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07 July 2010 By Rick Rozoff On July 4 General David Petraeus assumed command of
142,000 U.S. and NATO troops in a ceremony in the
Afghan capital of Kabul. He succeeded the disgraced
and soon to be retired General Stanley McChrystal as
chief of all foreign troops in Afghanistan, those
serving under U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A)/Operation
Enduring Freedom and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization-led International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF). He now commands military units from 46 official
troop contributing nations and others from several
additional countries not officially designated as such
but with forces in or that will soon be deployed to
Afghanistan, such as Egypt, Jordan and Colombia.
Neither the Carthaginian commander Hannibal during the
Second Punic War nor Napoleon Bonaparte in the wars
that bore his name commanded troops speaking as many
diverse tongues. That Petraeus took charge of soldiers from fifty
nations occupying a conquered country on his own
country’s Independence Day has gone without
commentary, either ironic or indignant. In 1775
American colonists began an eight-year war against
foreign troops – those of Britain and some 30,000
German auxiliaries, the latter a quarter of all forces
serving under English command in North America.
Currently the three nations providing the most troops
for the nearly nine-year-old and increasingly deadly
war in Afghanistan are the U.S. (almost 100,000),
Britain (9,500) and Germany (4,500). Petraeus’s remarks on the occasion of accepting his
new dual command contained the standard U.S. and NATO
characterization of their war in Afghanistan as aimed
exclusively against armed extremists, in particular
those portrayed as fighters from other countries. A
representative quote states “al-Qaeda and its network
of extremist allies will not be allowed to once again
establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan.” Two hundred and
thirty-five years ago the government of King George
III may well have spoken in a similar vein concerning
the likes of Johann de Kalb, Thaddeus Kosciuszko,
Casimir Pulaski, Friedrich Von Steuben and the Marquis
de Lafayette illegally entering British territories
along the Atlantic Seaboard and waging warfare against
the Crown’s troops. Petraeus arrived in Kabul on July 2, direct from
Belgium where he had addressed NATO Secretary General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the 28 member states’ permanent
representatives in the North Atlantic Council and
representatives of 46 ISAF contributors at NATO
Headquarters in Brussels and Admiral James Stavridis,
Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Egon
Ramms, Commander Joint Force Command Brunssum, and
other senior military staff at Supreme Headquarters
Allied Powers Europe near Mons. (Two days later at
NATO headquarters in Kabul he had two flags bestowed
on him, “one for the U.S. and the other for NATO.”)
[1] NATO chief Rasmussen was in Lisbon, Portugal the
day Petraeus left Belgium for Afghanistan, in part to
prepare for the November summit of the world’s only
military bloc there in November, where NATO will adopt
its new, 21st century, Strategic Concept and endorse
plans for an integrated interceptor missile grid to
cover almost the entire European continent in
conjunction with, and under the control of, the U.S. In reference to General Petraeus taking up his new
duties, Rasmussen stated at a press conference with
Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado that “It has
been a change of command but it will not be a change
of strategy.” A week after Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as
head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan [2], an
ephemeral scandal that disappeared as quickly, which
is to say instantaneously, as it developed, the U.S.
Senate voted as it customarily does in matters of
foreign policy – unanimously – and in a 99-0 vote
confirmed Petraeus as the new commander of the world’s
longest and largest-scale war. He told Senate members on June 30 that “My sense is
that the tough fighting will continue; indeed, it may
get more intense in the next few months.” A few days earlier he said of President Barack
Obama’s proposed date for beginning the withdrawal of
American and NATO troops from Afghanistan that the
meaning of that pledge by the president, Petraeus’
commander-in-chief, was “one of urgency – not that
July 2011 is when we race for the exits, reach for the
light switch and flip it off.” Last December Petraeus
asserted that there was no plan for a “rush to the
exits” and that there “could be tens of thousands of
American troops in Afghanistan for several years.” [3] In May he spoke at an Armed Forces Day dinner in
Louisville, Kentucky – on a day that Afghan President
Hamid Karzai was visiting the same state – and
insisted that “the US must continue to send troops to
Afghanistan….” [4] To indicate how thoroughly the Pentagon and NATO
are inextricably enmeshed in not only the Afghan
campaign but in a far broader and deeper partnership,
a few days before Petraeus, speaking of his then-role
as chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), said that
he has striven to “operationalize” U.S.-NATO military
integration at CENTCOM ”where up to 60 representatives
of coalition partner countries serve. In addition,
officers from the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia
act as representatives of CentCom, increasing further
the need to share sensitive information.” [5] Afghanistan falls within CENTCOM’s area of
responsibility and the war in that country is a
mechanism for extending the Pentagon’s military
contacts, deployments, acquisition of bases and
general warfighting interoperability with scores of
nations both within and outside CENTCOM’s formal
ambit. In April, three months before taking up his Afghan
war post, Petraeus was in Poland – covered by U.S.
European Command (EUCOM) – to meet with the nation’s
Chief of the General Staff, General Franciszek Gagor,
discuss the war that has now cost the lives of
nineteen Polish soldiers, and disclose that “in a few
months a 800-1,000 strong U.S. battalion would
reinforce Poland’s ISAF forces in the Afghan province
of Ghazni. “Petraeus said that the U.S. troops would be placed
under the Polish commander who is responsible for the
province.” [6] He also met with Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich and
President Lech Kaczynski as well as delivering a
lecture at the National Defence Academy. Kaczynski,
who would perish in an airplane crash three days
later, presented Petraeus with the Order of Merit of
the Republic of Poland and the Iraq Star. [7] Other new NATO members in Eastern Europe are
equally involved, with the Pentagon employing seven
new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania to train
Stryker brigades and airborne troops for the war in
Afghanistan. [8] As commander of CENTCOM and superior to General
McChrystal in Afghanistan, Petraeus methodically laid
the groundwork for expanding the scope of the greater
Afghan war throughout his command’s broad geographical
reach, the heart of what has been deemed the broader
Middle East – from Egypt in the West to Kazakhstan in
the East, taking in Iraq and the rest of the Persian
Gulf region, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and all of
Central and much of South Asia. On January 2 of this year he traveled to Yemen and
met with President Ali Abdullah Saleh after the
Christmas Day airline bomb scare outside Detroit,
though Petraeus had also been in Yemen the preceding
summer. Pentagon assistance to the Yemeni government,
administered under what is described as a
counter-terrorism program, had grown from $4.6 million
in fiscal 2006 to $67 million in fiscal 2009. While in Iraq the day before his departure for
Yemen in January, Petraeus stated, “We have, it’s well
known, about $70 million in security assistance last
year. That will more than double this coming year.”
[9] At the time leading U.S. officials and those of its
NATO allies strained to link their counterinsurgency
wars – overt and otherwise – in the Horn of Africa and
Gulf of Aden regions as extensions of the Global War
on Terror from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and
Somalia. Then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown even
affirmed that “The weakness of al Qaeda in Pakistan
has forced them out of Pakistan and into Yemen and
Somalia.” [10] In May the New York Times revealed that last
September Petraeus had authorized covert special
forces operations under a directive called the Joint
Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order. A United Press International feature last month
indicated part of the order’s designs: “The recent disclosure that the U.S. military is
expanding its covert operations in the Middle East,
Central Asia and the Horn of Africa is widely seen as
a dangerous precedent, with Iran as one of the main
targets….Officials stressed that the directive…permits
operations that could pave the way toward possible
military attacks against Iran if the confrontation
over Tehran’s nuclear program worsens.” [11] This March the U.S. Defense Department’s website
featured an article entitled “Centcom Looks Beyond
Iraq, Afghanistan, Petraeus Says” in which, in
addition to discussing counterinsurgency operations in
Pakistan and Yemen, “Petraeus told the Senate Armed
Services Committee that the United States must remain
vigilant in overseeing broader security challenges
throughout the region. “Petraeus called Iran the ‘primary state-level
threat’ in the Middle East. He told the panel that
Iran undermines security throughout the region in its
efforts to gain nuclear weapons, which threatens a
broader arms race, and uses its paramilitary force to
influence Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Afghanistan and
the Gulf region.” [12] Two months before he announced the U.S. was
maintaining several Aegis class warships in the
Persian Gulf, ships equipped with advanced missile
radar and Standard Missile-3 interceptor missiles.
“The U.S. positioned eight Patriot missile batteries
in the Middle East and Aegis ballistic missile
cruisers in the Persian Gulf, Gen. David Petraeus, the
U.S. Central Command leader, told the Institute for
the Study of War on Jan. 22.” [13] The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 theater missile
interceptors are to be deployed to Iran’s Persian Gulf
neighbor states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the
United Arab Emirates. In early March Petraeus was in what is now
crisis-stricken Kyrgyzstan, less than a month before
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was overthrown in a bloody
uprising [14]. He had arrived in Kyrgyzstan on March
10, one day after “the U.S. embassy said [a] $5.5
million anti-terrorist center would be built in Batken
in southern Kyrgyzstan – where Russian and Kyrgyz
officials had earlier said Moscow might consider
building a similar military facility.” [15] It would
appear that Petraeus and the Pentagon once more beat
Russia to the punch. He met with Bakiyev (who would be forced into exile
early the next month) “to discuss bilateral
cooperation and the situation in Afghanistan.” [16]
The U.S. has used an air base at the Manas
International Airport near the nation’s capital since
2001 for moving troops in and out of Afghanistan,
recently at a rate of 55,000 a month. A political analyst based in the Kyrgyz capital of
Bishkek, Aleksandr Knyazev, was quoted by Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty during Petraeus’ visit on the
repercussions of the Pentagon constructing a
counterinsurgency/special forces base in the country:
“Such a demonstrative act by the Kyrgyz side to
agree…to (build a U.S.-funded counterterrorism center)
is like throwing down a challenge to Russia and
China.” The feature from which the above comment is
borrowed added: “The Kyrgyz plan to set up a U.S.-funded training
center in Batken might upset Russia, as the
Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty
Organization announced its intention last year to
build a military base in southern Kyrgyzstan. “Kyrgyzstan had been under pressure by Russia and
China to close the U.S. air base. The Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, a regional security treaty
dominated by Russia and China, has called on the
United States to close its military bases in Central
Asia. “According to the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek,
Washington has committed $5.5 million toward the
completion of the counterterrorism center.” [17] Petraeus also visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in
early April and immediately after his return Kazakh
President Nursultan Nazarbayev met with President
Barack Obama in Washington. Nazarbayev announced that
he had granted the Pentagon the right to fly troops
and military equipment over his nation for the
expanding war in Afghanistan. According to Michael
McFaul, Special Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs and Senior Director of
Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security
Council, “the agreement will allow troops to fly
directly from the United States over the North Pole to
the region.” [18] In early June a report titled “Pentagon Looks to
Plant New Facilities in Central Asia” disclosed that
the U.S. is “preparing to embark on a mini-building
boom in Central Asia” and “the US military wants to be
involved in strategic construction projects in all
five Central Asian states, including Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan.” [19] In what was described as the major component of the
project, the aforementioned training center in
Kyrgyzstan, the report also stated, “The facility was
originally intended to be built in Batken. But now it
appears that it will be situated in Osh.” [20] Three days after the above excerpts appeared online
the city of Osh erupted into violence, a deadly
conflict between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks which cost
hundreds of lives and led to hundreds of thousands of
Uzbeks being displaced. An account of an announcement reported to have been
posted on the U.S. government’s Federal Business
Opportunities website in the middle of this May
included this quote: “We anticipate two different
projects in Kyrgyzstan. Both are estimated to be in
the $5 million to $10 million dollar range.” The posting “added that up to $5 million each was
earmarked for Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
It also listed two separate proposals for Tajikistan,
one valued at up to $5 million, the other worth up to
$10 million.” [21] The U.S. military was evicted from the Uzbek air
base at Karshi-Khanabad in November of 2005 and
neither troops nor planes have returned since. But
this April General Petraeus visited Uzbekistan, met
with President Islam Karimov, and “the sides exchanged
opinions on the issues of further development of
Uzbek-US cooperation and other areas of mutual
interest.” [22] American troops and pilots may soon
join their German NATO allies operating from the air
base at Termez near the Uzbek-Afghan border. On June 25 Western news agencies reported that Ken
Gross, the American ambassador to Tajikistan, where a
French-dominated NATO operation has been run since
early 2002 at the Dushanbe Airport but where to date
no U.S. forces have been stationed, revealed that the
Pentagon is to “build a facility for training local
troops” to be opened next year. The American envoy
said that “The plan [includes] almost $10 million to
build this national training centre for the Tajik
armed forces.” [23] An Agence France-Presse report added that “The
United States has in past years built training
facilities, financed military programs and established
airbases in a handful of strategic ex-Soviet republics
in Central Asia….These include Georgia and Azerbaijan
in the Caucasus as well as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan
in Central Asia.” [24] Petraeus’s visits to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Uzbekistan in April followed up on trips to the same
three Central Asian nations last August, to Tajikistan
in October and to Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
Kazakhstan in January of last year. What his visits have focused on and in large part
accomplished is to secure transit rights and, as has
been seen above, a military foothold in the former
Soviet republics in Central Asia. Starting in earnest
with his tour of Central Asia in January of 2009,
Petraeus has solidified what is known as a Northern
Distribution Network for the Afghan war, a three-prong
project that takes in a majority of the fifteen
nations that formerly constituted the Soviet Union and
that circumvents Pakistan, hitherto the main land
route for U.S. and NATO supplies into Afghanistan but
one which is more endangered by attacks with each
passing day. The first route starts in Latvia on the Baltic Sea
and proceeds overland through Russia, Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan. Last month “NATO marked a new first in its
Afghan campaign…as officials announced that the
alliance had sent supplies by rail to its troops via
Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for the first
time….” “The first trial shipment of the NATO train
departed Riga, Latvia on May 14 and arrived in
Afghanistan on June 9….” [25] The second starts at the Georgian Black Sea port
cities of Poti and Batumi and moves south and east to
Azerbaijan, then across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan,
from there to Uzbekistan and then to Afghanistan. A
third option bypasses Uzbekistan by going, as the
first does, from Latvia through Russia to Kazakhstan,
but then from the last country through Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan to Afghanistan. An commander of Central Command Petraeus oversaw a
proxy war on the Arabian Peninsula [26] in Yemen and
in conjunction with NATO engineered the military
buildup against Iran in the Persian Gulf. [27] He also to varying degrees pulled the Central Asian
nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan deeper into the Afghan war
nexus. Even nations outside of Central Command’s area
of operations – Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Latvia,
Georgia, Azerbaijan and now Russia – are part of the
network. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine have troop contingents
serving under NATO in Afghanistan, with Moldova likely
to provide troops soon. Of the fifteen former Soviet
republics, then, only Belarus would remain completely
aloof from the war. While speaking outside NATO headquarters in Kabul
on July 4, General Petraeus stated “We are in this to
win.” Only four days before, the deadliest month of
the war for NATO forces ended and with it the lives of
over a hundred foreign soldiers. Petraeus’s 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops are not
going to turn the tide in America’s longest, and
NATO’s first ground, war. Nor will the conflict be
shortened by pulling more nations, with almost a third
of the world’s already embroiled, into the Afghan
vortex. 1) Associated Press, July 4, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../wests-afghan-debacle-commander-dismissed-as-war-deaths-reach-record-level 3) New York Times, December 7, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../nobel-committee-celebrates-war-as-peace] 4) KEYC TV, May 15, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../u-s-and-nato-accelerate-military-build-up-in-black-sea-region 9) Reuters, January 1, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../u-s-nato-expand-afghan-war-to-horn-of-africa-and-indian-ocean-2 11) United Press International, June 3, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../u-s-extends-missile-buildup-from-poland-and-taiwan-to-persian-gu 14) Kyrgyzstan And The Battle For Central Asia http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../kyrgyzstan-and-the-battle-for-central-asia 15) Reuters, March 9, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../kazakhstan-u-s-nato-seek-military-outpost-between-russia-and-china/ 19) EurasiaNet, June 8, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/../yemen-pentagons-war-on-the-arabian-peninsula 27) NATO’s Role In The Military Encirclement Of
Iran http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../natos-role-in-the-military-encirclement-of-iran |
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