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McChrystal Backtracks on Troop Veto for Kandahar Shuras
WASHINGTON - The U.S. military has now officially backtracked from its earlier suggestion that it would seek the consent of local shuras, or consultative conferences with those elders, to carry out the coming military occupation of Kandahar city and nearby districts – contradicting a pledge by Afghan President Hamid Karzai not to carry out the operation without such consent.
About 100 government, tribal, and religious leaders, mostly from Alasai district meet at a shura council meeting on Forward Operating Base Morales Frasier, Nijrab district, in southern Kapisa, Afghanistan, March 17, 2009. The shura was held to address operations in the Alasai district and the recent appointment of a new sub-governor there. (photo by Chief Master Sgt. John Zincone) Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, a spokesman for
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in
Afghanistan, told IPS Tuesday that local tribal elders in Kandahar
could "shape the conditions" under which the influx of foreign troops
operate during the operation, but would not determine whether or where
NATO troops would be deployed in and around the city.
Asked whether the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is committed to getting local approval before introducing more troops into Kandahar and surrounding districts, the McChrystal spokesman said, "We're not talking about something as simple as a referendum."
At a Mar. 29 briefing in Kabul on plans for the Kandahar operation, however, an unnamed senior U.S. military official told reporters that one of the elements of the strategy for gaining control over the Taliban stronghold is to "shura our way to success" - referring to the Islamic concept of consultative bodies. In those conferences with local tribal elders, the officials said, "The people have to ask for the operation... We're going to have to have a situation where they invite us in."
Those statements clearly suggested the intention to get the support of local tribal elders before going ahead with the large-scale military operation scheduled to begin in June.
That is what President Karzai said to a shura of between 1,000 and 2,000 Kandahar province tribal elders Apr. 4. Karzai said NATO's Kandahar operation would not be carried out until the elders themselves were ready to support it, according to a number of press reports.
According to the report by RTA, Afghanistan's state television service, Karzai actually said, "I know you are worried about this operation," before asking their opinion. He also said that the shuras to be organized at the district level were for the purpose of "getting approval and deciding" on the operation, according to the RTA report.
And the assembled elders made it known that they didn't want the operation.
That was clearly not what McChrystal, who was sitting behind Karzai at the shura, wanted to hear.
McChrystal's Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. William Mayville, and spokesman Sholtis both sought to minimize the damage from the incident. Mayville asserted that Karzai is "on board" on the Kandahar offensive, adding, "We would not have had this shura if he wasn't convinced this is the right stuff."
Sholtis suggested that Karzai had only "made it clear that he would involve local leaders in the decision-making process".
Sholtis acknowledged that "nobody wants a counterinsurgency fought in their backyard", but claimed that the elders who spoke at the Kandahar shura had "made it clear that Kandahar also suffers from an unwanted Taliban presence."
Sholtis also said the three elders who had expressed concerns about the operation had been supported by "probably about a third of the more than 1,000 who attended".
But published accounts of the meeting show that the elders were not calling for expelling the Taliban from the city and its environs. When Karzai asked the assembled elders whether they were "happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out", they shouted loudly, "We are not happy," the Sunday Times of London reported.
As reported by AFP, when Karzai asked, "Are you worried?" the elders shouted back, "Yes we are!"
According to the RTA account, one elder interrupted Karzai to say, "Who are the Taliban, but my son and another's nephew? The problem is actually these people who are in power, in particular the tribal elders and those who have power in Kandahar city."
And in a revealing response, Karzai said, "Absolutely, you are right..."
Some of the elders told CNN's Atia Abawi they preferred to negotiate with the Taliban rather than confront them in a military offensive.
McChrystal and other officials in the ISAF command appear to have hoped that the threat of a major influx of U.S. troops in and around Kandahar city would compel such local leaders and tribal elders to persuade Taliban troops to leave their district. Karen DeYoung and Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post reported Mar. 21 that U.S. officials had been telling them they had to "improve governance, address corruption and eject the Taliban" or face "expanding military operations".
McChrystal and ISAF base that calculation on a broader U.S.-NATO assumption about the nature of the Taliban movement and its base of popular support in Kandahar and southwestern Afghanistan in general.
The British regional coordinator for southern Afghanistan, Nicholas Kay, told Asia Times correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad in January 2007 that a majority of the population of southwestern Afghanistan supported the Taliban. But Kay said that 80 percent were Taliban or supporters only because they were "disgruntled by government inefficiencies and corruption" and were therefore "reconcilable".
Only 20 percent of the Taliban and their supporters were "ideologically committed" to the cause, Kay told Shahzad.
Kay's view formed the basis for the Barack Obama administration's optimistic strategy of "turning" the supposedly reconcilable 80 percent of the Taliban. That theory failed, however, to consider a key political dynamic in southern Afghanistan: the Taliban exploitation of the government's opium eradication policy, which systematically favored wealthy landowners - who were allowed to avoid destruction in return for a bribe - and fell entirely on the poor.
As early as spring 2006, tribal elders in Kandahar province were supporting the Taliban in return for the insurgents providing protection against government destruction of opium fields, as the well-informed International Council on Security and Development reported in April 2006.
Journalist Gretchen Peters found the same alliance between the Taliban and opium farmers against opium eradication in Helmand province in 2007. It was neither "ideology" nor mere anger about government corruption that was binding the rural population to the Taliban but something far more tangible.
The big Apr. 4 shura in Kandahar revealed a chasm between the prevailing U.S. view of soft support for the Taliban and the views of both Karzai and the tribal elders themselves. As a result there will be no empowering of district shuras to decide whether or not to invite U.S. and Canadian troops to confront the Taliban.
But McChrystal must now worry about how the Kandahar campaign can succeed in the face of opposition from both local leaders and President Karzai.
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30 Comments so far
Show AllMcChrystal has to decide in which of his feet he going himself. Everything he does just makes it harder for him to do anything. He should take the honourable way out of the Samurai.
We preach winning hearts and minds but we practice death and destruction. Whenever you hear the US military using phrases like 'transparency', "working with the locals", "bringing democracy"--put your hand on your wallet and reach for your gun...
Is backtrack another word for lie?
"Only 20 percent of the Taliban and their supporters were 'ideologically committed' to the cause, Kay told Shahzad...."
This fellow should do stand-up comedy.
The British, and the Americans after them, have misunderstood other cultures' practice of "consensus" for so long it would be a waste of time to give them another lecture on the subject.
The American barbarians also misunderstood this in Vietnam.
If the US and NATO in Afghanistan are committed to finding 1842, they will find it soon enough.
Why argue?
Eugene:
I'm enjoying your comments. Please enlighten me...what is the significance of 1842?
Like the former Soviet Union, the USA will collapse as a result of this "war" in Afghanistan. I would guess the collapse will come suddenly in a few years.
Naw, keep in mind communism was held together by faith in ones government.
At most we'll enter into another decade of shame like we did after Vietnam .
Me thinks mcchrystal smokes more crack and meth than is good for him, but being a member of the 'special forces', he probably doesn't think that there is ever too much of that shit to smoke.
So, what is this Kandahar thing, a planned attack on some more ghosts that deserve killing? When, in June? Wouldn't this be something like a traitor to the uniform and america to announce and advertize an attack on the enemy. Truly someone I would have a hard time serving in uniform under such a whacked out strategy or would this be a tactical phase of STUPID military functions?
But what the hey, old mcchrystalmeth is just living evidence of o's inability to be a functional commander in chief.
I really can't imagine the opinions of Karzai or these tribal leaders having any effect on McChrystle's plans.
We never let Maliki's opposiiton to anything we wanted to do in Iraq interfere with Patreas' plans, why should anything be different here?
These government "leaders" have got to get it through their thick heads that we are the U. S. of A., the world's biggest war-mongers, and what they have to say means absolutely nothing.
Got that straight now or do I have to draw you a picture?
The warmonger is bankrupt and even as a warmonger incompetent.
What is the point of all these fake permissions? The rape of Kandahar is on the drawing board, and will happen as planned just like the rape of Fallujah and the rape of Gaza. Karzai is in no position to make promises to the Shuras. Everyone knows he's a stooge. Who in their right mind would invite McChrystal's gang to murder their own relatives? It would be smarter to paint everyone in Kandahar as a probable terrorist prior to the current proposed bit of butchery, than to put out the insane pretense that Karzai has any say in the matter or that our destructive juggernaut is somehow there by invitation. Nobody with any brains is going to buy that, though it will likely play ok in America.
1842 awaits.
Maybe Karzai is trying to shift the balance of power to the Afghans via a Shura or Loya Jurga (Grand Council). In that way the people will gain power by their ability to say yes or no. That is not happening now. A Loya Jurga would completely change the dynamics of the Afghanistan war.
Remember one of the main concepts of the book, The Art of War. Without the will of the people you cannot win the war (hence the "talk" of hearts and minds). Until there is a Loya Jurga the hearts and minds of the Afghans will be against the U.S.
We're not interested in nation building, we're not interested in hearts or minds (unless they've been separated from their bodies) and we're not interested in being social workers. We are interested in complete control.
It reminds me of what Chomsky once said (paraphrase): Conservatives (Authoritarians) whether R or D want absolute control because without absolute control you don't have absolute power and without absolute power your assets are absolutely at risk. This paranoid/dis-functional concept is one of the main factors of our disjointed, us vs. them world.
It is difficult to quote the passage below too often:
"It is not enough to destroy one's own and other people's experience. One must overlay this devastation by a false consciousness inured, as Marcuse puts it, to its own falsity.
Exploitation must not be seen as such. It must be seen as benevolence. Persecution preferably should not need to be invalidated as the figment of a paranoid imagination; it should be experienced as kindness. Marx described mystification and showed its function in his day. Orwell's time is already with us. The colonists not only mystify the natives, in the way that Fanon so clearly shows, they have to mystify themselves. We in Europe and North America are the colonists, and in order to sustain our amazing images of ourselves as God's gift to the vast majority of the starving human species, we have to interiorize our violence upon ourselves and our children and to employ the rhetoric of morality to describe this process.
In order to rationalize our industrial-military complex, we have to destroy our capacity to see clearly any more what is in front of, and to imagine what is beyond, our noses. Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste to our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s, if possible.
From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to those forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father, and their parents and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities, and on the whole this enterprise is successful. By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves, a half-crazed creature more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age.
Love and violence, properly speaking, are polar opposites. Love lets the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to constrain the other's freedom, to force him to act in the way we desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other's own existence or destiny.
We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love."
R.D.Laing from The Politics Of Experience
Eugene Costa -- I will add to that something that I will never forget:
a remark during a conversation I had 2 years ago with a very old Italian gentleman. he was world travelled for being a Nautical Engineer and had a clear mind, memory, eyes, read in several languages different newspapers everyday :
upon reading about the invasions by the USA and NATO - he said this to me:
"WE in the west have much to be ashamed for...I am was a nautical engineer because I wanted to learn about the world...and it has been my life-long love of cultures, history ...I have lived long enough to have seen the first and second world wars....I and my brother were playing in the piazzas when the Fascists came to power and we knew from all the signs, terrible things were coming...I know about Empires, I know about the Roman Empire...because I AM Roman..today - that Empire is the USA...the trouble with US westerners is:
WE colonized other regions to enrich ourselves at their expense...we took their riches and left their people with nothing...and then we are SURPRISED that they come to our lands...if we had no intention of ever sharing with them the prosperities we achieved by colonizing them..to help them or treat with them fairly...we should have just left them alone...we have much to be ashamed for".
it was quite enthralling listening to his recollections and very erudite language with clearly enunciated words...with only his limp with a walker as his biggest ailment....
all that - at age 102.
Three cups of tea, anyone?
The Chinese Army came to our City Council Meeting and asked us if we rather have them attack our city on a friday or wednesday to wipe out the Repugs.
Which day did the council pick?
"But McChrystal must now worry about how the Kandahar campaign can succeed in the face of opposition from both local leaders and President Karzai."
Can Karzai spell Diem, or maybe Noriega? We can.
All the talk of cooperating with the elders regarding any military operation around Khandahar and allowing them to say yea or nay is ridiculous. It would'nt make any difference to McChrystal one way or the other. He sees no way but his way. And that is to wage war against anyone even suspected of armed resistance. That means killing anyone in your gun sights. How many innocents are going to die in order for McChrystal to claim another victory?? The soldiers in Afghanistan have become, after nine years of killing have become a band of blood thirsty murderers willing to follow any orders from their superiors to further this countries very misguided policies regarding not only Afghanistan but the entire Muslim world. We (as a country) have no choice other than admit defeat and get out of that part of the world. However that option is not available to the military or the "government". We will only be forced to leave when the cost in blood and treasure is catastrophic. We are almost there...........and the beat goes on.
The deception of others is almost invariably rooted in the deception of ourselves.
McChrystal and the USA basically told the Afghanis...Tribal Elders, Taliban, "insurgents", warlords, whatever their different motivations and relationships - ALL AFGHANIS --
"we declare war on ALL of you".
does McChrystal think that the Elders will simply swallow his dismissal of their "shura" councils - in the manner he did:
"it's not as SIMPLE as having a referendum"
when THAT is EXACTLY what their culture is about? he just shot himself in the foot.
"The U.S. military has now officially backtracked from its earlier suggestion that it would seek the consent of local shuras, or consultative conferences with those elders, to carry out the coming military occupation of Kandahar city and nearby districts – ..."
Oh, yeah ... beyond disgusting and insane.
++++++++++
Can we come in, please, to occupy your city and nearby districts and in so doing kill some more of your friends and relatives, turn your houses and neighborhood areas into rubble so we can kill Taliban who you want to negotiate with yourselves?
Please, please, we have to spend our military budget so we can get more for the rich people of our country so they can make money on the profits of manufacturing more arms and weapons and sell them to our own government. Please, please ... this is all necessary for our Pentagon's prosperity and our fighting forces?
No? What do you mean "NO!" We want to help you achieve democracy and freedom.
Oh, God. There's no dealing with these people. Get the drones ready. We've got to take out these insurgents. How dare they not appreciate what we're doing for them?!!!!
A little Shock and Awe works everytime.
++++++ An excerpt from the new DICK & JANE GO TO WAR reader for grades 1 through 3.
/cm
IF WE CAN ATTACK AND DECIDE TO KILL AGAINST THE WISHES OF A COUNTRY'S CITIZENS, IS THAT LIBERATION OR OCCUPATION???
The fascist amerikam military survives by lies and fear mongering, and of course, controlling the msm !The war criminals in the white house and congress do nada to change the murderous occupations ! Fascist amerika WILL murder its way into the oblivion of a failed empire !
This might be as good as Dienbienphu if the US and NATO proceed with this invasion.
The foreign forces are a lot more vulnerable than they appear to be.
Karzai was not blowing smoke about joining the insurgents.
And he had very private talks in Iran and Beijing.