Afghanistan: The News Is Bad
Thursday 10 June 2010
by: Jim Lobe | Inter Press Service
Washington - While U.S. officials insist they are making progress in reversing the momentum built up by the Taliban insurgency over the last several years, the latest news from Afghanistan suggests the opposite may be closer to the truth.
Even senior military officials are conceding privately that their much-touted new counterinsurgency strategy of "clear, hold and build" in contested areas of the Pashtun southern and eastern parts of the country are not working out as planned despite the "surge" of some 20,000 additional U.S. troops over the past six months.
Casualties among the nearly 130,000 U.S. and other NATO troops now deployed in Afghanistan are also mounting quickly.
Four U.S. troops were killed Wednesday when Taliban fire brought down their helicopter in the southern province of Helmand, the scene of a major U.S. offensive centred on the strategic farming region of Marja over the past several months.
That brought the death toll of NATO soldiers just this week to 23, including 10 killed in various attacks around the country on Monday, the deadliest day for NATO forces in two years.
"It's been a tough week," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday.
Seventeen of the 23 were U.S. soldiers, bringing the total U.S. death toll in and around Afghanistan since the U.S. intervened to oust the Taliban from power in late 2001 to more than 1,100, according to the independent iCasualties website.
While senior military officials attributed the steadily rising toll to Washington's surge of a total of 30,000 additional troops by next month, as well as the beginning of the Taliban's annual summer offensive, none other than Secretary of Defence Robert Gates warned that the U.S. and its NATO allies were running out of time to show results.
"The one thing none of the (alliance's) publics...including the American public, will tolerate is the perception of stalemate in which we're losing young men," he said in London Wednesday on the eve of a key NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels this week at which Afghanistan will top the agenda and Gates himself is expected to prod his interlocutors to fulfil pledges to provide more troops.
"All of us, for our publics, are going to have to show by the end of the year that our strategy is on the track, making some headway," he said.
Obama, who last November set a July 2011 as the date after which Washington would begin to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, has said his administration will conduct a major review of U.S. strategy and whether it is working at the end of this year.
The latest polling here shows a noticeable erosion of support for Washington's commitment to the war compared to eight months ago when Obama agreed to the Pentagon's recommendations to send the 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to bring the total U.S. presence there to around 100,000.
An additional 34,000 troops from NATO and non-NATO allies are supposed to be deployed there by year's end.
According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Thursday, 53 percent of respondents said the war in Afghanistan, which last month, according to most measures, exceeded the Vietnam conflict as the longest-running war in U.S. history, was "not worth fighting". That was the highest percentage in more than three years.
The same poll found that 39 percent of the public believe that Washington is losing the war, compared to 42 percent who believe it is winning.
While public scepticism about the war appears to be growing, the foreign policy elite, including within the military, also seems increasingly doubtful for a number of reasons.
Disillusionment with President Hamid Karzai - already running high as a result of last year's rigged elections and his tolerance for government and family corruption - gained new momentum last weekend with the forced resignations of his two top security officials, Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, who were considered by Western officials as among the most competent of Karzai's cabinet members.
The two men reportedly objected strongly to Karzai's order to release all accused Taliban prisoners who are being held without enough evidence for trials.
The order was seen as the latest in a series of moves designed to reconcile with the Taliban leadership, a step that Washington has strongly opposed until now.
Among other things, the U.S. fears that such a move could prompt leaders of the Northern Alliance, which consists of non-Pashtun groups, to break with the government and prepare for renewed civil war of the kind that devastated Afghanistan before the Taliban first took control in 1996.
Karzai's bid for reconciliation stems from his conviction, according to a number of accounts, that U.S. strategy is unlikely to succeed in weakening - let alone defeating - the Taliban and that his hold on power will ultimately rely on reaching an accommodation with them.
That impression may well be grounded in an accurate assessment of the way Washington's counterinsurgency strategy is actually playing out.
Indeed, the Marja campaign, which was heralded as a major test of Washington's new strategy when it was launched in February, appears to be faltering badly. Late last month, Washington's overall military commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, even referred to it as "a bleeding ulcer".
While it initially succeeded in "clearing" Taliban from the region McChrystal's pledge that U.S. troops would bring with them an Afghan "government in a box" that would provide basic security and social services proved, as a feature story in Thursday's Washington Post described it, "largely empty".
As a result of local disillusionment with the police and the very few Afghan civilian officials that followed the U.S. military into the area, insurgents have regrouped and in some areas regained the offensive, according to the latest reports. One recent study found that the majority of the population had become more antagonistic to NATO forces than was the case before the operation began.
The Marja experience has cast doubt on a yet more ambitious and strategically critical operation planned for Kandahar.
While Washington had initially planned to launch a major military operation to "clear" Taliban from neighbourhoods in and around the city before introducing the civilian component of the counterinsurgency strategy, it has now reversed the order in hopes of not alienating the local population as it did in Marja.
But the presence of more police and civilian officials will no doubt require a build-up of NATO troops to protect them, particularly in light of a stepped-up and highly effective Taliban campaign to intimidate government officials who are perceived as cooperating with the Western forces by assassinating selected targets, including even low-level bureaucrats.
Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
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Comments
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This is no surprise to me.
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 12:25 — BruceB (not verified)This is no surprise to me. We need to get all of our soldiers home now. The military is designed to kill people, and it will not be successful at setting a US style society where it is clearly not wanted.
Are we winning or losing in
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 12:49 — Cliff (not verified)Are we winning or losing in Afghanistan? Every death is a loss.
To the US
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 13:32 — Anonymous (not verified)To the US Government:
Riiiiiidi pagliaci!!!!
ROFL.
How many times have we heard that the primitive natives are no match for our superior force?
How many times will the gullible fall for the blandishments of the arrogant?
What empire has triumphed in Afghanistan?
Pride goeth before the fall. Deposuit potentes de sedes.
Bring On the Friday Night
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 13:35 — Vic Anderson (not verified)Bring On the Friday Night Follies!
As if America will abandon
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 13:43 — Anonymous (not verified)As if America will abandon Afghanistan, with China/India/Russia right at Afghanistan's doorstep. Give your heads a shake, you guys are in there til the corporations that drive US foreign policy stop making money from the war.
I say we're going to stick
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 14:17 — Anonymous (not verified)I say we're going to stick it out, too much treasure up for grabs: copper, cannabis, opiates coal, etc and everything in between. Slaughter the natives, work with others (China, India) and carve up the "Pie".
Besides, corporations from ITT to Lockheed are makin' bank while millions are unemployed in the states. When a drone strikes, you can hear the sound of hundreds more losing their lifelines of UI insurance nationwide. This is all about control, always has been for the troubled imperialists.
From my limited knowledge of
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 16:47 — Anonymous (not verified)From my limited knowledge of the country, it will take soldiers equal to the population of the country to hold them under our thumb. That means, over 20 million troops with all the logistic support. The Soviets found this fact the hard way and got out. We are, unfortunately, stuck and must continue to help create some type of stability so to avoid major international strife in the region and in the world. We broke it, we must fix it. That is what we agreed to the world when we got in.
We will stay there until it
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 17:11 — Anonymous (not verified)We will stay there until it is safe to build the
Oil Pipeline for Obama.
Well, sucess could be had in
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 20:46 — Anonymous (not verified)Well, sucess could be had in Afghanistan,
this is how to win the war: when the taliban
throw acid in a little girl's face for trying
to go to school, those specific taliban are
hunted down by any means necessary and
dealt with as specific retribution for violating the
fundamental rights of Afgahn women.
When taliban attack women for trying to
attend university or for trying to work or
for trying to exercise their fundamental
human rights at home, they are hunted
down by any means necessary and dealt with
in public. And Afghan women are given
the means to protect themselves against
abusive husbands. Got it folks? If this war
were run as a war on behalf of the human rights of Afghan women, we could win,
AND we could smash the al-quaida regiments
world-wide. HUman rights for ALL,
not just for some slime ball sheiks!
(typos corrected): Well,
Fri, 06/11/2010 - 20:47 — Anonymous (not verified)(typos corrected):
Well, success could be had in Afghanistan,
this is how to win the war: when the taliban
throw acid in a little girl's face for trying
to go to school, those specific taliban are
hunted down by any means necessary and
dealt with as specific retribution for violating the
fundamental rights of Afghan women.
When taliban attack women for trying to
attend university or for trying to work or
for trying to exercise their fundamental
human rights at home, they are hunted
down by any means necessary and dealt with
in public. And Afghan women are given
the means to protect themselves against
abusive husbands. Got it folks? If this war
were run as a war on behalf of the human rights of Afghan women, we could win,
AND we could smash the al-quaida regiments
world-wide. Human rights for ALL,
not just for some slime ball sheiks!
The title of a TO article a
Sat, 06/12/2010 - 12:41 — Straight-Ahead (not verified)The title of a TO article a while back was "Afghanistan, Where Empires Go to Die."
One of the books of Winston's Churchill's history of WW II was called "Passing the Torch." I used to think that meant passing the torch of leadership in the fight against the Germans. In more recent years, I've come to the conclusion that it meant much more than whose generals called the shots at Normandy and beyond. Events support my interpretation of Churchill's title.
The US has had imperial ambitions almost since its founding. The Spanish-American war and WW I whetted the imperial appetite (hors d'oeuvres, ya know?). Churchill was astute enough to understand that Britain's imperial glory was fading, the Empire having been bankrupted by the perpetual war that is an inseparable, incurable,ultimately fatal, congenital fault of empire. Now we're in the same boat.
I am not surprised the news
Sat, 06/12/2010 - 13:54 — Anonymous (not verified)I am not surprised the news is bad, either. This is the kind of conflict that cannot be solved through violence. Plus, the most important question is, how are we doing here at home in the U.S.? With
No Medicare for All Americans
Over a trillion in for Endless War
Millions upon millions in virtual debt slavery
No college education without debt slavery
35 million Americans unemployed
45,000 Americans per year STILL dying because they STILL don't have health care
Illegal trade agreements promoting illegal labor
11-20 million people living in America without full civil rights
More people imprisoned than any other country on earth, with vast numbers there for victimless offenses such as pot or working illegally
Refusing to legalize, regulate, and tax, like alcohol, the biggest cash crop in the state of California alone
Forcing 30 million people to purchase a product from a private industry
No campaign finance reform remotely on the horizon and a Congress filled with sold-out-to-the-corporations-representatives
AMERICA: THE NEWS IS BAD
A lesson ever
Mon, 06/14/2010 - 16:38 — Anonymous (not verified)A lesson ever forgotten:
After the surrender of Saigon Government ,VN in 1975, aweird phenomenon could be seen everywhere after that.
A soldier who worked in the same unit with me turned out an inside job agent for VC . He is the very man , a VC squad leader of National Liberation Front to take over my communication center .
The stories would be as many as fairy tales if each ex-soldiers can tell about his experience
So how do we solve this problem with the current wars.????
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