[R-G] Afghanistan’s disasters of war

Wed May 6 16:31:11 MDT 2009

H/T: http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/05/afghanistan-insurgency-tactics.html

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17804

9 May 2009 | issue 2150

Afghanistan’s disasters of war

The latest downward spiral for the occupation cannot be solved by  
sending in more troops or spreading the war to Pakistan, writes Simon  
Assaf

The Hydra in Greek mythology was a beast with nine heads. When one was  
cut off another two would grow in its place. This is an apt  
description of the West’s dilemma in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Some eight years after the battle for “hearts and minds” in  
Afghanistan was supposedly won, the occupation is spinning into a deep  
crisis.

The Pakistani Taliban, insurgents who are allied to the resistance in  
Afghanistan, triggered global panic last month when they took control  
of Buner, a region some 60 miles north of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.

An offensive by the Pakistani army was able to them drive out, but not  
before Hillary Clinton, the new US secretary of state, warned of an  
“existential threat to Pakistan.”

The deepening malaise of the war is laid bare here. A key battle for  
Afghanistan is now being waged on the edges of Islamabad.

Clinton’s comment reflects the deep fear that the war is now in danger  
of destroying Pakistan.

The stakes could not be higher. The US, Nato and their allies in the  
Afghan government hold little sway over Afghanistan outside Kabul. Now  
even sections of the capital are beginning to slip away from their  
control.

Any support the occupation enjoyed during its early years has melted  
away. Heavy casualties from air strikes fuel growing anger, as do  
“night raids” – assaults on villages suspected of harbouring  
resistance fighters.

This anger is translating to tacit support for the insurgents.

Supplies

The isolation of the occupation inside Afghanistan has become further  
complicated by the fact that the foreign troops are hopelessly  
surrounded.

Afghanistan is landlocked and dependent on supplies that are shipped  
through Pakistan. This route winds through the insecure insurgent  
areas in the north of the country.

In recent months insurgents have attacked supply columns, hijacked  
scores of armoured vehicles and set fire to military stores in the  
port city of Karachi.

The occupation has had to turn for help from Afghanistan’s neighbours  
such as Iran – which has some influence in the west of the country.  
This region is home to Shia Muslims, who are hostile to the Sunni  
Taliban.

Some Nato countries, such as France and Germany, want to tempt the  
Iranians into letting them use their ports to resupply the Nato troops.

But any such deal would come with a hefty price tag. Iran is in  
conflict with the West over Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, economic  
sanctions and its nuclear programme.

The alternative is to look to the unstable states of Turkmenistan and  
Uzbekistan on Afghanistan’s northern border.

Here Russia holds sway. It did get the governments to open supply  
routes. But it can always choose to close them again.

So Russia holds a powerful tool to use against the US and the European  
powers when it comes to key issues such as the accession of Georgia  
and Ukraine to Nato, or the missile defence shield along Russia’s  
western frontiers.

To avoid such pressure the coalition is desperate to resolve the  
situation on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has  
been given the unfortunate tag of the “Af-Pak war”.

The new US strategies were unveiled by Barack Obama in March.

He is attempting to pour more troops into Afghanistan in the hope this  
will buy time to strengthen the Afghan army.

But there is a limit to what the US can supply and, as Bush discovered  
before Obama, Nato is reluctant to commit large numbers of troops.

Its leaders are coming to realise that it will take more than greater  
troop numbers to turn the battle around.

There are currently about 60,000 US and 58,000 other international  
troops in Afghanistan. The extra 20,000 soldiers the US is sending are  
too few to make any lasting military impact.

At the height of the Russian occupation in the 1980s there were  
150,000 troops fighting alongside a 132,000 strong Afghan army.

By contrast this occupation is struggling to maintain the local force  
of 80,000 soldiers.

Obama’s strategy also involves abandoning Afghan president Hamid  
Karzai, and opening negotiations with the “moderate Taliban” – local  
insurgent organisations.

Karzai, however, is proving stubborn. He has called snap elections in  
August in an attempt to head off plans to unseat him. He has been  
granting concessions to Islamists as an attempt to boost his standing.

The latest compromise involves dumping what few rights are enjoyed by  
Shia Muslim women.

His negotiations with elements of the Taliban, sponsored by Saudi  
Arabia, have so far failed to produce any real breakthrough.

Now any chance of winning over sections of the local resistance has  
been put in danger as many of the new troops will be used to destroy  
the vast opium poppy plantations.

This is seen as vital in “cutting the lifeline of the insurgency”.

But the occupation is taking a big risk by opening up a new front on  
Afghanistan’s desperate farmers – many of whom have joined the  
resistance as a way of defending their crop.

The success or failure of the Af-Pak strategy is hostage to the  
biggest gamble of all – spreading the war into Pakistan in the hope of  
wiping out the insurgents’ sanctuaries.

The recent events near Islamabad are a testament to how badly off  
track this approach has become.

The current occupiers of Afghanistan face the same dilemma as all  
those that came before.

To secure control over the towns the occupation troops must push into  
the farmlands, mountains and valleys.

This has been the pattern of fighting over the past seven years.

This strategy of “hot pursuit” was successful at first. But it came to  
a halt when the resistance fighters began escaping across  
Afghanistan’s long and porous border with Pakistan.

So the US sent in unmanned Predator drones armed with deadly payloads  
of missiles to hunt them down.

According to The News newspaper in Pakistan only ten of the 60 drone  
attacks so far have found their target, killing 14 insurgent leaders.

The rest have hit civilian areas and killed at least 687 people.

The popular revulsion at the use of these drones embarrassed  
Pakistan’s government at first, and quickly fed support for a nascent  
insurgency in the tribal regions.

As this rebellion grew, the US and its allies pushed Pakistan’s  
military to move into the border region, breaking a long standing if  
uneasy truce.

Disaster

The military forays ended in disaster. Defeat undermined Pakistan’s  
dictator Pervez Musharraf and has seriously compromised the government  
that replaced him.

Many young men have joined the ranks of the insurgency. As one tribal  
elder explained, “Our youths have become bitterly angry. The  
courageous among them have joined Taliban, no matter whether they  
agree with their philosophy or not.”

Now the US wants to expand its range to the vast and volatile  
Baluchestan region of northwestern Pakistan.

These attacks could stir the region, which also spills into eastern  
Iran, to join the growing insurgency.

In reference to an increase in the use of drones, Obama recently  
declared, “We will insist that action be taken, one way or another,  
when we have intelligence about high-level terrorist targets.”

The spillover of the war has come to represent a serious  
destabilisation of Pakistan. As the Pakistani Taliban grew with the  
revulsion at the US war, so did the range of its demands.

It built on longstanding anger at central government corruption and  
revived the demands of the secessionist movements that once held sway  
in the regions.

By adopting the Af-Pak strategy, Obama has made the war his own.

But one of the new president’s dilemmas is inherited from George  
Bush’s administration. To retreat would be a recognition of the  
greatest military disaster for the US since Vietnam.

To remain and try to win the war risks not only losing Afghanistan,  
but also Pakistan – a loss that would be deeply troubling for  
imperialism.

It is for this reason that the war has become, in the words of Neil  
Abercrombie, the head of the US Congress’s Armed Services  
Subcommittee, a “colossal geopolitical blunder”.

The following should be read alongside this article:
» Stalemate in Helmand
» Guy Smallman's photos: Misery in Kabul

...

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17805

This article should be read after: » Afghanistan’s disasters of war
Stalemate in Helmand

Nothing illustrates the problems of the occupation more than the  
hapless misadventure of British troops in the Helmand province in  
southern Afghanistan.

According to intelligence sources quoted by the influential Royal  
United Services Institute (Rusi), Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered  
his forces in September 2008 to concentrate on pinning down British  
troops in Helmand.

In 2006, occupation forces poured into the region in an attempt to  
expand the remit of the Afghan government.

Instead the move widened and deepened the resistance to foreign forces.

The Taliban hoped a “hard pounding” of British soldiers would draw in  
troops from other regions, freeing up the insurgency to spread. The  
tactic seems to be working.

The bulk of the new surge of US troops are heading to the region to  
bail out the British forces, while the British officers have been  
complaining that they have insufficient troops and equipment to fend  
off the insurgents.

The heavy fighting has forced Britain to bolster its forces there by  
sending in more reservists and part time soldiers.

In his grim assessment of the war, General Sir Michael Rose warned,  
“It is clear that in Afghanistan coalition forces have now reached  
their limit of exploitation with regards to manpower”.

It is tempting to lay the blame for the miscalculation in the Helmand  
province on a misguided decision by the Ministry of Defence. But the  
rot goes deeper.

Michael Clarke, the director of Rusi, said of the dilemma, “The  
coalition can lose the Afghan campaign by losing in Helmand, but it  
cannot win it there.

“It can lose the whole campaign on the home front through a disaster  
in Helmand, but it cannot win on the ground in Afghanistan itself  
without significant victories elsewhere.”

The battle for control in Helmand shows the desperation of an  
occupation running out of options, and spiralling towards disaster.