[R-G] US commander warns American troops will be in Afghanistan for years

[Anthony Fenton]

US commander warns American troops will be in Afghanistan for years
February 21, 2009 by sudhan
By Peter Symonds |WSWS, 21 February 2009
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/afgh-f21.shtml

The top US commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, warned  
on Wednesday that the huge boost to US troop numbers announced this  
week would have to continue for years. His comments underscore the  
fact that the Obama administration is preparing for a dramatic  
escalation of the war in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan that  
will inevitably heighten tensions throughout the region, especially in  
Central Asia.

In a bid to shore up the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, President  
Obama announced on Tuesday that an additional 17,000 US soldiers would  
be sent there. McKiernan told the media that the troop buildup was  
“not a temporary force uplift” and would “need to be sustained  
for some period of time,” adding that he was looking at “the next  
three to four to five years”. The US already has 36,000 troops  
deployed in Afghanistan, along with about 30,000 other foreign  
soldiers operating under NATO command.

The latest troop increase will not be the last. McKiernan repeated a  
previous request for an extra 10,000 in Afghanistan on top of those  
already announced. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates did not rule out  
additional US forces, but noted that no additional troops would be  
sent to Afghanistan until the Obama administration had completed its  
current strategic review.

At a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Poland, Gates pressed NATO  
allies for further support for Afghanistan. NATO Secretary General  
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned that NATO could not “afford the price of  
failure in Afghanistan” and urged “all members of the team… to  
pull closer together and pull harder in 2009″. But the commitments  
made were cosmetic, underlining the continuing deep tensions inside  
NATO between the US and European powers such as Germany and France.

UK Defence Secretary John Hutton complained that Britain was already  
doing its share, saying that “the European members of NATO need to do  
more”. Italy promised 500 soldiers. Germany indicated that it may  
send an additional 600 troops, but to the largely peaceful north of  
Afghanistan to assist with elections due in August. France committed  
no extra soldiers. While expressing his disappointment at the lack of  
extra forces, Gates urged NATO members to contribute economic aid and  
to the training of Afghan security forces.

The NATO summit highlighted the intersection of the war in Afghanistan  
with growing rivalry in Central Asia. One day before the meeting, the  
Kyrgyzstan parliament voted to shut down a key US air base needed to  
supply US and NATO forces in land-locked Afghanistan. As supply lines  
through neighbouring Pakistan have come under fierce attack from anti- 
US insurgents, the Pentagon has been seeking alternative routes  
through Central Asia.

Russia, however, has made clear that any shipment of US supplies  
through the region will depend on its support and will involve US  
concessions, particularly over the positioning of US anti-ballistic  
missiles in NATO-allied countries in Eastern Europe. Before the  
decision to shut down the Manus Air Base, Moscow announced a  
substantial aid package to Kyrgyzstan. At the same time, Russia has  
permitted some non-military US supplies to pass through Latvia,  
Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan—the first trainload left on  
Thursday.

The issue is creating divisions within NATO. The US-based think tank  
Stratfor commented: “The lack of enthusiasm for the Afghanistan surge  
was matched by growing questions among the Europeans over the military  
plan itself—both the overarching strategy and the lines of supply.  
Moreover, the Europeans are anxious to know how and to what extent the  
US plan involves the Russians.” While France and Germany support a  
rapprochement with Russia, Eastern European countries are opposed to  
any deal that would weaken US protection against Moscow.

The US confronts a deteriorating military situation in Afghanistan.  
Commenting on the boost to US troop numbers, General McKiernan said:  
“What this allows us to do is change the dynamics of the security  
situation, predominantly in southern Afghanistan, where we are, at  
best, stalemated.” He added: “I have to tell you that 2009 is going  
to be a tough year.”

Other US analysts are less cautious in their warnings. John Nagl, from  
the Centre for a New American Security, told the British Observer that  
the number of US soldiers in Afghanistan could eventually rise to  
100,000. “The immediate problem is to stop the bleeding. The 30,000  
troops is a tourniquet… [but] that is all we have. If Obama is a two- 
term president then by the end of his time in office there may only be  
marine embassy guards in Iraq. But there will still be tens of  
thousands of troops in Afghanistan.”

In a detailed statement to a US Congressional committee last week,  
Anthony Cordesman from the Centre for Strategic and International  
Studies bluntly warned that “we are losing the war in Afghanistan and  
Pakistan and we have at most two years in which to decisively reverse  
the situation”. He cited military statistics for 2008 pointing to a  
33 percent rise in military clashes with insurgents, an increase in  
roadside bombs of 27 percent and in surface-to-air fire of 67 percent.

Cordesman stressed, however, that such details were secondary to the  
growing influence of the Taliban and other anti-occupation militias in  
Afghanistan. He cited in some detail the results of an ABC poll,  
released this month, which demonstrated falling support in Afghanistan  
for the occupation, and for its puppet President Hamid Karzai. Just 18  
percent supported any increase in US and NATO troops and 44 percent  
wanted a reduction.

Support for the Taliban was strongest in the south and east of the  
country, where Pashtun tribes have been subjected to more than seven  
years of searches, arbitrary detention, military attacks and bombing.  
Overall, 25 percent of Afghans felt that violent attacks on occupation  
forces were justified; in the top five high-conflict provinces, the  
figure rose to 38 percent.

The survey also provided evidence of deteriorating living standards.  
The proportion of Afghans who characterised their economic  
opportunities as “very bad” doubled from 17 percent in 2006 to 33  
percent. More than half reported an income of less than $US100 a month  
and 93 percent less than $300. Many registered complaints about fuel  
prices, lack of electricity, medical care, roads and other  
infrastructure. Nearly three quarters of respondents were worried  
about the impact of the global economic crisis.

Far from addressing any of these issues, the surge in US troops in  
Afghanistan will compound the anger and resentment that is providing a  
steady stream of recruits to the anti-occupation insurgency. Most of  
the fresh troops will be assigned to south of the country, where  
control by US forces and the Karzai government is tenuous, and to the  
border with Pakistan in an effort to halt the infiltration of Taliban  
fighters from bases in Pakistan.

The US war in Afghanistan has already spread across the Pakistani  
border, destabilising the government in Islamabad. The Obama  
administration has continued US missile strikes from unmanned drones  
on targets inside Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border, killing  
scores of civilians and inflaming local anger. Proof that at least  
some of the US drones are operating from a base inside Pakistan will  
compound the political difficulties facing the government, which has  
previously disclaimed any knowledge or involvement. The London-based  
Times and the Pakistani News have both published Google Earth images  
of three drones parked at the Shamsi air field in southwestern Pakistan.

Under pressure from Washington, the Pakistani army has been fighting a  
war to suppress anti-US militants in the Federally Administered Tribal  
Areas (FATA). Some 120,000 troops have been involved, and more than  
1,500 have been killed in the fighting. The army, which has received  
around $10 billion in US aid, has laid waste to towns and villages,  
causing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee. The insurgency has  
also spread beyond the FATA to areas of the North West Frontier  
Province, including the Swat Valley, and is even touching on the  
Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous state.

Pakistan announced this week that it had struck a shaky deal with  
insurgents in the Swat Valley to introduce Islamic Sharia law to the  
area as part of a ceasefire. Richard Holbrooke, US special envoy to  
Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the media that the Obama administration  
was concerned that “the truce does not turn into a surrender”. He  
said he had spoken to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari who had  
assured him that was “not the case” and described the deal as “an  
interim arrangement”.

US Defence Secretary Gates took a slightly different tack, saying on  
Friday that the agreement was acceptable if it led to reconciliation  
and the disarming of the insurgents. He made clear that the US was  
looking to similar arrangements with sections of the anti-occupation  
forces in Afghanistan, seeking to replicate the tactic used in Iraq to  
buy off local tribal leaders and use them against hard-line  
insurgents. “We have said all along that ultimately some sort of  
political reconciliation has to be part of the long-term solution in  
Afghanistan,” Gates said.

Washington’s neo-colonial occupation of Afghanistan, however, is  
confronting widespread hostility and a burgeoning armed resistance.  
Asked about the ability of the US to succeed where the British army in  
the nineteenth century and the Soviet military in the 1980s had  
failed, General McKiernan simply said that it was “a very unhealthy  
comparison”. The comparison is perfectly apt. Like the British Raj  
and the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy, Washington is pursuing a  
criminal war for the subjugation of Afghanistan and the pursuit of US  
economic and strategic ambitions in Central Asia. Now, thousands more  
US soldiers are being sent into a quagmire that shows no signs of  
ending.