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The AfPak Train Wreck
When President Barack Obama laid out his plan for winning the war in Afghanistan, behind him stood an army of ghosts: Greeks, Mongols, Buddhists, British, and Russians, all whom had almost the same illusions as the current resident of the Oval Office about Central Asia. The first four armies are dust. But there are Russian survivors of the 1979-89 war that ended up killing 15,000 Soviets and hundreds of thousands of Afghans as well as virtually wrecking Moscow's economy.
One is retired General Igor Rodionov, commander of the Soviet's 120,000-man 40th Army that fought for 10 years to defeat the Afghan insurgents. In a recent interview with Charles Clover of the Financial Times, he made an observation that exactly sums up the president's deeply flawed strategy: "Everything has already been tried."
Three Flawed Goals
The president laid out three "goals" for his escalation: One, to militarily defeat al-Qaeda and neutralize the Taliban; two, to train the Afghan Army to take over the task of the war; and three, to partner with Pakistan against a "common enemy." The purpose of surging 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, the president said, is to protect the "vital national interests" of the United States.
But each goal bears no resemblance to the reality on the ground in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. Rather than protecting U.S. interests, the escalation will almost certainly undermine them.
The military aspect of the surge simply makes no sense. According to U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones, al-Qaeda has fewer than 100 operatives in Afghanistan, so "defeating" it means trying to find a few needles in a 250,000 square-mile haystack.
As for the Taliban, General Rodionov has a good deal of experience with how fighting them is likely to turn out: "The war, all 10 years of it, went in circles. We would come and they [the insurgents] would leave. Then we would leave, and they would return."
The McClatchy newspapers reported this past July that the Taliban had successfully evaded last summer's surge of U.S. Marines into Helmand Province by moving to attack German and Italian troops in the northern part of the country. Does the White House think that the insurgents will forget the lessons they learned over the last 30 years?
Growing the Afghan Army?
Another major goal of the escalation is to increase the size of the Afghan army from around 90,000 to 240,000. The illusions behind this task are myriad, but one of the major obstacles is that the Afghan army is currently controlled by the Tajik minority, who make up about 25% of the population but constitute 41% of the trained troops. More than that, according to the Italian scholar Antonio Giustozzi, Tajiks command 70% of the Army's battalions.
Pashtuns, who make up 42% of Afghanistan, have been frozen out of the Army's top leadership and, in provinces like Zabul where they make up the majority, there are virtually no Pashtuns in the army.
The Tajiks speak Dari, the Pashtuns, Pashto. Yet Tajik troops have been widely deployed in Pashtun areas. According to Chris Mason, a member of the Afghanistan inter-agency Operations Group from 2003 to 2005, Tajik control of the army makes ethnic strife almost inevitable. "I believe the elements of a civil war are in play," says Mason.
Matthew Hoh, who recently resigned as the chief U.S. civil officer in Zabul Province, warns that tension between Pashtuns and the Tajik-led alliance that dominates the Karzai government, is "already bad now," and unless the Obama administration figures out how to solve it, "we could see a return to the civil war of the 1990s."
It was the bitter civil war between the Tajik-based Northern Alliance and the Pashtun-based Taliban that savaged Kabul and led to the eventual triumph of the Taliban.
Obama's escalation will target the Pashtun provinces of Helmand and Khandahar. The Soviets followed a similar strategy and ended up stirring up a hornet's nest that led to the creation of the Taliban. U.S. troops will soon discover the meaning of the old Pashtun axiom: "Me against my brothers; me and my brothers against our cousins; me, my brothers and my cousins against everyone."
Pashtun Pushback
Afghanistan has never had a centralized government or a large standing army, two of the Obama Administration's major goals. Instead it has been ruled by localized extended families, clans, and tribes, what Hoh calls a government of "valleyism." Attempts to impose the rule of Kabul on the rest of the country have always failed.
"History has demonstrated that Afghans will resist outside interference, and political authority is most often driven bottom-up by collective local consent rather than top-down through oppressive central control," says Lawrence Sellin, a U.S. Army Reserve colonel and veteran of the Afghan and Iraq wars. "It is absolutely clear that the path to peace in Afghanistan is through balance of power, not hegemony."
Yet a powerful Tajik-controlled army at the beck and call of one of the most corrupt—and isolated — governments in the world has been doing exactly the opposite in the Pashtun areas. A Pashtun pushback is inevitable. According to Hoh and Mason, it has already begun.
Partnering with Pakistan
The goal of a U.S. "partnership" with Pakistan is predicated on the assumption that both countries have a common "terrorist" enemy, but that is based on either willful ignorance or stunningly bad intelligence.
It is true that the Pakistan army is currently fighting the Taliban. But there are four Talibans in Pakistan, and their policies toward the Islamabad government range from hostile, to neutral, to friendly.
Pakistan's army has locked horns in South Waziristan with the Mehsud Taliban, the Taliban group that was recently driven out of the Swat Valley and that has launched a bombing campaign throughout the Punjab.
But the wing of the North Waziristan Taliban led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur has no quarrel with Islamabad and has kept clear of the fighting. Another South Waziristan Taliban, based in Wana and led by Mullah Nazir, is not involved in the fighting and considers itself an ally of the Pakistani government.
Washington wants Pakistan to go after the Afghan Taliban, led by Mullah Omar and based in Pakistan. But Omar has refused to lend any support to the Mehsud Taliban. "We are fighting the occupation forces in Afghanistan. We do not have any policy whatsoever to interfere in the matters of any other country," says Taliban spokesperson Qari Yousaf Ahmedi. "U.S. and other forces have attacked our land and our war is only against them. What is happening in Pakistan is none of our business."
The charge that the Taliban would allow al-Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan once again is unsupported by anything the followers of Mullah Omar have said. Gulbuddin Hekmatyer, a former U.S. ally against the Soviets and the current leader of the Taliban-allied Hizb-I-Islam insurgent group, told Al-Jazeera, "The Taliban government came to an end in Afghanistan due to the wrong strategy of al-Qaeda," reflecting the distance Mullah Omar has tried to put between the Afghan Taliban and Osama bin Laden's organization.
The "other" forces Ahmed refers to include members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Patrol, an Indian paramilitary group defending New Delhi's road-building efforts in southern Afghanistan. The Pakistanis, who have fought three wars with India — including the 1999 Kargil incident that came very close to a nuclear exchange — are deeply uneasy about growing Indian involvement in Afghanistan, and consider the Karzai government too close to New Delhi.
In short, Obama's "partnership" would have the Pakistanis pick a fight with all four wings of the Taliban, including one that pledges to remove India's troops. President Obama did not explain why the Pakistanis should destabilize their own country, drain their financial reserves, and act contrary to their strategic interests vis-à-vis India.
Escalation's Negative Consequences
Will the escalation have an impact on "vital American interests?" Certainly, but most of the consequences will be negative.
Instead of demonstrating to the international community that the United States is stepping away from the Bush administration's use of force, the escalation will do the opposite.
Instead of bringing our allies closer together, the escalation will sharpen tensions between Pakistan and India — the latter strongly supports the surge of U.S. troops — and pressure the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to scrape together yet more troops for a war that is deeply unpopular in Europe.
Instead of controlling "terrorism," the escalation will be the recruiting sergeant for such organizations, particularly in the Middle East, where the administration's show of "resolve" on Afghanistan is contrasted with its abandonment of any "resolve" to resist Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.
And finally, the deployment will cost at least $30 billion a year on top of the $70 billion the United States is shelling out to support its current force of 81,000 troops. In the meantime, the administration is too starved for cash to launch a badly needed jobs program at home.
And keep in mind that the president said such a July 2011 withdrawal would be based on "conditions on the ground," a caveat big enough to drive a tank through.
"More soldiers is simply going to mean more deaths," says Gennady Zaitsev, a former commander of an elite Soviet commando unit in Afghanistan. "U.S. and British citizens are going to ask, quite rightly, 'Why are our sons dying?' And the answer will be 'To keep Hamid Karzai in power.' I don't think that will satisfy them."
Looking back at years of blood and defeat, General Rodionov put his finger on the fundamental flaw in Obama's escalation: "They [the U.S. and its allies] have to understand that there is no way for them to succeed militarily…It is a political problem which we utterly failed to grasp with our military mindset."
That misunderstanding could become the epitaph for a presidency.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllThe goals are to keep the oil pipeline open and to keep the welfare money to the military industrial complex flowing. They therefore cannot fail.
The pipeline hasn't even been built yet. So you can see how critical this actually is.
- General Rodionov (said)…It is a political problem -
So I yet again suggest that Progressives try to solve it politically, by attacking the law that started this madness and that will keep it going until the US military has completely prevented future terrorism (in other words, forever war).
It doesn't matter that there are only 100 al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. America is at war with that group and as long as 1 al-Qaedaian (al-Qaedan?) is said to exist anywhere, the war to prevent future terrorism goes on.
Congress declared war on enemies to be named later. Mr. Obama said that America is at war with 'al-Qaeda and its affiliates'.
Even if all the al-Qaedaerians are killed, there will still be official enemies (the President will announce just who they are when it's convenient).
That reminds me of a joke I made up.
How do you identify a future terrorist?
Posthumously.
It also doesn't matter what the goals in Afghanistan are (pipelines, surrounding Russia, etc.) Our feckless Congress enshrined into law the idiocy that is the DAFT law (aka Public Law 107-40). That is all the justification the C-in-C needs to escalate, to surge, to expand, to continue hostilities anywhere he chooses (look, there's future terrorists threatening our future resources!)
To end the war, the justification that the President and MIC use to wage that war must be dealt with and not ignored for another 8 years.
End the DAFT war by repealing the DAFT law.
Epitaph for a presidency indeed: Here LIES black Bush Barack, Buckanear-in-Cheap.
This article contains the first mention I've run across about "the Indo-Tebetan Border Patrol, an Indian paramilitary group defending New Dehli's road building efforts in southern Afghanistan."
Now this is a bizarre new addition to the factional witches' brew of warlordism running rampant in the region. Small wonder "Pakistanis are deeply uneasy with growing Indian involvement in Afghanistan, and consider the Karzai government too close to New Dehli", as Conn Hallinan of Foreign Policy in Focus puts it.
Who in their right mind could possibly believe the civilian government of Pakistan, the Pakistani military, or the Pakistani ISI intelligence agency in particular would ever ally itself with India, to fight against any Muslim ethnic faction in Afghanistan or in the frontier tribal areas? If the Indian equivalent of Blackwater, Inc. is tasked the job of guarding Indian financed road construction projects (over which supplies to US/NATO forces undoubtedly will travel), it is hard to envision anything more likely to solidify all of the locals against the whole anti-Islamic infidel coalition.
US intelligence and the Pakistani ISI have been locked into a very bad, mutually abusive marriage of convenience ever since the CIA's black ops boys decided to clandestinely fund the muhjadaheen "freedom fighters" against the Soviets three decades ago. This whole marriage nearly ended in a nasty, bitter divorce in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Talk about predictable blowback. Here we are now, eight years later, urging and goading Pakistan to pick fights with their own kindred while Uncle Sam brazenly engages in hanky panky with Pakistan's major rival, India.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Bill from Saginaw
. . . retired General Igor Rodionov . . . made an observation that exactly sums up the president's deeply flawed strategy: "Everything has already been tried."
Ah, but it hasn't been tried "the American way". An American Fuck-Up, authored by President FUBARack H. Obama, will be BIG, BLOODY, UNBELIEVABLY EXPENSIVE AND AS EFFECTIVE AS TURNING A LIGHT ON IN A DARK ROOM SO A BLIND MAN CAN SEE.
Will FUBARack H. Obama call Hamid Karzai and tell him to stop the Afghans from "demeaning" him?
obama lacks all courage. the republicans were right when they said obama was too inexperienced to be president, though they said that for the wrong reasons. only years and experiences can steel someone to the jaugernaut that is the pentagon. mcchrystal took the bottle right out of baby obama's hands and ran with it. obama just arrived at the federal level in 2005, and has not had the time to develop the self- confidence and accurate intuition about things military. he is on unfamiliar territory when dealing with the brazen mcchrystal and the "aw-shucks" patreus, each of whom he should have long ago fired. maybe obama fears for his own safety and that of his family, given the hundreds of billions of dollars that our industrial warlords would lose if he steered the nation toward a peacetime economy.
Thanks to Bill from Saginaw and locust for excellent comments.
Obama says he had 10 meetings about Afpac, presumably all with military types, and, unfortunately, not with Conn Hallinan, the Russian General Igor Rodionov, Michael Moore or Greg Mortenson (Three cups of Tea). It is said that there are 6 million students in Af almost half of whom are girls. Secular education is and should be the goal of forming a stable country free of corruption. This goal cannot be acomplished militarily in one or two years. It will take at least 20 years to educate the roots of a healthy society. l00,000 men could build many needed schools and equip them with teachers thus laying the foundation of a well functioning country. And builders don't each require one million dollars of military equipment.
Then O, his generals and CIA thugs would be left with the prospect of finding new enemies to demonize.
Over and over, we hear the same tired bemusement from liberal writers. They keep saying that there is complete disconnect between the stated reasons for the war and the obvious facts on the ground. Here is a typical example: "But each goal bears no resemblance to the reality on the ground in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. Rather than protecting U.S. interests, the escalation will almost certainly undermine them."
Another constant theme: "The military aspect of the surge simply makes no sense."
And the consequences of our behavior is foreseen with unerring acumen: "Instead of controlling 'terrorism,' the escalation will be the recruiting sergeant for such organizations, particularly in the Middle East..."
The problem is that they usually end, as does this article, utterly devoid of an answer as to why anyone would pursue such an obviously self-destructive course. We are left with a sense of impotent frustration, a sense of powerlessness in the face of irrational destructiveness.
In a way, that's what defines liberalism - the inability to ask the decisive question and seek a genuine answer to it.
What liberals don't seem to understand is that the goal of the war against Afghanistan and Pakistan is not to create "stability" - it is to create sufficient numbers of enemies so that we can perpetuate the war and the profits that ensue.
In the words of George Orwell: "The war is not supposed to be winnable, it is supposed to be continuous...all for the hierarchy of society...The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent..it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War… is now a purely internal affair."
The purpose of the war in Afghanistan is to maintain a permanent state of war. This state is necessary for the national security state to flourish, as well as to ensure the subjection of the majority. Obama, the smiling liberal, is well-chosen as executor of this totalitarian strategy because he can pull off the crime while keeping his progressive credentials intact. The liberals wish to live in the illusion of our "restraint", "lawfulness", and "decency" in comparison to our manufactured "enemies".
A secondary goal of the war is the control of Central Asian energy resources in a game the U.S. cannot afford to cede to the Russians and Chinese. But principally, war in Afghanistan helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. Liberals play an essential role in the maintenance of this state through the proliferation of their illusions about "democracy" and "constitutional law" which mask the realities of power. That is their role and in that they serve the security state well.
Great comments.
"What liberals don't seem to understand is that the goal of the war against Afghanistan and Pakistan is not to create "stability" - it is to create sufficient numbers of enemies so that we can perpetuate the war and the profits that ensue."
Excuse me, sir, but "liberals" understand that exactly. What YOU don't seem to understand is that the false separation of logical needs into "liberal" and "conservative" is just one more tactic under "divide and conquer". You just cannot express the reality of the situation without taking a shot at "the liberals." Sad, really.
"The purpose of the war in Afghanistan is to maintain a permanent state of war. This state is necessary for the national security state to flourish, as well as to ensure the subjection of the majority."
This "liberal" understands that precisely. And so does all of his "liberal" friends. I might point out that it is your "conservatives" who over the last eight years have promulgated such a condition. Your "conservative" big money MIC CEO's and your "conservative" bankers have pushed our country down the toilet.
"The liberals wish to live in the illusion of our "restraint", "lawfulness", and "decency" in comparison to our manufactured "enemies"."
Actually it is the "conservatives" who, again, over the last eight years especially, have promulgated an illusion of "restraint", "lawfulness", and "decency" while acting in exactly opposite fashion. "Restraint"? Illegal invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Lawfulness"? How about the general trashing of the constitution during the Bush years, and yes, now continued by "liberal" Obama.
"A secondary goal of the war is the control of Central Asian energy resources in a game the U.S. cannot afford to cede to the Russians and Chinese."
"...cannot afford to cede..." So you say. Is your portfolio heavily invested in oil and gas company stocks? Couldn't the three or four trillion dollars these illegal wars and occupations will have cost before they are all over, which they are never likely to be, have been invested in wind, solar, tidal and other renewable sources of energy, making the USA energy independant and most likely a net exporter of energy?
Well, at least you got in a few digs against "the liberals", Rush.
Thanks for your comments, Kent. Actually everything I said about "liberals" applies doubly to conservatives. I was not attempting to contrast the liberal with the conservative position. I was attempting to characterize the liberal ideology as equally destructive of the natural environment as the conservative one. The fact that my post was misunderstood as a conservative diatribe is indicative of the narrowness of political discourse in this country. The ideology which Barack Obama represents applies equally to the political "left" and "right" in this country.
The specific point I was making is that the ruling class in this country is promoting war in the Middle East in order to pursue not only control of Central Asian energy resources, but to maintain an atmosphere of militarism in this country which makes social control easier. This is part of a larger project of the national security state that has nothing to do with the phony contrast of "liberal" and "conservative" which are two halves of the same ideology.
The difference between the US and Soviet situations in Afghanistan is seldom highlighted in these discussions. The US faces an Afghan resistance (or insurgency, depending on one's POV) that has no apparent superpower support. The Soviets faced a resistance (insurgency) receiving massive support originating in the US and abetted by Pakistan and drawing many volunteer fighters from the Arab nations and perhaps other Muslims. Isn't this difference noticed by US policy makers and doesn't it give them reason to expect that things will work out differently this time?
There many reasons to think that the US shouldn't win or even be fighting in Afghanistan but policy makers will never acknowledge those reasons. They will instead think of their desired energy pipeline route or the rich flow of taxpayer funds (or rather, debt) to the war machine and reassure themselves that the US domestic population is too busy simply surviving to throw up effective resistance to a war so far away and with such a modest US casualty rate.
It is insanity which will cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Stupid in the extreme. We have a large number of arrogant, ignorant, adolescent mentalities in charge of our government. And the corruption is so deep rooted it will be impossible to remove it. We in the US are in fact royally screwed. Pathetic. Just pathetic.
We should listen to the Russians who are trying to warn us. They had tried everything. We also did our best to help them fail. Another poster said the difference between our war and the Russian occupation (isn't that what we are doing also) is that the present Taliban and insurgents are not backed by a superpower support. Well they are being supplied with arms that are being given to them by someone. They are being trained in tactics by Chechnens; high incident of superior sniping ability observed. And they are escalating. Soon they will have surface to air missles and then all bets will be off.