Category: Afghanistan (vintage)

Forging Peace With War

President Obama, Jan 20 2009:

    We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.

This peace-forging, in a poor land where the US brought war over seven years ago, is social engineering at the point of a spear, and it won’t work.
According to Masood Aziz, a former diplomat:

    [Social engineering on a grand scale is] “a now thoroughly discredited approach to development in the Third World. The idea that after spending over $2.5 trillion on aid and social engineering since World War II, the West can create a “wonderful culture” in the Third World is delusional and suggests ignorance of the fact that foreign intervention has a dismal record of success.
    …culture is essential to development and . . . it needs to be protected in its own land and nurtured when in danger–not imposed from the outside. It is now well-recognized that development efforts only work if they are inclusive of human security, which itself embodies cultural and social norms. This “human development” approach–as elucidated by the Noble laureate Amartya Sen–has its focus on expanding human liberty and freedom and respect for the local population in defining their own needs and futures. In this sense, development is a basic human right based on a nation’s deep cultural and social character. When disturbed either by conflict, or by the imported idealism Marlowe seems to suggest, these rights are violated and disaster ensues
    Not understanding what Afghans want–security, education for their children, prosperity and the preservation of dignity–and instead advocating for “greatness” to come from the outside, has grave consequences for both Afghans and the community of nations engaged in this fight..

Continue reading “Forging Peace With War”

More Warriors Needed

The US Army is currently on track to increase 65,000 people to a total of 547,000 active-duty soldiers next year, up from 482,000 before the current conflicts. There is a corresponding increase in the US Marine Corps, from 194,000 to 221,000, for a total increase of 92,000 to 768,000 ground troops.
A larger US military was first proposed by the presumptive Secretary of State, Senator Clinton along with Senator Graham in May, 2004 and has subsequently been endorsed by Senator Obama. In 2004 Clinton said, “I don’t think we have any alternatives.” In July 2005 Clinton co-introduced with Graham legislation to increase the size of the regular United States Army by 80,000 soldiers.
This 92,000 increase is apparently not enough.
According to an Army spokesman, the Pentagon actually needs not 547,000 but 580,000 soldiers, a 33,000 additional increase, “to meet current demand and get the dwell time.

    The demand for soldiers extends beyond the war zones, as commanders in other regions request troops, Undersecretary of the Army Nelson Ford said. “It’s a real challenge. It’s not just Centcom that thinks they need more soldiers; Northcom wants more soldiers, Africom wants a dedicated headquarters, Pacom wants more for 8th Army in Korea,” Ford said, referring to the U.S. Central Command, Northern Command, African Command and Pacific Command.

The New York Times, a chief promoter of the Iraq and Afghanistan imperialism, also weighed in on this matter recently in its editorial “A Military for a Dangerous New World [sic]”.

    The United States and its NATO allies must be able to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan — and keep pursuing Al Qaeda forces around the world. Pentagon planners must weigh the potential threats posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions, an erratic North Korea, a rising China, an assertive Russia and a raft of unstable countries like Somalia and nuclear-armed Pakistan. And they must have sufficient troops, ships and planes to reassure allies in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
    We believe the military needs the 65,000 additional Army troops and the 27,000 additional marines that Congress [read: Senators Clinton, Graham and Obama] finally pushed President Bush into seeking. That buildup is projected to take at least two years; by the end the United States will have 759,000 [actually 768,000] active-duty ground troops.
    That sounds like a lot, especially with the prospect of significant withdrawals from Iraq. But it would still be about 200,000 fewer ground forces than the United States had 20 years ago, during the final stages of the cold war. Less than a third of that expanded ground force would be available for deployment at any given moment.

Continue reading “More Warriors Needed”

Is there an Islamic Charlie Wilson?

As the US and NATO lose control of surface roads in Afghanistan they are more and more dependent upon air transport and air cargo delivery.
According to USA Today:

    Afghanistan’s roads have grown more dangerous. The number of roadside bombs and suicide attacks has increased to 1,041 this year from 224 in 2005, according to the NATO command in Afghanistan. This year, more than 1,400 bombs, which the military calls improvised explosive devices, were discovered before they were detonated.
    U.S. forces have sharply increased the number of airdrop supply missions in Afghanistan in the past three years, as roads have become more dangerous and allied troops have established remote outposts.
    The number of airdrops has increased to 800 this year from 99 in 2005, according to Central Command’s air operations center. Planes dropped 15 million pounds of cargo this year, nearly double last year’s load of 8.2 million pounds.

Canadian forces have even resorted to leasing Russian helicopters:

    Canada’s battle group moved into southern Afghanistan in 2006 without any helicopters, unlike the British, U.S., and Dutch forces. The lack of air assets forced the Canadians to rely more heavily on road convoys, which the Canadian commanders described at the time as an advantage because it would give the troops more familiarity with the Afghan people and terrain. But regular traffic of military vehicles on Afghan roads has proven deadly for Canadian soldiers as the rising insurgency targets supply convoys.

Many Forward Operating Bases (FOB) are outposts in the Afghan back country that are normally reached only by weekly helicopter supply flights.
Air transport seems like the answer to loss of ground control. But is it? Soviet forces had a similar experience in 1978-1988. One of their downfalls was the supply of MANPADS by the CIA to Afghan partisan forces resulting in the downing of many Soviet aircraft.

Continue reading “Is there an Islamic Charlie Wilson?”

Afghanistan: Some dots to connect

The Afghanistan Conflict Monitor does a great job of pulling together reports on breaking developments in that war-wracked country.
Here are three consecutive posts from today’s front page:

You can find many more details about the tragedy Afghanistan is living through, more than seven years into the country’s occupation by the US-led coalition, here.
Seven years into the US-led occupations of Japan and Germany, the situation in each of those countries was exponentially better than the situation in Afghanistan today.
The present model of overwhelmingly military, overwhelmingly western responsibility for Afghanistan’s in/security environment is clearly not working for the Afghan people. They– and the world– need a different model.

NATO trucking woes in Pakistan continue

The Daily Telegraph’s Isambard Wilkinson reports that the main trade association for Pakistani trucking companies that haul NATO goods into Afghanistan from Karachi has now decided to halt all NATO trucking until the security of the trucks and their drivers can be assured.
(HT: Afghanistan Conflict Monitor, again. Great resource!)
Wilkinson quotes Khyber Transport Association head M.S. Afridi as saying, ” “We have stopped supplies to foreign forces in Afghanistan from today. We have around 3,500 trucks, tankers and other vehicles, we are the major suppliers to Afghanistan, transporting about 60-70 per cent of goods.”
He writes,

    the main weak point, according to the Tariq Hayat Khan, the political agent for the Khyber tribal area, is on the outskirts of Peshawar city, which falls outside his jurisdiction and where the truck depots stand.
    The hauliers are asking the government to shift the depots away from Peshawar’s ring-road, to a less vulnerable place.

3,500 trucks is, I believe around five days’ worth of supplies for the NATO force in Afghanistan? Anyway, it looks like a stoppage that will have a significant impact for many ISAF troops in Afghanistan.
Afridi’s statement comes a week after a big attack in the Peshawar area left 160 Afghanistan-bound trucks as charred remains. But evidently there have been other attacks, too, since Wilkinson writes that “Hundreds of Nato and US-led coalition vehicles have been destroyed in the last two weeks after depots were targeted by hundreds of militants in northwest Pakistan.”
He adds this:

    Qudratullah Khan, a transporter from Khyber Agency who runs Al Qadri Cargo Company, said: “Transportation of goods to Afghanistan has become a risky job and even our lives at stake while taking the goods.
    “The vehicles carrying containers for Afghanistan are being looted in a broad day light, the drivers are killed and kidnapped, but we do not see any security or protection to us.”
    He added that there suspicions that drivers were involved in looting vehicles and convoys in collusion with the militants.
    …Mr Khan said the Taliban is taking 30 per cent of the goods as for the Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud’s “Islamic treasury”, and 30 per cent are shared by the drivers and transporters when these vehicles are looted or kidnapped.

So there’s a major problem of trusting the drivers. (And maybe, also, of trusting some of the army and security force units sent in to help guard the convoys?)
This certainly does not look like a problem that will be solved satisfactorily any time soon.
All of which increases the urgency with which NATO needs to conclude the negotiations it’s now holding with Russia about opening a major trans-shipment route into Afghanistan via the Russian railroads. Even more so, since NATO is planning to beef up its presence in Afghanistan, which means it will require an even thicker pipeline of shipments into the country.
Over the past few months Russia has lost a considerable amount of that portion of “leverage” it had with western nations by virtue of its status as oil exporter (though the leverage it derives from its gas exports has not declined as much.) But now, thanks to the deterioration of the security situation in Pakistan, Russia is acquiring considerable new leverage with the west by virtue of its rail network.
Stay tuned for developments in all aspects of this story. The situation in Pakistan does not look stable.

NATO’s Russian route to Afghanistan

NATO’s deputy assistant sec-gen for security cooperation and partnership, Robert Simmons, has been in Moscow pushing forward the plan to open a Russian route to resupply the NATO positions in Afghanistan. (HT: Afghanistan Conflict Monitor.)
This, two days after the well-planned attack on a NATO staging area in Peshawar that left 160 Afghanistan-bound trucks torched to a cinder.
Interfax tells us that Simmons described Russia-NATO cooperation on Afghanistan as “good on the whole.” He said NATO had received a plausible “proposal” from Russia regarding a trans-shipping agreement. However, to get the Russia route open will also require trans-shipping agreements with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Ukraine, so NATO is working on those now.
Simmons also spoke about an agreement under which Afghan servicemen would receive training at “the Domodedovo center near Moscow.”
As I’ve discussed here before, the urgent need the western alliance has to get supplies to its troops in Afghanistan has forced it into a collaboration with Russia which makes any idea of outright confrontation with Moscow– such as Georgia’s President Saakashvili tried to stoke last August– quite suicidal for NATO.
If you look at the handy sketch-map of possible land routes into Afghanistan that B of Moon of Alabama published in November and the list of countries Simmons is talking to you can see that Simmons’s current “Russia route” will run somewhat to the north of B’s Red Line, thus avoiding the serious hassle and expense of transferring the goods to boats to get across the Caspian Sea. I think to get from either Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan into Afghanistan, the goods will also need to go across Turkmenistan. Maybe that leg is already in NATO’s bag?
This little rail map of Central Asia published by Stratfor in January is also handy. It shows that there is at present just one rail connection going from western China into one of the central Asian Stans: the line from Urumqi into Kazakhstan. But it also shows (in red) the two additional connectors the Chinese are currently working on. These will greatly strengthen China’s ability to exert influence in the entire Central Asian region.
As of now, Afghanistan does not have any national rail line. But China is now planning to build one. It will traverse the whole country north to south, linking Afghanistan to both Tajikstan and Pakistan (and not coincidentally also giving China an indirect outlet to the Arabian Sea.)
But the “China route” for getting NATO goods into Afghanistan– B’s Green Line– still seems to be a long way off. (Correct me if I’m wrong, anyone.) That leaves NATO having to juggle between reliance on Pakistan, or Russia, or on the unbelievably expensive option of shipping things in by air. Airlift is totally not a sustainable option over any length of time. Afghanistan is quite a lot bigger and more distant from NATO’s home-bases than West Berlin!
Hence, given the current uncertainties in Pakistan, NATO’s increasing reliance on Russia.

Recruiting for the Enemy

The US occupation forces in Iraq have, from the beginning of the occupation more than five years ago, engaged in the arbitrary imprisonment (“detaining”) of Iraqi citizens. As one former US soldier testified: “I witnessed and participated in countless massive operations led by American commanders whose metrics for success were numbers of detainees apprehended.”–Louis Montalvan
If you were a YSM (young Sunni male) found in a night-time US military sweep through Iraqi neighborhoods you stood an excellent chance of being zip-tied, thrown into the back of a truck and taken downtown. “Most of the people they detain are innocent,” said Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi.
This has resulted in US prison populations in Iraq of nearly 20,000 prisoners, with another 26,000 being held by our Iraqi surrogates.
As Afghanistan heats up, more Afghan citizens are being arbitrarily arrested and held in prison. In August construction began on a new facility for as many as 1,100 detainees and now the US Military has initiated an inquiry into possible detainee abuse
All of this, of course, is in direct violation of the Geneva Convention which calls for the military to be responsible for the welfare of citizens in a war zone or occupied territory.
Protected civilians MUST be:

    – Treated humanely at all times and protected against acts or threats of violence, insults and public curiosity.
    – Entitled to respect for their honour, family rights, religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs.

Continue reading “Recruiting for the Enemy”

Karzai wants the foreign troops out, too

So it’s not just the US-installed government in Baghdad that is now acting uppity and turning on its former master… Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a team of visiting UN Security Council members today that he, too, wants to see a “timeline” for the end of foreign military presence in his country.
That AFP report tells us that,

    Karzai told a delegation from the Council that his country needed to know how long the US-led “war on terror” was going to be fought in Afghanistan or it would have to seek a political solution to a Taliban-led insurgency.
    A US-led invasion ousted the extremist Islamic Taliban regime in 2001 and launched its “war on terror”, which has brought nearly 70,000 mainly Western troops to Afghanistan, most of them under a UN Security Council mandate.
    US President-elect Barack Obama has said that Afghanistan and the “war on terror” would be a priority for his government and campaigned on a pledge to shift US forces from Iraq to Afghanistan.
    “The international community should give us a timeline of how long or how far the ‘war on terrorism’ will go,” Karzai’s chief spokesman Homayun Hamidzada cited the president as telling the delegation.
    “If we don’t have a clear idea of how long it will be, the Afghan government has no choice but to seek political solutions,” he told AFP, adding this included “starting to talk to Taliban and those opposing the government.”

Among the people on the delegation was Washington’s Afghan-born ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad. In recent months, Khalilzad has not done much to quell rumors that he is considering running against Karzai in the elections scheduled for Afghanistan next fall. But gosh, If Karzai’s going to be so “uppity”, maybe some people in Washington will want to see him replaced much earlier than that?
… Also on Afghanistan, JWN readers might be interested in reading this and other recent posts on a new blog, “Afghanistan Shrugged”, written by a US National Guard officer who was recently deployed as head of an American “Embedded Training Team” working with Afghan National Army units in Bermel, Paktika, near the border with Pakistan.
The writer calls himself Vampire06. And yes, he is (as the title of his blog suggests) an admirer of Ayn Rand. He gives an interesting, fairly intelligent ground-level view of the work of the ETTs, so a bunch of his recent posts are worth reading.
You might, however, be interested in following the discussion I’ve had on V06’s most recent post with Joshua Foust of Registan, here.

Rumsfeld, Kagan, and Chalabi in the NYT

I can’t believe that the NYT gave a huge chunk of its prime op-ed real estate today to allow war criminal Donald Rumsfeld to offer his views and advice on US. And Ahmad Chalabi. And Fred Kagan.
Among the gems Rumsfeld offers are, regarding Iraq, “By early 2007, several years of struggle had created the new conditions for a tipping point…” And reflecting on US military history more generally:

    The singular trait of the American way of war is the remarkable ability of our military to advance, absorb setbacks, adapt and ultimately triumph based upon the unique circumstances of a given campaign. Thus it has been throughout our history. And thus it will be in Iraq and Afghanistan, if we have the patience and wisdom to learn from our successes, and if our leaders have the wherewithal to persevere even when it is not popular to do so.

Chalabi’s piece is a little intriguing. It’s titled “Thanks, but you can go now.” In it he argues,

    The independent, democratically elected Iraqi government now representing the interests of its people is nearly identical to the government that could have been formed in 2003.

H’mm, I made something similar to that argument just myself, this morning. But unlike Mr. Snake-oil Ahmad Chalabi I never worked for a moment to try to get the US into this war, and I am not now and never have been on the payroll of any government.
Chalabi is most likely on Tehran’s payroll at this time (and has likely been for quite a while.) He is Mr. Look-after-number one, but he also has a good finger to the prevailing political winds.
In this piece, he tries to write “in the name of” all Iraqis. He writes:

    Iraqis want the closest possible relationship with the United States, and recognize its better nature as the strongest guarantor of international freedom, prosperity and peace. However, we will reject any attempts to curtail our rights to these universal precepts.
    We welcome Mr. Obama’s election as a herald of a new direction. It is our hope that his administration will offer Iraq a new and broader partnership. Iraq needs security assistance and guarantees for our funds in the New York Federal Reserve Bank. But we also need educational opportunity, cultural exchange, diplomatic support, trade agreements and the respectful approach due to the world’s oldest civilization.
    We also hope that Mr. Obama will support the growing need for a regional agreement covering human rights and security encompassing Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran (and any other neighbors so inclined). We have all been victims of terrorism. The mutual fears that have been festering for decades, augmented by secret wars and the incitement of insurrection, are no longer acceptable.
    The United States has agreed to Iraq’s request to inscribe in any regional pact a prohibition against the use of Iraq’s territory and airspace to threaten or launch cross-border attacks. This laudable commitment gives us hope that America has a new collective vision of security in our region as not exclusively a function of armed force but also dependent on a profound comprehension of others’ fears.

Somewhat irritatingly, I find I agree with a lot of what he writes.
Luckily, no such feelings emerge when reading Kagan.
The best of the seven pieces the NYT has gathered today on the joint question of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is undoubtedly this one by Rory Stewart. It’s titled “The ‘Good War’ isn’t worth fighting”. Stewart, a British adventurer, writer, and former army officer who knows both Iraq and Afghanistan pretty well, argues that,

    President-elect Obama’s emphasis on Afghanistan and his desire to send more troops and money there is misguided. Overestimating its importance distracts us from higher priorities, creates an unhealthy dynamic with the government of Afghanistan and endangers the one thing it needs — the stability that might come from a patient, limited, long-term relationship with the international community…

The whole of that piece is worth reading. Unlike Rumsfeld’s self-serving and ill-focused little rant.

Newsflash! Russia lets NATO trans-ship weapons to Afghanistan

The Kyiv Post reported yesterday that,

    Russia has granted NATO-member Germany permission to ship weapons and equipment for its force in Afghanistan overland through Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

(HT: Afghanistan Conflict Monitor.)
So the Cold War really has ended and is not– despite the efforts of many– about to be cranked up again any time soon?
The Russians and the US have been in talks for some time about the US (or NATO, unclear) getting the right to ship non-lethal goods to Afghanistan through Russia. So this is new.
Check out the RIA Novosti links at the bottom of this Afghanistan Conflict Monitor page.
They do indeed confirm– from an authoritative Russian source– that Russia has now given this permission to both Germany and Spain.