US
Endgame In Afghanistan: The Evil Of Three Lessers
29 September 2010By Eric Walberg
In his school-boyish Oval Office "Mission
accomplished!" speech 31 August, United States
President Barack Obama heaped faint praise on Bush's
invasion of Iraq, averring that no one could doubt
Bush's support for the troops, love of his country and
commitment to its security when he wrote this most
"remarkable chapter in the history of the United
States and Iraq". True, it was written at a "huge
price" to the US (apparently it was provided free of
charge for the fortunate Iraqis).
He vaguely talked of "a transition to Afghan
responsibility", vowing to stick to his promise to
begin withdrawal of troops next year, reiterating the
Obama Doctrine: "American influence around the world
is not a function of military force alone. We must use
all elements of our power -- including our diplomacy,
our economic strength, and the power of America's
example -- to secure our interests." The fact that as
a senator, he opposed Petraeus, the mastermind behind
the surge in Iraq in 2007 and the one Obama is now
staking his presidency on in Afghanistan, was not
raised.
The lack of fighter jet and battleship for his
"Mission accomplished!" sound byte was just as
symbolic as was Bush's bomber-jacket hubris. Obama is
looking more and more like a White House caretaker, a
prisoner of the Pentagon, if in fact he ever had any
policy freedom in the first place. Hillary famously
cracked "Whatever Stanley [McChrystal] wants, give it
to him." Now, with the unceremonious dumping of
McChrystal, Dave will most certainly get what he
wants, and an early exit from Afghanistan is not on
his check list. On the contrary he now wants to surge
the surge with an extra 2,000 troops. So what are
Obama/Petraeus's real options?
There is little to differentiate McChrystal and
Petraeus apart from the latter's pomposity. He oversaw
the preparation of the Army-Marine Corps's
counterinsurgency field manual and its application in
Iraq, and will try to smoke out the "enemy" just as
did his predecessor. Obama droned on, so to speak,
about Al-Qaeda (counterterrorism in Washington-speak),
but made clear the current surge was really to stem
the Taliban hordes (counterinsurgency or COIN in
Washington-speak). Counterterrorism elements "are
absolutely part of a comprehensive civil-military
counterinsurgency campaign", Petraeus told wired.com,
meaning he, like Obama, still confuses Taliban and
terrorism, or rather tries to confuse anyone bothering
to listen.
McChrystal's unpopular (among GIs) order for troops to
stop killing civilians at random will continue: "You
cannot kill or capture your way out of a substantial
insurgency." He has sort-of endorsed Karzai's attempt
to "win Afghan hearts and minds" through the new High
Peace Council which would lead to "reintegration of
reconcilable elements of the insurgency,. This has
been tried now for two years without any success. It
looks like a repeat of the Iraqi Sunni Awakening
movement of 2005, which paid former Sunni resistance
fighters as ad hoc militias, which had nothing to do
with Petraeus, being a spontaneous development by
local sheikhs. Whether it was successful is still
debatable.
Trying to apply this to Afghanistan is a pipe dream in
any case, where hostile mountains, warlords and a
decentralised state were and are the norm, unlike
pre-2003 Iraq. Apart from the dubious surge theory,
there is nothing that Petraeus adds to the equation,
nothing to suggest he will have any chance of budging
the Taliban from their bottom line: the unconditional
exit of all foreign troops and evacuation of all
bases. None of this remotely reflects the so-called
Obama Doctrine of diplomacy vs military solutions to
international problems, talking vs killing, but hopes
for Obama long ago dried up. His tired Oval Office
spiel neither surprised nor disappointed. It induced
only yawns.
The man in control, Petraeus, is himself in need of an
awakening. Someone should tell him his surge, COIN and
whatnot are too late: the Taliban are already the de
facto government. NGOs seriously working in
Afghanistan have known this for quite a while. The
tragic deaths of ten International Assistance Mission
(IAM) staff recently in Badakshan province was a
direct result of forgetting this important political
fact. At 44, IAM is the longest serving NGO in
Afghanistan, and has successfully manoeuvred the
various royal, republican, communist, Islamist regimes
for over four decades by scrupulously avoiding any
identification with local government and occupation
forces, acknowledging whichever side is in power, and
sticking to its relief work. But NATO abandoned the
area in July just as new aid workers were arriving,
and this time the new volunteers got caught in the
transition. Says IAM director Dirk Frans sadly, "They
were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
The case was all the more poignant as there has been
increasing cooperation with the Taliban and fewer
targeted killings of aid workers as a result of NGOs
reaching out to the Taliban and respecting their right
to govern. Mullah Omar even wrote a letter of approval
for one aid group. "The chain of command is more
coherent in 2010 than 2004," says Michiel Hofman,
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) rep in Afghanistan. MSF
has access to Taliban-controlled areas so long as its
employees wear clearly marked vests with the group's
insignia, front and back, to differentiate them from
the occupiers.
UNICEF and the World Health Organisation work with
both the Taliban and Karzai officials to provide polio
vaccinations, once condemned by clerics as a
conspiracy to poison or sterilise Muslim children.
Volunteers carry a precious letter of approval from
Mullah Omar. Red Cross spokesman Bijan Famoudi told
April Rabkin at npr.org that Red Cross workers
coordinate with the Taliban almost daily concerning
their movements and can reach Taliban leaders within
hours if there is a problem.
The Taliban are not the ogre they are made out to be
by the Western media. They respect genuine
international aid workers, unlike foreign fighters
from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, who have a
"reputation much tougher when it comes to foreigners",
notes Hofman. But then the MSF honcho could say the
same of the other foreign fighters, the occupiers, who
in a desperate bid to use such workers are human
shields, have increasingly insisted on NGO cooperation
as part of their effort to "win hearts and minds". The
US and German military have put conditions on grants
to aid organisations, requiring them to work with the
occupiers. Caritas refused a chunk of $12.9m worth of
aid because it would have been part of the German
army's reconstruction work.
Karzai too tries to pressure NGOs. In April, he had
Italian and Afghan employees of the Italian aid
organisation Emergency, which ran a hospital in
Helmand, charged with "terrorist activities",
including plotting to assassinate the governor. The
charges were nonsense, a case of sour grapes, as the
group successfully negotiated the release of a foreign
journalist, no thanks to Karzai et al.
The US has three choices at this point: the easy one
is to just pull out and leave the Taliban to disarm
the Western-created warlord militias and to work with
the less odious members of the Karzai regime to create
a viable regime in a peaceful, if very poor and
devastated country. There are genuine NGOs on the
ground now that can help coordinate a non-imperialist
international aid effort. Yes, some heads will roll,
but the sooner the process gets underway, the fewer
deaths there will be all round. This is what Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia want, leaving them in the driver's
seat.
Its second option is to let the regional governments
take over in stabilizing the current regime. This,
however, would require a revolution in US thinking:
mend fences between it and Iran. Iran is eager and
willing to do just this and has been since it provided
the US with valuable assistance in routing the Taliban
after 9/11. Iran supports the Karzai regime, which is
dominated by the Persian-speaking Tajiks, and strongly
opposes making any deals with the Taliban. In a
meeting in New Delhi in August, Iran's Deputy Foreign
Minister Mohammed Ali Fathollahi said, "Empowering the
military forces of Afghanistan and also the police of
Afghanistan are points on which countries of the
region should help, and Iran voices its readiness to
help in this regard.... We don't have any doubt in the
capability of the government of Afghanistan."
Sounds like Petraeus/ Obama, right? The US plans to
spend $11.6 billion next year and another $25b by 2015
precisely to create an Afghan army and policy force to
support Karzai. Iran has offered to help do this. It
holds the fate of this US endgame in its hands. The
advantage of this option is that peace would break out
in the region without US occupation of Afghanistan and
subversion of Iran, and the US would still have quite
a bit of influence in post-pull out Afghanistan. Both
India and Russia would be solid supporters of such a
scenario and the latter would ensure the support of
the "stans" on Afghanistan's northern borders.
Pakistan and the Saudis would have no choice but to
tag along.
Its third option is a lame compromise between the
above. Council for Foreign Relations President Richard
Haass suggests partitioning Afghanistan, handing over
Pashtun areas to the Taliban and arming the other
ethnic groups to defend themselves. Syed Saleem
Shahzad reports in Asia Times that the US is finally
talking to the Taliban commanders, including
Sirajuddin Haqqani, mediated by Pakistan and the
Saudis, offering to cede control of the south to the
Taliban while keeping control of the north. This is a
recipe for unending civil war too horrible to
contemplate.
©
EsinIslam.Com
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