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13 April 2010 By Rick Rozoff With the Pentagon and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization planning the largest military campaign of
the Afghan war this summer in the south, Kandahar
province, a complementary offensive in the north,
Kunduz province, and increased troop strength of
150,000 in preparation for the assaults, a war that
will enter its tenth calendar year this October 7 is
reaching the apex of its intensity. The length of the war if not the amount of troops
deployed for it inevitably conjures up a comparison
with the U.S. war in Vietnam, before now the longest
in America’s history. Not only protracted but
intractable, with its escalation in earnest beginning
in early 1965 and the end of U.S. combat operations
not occurring until 1973. Another analogy is with the Korean War, far shorter
in duration – three years – and with fewer U.S. troops
and deaths than in Vietnam. In at least two manners the Korean War more closely
resembles the current armed conflict in South Asia.
First, foreign intervention was formally authorized by
the United Nations although in effect it was a
U.S.-led and -dominated military operation on the
Asian mainland. Second, Washington then, as now, recruited troops
from allied nations, particularly from members of
post-World War II military blocs it had formed or was
in the process of establishing. In addition to South
Korea, soldiers from fifteen other countries fought
under U.S. (and nominal UN) command. From NATO, formed the year before the Korean War
began in 1950: Britain, Canada, France, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Luxembourg and then candidate members
Greece and Turkey. From the Australia, New Zealand, United States
Security Treaty (ANZUS), formed during the Korean War
in September of 1951: All three members. From what in 1955 would be formalized as the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), envisioned
at the time as an Asian parallel to NATO: The
Philippines, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand,
along with the U.S., Britain and France which were
also founding members. Washington additionally dragooned between
1,800-3,000 troops each from Colombia, Ethiopia and
apartheid South Africa for the war effort. SEATO was dissolved in 1977 and ANZUS remains an
active alliance, although for the expanding war in
Afghanistan (and neighboring Pakistan) all foreign
troops, including in the near future “virtually all
American forces,” [1] are or will be under NATO
command, including the first contingent of troops from
Colombia. Australia and New Zealand, with 1,550 and
200 troops respectively, are now identified as NATO
Contact Countries. To return to the Vietnam precedent, on July 2, 2009
the U.S. launched its largest military offensive
anywhere since the second attack on Fallujah in Iraq
in 2004, Operation Phantom Fury, which included a
total of 10,000-15,000 American troops. In Operation Khanjar (Strike of the Sword)
conducted in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, 4,000
U.S. forces and fifty aircraft participated in an
assault that included “the biggest offensive airlift
by the Marines since Vietnam.” [2] In February 15,000 U.S., NATO and Afghan government
troops launched the largest joint military attack of
the war against the town of Marjah in Helmand
province, with an estimated population of
75,000-80,000 and by one account as few as 400
suspected insurgents. [3] A more than 27-1 ratio of
armed belligerents. The insurgents were not only
outnumbered but outgunned and unlike their opponents
didn’t have warplanes for air cover and bombing and
strafing runs. Western troops were ferried in by
helicopters and rockets were fired from a High
Mobility Artillery Rocket System, in one case killing
ten members of an Afghan family when their house was
hit. Nevertheless a U.S. officer described the fighting
being as tough as that in Fallujah six years earlier.
“In Fallujah, it was just as intense. But there, we
started from the north and worked down to the south.
In Marjah, we’re coming in from different locations
and working toward the centre, so we’re taking fire
from all angles.” [4] The offensive was initiated on February 13th and
six weeks later it was reported that U.S. and NATO
troops were “still coming under fire and being
targeted by bomb attacks despite efforts to restore
Afghan government control.” [5] The Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin,
“said he was puzzled by allied claims that the
offensive was a success,” according to the Associated
Press, which moreover attributed a further statement
of Rogozin’s – “So the result (of the Marjah
offensive) was that the mountain shook, but only a
mouse was born” – to a “Russian proverb.” [6] What the Russian envoy no doubt knew if the U.S.
news agency’s writer and editors didn’t was that
Rogozin’s line was a quote from the Roman poet Horace:
Parturiunt montes; nascetur ridiculus mus. The
mountains are in labor; a ridiculous mouse will be
born. While the mountain was writhing with a stillborn
victory, U.S. President Barack Obama paid an
unannounced one-day visit to the Afghan capital of
Kabul to, as it can be safely assumed, remind his
Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai who was in charge of
the country. The following day the U.S.’s top military
commander, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Admiral Michael Mullen, visited Marjah forty days
after the offensive was unleashed there and in a news
report entitled “Mullen in Afghan war zone as US gears
up for Kandahar” it was disclosed that “The United
States and allies have boosted their troop numbers to
126,000, with the number set to peak at 150,000 by
August as the fight expands into neighbouring Kandahar
province, the heartland of the insurgency.” [7] If the U.S. and its NATO allies faced 400-2,000
armed fighters in Marjah (the most common figure cited
in the Western press was 600), a town of no more than
80,000 inhabitants, and still confronted snipers and
improvised explosive devices a month and a half into
the operation, Kandahar presents a challenge several
orders of magnitude greater. The province has a
population of almost one million with half that number
in the capital. It is also, in the copy and paste
style of the American establishment news media,
routinely referred to as the “heartland of the
insurgency” and the “birthplace of Taliban.” The assault on Marjah was intended and presented as
a warm-up exercise for the campaign in Kandahar
province and city scheduled to begin as early as June,
and the public relations blitz before the February
attack on Marjah was of a scope customarily reserved
for high-budget Hollywood releases and professional
sports events. The self-celebratory propaganda in
advance of the offensive in Kandahar can be expected
to exceed it in bravado and extravagance. To be
proportionate to the scale of the fighting. The
“battle for Kandahar” is intended to be the decisive
victory in what will then be a nearly nine-year war,
one that permits Washington and its Western allies to
“retreat in dignity” from the Afghan imbroglio. In preparation for the offensive the U.S. is
increasing the transfer of troops and military
equipment to the war zone. In early April the
Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition,
Technology, and Logistics Ashton B. Carter affirmed
that a “massive amount of equipment and supplies being
sent to support troops in Afghanistan is a historic
logistical effort,” and stated: “I think it’s fair to say that there’s never been,
like in these months that we’re witnessing right now,
as dramatic a logistics effort as we see in
Afghanistan.” [8] He was further cited as saying “From the ramp up of
airlifts, sealifts and ground supply lines, to the
building of forward operating bases, runways and tent
cities…the effort to build up and supply the plus up
of troops in Afghanistan is critical to NATO’s success
there.” [9] In 2008 NATO established its first multinational
Strategic Airlift Capability operation at the Papa Air
Base in Hungary, intended for supplying war efforts
around the world in future but for the conflict in
Afghanistan most immediately. The “first-of-its-kind
mobility unit comprising airmen from 12 nations” [10]
is staffed by U.S. military personnel, who are also
now permanently stationed at bases in Bulgaria and
Romania and later this month will be in Poland as
well. Late last July the “first-ever multinational
strategic airlift unit was officially activated…at a
ceremony at Papa Air Base, Hungary, according to a
U.S. Air Forces in Europe release.” [11] A Pentagon website disclosed this April 2nd that
the Hungarian-based “Heavy Airlift Wing, comprised of
12 nations, recently moved 2.1 million pounds of
equipment essential to surge operations supporting the
International Security Assistance Force in
Afghanistan. “The international wing has been part of the
operation to move more than 6 million pounds of basic
expeditionary airfield resources, or BEAR materiel, to
build six forward operating bases supporting 3,500
people….” [12] At a press conference at the same time the new
commander of the U.S. Third – “Patton’s Own” – Army
(United States Army Central), Lieutenant General
William G. Webster, informed reporters in Kuwait that
“The military is scrambling to finish what it calls
the largest movement of troops and equipment since the
buildup of World War II as it draws down in Iraq and
ramps up in Afghanistan.” He added that “the military is moving as fast as it
can on the massive and complex job. There are roughly
3 million pieces of equipment in Iraq, including
41,000 vehicles and trailers,” and said “officials
expect to be able to move the more than 5,000 vehicles
needed for the Afghanistan buildup into that country
by the end of the summer. “Besides air deliveries to Afghanistan, the
military is moving goods through neighboring Pakistan
and is using a system of roads, rail and sea routes
through Uzbekistan and other points to the north in
Central Asia.” [13] His was not the only recent reference to World War
II in regards to the Afghan war. There is no literal
comparison between the ongoing fighting in Afghanistan
and the most deadly and destructive armed conflict in
human history. The Second World War included all the
world’s major industrial powers as belligerents
(Sweden alone possibly excepted), which collectively
mobilized up to 100 million troops. The war cost the lives of as many as 70 million
people, soldiers and civilians alike. In the nuclear age the world would not survive any
attempt at a similar conflagration. But that war is increasingly becoming the frame of
reference for the fighting in the Afghanistan-Pakistan
theater. In the April 1st edition of Toronto’s Global and
Mail Michael O’Hanlon, director of research and senior
fellow on foreign policy issues at the Brookings
Institution, wrote in an opinion piece called
“Kandahar is what the Canada-U.S. alliance is all
about” that “Americans need to feel unabashed about
asking Canada to stay on in Afghanistan past 2011,” as
the two nations “are beginning the most important
combined wartime operation since the Second World
War.” [14] Canada has lost 141 soldiers in Afghanistan, most
all of them in Kandahar. That death toll is Canada’s
highest since the Korean War, which ended 57 years
ago. Australia, which has not suffered combat
casualties since the wars in Korea and Vietnam, has
acknowledged that twenty of its soldiers have been
wounded in Afghanistan so far this year. The carnage against Afghan civilians perpetrated by
the U.S. and NATO from the sky and on the ground is
steadily mounting (as deaths from U.S. drone missile
attacks in adjoining Pakistan near the 800 mark). From
Kunduz last autumn and Marjah the last two months to
the unconscionable murder of two pregnant women (one a
mother of ten, the other of six), a teenage girl and
others in the village of Khataba in Paktia province in
February, the counterinsurgency strategy of General
McChrystal, commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in
Afghanistan, is having its lethal effect. The war is also costing NATO a rising number of
casualties in the military bloc’s first ground war. As
of April 3rd Western nations had lost 144 soldiers
this year. In the first three months of 2010 the
NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF)
acknowledged at least 138 deaths as compared to 78
during the same quarter in 2009, which itself was the
deadliest year for U.S. and NATO forces – 520 losses –
since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. “Military
planners have said they expect an escalation of deaths
and injuries among foreign troops as deployments surge
to a peak of 150,000 by August….” [15] American combat deaths also “roughly doubled in the
first three months of 2010 compared to the same period
last year,” and “have been accompanied by a dramatic
spike in the number of wounded, with injuries more
than tripling in the first two months of the year and
trending in the same direction based on the latest
available data for March.” “U.S. officials have warned that casualties are
likely to rise even further as the Pentagon completes
its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to
Afghanistan and sets its sights on the Taliban’s home
base of Kandahar province, where a major operation is
expected in the coming months.” [16] On April 2nd three German soldiers were killed and
five seriously wounded in a firefight with an
estimated 200 insurgents in the northern Afghan
province of Kunduz. According to Deutsche
Presse-Agentur, “It was the highest number of
casualties the postwar German armed forces, the
Bundeswehr, have suffered in battle and brought to 39
the number of German soldiers killed in Afghanistan.”
[17] That is, the three soldiers killed represented
the most German combat fatalities in a single exchange
since the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945. The 39
deaths in total are also the first since the end of
World War II. German NATO troops responded by killing six Afghan
government soldiers in the same province on the same
day. In mid-March German General Bruno Kasdorf, chief of
staff of the International Security and Assistance
Force in the Afghan capital, informed German public
radio that “There will definitely be an operation up
there in Kunduz (province),” and that the offensive
would be “similar” in scale “to the offensive
currently underway in the southern province of Helmand
involving 15,000 US, NATO and Afghan troops.” [18] Germany currently has approximately 4,300 troops in
Afghanistan, the third largest contingent after the
U.S. and Britain and the most deployed abroad in the
post-World War II period since 8,500 troops were
assigned to the NATO force in Kosovo in 1999. [19] In Afghanistan, as evidenced above, they are in an
active war zone for the first time in 65 years. Last
September 5th German troops called in NATO air strikes
against villages near their base in Kunduz which
resulted in the deaths of over 150 Afghan civilians.
[20] German Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and
Development Dirk Niebel, who was in Afghanistan on the
day of the deadly fighting that cost the lives of five
of his own country’s soldiers and six from the
government of Afghanistan, the protection of which is
the pretext for German military involvement in the
nation, in speaking of his nation’s combat troops at a
ceremony for those killed on April 2nd stated “They
want people to understand that they have to defend
themselves – sometimes also preventatively. And they
don’t understand why they have to explain themselves
to the German public, or why they could even be
prosecuted.” [21] Another report of the same day quoted German
Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg
asseverating, “We will stay in Afghanistan” although
the mission is being conducted under “war-like”
circumstances and the situation confronting German
troops could be categorized as a war. “The remarks reflect calls by Foreign Minister
Guido Westerwelle and some others to reclassify the
German mission in Afghanistan as ‘armed conflict.’ So
far, German military forces have been subjected to the
civil penal code, given their participation in
training Afghan police and soldiers and in
reconstruction activities.” [22] Reclassifying Germany’s – overt and
incontrovertible – combat mission in Afghanistan as
war in place of the previous designations of
peacekeeping and reconstruction would allow for a
relaxation of legal and other constraints on its
troops, so-called combat caveats, so that massacres
like that in Kunduz last September will be more likely
to be repeated and less likely to be prosecuted. Germany’s military role in NATO’s first Asian war
is of special significance as the May 8th (May 9th in
much of Eastern Europe) 65th anniversary of the end of
World War II in Europe approaches. When the leaders of the Big Three allied powers –
Britain, the Soviet Union and the U.S. – met in Yalta
and Potsdam in 1945 to discuss what a post-war Europe
would look like, particular emphasis was placed on
building a new legal and security structure that would
prevent the possibility of the horrors of the Second
World War ever again being inflicted on the continent
and the world. The nation that had ignited the deadliest war in
human history – Germany with its invasions of Poland,
Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, France,
Yugoslavia, Greece and the Soviet Union between 1939
and 1941 – was to be demilitarized. At the time many
in the world hoped the model might be extended to all
of Europe and even to the rest of the world. That wish was dashed with the creation of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 and the inclusion
of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) into
the military bloc six years afterward. Germany itself would violate the post-World War II
prohibition against engaging in armed conflicts by
supplying Luftwaffe warplanes for NATO’s 78-day air
war against Yugoslavia in 1999 and then by deploying
troops for what has now become a full-fledged combat
role in Afghanistan. German forces have been appointed
to lead fellow NATO nations’ troops in the upcoming
large-scale military offensive in Kunduz province. On May 9th troops from the other Second World War
allied powers in the European theater – the U.S.,
Britain and France – are for the first time to March
in the Victory Day parade in the Russian capital. There are different ways to commemorate the end of
the world’s bloodiest war. Britain’s Sunday Telegraph ran a feature on April
4th titled “Luftwaffe and RAF join forces in
Afghanistan,” which celebrated the fact that
“Sixty-five years after the end of the Second World
War” a “Luftwaffe navigator has flown into combat in
the same plane as an RAF pilot for the very first
time.” That the British Royal Air Force and its German
opposite number would not only forget dogfights over
the English channel and bombing raids over the
continent in the early 1940s but join ranks in combat
missions over an unoffending nation and its people in
faraway South Asia seemed a cause for approbation to
the major British daily, which detailed that “the
[German] navigator climbed into a Tornado GR4 ground
attack aircraft at Kandahar airbase in southern
Afghanistan to provide air support for troops in
Helmand province.” The British Tornado GR4 multirole
fighter, equipped for Storm Shadow and Brimstone
missiles, earlier saw action in Iraq. In fact the Tornado combat plane jointly flown by a
German and a British pilot in Afghanistan “was armed
with 500lb Paveway air-to-ground bombs, Brimstone
missiles and a 27mm cannon.” [23] On May 8th and 9th when the world remembers the end
of a conflict that accounted for the largest-ever loss
of human life, two distinct, exclusive and even
opposite interpretations will be offered on the events
of 65 years ago. One is that humanity must never allow the use of
war to achieve political, territorial and economic
objectives or in the name of redressing past
grievances, which all too often is reduced to motives
of revenge. The other is that the majority of the world’s major
military powers must intensify plans for international
armed intervention based on global rapid deployment
forces able to confront and attack any nation accused
of posing a threat outside or inside its borders.
“Preventatively.” The West’s war in Afghanistan – with an
ever-widening network of military bases and transit
infrastructure in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus,
the Middle East, and Central and South Asia servicing
it – is the era’s most egregious example of the second
strategy. 1) Associated Press, March 16, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../new-nato-germany-returns-to-world-military-stage 20) Pajhwok Afghan News, September 5, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../following-afghan-election-nato-intensifies-deployments-carnage 21) Deutsche Welle, April 4, 2010 |
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