[R-G] Obama’s Afghan “surge” sows seeds of new wars

[Anthony Fenton]

Obama’s Afghan “surge” sows seeds of new wars

by Keith Jones

Global Research, February 25, 2009
World Socialist Web Site - 2009-02-24
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/pers-f24.shtml


US imperialism is set on a course to expand and intensify the Afghan  
War—vastly increasing the number of troops deployed to Afghanistan and  
extending the war into neighboring Pakistan.

The Obama administration's Afghan troop "surge" and the ensuing  
ratcheting up of violence will have catastrophic consequences for the  
Afghani and Pakistani peoples. It adds a new, explosive dynamic to the  
decades-old geopolitical rivalry between India and Pakistan and will  
intensify the great power competition for control of oil-rich Central  
Asia, sowing the seeds for even larger and more destructive wars.

President Barack Obama announced last week the deployment of a further  
17,000 US troops to Afghanistan, increasing US troop strength in the  
impoverished Central Asian state by almost 40 percent. At Washington's  
urging, the Afghan government has begun arming tribal groups, copying  
a tactic the Pentagon employed in Iraq.

Since last August, the US has carried out 38 missile strikes inside  
Pakistan, the two most recent coming within days of a visit to  
Pakistan by Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan  
and Pakistan. According to an article in last Saturday's New York  
Times the two latest air strikes represented a change in US policy,  
bringing it even more directly into Pakistan's internal politics. For  
the first time the US targeted Islamist militia who have not been  
involved in the Afghan insurgency.

The Times has also revealed that US Special Forces are carrying out  
covert land operations inside Pakistan and that since last summer 70  
US military personnel have been deployed to Pakistan to train  
Pakistani soldiers and paratroopers in counter-insurgency warfare.

It has become a veritable mantra of the Obama administration and US  
geo-political think tanks that suppressing Taliban "safe-havens" in  
Pakistan is pivotal to stamping out the anti-US insurgency in  
Afghanistan and that this requires that Islamabad "do more."

Under pressure from Washington, the Pakistani military and government  
have for years been conducting offensive operations in the  
traditionally autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),  
strafing villages, "disappearing" alleged opponents of the US  
occupation of Afghanistan, and imposing colonial-style collective  
punishments on "uncooperative" tribes. Over the past six months these  
military operations have been expanded. Earlier this month, the United  
Nations refugee agency said the fighting has displaced 450,000 people  
in northwest Pakistan and it fears the total will reach 600,000 in a  
matter of weeks. Holbrooke himself told PBS television that he had  
seen "flattened villages" when touring FATA by air. But Washington is  
adamant that its Pakistani allies must be even more ruthless, even if  
such action further stokes popular anger against the government and  
threatens to divide the military, many of whose recruits are drawn  
from Pakistan's Pashtun community. The Pashtuns have borne the brunt  
of the US occupation of Afghanistan and the Pakistani government's  
drive to assert its authority in FATA.

The New York Times and other liberal supporters of the Obama  
administration have promoted the Afghan war as the so-called "good  
war,' in contrast with the Iraq war (which the Times nonetheless also  
enthusiastically supported.) In fact, the two wars are of a piece.  
Both have been waged with the aim of imposing US hegemony in regions  
where there are vast reserves of oil and thereby securing US global  
predominance, under conditions where the US's economic power has been  
vastly eroded.

The Afghani and Pakistani peoples have already paid a horrific price  
for Washington's and Wall Street's predatory ambitions. Dating back to  
the early 1950s, the Pakistani military has served as a tool of US  
geopolitical strategy and Washington, in turn, has served as the  
bulwark of a succession of right-wing military dictatorships,  
including that of George W. Bush's "friend" and "indispensable ally in  
the war on terror," General Pervez Musharraf.

The current US intervention in Afghanistan is the culmination of three  
decades of intrigue and subversion, which first saw the US arm Islamic  
guerrillas, in order to destabilize a pro-Soviet government in Kabul  
and draw the Soviet Union into a disastrous land war, and later, in  
the name of fighting "Islamist terrorism," occupy Afghanistan and  
install a corrupt and violent puppet government.

The intensification of the war in Afghanistan will only further  
destabilize the entire region. Pakistan deeply resents Washington's  
forging of a "global, strategic partnership" with India. With the aim  
of building up India as a counterweight to a rising China, the Bush  
administration said that it wanted to help India become a "world  
power," and in way of proof, offered New Delhi a civilian nuclear  
treaty that effectively ended the embargo on nuclear trade with India,  
allowing it to focus its indigenous nuclear program on the development  
of its nuclear arsenal.

Islamabad charges that India, with the US's blessing, has greatly  
increased its influence in Afghanistan since 2001. Indeed, India has  
lavished aid on the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai and, according  
to a recent report in the news magazine India Today, Indian  
strategists view Afghanistan as "a strategic pivot for India... They  
believe that in case Islamabad cannot be disciplined through  
diplomatic means, Afghanistan could prove to be a launching pad for  
action against the Afghan border."

The Indian elite, meanwhile, resents Pakistan's pivotal role in the  
Afghan war—more than 80 percent of supplies for US forces in  
Afghanistan are transported through Pakistan—and fear that the Obama  
administration's focus on the Afghan war is causing it to attach less  
importance on ties with India than did Bush.

A key reason India took such a bellicose, anti-Pakistan stance  
following last November's terrorist atrocity in Mumbai—labeling  
Pakistan the center of world terrorism—was to preempt any move by  
Washington to become more involved in negotiating an end to the Indo- 
Pakistani dispute over Kashmir. During the presidential election  
campaign, Obama and several of his aides said the US should take up  
the Kashmir question, with the suggestion that assisting Islamabad in  
wrenching concessions from India could be a quid pro quo for Pakistan  
doing Washington's bidding in the Afghan war.

India's Hindu chauvinist right and sections of its military  
establishment complain that while the US mounts military strikes in  
Pakistan and gave Israel carte blanche to pummel Gaza, it demands that  
India take no action against Kashmiri insurgents in Pakistan, so as  
not to disrupt the war in Afghanistan. "Let us not forget," former  
Indian Foreign Minister Jawant Singh told Outlook magazine, "that the  
Americans are caught in a bind. They have destabilized the region and  
are trying to retrieve something for themselves."

No less incendiary will be the impact of the increased US intervention  
on the broader geopolitical equation in Eurasia. Both Russia and China  
view limiting US influence in Central Asia to be imperative for their  
long-term military and economic interests.

China fears US encirclement, as Washington seeks to add India to its  
longstanding Japanese-anchored system of Pacific Rim allies, and  
Beijing views Central Asia as a big part of the solution to its  
burgeoning energy needs. For Russia, Central Asia is an historic area  
of dominance. Moreover, limiting US access to the region's oil and  
natural gas resources greatly strengthens Russia's attempt to use its  
own vast energy reserves as a source of geopolitical power.

Russia has been particularly active in respect to Afghanistan. To the  
shock and dismay of Washington, Kyrgyzstan recently announced that US  
forces must vacate the Manus Air Base within six months. The  
announcement came shortly after Moscow announced a substantial aid  
package to Kyrgyzstan.

Russia has offered to allow some US and NATO supplies to reach  
Afghanistan by passing through its territory. But its intention is  
clearly to trade access for US concessions, including over the  
positioning of US antiballistic missiles in Eastern Europe. And in  
what is a direct challenge to NATO's extension of its sphere of  
operations into Central Asia, the Russian-led Collective Security  
Treaty Organization recently announced it was setting up a rapid  
deployment force to counter terrorism and other threats to "stability"  
in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Washington is desperate to secure additional supply lines to  
Afghanistan, because insurgents in Pakistan have been highly effective  
in disrupting the main line that passes through the northwest tribal  
areas of Pakistan, and the "surge" will require a vast increase in  
shipments of weapons, oil and food.

Iran, for its part, is likely to see the increased US presence in  
Afghanistan as a threat, but also as a potential opportunity to  
bargain for a new modus vivendi with Washington. (India recently  
finished building a highway to connect Kabul to the Iranian border,  
thereby opening the possibility for Iran to serve as an alternate US- 
NATO supply route.)

The explosive geopolitical tensions that are being stoked by the US  
drive to extend its reach into Central Asia were starkly revealed in  
last August's eruption of the Russo-Georgian war.

The development of a global depression will only intensify the great  
power struggle for markets, resources and geopolitical advantage.  
Already, government are turning to beggar-thy-neighbor economic  
policies.

War will not be averted by appealing to one or another reactionary  
national bourgeois clique or, for that matter, to the United Nations.  
It only serves as clearing house for the mercenary deals made between  
rival capitalist nation states. In the case of Afghanistan, the UN has  
given its imprimatur to the US occupation.

The struggle against war requires the mobilization of the  
international working class as an independent political force in the  
struggle against capitalism and the outmoded nation-state system in  
which it is historically rooted.

Keith Jones is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global  
Research Articles by Keith Jones