Afghanistan

[Slimprofits]

Gen. Stanley McChrystal's long-awaited reassessment of the war against Taliban insurgents aims for a transformation of the shaky relationship between U.S. forces and Afghan civilians as troops press a counterinsurgency strategy of clearing and holding populated areas, said officials apprised of the report's contents.

The biggest change urged in McChrystal's report is a "cultural shift" in how U.S. and foreign troops operate — ranging from how they live and travel among the Afghan population to where and how they fight, a senior military official in Kabul said Friday.

[..]

As McChrystal readies the assessment of the war, due in two weeks, numerous U.S. officials and outsiders aware of his thinking suggest that he will request in a companion report that more American troops, probably including marines, be added next year.

Several people familiar with the work being done cautioned that McChrystal could opt not to ask for an increase at all — a recognition that President Barack Obama and other White House advisers would not look favorably on adding new numbers to U.S. forces after already agreeing to boost their ranks by 21,000 troops earlier this year.

[..]

The additions Obama has already approved will bring the U.S. presence to about 68,000 by the end of the year. That is roughly double the size of the U.S. force when Obama took office.

McChrystal's predecessor left behind an unfilled request for an addition of approximately 10,000 U.S. forces, and Obama had been expected to review that request near the end of the year.

cont.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090731/...us_afghanistan

By PAULINE JELINEK and ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writers

[ASH]

Re: Afghanistan

Gen. Stanley McChrystal's long-awaited reassessment of the war against Taliban insurgents aims for a transformation of the shaky relationship between U.S. forces and Afghan civilians as troops press a counterinsurgency strategy of clearing and holding populated areas, said officials apprised of the report's contents.

...

By PAULINE JELINEK and ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writers

There was an interesting article on Afghanistan strategy in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, and also a review of two recent books on the subject.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Afghanistan

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...nskeep_op.html

We've been told again and again for years on end that the Taliban were running their operations off the opium trade, clearing as much as $400 million per year. Now, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation says the proceeds are closer to $70 million.

But that's not the real news. The real news is what's missing: If our enemies aren't taking as much money as we thought to provide protection to the source of raw material for 90% of the world's heroin, then who is providing that protection?

Apparently, the answer is: our friends.

The Times goes on to say:

In one of its most disconcerting conclusions, the Senate report says the United States inadvertently contributed to the resurgent drug trade ... by backing warlords who derived income from the flow of illegal drugs. ... These warlords later traded on their stature as U.S. allies to take senior positions in the new Afghan government, laying the groundwork for the corrupt nexus between drugs and authority that pervades the power structure today.
The cost of this may well go beyond the effect on the heroin shipments.

When we sat down this week with Amin Tarzi, director of Middle East Studies at the Marine Corps University and a native Afghan, he said that the United States has lost credibility with the Afghan populace by allying itself with warlords who have been known across Afghanistan for many years as criminals. We have, he says, handed a golden issue to the Taliban. They first took power in the 1990's by charging that the existing government was corrupt. Now they can say it again.

yes, inadvertantly. (this is me snickering)

[ASH]

Re: Afghanistan

yes, inadvertantly. (this is me snickering)

It's tough when you don't have the manpower or political will to run an occupied country as an imperial colony, yet your choice of proxies is dreadful. For some reason, we keep acting like we expect to do business with Thomas Jefferson, yet we are actually doing business with Al Capone.

[Ghent12]

Re: Afghanistan

It's tough when you don't have the manpower or political will to run an occupied country as an imperial colony, yet your choice of proxies is dreadful. For some reason, we keep acting like we expect to do business with Thomas Jefferson, yet we are actually doing business with Al Capone.

I wonder if Afghanistan has income tax laws...

[D-Mack]

Re: Afghanistan

Who is funding the Afghan Taliban? You don’t want to know
Post a comment (64)
Posted by: GlobalPost
Tags: Global News, Afghanistan, funding, GlobalPost, international aid, Pakistan, poppy, Taliban


U.S. soldiers (L) and an Afghan policeman keep watch near a building which is held by the Taliban in Logar, south of Kabul August 10, 2009. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood

The article by Jean MacKenzie originally appeared in GlobalPost. This is part of a special series by GlobalPost called Life, Death and The Taliban. Click here for a related article Funding the Pakistani Taliban.

KABUL — It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.

Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.

“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.

...

http://blogs.reuters.com/global/2009...-want-to-know/

wel, well .... the same old stuff

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Afghanistan

What I keep hearing from friends in theatre is that Hamid Karzai is all too often referred to only half jokingly as "Mayor of Kabul".

Afghan doesn't deserve nation-state status yet.

It's kind of like Germany pre Unification(well actually two unifications ago), but minus zee Teutonic efficiency, and adding lots more drugs, even more weapons, and a couple generations more of conflict.

Afghanistan is a cluster of fiefdoms.....NOT a singular country......it might be best to treat it as such and stop pretending there's substance to the Karzai dog and pony show meant for western telegenic consumption.

As far as Afghan insurgency hotting up......the heat is getting turned up in some quite carefully calculated and sophisticated ways by insurgents....with significant efforts specifically designed to fracture the coalition by attacking the weakest perceived links in the chain.

[c1ue]

Re: Afghanistan

Afghanistan has a larger population than Iraq and significantly more difficult terrain.

The US has failed with 200K+ troops to quell disturbances in Iraq - I fail to see how 50K troops are going to do squat in Afghanistan.

[don]

Re: Afghanistan

The Afghan pipe dream
By Pepe Escobar

America's convoluted, Alice-in-Wonderland interpretation of this summer's top political show - the "free expression of the people" in the Afghanistan election - reads like an opium dream. In fact, it is actually a pipe dream - as in Pipelineistan. With the added twist that no one's saying a word about the pipe that's delivering the opium dream.

As in an opium dream, delusion reigns. The chances of United States President Barack Obama actually elaborating what his AfPak strategy really is are as likely as having his super-envoy Richard Holbrooke share a pipe with explosive uber-guerrilla warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Obama says "success in Afghanistan" involves "diplomacy, development and good governance" - but all dazed and confused world public opinion sees are packs of extra marines being deployed to "fight the Taliban".

Former Waziristan jihad master Baitullah Mehsud, a "Pak", not an "Af" Taliban, may have been done in by a clever US Predator drone. But one Osama bin Laden - as in an opium dream - still ghostly roams across the Hindu Kush, eight years after the 9/11 fact. A vision or a waking dream, he may be playing Return of the Living Dead in "Pak", not "Af" - so why all these extra marines frantically canvassing Afghan lands?

Or should we believe Pakistan Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira, who said there "is no evidence that Osama bin Laden is present in Pakistan" and that "those making claims of his presence in the country should provide valid proof of it"?

Furthermore, the US notion that a motley crew of Pashtun peasants, angry young religious men, gangsters, highway robbers and anti-government rabble-rousers sprinkled around Pashtun country in Afghanistan would suddenly start welcoming shady al-Qaeda new breeders bent on destroying Western civilization as we know it is, well, no less than an opium dream.

As for the sham election, who cares who's the winner - Pashtun President Hamid Karzai, aka "the kebab seller", Tajik Abdullah Abdullah or anyone else? Afghanistan will be ruled by Barack Hussein Obama anyway. "The Taliban" - this ghostly, immaterial entity - may start getting less cash from their former Pakistani intelligence masters; but pious, Salafi Persian Gulf potentates will still make sure they more than balance their budget - unlike certain Western powers. They couldn't care less about super-envoy Holbrooke's recently announced campaign to freeze wire transfers to "the Taliban".

Unable to fire Karzai, Washington watches impotently as he drafts psycho killer Uzbek General Rashid Dostum to campaign for him - as if sporting Tajik commander Muhammad Fahim as his running mate was not enough. It's Do the Warlord Dance in Kabul - and the prize is buckets of drug money for everybody so funding for private militias remains as free as a full supply of opium to the world economy.

And in the end, the warlords will find a shortcut to get rid of Karzai anyway.

Just ask the perennial Hekmatyar - who is fighting not only Karzai but the US and coalition troops (as if he's reading too much recent Iraq history, he insists on a timetable for Western troop withdrawal). Incidentally, good ol' friend of Saudi Arabia Hekmatyar is not a "Taliban" - but a Pashtun nationalist.

As for installed-by-George W Bush Karzai, he may be an Americanized aristocrat from the minor Popolzai tribe who knows his Pashtunwali - the inflexible Pashtun tribal code; but he's also a no-holds-barred opportunist who studied in India, so he's betting on India to counter Pakistani influence over Afghanistan. He wants no "Pak" dominating "Af", while for Washington everything is now "AfPak". He knows that "the Taliban" control the day and virtually all the night in over half of Afghanistan. He knows he's got to do something to try to stop Westerners killing Pashtuns in droves. Yet another American puppet turns against his masters.

Ich bin ein Talibanistaner

And what to make of the McChrystal, Gates and Mullen show - worthy of the Marx Brothers? To amuse the galleries, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen did a two-on-one and faced down commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan General McChyrstal's inimitable Dr Strangelove impersonation by asking him to take it easy and submit his new Afghan report to Obama only after the Afghan election.

Iron Gates wants an orgy of new troops; super-envoy Holbrooke, for his part, wants a massive nation-building squad - he's building his own (doomed), counterinsurgency-heavy, Afghan shadow government. The bottom line is that, mired in the opium dream that all Afghans love the concept of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) occupying their country, the Pentagon wants a star-studded AfPak show running for decades.

McChrystal first said the Taliban are winning. Then he said they're not. Then he asked for - what else - more troops and more help on the civilian side. There will be 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2009. At the moment there are 96,500 US plus NATO troops on the ground – including 4,050 Germans, 485 Norwegians, 470 Bulgarians and 2,378 from "other nations".

The extrapolations into ridicule boggle the mind. The 4,050 members of the Bundeswehr fighting "Taliban" in northern Afghanistan near Kunduz now have to shout out a trilingual warning before getting down to the nitty gritty. First, in English, it's "United Nations - stop, or I will fire!" Then comes the Pashto remix - "Melgaero Mellatuna-Dreesch, ka ne se dasee kawum!" And then the Dari remix. Forget about the cool and crisp Achtung! Sounds more like a Monty Python sketch about the European Commission in Brussels. Even German top commander General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn is embarrassed.

While all this funky charade goes on, virtually nobody - apart from Canadian energy economist John Foster, in an op-ed published by The Star newspaper - is talking about the (real) Afghan pipe dream. Once again, since the late 1990s, it all comes back to TAPI - the Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/Pakistan/India gas pipeline, the key reason Afghanistan (as an energy transit corridor) is of any strategic importance to the US, apart from being deployed as an aircraft carrier stationed right at the borders of geopolitical competitors China and Russia. TAPI, financed by the Asian Development Bank, should in theory start to be built in 2010.

Both Russia and Iran, accomplished chess masters, are honing their moves to make TAPI unworkable. Until then, the AfPak theater basically boils down to the US and NATO at war against nationalist Pashtuns. Washington hysteria will continue to rule - as in "the Taliban" about to take over Islamabad's nukes and convert the US into TalibanUStan. And last but not least, please save the last bowl of opium for that oh-so-savvy wild bunch - the warlords.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KH20Df01.html

[audrey_girl]

Re: Afghanistan

Methinks that 100 years from now when historians of the quality of Ms. Barbara Tuchman get to write about this, that they will be in wonder of the fact that less than a generation ago another war waged in Afghanistan that destroyed the Soviet Imperial state.

These future historians will wonder about our leaders and the American populance complete ignorance of the fact that the same Soviet Imperial state (which by the way sits right next door, so no real problem with 5000 mile supply lines) could not beat an Afghan peasant army with over 300,000 + troops...

It is shocking how foolish our new President and government is, in regards to this war. The first thing the President should have done after taking office was to fire Gates.



from wikipedia:

Soviet ground forces, under the command of Marshal Sergei Sokolov, entered Afghanistan from the north on December 27. In the morning, the 103rd Guards 'Vitebsk' Airborne Division landed at the airport at Bagram and the deployment of Soviet troops in Afghanistan was underway. The force that entered Afghanistan, in addition to the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, was under command of the 40th Army and consisted of the 108th and 5th Guards Motor Rifle Divisions, the 860th Separate Motor Rifle Regiment, the 56th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade, the 36th Mixed Air Corps. Later on the 201st and 58th Motor Rifle Divisions also entered the country, along with other smaller units.[27] In all, the initial Soviet force was around 1,800 tanks, 80,000 soldiers and 2,000 AFVs. In the second week alone, Soviet aircraft had made a total of 4,000 flights into Kabul.[28] With the arrival of the two later divisions, the total Soviet force rose to over 100,000 personnel. ....


Under Soviet guidance, the DRA armed forces were built up to an official strength of 302,000 in 1986. To minimize the risk of a coup d'état, they were divided into different branches, each modeled on its Soviet counterpart. The ministry of defense forces numbered 132,000, the ministry of interior 70,000 and the ministry of state security (KHAD) 80,000. However, these were theoretical figures: in reality each service was plagued with desertions, the army alone suffering 32,000 per year.


Between December 25, 1979 and February 15, 1989, a total of 620,000 soldiers served with the forces in Afghanistan (though there were only 80,000-104,000 serving at one time): 525,000 in the Army, 90,000 with border troops and other KGB sub-units, 5,000 in independent formations of MVD Internal Troops, and police forces. A further 21,000 personnel were with the Soviet troop contingent over the same period doing various white collar and blue collar jobs....


The total irrecoverable personnel losses of the Soviet Armed Forces, frontier, and internal security troops came to 14,453. Soviet Army formations, units, and HQ elements lost 13,833, KGB sub-units lost 572, MVD formations lost 28, and other ministries and departments lost 20 men. During this period 417 servicemen were missing in action or taken prisoner; 119 of these were later freed, of whom 97 returned to the USSR and 22 went to other countries....

There were 469,685 sick and wounded, of whom 53,753 or 11.44 percent, were wounded, injured, or sustained concussion and 415,932 (88.56 percent) fell sick. A high proportion of casualties were those who fell ill. This was because of local climatic and sanitary conditions, which were such that acute infections spread rapidly among the troops. There were 115,308 cases of infectious hepatitis, 31,080 of typhoid fever, and 140,665 of other diseases. Of the 11,654 who were discharged from the army after being wounded, maimed, or contracting serious diseases, 92 percent, or 10,751 men, were left disabled.[65]

[Slimprofits]

Re: Afghanistan

Afpak Photo War archive

http://cryptome.info/afpak-archive/afpak-archive.htm

[KGW]

Re: Afghanistan

It's tough when you don't have the manpower or political will to run an occupied country as an imperial colony, yet your choice of proxies is dreadful. For some reason, we keep acting like we expect to do business with Thomas Jefferson, yet we are actually doing business with Al Capone.

So, why are we "over there" doing business with "Al Capone?" (hint: it has noting to do with "democracy.")

[flintlock]

Re: Afghanistan

I'm still not clear what the mission goal in Afghanistan is. I don't think most Americans are either.

[flintlock]

Re: Afghanistan

So, why are we "over there" doing business with "Al Capone?" (hint: it has noting to do with "democracy.")

Quit hinting! I'd like to know. What is the angle?

[Diarmuid]

Re: Afghanistan

I'm still not clear what the mission goal in Afghanistan is. I don't think most Americans are either.

A a quick search on Unocal should get you started in what I believe is the right direction

here are a few articles to start with

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm


http://books.google.be/books?id=MqrO...Cheney&f=false