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03 January 2011 By Rick Rozoff No stranger to armed conflicts over the past 70
years, the United States has completed its first
decade of continuous warfare: 2001-2010. On January 1 the U.S. and its allies in the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization will enter not only a new
year but a second decade of war in Afghanistan. The air and cruise missile attacks that commenced
on October 7, 2001 and the insertion of U.S. and
British ground troops that followed have been
succeeded by a 48-nation, 152,000-troop occupation and
counterinsurgency campaign that is also conducting
almost daily deadly drone missile strikes and
helicopter gunship raids into neighboring Pakistan. The U.S. Defense Department announced that on
September 1 American troop strength in Iraq was
decreased to under 50,000 as the occupation was
transitioned to so-called Operation New Dawn. Troops
from approximately 40 other nations assigned to
Multi-National Force – Iraq, most of them new NATO
members and NATO candidates from Eastern Europe and
former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus and
Central Asia, were withdrawn from 2006-2008. Rather
not withdrawn, but transferred to Afghanistan, leaving
behind only the remnants of a once 160,000-strong
American contingent and the NATO Training
Mission-Iraq. There are now over three times as many foreign
troops in Afghanistan as there are in Iraq, from 48
official NATO Troop Contributing Nations. Also
deployed in theater or pledged for that purpose are
troops from several other countries in Asia, Africa,
South America and the Middle East, among them Bahrain,
Colombia, Egypt and Kazakhstan. The microcosm of a U.S. and NATO rapidly
deployable, interoperable global expeditionary
military force melded in combat. Killing and dying
together on a common battlefield, the blood of thirty
nations spilled in one country. 711 foreign troops were killed in Afghanistan in
2010, a nearly forty percent increase over 2009. By
comparison, 60 foreign soldiers were killed in Iraq in
2010, all of them American. Almost 500 U.S. and 213
non-U.S. troops lost their lives in Afghanistan in
2010. Over 800 Afghan government soldiers were killed in
the same period and 2,400 civilians were killed in the
first ten months of the year. A Pentagon official in the Afghan capital estimated
that 18,000 attacks were conducted against U.S. and
NATO forces in 2010, twice as many as in the preceding
year. [1] Far from any prospect of a decrease in the death
toll in the war-ravaged country during the new year,
the spokesman for the NATO-led International Security
Assistance Force, Germany's Brigadier General Josef
Blotz, this week stated that the Afghan war will only
intensify in 2011, that "There is no end to the
fighting season; we need to keep pressure on the
Taliban all over the country." [2] As though to confirm Blotz's claim, on December 30
two rockets landed in the main U.S. military base at
the Bagram Airfield. Fighting has increased in the north of Afghanistan
where the bulk of 5,000 German troops assigned to NATO
are stationed, an area hitherto comparatively
peaceful. Bundeswehr forces are engaged in ground
combat operations for the first time since the Second
World War. Berlin has lost 46 soldiers in the
conflict. Germany recently ordered the latest of 473 Eagle
reconnaissance vehicles under a $165 million contract
with the U.S. military contractor General Dynamics.
The first armored vehicles were delivered to the
German armed forces in 2009 and deployed to
Afghanistan. On the day before Christmas NATO troops raided the
compound of a private security firm in Kabul, killing
two Afghan nationals. Afterward, Afghan Interior
Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary announced his
government has determined that "NATO is in violation
of a security agreement in Kabul and is suspending an
Afghan police general who helped the U.S.-led
coalition carry out a raid in the capital that killed
two private security guards." [3] On the same day New Zealand special forces serving
under NATO launched a night raid in a factory in Kabul
and slew two more security guards. To indicate in the aftermath of the NATO summit in
Portugal in November that the West is intensifying its
concentration on the Afghanistan-Pakistan war front,
since the summit ended on November 20 several major
officials from NATO countries have visited
Afghanistan: U.S. President Barack Obama and Defense
Secretary Robert Gates, British Prime Minister David
Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Defense
Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Spanish Prime
Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and First Deputy
Prime Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, Romanian
President Traian Basescu and Defense Minister Gabriel
Oprea, French Defence Minister Alain Juppe, Canadian
Governor General David Johnston and U.S. Secretary of
the Navy Raymond Mabus. Chancellor Merkel told German troops in Kunduz
province: "What we have here is not just a warlike
situation. You are involved in combat as in war." [4] Afghanistan is the cynosure of the Western military
bloc's worldwide military strategy, which now has
expanded to include Pakistan. 2010 was the deadliest year of the over nine-year
war in regard to U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle (drone)
missile attacks in Pakistan's Federally Administered
Tribal Areas, where over 120 strikes killed 1,000
people. In 2009 the Central Intelligence Agency
directed less than half that amount – 53 – of lethal
operations in Pakistan. December was among the most
deadly months of the year, with at least 123 people
killed in twelve missile attacks. [5] The intensity and ferocity of the strikes compelled
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to warn that "drone
attacks were affecting efforts to end terrorism in the
country, therefore we condemn it and we are against
it." [6] On Christmas Day General David Petraeus, commander
of all U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, was in the
war zone and stated, "there will be more coordinated
military operations on either side of the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border." He insisted on more "hammer and anvil operations"
after revealing that "there had already been
coordinated operations on both sides of the border,
with Pakistani forces on one side and NATO and Afghan
troops on the other." [7] Two NATO helicopter gunships staged the latest
violation of Pakistani air space shortly after
Petraeus spoke, entering the Landi Kotal area of
Khyber Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal
Areas. NATO intrusions into Pakistan have been
mounting since last September and on the 30th of that
month a NATO helicopter attack killed three Pakistani
soldiers. The U.S. and NATO are slated to deploy troops to a
Pakistani military base in Quetta, the capital of
Balochistan province, which borders Iran and where the
Pentagon and CIA have operated out of the Shamsi air
base, southwest of the capital, for years. NATO
helicopters have also entered the airspace of
Balochistan, marking an expansion of operations from
the tribal areas into the heart of Pakistan. In recent weeks reports have disclosed that the
U.S. will supplement CIA drone missile strikes and
NATO helicopter gunship raids in Pakistan's tribal
areas with special forces operations. A Russian analyst commented on that development in
ominous tones: "Till now US troops have invaded Pakistan only
sporadically. The launch of an operation against the
Taliban in Pakistan may create new problems for
Washington and may lead to the expansion of the Afghan
threat." [8] It is in fact the latest escalation of the Afghan
war into Pakistan. One that will increase combat
operations, deaths and destruction on both sides of
the border in the new year beyond the record levels of
the last. 1) Voice of Russia, December 27, 2010 http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/../37888169.html 2) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 27, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../
americas-undeclared-war-deadly-drone-attacks-in-pakistan-reach-record-high 6) Trend News Agency, December 30, 2010 http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/../37888169.html |
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