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US Marines launch large offensive
By Alfred De Montesquiou, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – U.S. Marines and Afghan troops Friday launched the first offensive since President Barack Obama announced an American troop surge, striking against Taliban communications and supply lines in a southern insurgent stronghold, a military spokesman said.
Allied chief says 25 countries will send 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2010
By Robert Burns, The Associated Press Fri Dec 4, 6:38 AM
BRUSSELS, Belgium - NATO's top official said Friday that at least 25 countries will send a total of about 7,000 additional forces to Afghanistan next year "with more to come," as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to bolster allied resolve.
Gates: 'No deadlines' on troop withdrawal
Afghanistan drawdown could take 2 to 3 years, defense secretary says
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, December 4, 2009
The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, scheduled to begin in July 2011, will "probably" take two or three years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday, although he added that "there are no deadlines in terms of when our troops will all be out."
Clinton seeks support over U.S. plan in Afghanistan
By Mary Beth Sheridan Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 3, 2009 9:28 PM
BRUSSELS -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Brussels early Friday ahead of meetings with NATO ministers where she will seek to persuade European allies to pledge troops to strengthen the U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan.
US envoy: NATO to send more forces to Afghanistan
By Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press Writer – Thu Dec 3, 5:03 pm ET
BRUSSELS – U.S. special envoy Richard C. Holbrooke acknowledged Thursday that the war in Afghanistan is unpopular, given "the legacy of Iraq and Vietnam," but he predicted that NATO allies will soon contribute more forces to join the 30,000 additional U.S. troops being deployed there.
Germany, France Face Pressure on Afghan Troop Boost (Update2)
By James G. Neuger and Janine Zacharia
Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Pressure mounted on Germany and France to send more troops to Afghanistan after other NATO allies stepped up deployments in response to President Barack Obama’s buildup of American forces.
Afghan boss willing to talk with Taliban
Backing of the global community necessary, Hamid Karzai insists
Kathy Gannon / Associated Press December 04. 2009 1:00AM
Kabul, Afghanistan -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday he's willing to talk with the Taliban chief in a bid to bring peace to the country if the move has the backing of the United States and other international partners.
Our Timeline, and the Taliban’s
By MAX HASTINGS December 4, 2009 Op-Ed Contributor The New York Times
London - IT is hard to be optimistic about the outcome of President Obama’s troop “surge” in Afghanistan. The additional forces sound large in headlines, but shrink small in the mountains.
Afghan training mission faces tough obstacles
By Robert Burns, Ap National Security Writer – Thu Dec 3, 7:49 pm ET
WASHINGTON – America's eight-year effort to build a functional Afghan security force has been a study in slow motion, raising doubts about President Barack Obama's new plan to quickly get the nation's army and police in shape so U.S. forces can begin to leave in 18 months.
Afghans See Sharp Shift in U.S. Tone
The New York Times By Carlotta Gall 12/03/2009
KABUL - For Afghans, the change in tone was unmistakable. Unlike Bush-era speeches pledging unending support, President Obama suddenly introduced a timeline and a period of 18 months before the start of a drawdown of troops.
Take the War to Pakistan
New York Times By SETH G. JONES December 3, 2009
Kabul, Afghanistan - PRESIDENT OBAMA'S decision on a timetable for withdrawal of American troops only makes official what everyone here has known for a while: the clock is ticking in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is mission impossibleBy Fawaz A. Gerges, Special to CNN
December 3, 2009
Editor's note: Fawaz A. Gerges is a professor of Middle Eastern politics and international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, London University. He has taught at Oxford, Harvard and Columbia
US favours signifianct role for India in Afghanistan
December 04, 2009 rediff.com
The US favours a significant role for India [ Images ] in ensuring peace in Afghanistan but said it has to decide whether it wants a military presence in the war-ravaged country, a top American military commander said on Friday.
Obama borrows Soviet's Afghan endgame
The Associated Press By Douglas Birch 12/03/2009
MOSCOW - The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan bears ominous similarities to the disastrous Soviet war there 20 years ago, when a modern army was humbled by small guerrilla bands and the invaders struggled to prop up an unpopular government in Kabul.
Has Obama lost his oratorical touch?
Reuters 04 Dec 2009
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's gift of oratory has been credited with propelling him to the U.S. presidency and even helping him to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Down the wrong path in Afghanistan
Washington Post By Eugene Robinson Friday, December 4, 2009
President Obama should have declared victory in Afghanistan and begun a withdrawal. His escalation of the war may achieve its goals, but at too great a cost -- and without making our nation meaningfully safer from the threat of terrorist attacks.
The reality of Afghanistan
Los Angeles Times By Tim Rutten 04 Dec 2009
As his address at West Point on Tuesday night suggests, Barack Obama's presidency is turning out to be historic in more than the obvious way.
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US Marines launch large offensive
By Alfred De Montesquiou, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – U.S. Marines and Afghan troops Friday launched the first offensive since President Barack Obama announced an American troop surge, striking against Taliban communications and supply lines in a southern insurgent stronghold, a military spokesman said.
Hundreds of troops from the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines and the Marine reconnaissance unit Task Force Raider were dropped by helicopter and MV-22 Osprey aircraft behind Taliban lines in the northern end of the Now Zad Valley of Helmand province, scene of heavy fighting last summer, according to Marine spokesman Maj. William Pelletier.
A second, larger force pushed northward from the Marines' Forward Operating Base in the town of Now Zad, Pelletier said. Combat engineers were forcing a corridor through Taliban minefields with armored steamrollers and explosives, Pelletier said.
In all, about 1,000 Marines as well as Afghan troops were taking part in the operation, known as "Cobra's Anger," he said.
There were no reports of NATO casualties. The spokesman for the Afghan governor of Helmand province, Daood Ahmadi, said the bodies of four slain Taliban had been recovered. Ahmadi said 150 Afghan troops were taking part in the operation, which had located more than 300 mines and roadside bombs by Friday evening.
The operation began three days after Obama announced that he was sending 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan to help turn the tide against the Taliban. America's European allies will send an estimated 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year "with more to come," NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced Friday.
Most of the new troops are expected to be sent to southern Afghanistan, including Helmand, where Taliban influence is strongest.
The new offensive aims to cut off the Taliban communication routes through Helmand and disrupt their supply lines, especially those providing explosives for the numerous lethal roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices, that litter the area, known by Marines as "IED Alley."
Pelletier said several arms caches and at least 400 pounds of explosive materials had been found so far Friday.
"Right now, the enemy is confused and disorganized," Pelletier said by telephone from Camp Leatherneck, the main Marines base in Helmand. "They're fighting, but not too effectively."
Pelletier said insurgents were caught off guard by the early morning air assault, the first using Ospreys, an aircraft that combines features of helicopters and fixed wing aircraft.
Now Zad used to be one of the largest towns in Helmand province, the center of Afghanistan's lucrative opium poppy growing industry.
However, three years of fighting have chased away Now Zad's 30,000 inhabitants, leaving the once-thriving market and commercial area a ghost town.
British troops who were once stationed there left graffiti dubbing the town "Apocalypse Now-Zad," a play on the title of the 1979 Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now. The British base was nearly overrun on several occasions with insurgents coming within yards (meters) of the protection wall. The area was handed over in 2008 to the Marines, who have struggled to reclaim much of the valley.
In August, the Marines launched their first large-scale offensive in the barren, wind-swept and opium-poppy growing valley surrounded by steep cliffs with dozens of caves providing cover to Taliban units.
More than 100 hardline insurgents are believed to operate in the area, their positions so solid that a fixed frontline runs just a few hundred yards (meters) north of the Marines' base, according to Associated Press reporters who were with the Marines there last summer.
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AP Writer Amir Shah contributed to this report.
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Allied chief says 25 countries will send 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2010
By Robert Burns, The Associated Press Fri Dec 4, 6:38 AM
BRUSSELS, Belgium - NATO's top official said Friday that at least 25 countries will send a total of about 7,000 additional forces to Afghanistan next year "with more to come," as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to bolster allied resolve.
"With the right resources, we can succeed," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference after allied foreign ministers met with representatives of non-NATO countries that have forces in Afghanistan.
Clinton, who participated in the session, also was making a pitch to a NATO-only meeting later Friday for further support of the U.S. war plan.
Clinton told reporters travelling with her from Washington that she was encouraged by an expected series of announcements by allied nations of additional military, civilian and financial support in Afghanistan.
Fogh Rasmussen told an opening session at NATO headquarters that he hoped allied governments will answer President Barack Obama's call for additional support. The coming year, he predicted, "will see a new momentum in this mission."
Clinton was attending a string of meetings here with allied foreign ministers and with representatives of non-NATO countries that have troops in Afghanistan, plus Russia. She sought to rally support for Obama's revamped war strategy, which banks on major new allied contributions, not just to escalate the combat effort but also to bolster civilian functions and provide more development aid.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, also was attending the meeting of NATO's main political council to explain the 43-nation military mission, which he has sought to revise and reinforce since he took over command last June. He has described conditions in the fight against Taliban extremists - now in its ninth year - as serious and deteriorating.
Allied governments need to be able to sell their publics on the idea of enlarging the war, and particularly those countries in which political parties share power have to be sure "the political stars are in alignment" before they announce new commitments, Clinton said.
The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, sketched out the threat to Europe posed by Afghanistan's instability.
"We all know that in the 1990s, Afghanistan was the incubator of international terrorism, the incubator of choice for global jihad," he said. "The badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border are a threat to people everywhere, whatever their religion, and that's why it's very important that we make progress."
Clinton departed the U.S. capital Thursday shortly after testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where she joined Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in defending the president's decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
Clinton told reporters she was pleased that allies have responded positively to the Obama plan.
Fogh Rasmussen said Wednesday that the allies will contribute at least 5,000 more troops to the war effort "and probably a few thousand more."
The U.S. now has about 71,000 troops in Afghanistan, while 42 other NATO and non-NATO nations have a total of 38,000 troops there. They are fighting a far smaller collection of Taliban militants who enjoy a haven across the border in Pakistan.
European countries have been reluctant to add large numbers of soldiers to a war that often looks unwinnable and to support an Afghan government tainted by corruption and election fraud. Some leaders are waiting for an international conference on Afghanistan in London in late January before promising any more troops.
Asked about the criticism that has focused on Obama's decision to announce a date in 2011 to begin the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, Clinton said that it has been misunderstood by some and that others were simply seeking to create a controversy.
She also took a gentle stab at the Bush administration's approach to running the war. She said Afghanistan's defence chief had told her last month that for the first time he felt like a full participant in the NATO military structure, as a result of changes made by McChrystal, who was appointed to the top command by Obama several months after he took office. Referring to the more limited Afghan participation before McChrystal's arrival, she said, "That's a little bit discouraging, when one looks back."
Clinton also was scheduled to meet separately in Brussels Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for eleventh-hour talks on a follow-on to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expires Friday.
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Gates: 'No deadlines' on troop withdrawal
Afghanistan drawdown could take 2 to 3 years, defense secretary says
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, December 4, 2009
The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, scheduled to begin in July 2011, will "probably" take two or three years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday, although he added that "there are no deadlines in terms of when our troops will all be out."
The Pentagon, meanwhile, quietly acknowledged slippage on the front end of the 30,000-troop deployment that President Obama authorized for the first half of 2010.
"They are not all going to be there in six months," a senior military official said. The current thinking, the official said, is that the Pentagon will be able to push about 20,000 to 25,000 troops into the country by late summer, but that the final brigade -- about 5,000 troops -- will probably not arrive until early fall.
New details fleshed out the revamped strategy Obama outlined Tuesday night as Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before Congress on the plan for a second day.
In an opening statement and in comments at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gates tried to clarify his response to sharp questioning the day before on whether the deadline to begin withdrawal was as hard and fast as Obama had appeared to make it.
"July 2011, the time at which the president said the United States will begin to draw down our forces, will be the beginning of a process," Gates said. "But the pace and character of that drawdown, which districts and provinces are turned over and when, will be determined by conditions on the ground. It will be a gradual but inexorable process."
Those provinces and districts, a senior Pentagon official said, are likely to be areas that already are relatively peaceful, adding, "There are places we could transfer now."
The official described the deployment curve as beginning at a baseline of the 68,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan, rising at a 45-degree angle to 100,000, then continuing horizontally until July 2011 before beginning to slope back down. The fall "could be steep if everything is hunky-dory," he said, but "it could be much more elongated."
In Kabul on Thursday, U.S. officials sought to assure anxious Afghan leaders that despite the withdrawal deadline, Afghanistan will not be abandoned. Speaking with Afghan legislators, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander, insisted that the United States will ensure Afghan forces are ready to provide security before there are any meaningful reductions in the U.S. presence.
Still, Obama's speech has touched a nerve in Afghanistan, where large segments of the population remain deeply scarred by the U.S. decision to disengage soon after the Soviet Union pulled out its troops in 1989. The end of the proxy war between two superpowers spawned a civil war marked by some of the most intense combat seen in more than three decades of nonstop conflict in Afghanistan.
At a London news conference, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani sparred with reporters who asked him to respond to British and U.S. charges that Pakistan has been lax in locating al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in sanctuaries along its western border with Afghanistan.
"I doubt the information which you are giving is correct," Gillani said, "because I don't think Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan." He said that neither Britain nor the United States had provided actionable intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts, and that his government shared whatever intelligence it did have with them.
Clinton left Washington immediately after Thursday's hearing for Brussels, where she was to brief NATO allies on the strategy and solicit more allied aid. In the first of what the administration hopes will be a series of announcements, Italy said it will send 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
Staff writers Greg Jaffe in Washington and Griff Witte in Kabul contributed to this report.
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Clinton seeks support over U.S. plan in Afghanistan
By Mary Beth Sheridan Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 3, 2009 9:28 PM
BRUSSELS -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Brussels early Friday ahead of meetings with NATO ministers where she will seek to persuade European allies to pledge troops to strengthen the U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan.
Clinton and other U.S. officials have been working the phones for days, trying to secure at least 5,000 soldiers from Europe and elsewhere to add to the U.S. surge of about 30,000.
"We are encouraged that we're going to, beginning tomorrow but not ending tomorrow, have a number of public announcements about additional troop commitments, additional civilian assistance and development aid, as well," Clinton told reporters minutes before her plane took off from Washington on Thursday.
Clinton was also planning to discuss how to coordinate the unwieldy civilian aid effort in the war-torn country, which involves the United Nations, dozens of countries and hundreds of nongovernmental organizations.
"We have a unified military command but we have an 'un-unified' international effort" on civilian aid, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, told reporters in Brussels on Thursday.
Clinton said her goal was a "coordinating mechanism" for civilian assistance, but U.S. officials denied that they are seeking a high representative. European countries are wary that any such position could marginalize the United Nations' representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after President Obama's speech Tuesday that U.S. allies would send at least 5,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, and possibly several thousand more. However, only a handful of countries have made their commitments public. Britain has promised 500; Italy has said it will send about 1,000; and Poland has said it is likely to provide at least 600.
Some countries are not expected to make commitments before an international conference on Afghanistan scheduled for Jan. 28 in London. They include Germany and France, who are among the largest contributors of troops, with 4,200 and 3,750, respectively.
U.S. officials have asked Germany for additional soldiers numbering "in the low four figures," one diplomat said. The request to France was for 1,500 more troops, according to a report in the newspaper Le Monde.
The U.S. government is also seeking contributions toward training, equipping and funding the Afghan army and police.
Clinton acknowledged that some countries were moving cautiously on the troop decision because of the war's increasing unpopularity.
"There is a desire to be able to explain it to the publics of various countries and to make sure that in coalition governments the political stars are in alignment to be able to announce additional commitments," she said.
Some countries may also feel they are already contributing enough. Non-U.S. military forces in Afghanistan have jumped from about 17,000 to nearly 44,000 in the past two years, according to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. However, some are bound by strict, domestically imposed rules that limit where and how they can operate.
The United States had more than 71,000 troops in Afghanistan at the end of November, according to the Pentagon.
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US envoy: NATO to send more forces to Afghanistan
By Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press Writer – Thu Dec 3, 5:03 pm ET
BRUSSELS – U.S. special envoy Richard C. Holbrooke acknowledged Thursday that the war in Afghanistan is unpopular, given "the legacy of Iraq and Vietnam," but he predicted that NATO allies will soon contribute more forces to join the 30,000 additional U.S. troops being deployed there.
"We have been very gratified by the strong support of our European allies for President Obama's policy," Holbrooke, the president's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told journalists. He spoke before a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers that opens later Thursday. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will brief the ministers on Friday.
Obama's new plan for the war in Afghanistan calls for the dispatch of 30,000 more troops, but includes assurances that some of them will begin withdrawing in July 2011.
On Thursday, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said pledges from the alliance already have exceeded 5,000 troops. More than 20 nations are expected to make firm commitments at a force-generation conference on Monday, and following the international conference on Afghanistan in January, he said.
After Appathurai spoke, Italy — which has 2,800 troops in Afghanistan — announced that it will increase its contingent by about 1,000 soldiers starting next year. That will allow its force to take full responsibility for Western region of Herat, Afghanistan, and reduce the commitment of U.S. and British troops there. Armenia also announced it would send a small contingent of 40 troops to Afghanistan early next year, its first deployment as part of the international coalition.
Still, many European countries have been reluctant to add large numbers of soldiers to a war that often looks unwinnable, and to support an Afghan government tainted by corruption and election fraud. Some leaders are waiting for an international conference on Afghanistan in London next month before promising any more troops.
"I understand that the war is unpopular," Holbrooke said. "It's a long way off, and there's the legacy of Iraq and Vietnam."
But he also predicted that NATO members would announce more troops for Afghanistan at a series of meetings in the coming weeks. "Some countries may decide to speak tomorrow at the NATO ministerial, others will work it through the force-generation conference on Dec. 7, and others have announced already they are going to work toward the Jan. 28 date for the London conference," Holbrooke said.
France, Germany and other West European nations spearheaded opposition to the U.S.-led attack on Iraq in 2003, damaging relations between Washington and some of its closest allies.
But unlike al-Qaida, the enemies in Iraq and Vietnam did not pose a direct danger to the security of allied nations, Holbrooke said.
"Our core objectives in Afghanistan have not changed, but resources to achieve them have been increased," he said. Success will depend on close cooperation between all 43 troop-contributing nations and countries such as Japan, which provide development aid to the government in Kabul, he said.
Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, the spokesman for the 83,000-strong NATO force in Afghanistan, said that although more combat troops are needed, military instructors needed to train the expanding Afghan army and police also are a priority.
Other priorities include retaining trained troops in the government's army, he said. Low salaries and poor morale have contributed to a 1.5-2 percent desertion rate from the force, one of the highest in recent history.
So far, most of the pledges of additional troops have been small numbers from small nations. The largest contributors — Britain, France and Germany — are holding off on new troop pledges, waiting for the Afghanistan conference in London on Jan. 28.
Italy's defense minister said Thursday his country will send about 1,000 new troops. But the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that, while it is considering increasing its training of Afghan security forces, it will not participate in combat operations.
The U.S. now has 71,000 troops in Afghanistan, while other NATO members and allies collectively have 38,000 troops there. With the reinforcements, the international forces will grow to more than 140,000.
The Afghan army has about 94,000 troops, and plans to expand to 134,000. The Afghan police number about 93,000 members.
The U.S. and Afghan forces face an estimated 25,000 Taliban insurgents.
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Germany, France Face Pressure on Afghan Troop Boost (Update2)
By James G. Neuger and Janine Zacharia
Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Pressure mounted on Germany and France to send more troops to Afghanistan after other NATO allies stepped up deployments in response to President Barack Obama’s buildup of American forces.
Three days after Obama ordered another 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, more than 25 countries including Britain, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and non-NATO member Georgia promised 7,000 more soldiers for the fight against the Taliban.
Germany and France were the largest North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries to rule out further forces, at least until Afghanistan’s leaders commit to better governance at an international conference next month in London.
“It doesn’t make sense to reduce the public debate over success of the mission in Afghanistan to the number of troops -- yes or no to more soldiers,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters at a NATO meeting in Brussels today.
Obama’s buildup will put close to 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, compared with a current force of 38,000 from the rest of NATO. Britain, the largest contributor after the U.S., is boosting its force by 500 to 9,500. Italy will add 1,000, taking its force to 3,800.
“Every single government needs to ask themselves whether they are doing the maximum possible on the military and civilian side to ensure success in Afghanistan,” U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband said.
Clinton Appeal
In an appeal for more troops today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton singled out the British and Italian commitments for praise. Clinton told allied foreign ministers that “the need for additional forces is urgent, but their presence will not be indefinite.”
Obama’s reinforcements put a stronger American stamp on the war and pressure him to parlay his popularity in Europe into support for the U.S. Afghan strategy. Obama took office with the U.S. supplying 54 percent of the foreign troops in Afghanistan, a figure that he will push past 70 percent.
After defending the buildup and mid-2011 timetable for starting to withdraw U.S. forces in Senate testimony yesterday, Clinton traveled to Brussels to pin down allied support.
Germany, now with 4,400 soldiers, extended its mission by a year yesterday. A German-ordered NATO air strike that killed as many as 142 people including Afghan civilians in September has further eroded support for the war.
Germans Oppose War
Some 69 percent of Germans want their armed forces to withdraw from Afghanistan “as fast as possible,” up 12 points from September, an ARD television survey showed today.
France, which in 2008 upped its force level to 3,100 by sending a battalion to hard-fought eastern Afghanistan, plans to stand pat for now, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.
“We already adjusted the number of our soldiers,” Kouchner told reporters in Brussels, speaking in English. “If there is some places where to get security for our people, or for the Afghans, we have to adjust it, yes we’ll do it again. But for the time being -- nothing in terms of improving the number of soldiers.”
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he has indications that both countries will send reinforcements, possibly delaying the announcements until a Jan. 28 conference in London on Afghanistan’s future.
“I have been encouraged by the latest signals from the French government,” Rasmussen told reporters before meeting Clinton today. “I think, like Germany, they will await the international conference.”
To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at jneuger@bloomberg.net; Janine Zacharia in Brussels at jzacharia@bloomberg.net
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Afghan boss willing to talk with Taliban
Backing of the global community necessary, Hamid Karzai insists
Kathy Gannon / Associated Press December 04. 2009 1:00AM
Kabul, Afghanistan -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday he's willing to talk with the Taliban chief in a bid to bring peace to the country if the move has the backing of the United States and other international partners.
Karzai had previously offered to talk with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, but the Bush administration opposed such contacts. President Barack Obama has said the U.S. must "open the door" to Taliban members who abandon violence.
Karzai's interview, which took place in the presidential palace, was his first since Obama announced a new strategy for Afghanistan, including sending 30,000 U.S. reinforcements to combat the growing Taliban insurgency.
Obama said in his Tuesday address if all went well, the U.S. could begin withdrawing troops in July 2011.
The Afghan leader said he was not upset by the July 2011 date because it would give an "impetus and a boost" for Afghans to work toward taking control of their own nation.
He also said it was time to offer peace to Taliban members and end the insurgency.
"We must talk to the Taliban as an Afghan necessity. The fight against terrorism and extremism cannot be won by fighting alone," Karzai said.
"Personally, I would definitely talk to Mullah Omar. Whatever it takes to bring peace to Afghanistan, I, as the Afghan president, will do it."
But Karzai said the effort must have the full backing of the United States and its international partners. He said "sections of the international community" had undermined previous peace overtures by harassing former Taliban members "even though they had quit the insurgency."
He offered no examples.
Karzai offered to negotiate directly with Omar in November 2008, promising to provide security for the Taliban leader if he was "willing to come to Afghanistan or to negotiate for peace." The Taliban said at the time they would not enter into any negotiations as long as international forces were still in Afghanistan -- a stance the group has held to since.
Omar disappeared after the collapse of the Taliban regime in November 2001 and has been rumored to be living in Pakistan, a charge the Pakistani government denies.
In Washington, a senior U.S. official declined to comment on the reported offer but noted the Obama administration wanted the Afghan government to pursue reconciliation.
"Obviously, being part of the reconciliation process requires recognizing the Afghan government, renouncing violence and becoming a part of the political process," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue is sensitive. "We have not seen him (Mullah Omar) give any indication that he is willing to join a peaceful and democratic process."
In Brussels, Belgium, Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said reconciliation talks had been "on the backburner" but were now "moving to the front burner.
"There's an open door for any people fighting with the Taliban to renounce al-Qaida, lay down their arms and are processed peacefully," Holbrooke said. "But let me be clear, this takes a little time. It has to be Afghan-led and it requires resources."
During the interview, Karzai appeared relaxed and confident, displaying an air of independence despite intense U.S. and international pressure to crack down on corruption and improve governance following this summer's contentious election that gave him a second term.
Karzai said the election was not fraudulent and any corruption that occurred was not the work of Afghans.
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Our Timeline, and the Taliban’s
By MAX HASTINGS December 4, 2009 Op-Ed Contributor The New York Times
London - IT is hard to be optimistic about the outcome of President Obama’s troop “surge” in Afghanistan. The additional forces sound large in headlines, but shrink small in the mountains. The commitment is intended as an earnest indication of America’s will. But neither the number of troops nor the timeline that mandates a drawdown in less than two years is likely to impress the Taliban, who think in decades, or for that matter the Afghan people.
Most decision-makers on both sides of the Atlantic now privately believe we are in the business of managing failure, and that is how the surge looks. The president allowed himself to be convinced that a refusal to reinforce NATO’s mission in Afghanistan would fatally weaken the resolve of Pakistan in resisting Islamic militancy. Meanwhile at home, refusal to meet the American generals’ demands threatened to brand him as the man who lost the Afghan war. Thus the surge lies in the realm of politics, not warfare.
As the president said, the usual comparisons with Vietnam are mistaken. Today’s United States Army and Marine Corps are skilled counterinsurgency fighters. Their commanders, especially Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, are officers of the highest gifts. Combat and casualties are on a much smaller scale than in Southeast Asia four decades ago.
The critical fact, however, is that military operations are meaningless unless in support of a sustainable political system. One Indochina parallel seems valid: that war was lost chiefly because America’s Vietnamese allies were unviable.
If we lose in Afghanistan, it will not be because American soldiers are defeated, but because “our” Afghans — the regime of Hamid Karzai — cannot deliver to the people honest policing, acceptable administration and visible quality of life improvements. I’m hardly the first to say this. Yet the yawning hole in Mr. Obama’s speech at West Point, and in American policy, is the absence of a credible Afghan domestic and regional strategy.
It would be hard to overstate the cultural chasm separating Afghans from their foreign allies and expatriate returnees. Scarcely a single Western soldier speaks their languages. In the entire country there are only a few hundred competent administrators, and most of them are corrupt. Last year, I met an Afghan minister who had spent more than half his young life as an exile. He spoke and acted like a Californian. To Pashtun tribesmen, he must seem like a Martian.
“Democracy has been a disaster for our country,” an Afghan businessman once told me, in tones of withering scorn. Like most of his kind, he may live in Kabul, but he has one eye on the airport.
In Pakistan, there is great uncertainty about the impact of the surge. The West’s purpose is not to remake Afghanistan, an impossible task, but to promote regional stability and encourage the Pakistanis in their struggle against militants.
The strategic importance of these objectives is not in doubt. The question is whether they are attainable, and whether an increased troop commitment in Afghanistan will do much to advance them. The Islamabad government sincerely, even passionately, wants the United States and its allies to continue their Afghan campaign. But among Pakistan’s vast population, the West is much more unpopular — indeed, hated — than it was in 2006 or, for that matter, 2001. There is a danger that the surge will intensify that popular alienation, further fueling Islamic extremism and thus terrorism.
Little progress can be made toward regional stability without reducing tensions between Pakistan and India. India’s dalliance with the Afghan government, which has been given hundreds of millions of dollars in Indian aid, has increased the deep paranoia of the Pakistani Army and intelligence service. The status quo will only lead powerful elements of Pakistan’s security forces to continue to support Islamic militants as proxies against India.
Few responsible participants in the Afghan drama, even the most pessimistic, urge a precipitate withdrawal. We are too deeply committed for that. What seems important is to recognize that politics and diplomacy are the fundamentals, though they cannot progress unless security improves. Even the most limited stabilization program will founder unless all the regional powers, including Iran, become parties to it. It is difficult to imagine that the Karzai administration can raise its game sufficiently to gain a popular mandate strong enough to stop the Taliban.
President Obama said on Tuesday, “Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency.” Yes, the Taliban command limited support, and have relatively few hard-core fighters. But many Afghans, especially Pashtuns, unite in dislike both for the Western “occupiers” and the Kabul regime.
Progress depends, as General McChrystal seems to recognize, on reaching accommodations with the tribes from the bottom up, not the top down. The smartest surge will be one of cash payments to local leaders. You can buy a lot of Afghans for a small fraction of the cost of deploying a Marine company.
Perhaps the greatest problem for Western policymakers is that Taliban leaders watch CNN and Al Jazeera. They know that the British public has turned against the war, probably irrevocably, and that American opinion is deeply divided. They believe they have more patience than us, and they may be right.
The president’s troop surge was perhaps politically inescapable. But any chance of salvaging a minimally acceptable outcome hinges not on what American and allied soldiers can do on the battlefield, but on putting together a coherent political strategy. Mr. Obama’s speech represented a gesture to his generals rather than a convincing path to success in Afghanistan.
Max Hastings is a former editor of The Daily Telegraph and the author of the forthcoming “Winston’s War.”
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Afghan training mission faces tough obstacles
By Robert Burns, Ap National Security Writer – Thu Dec 3, 7:49 pm ET
WASHINGTON – America's eight-year effort to build a functional Afghan security force has been a study in slow motion, raising doubts about President Barack Obama's new plan to quickly get the nation's army and police in shape so U.S. forces can begin to leave in 18 months.
A lack of competence, resources and confidence have hampered Afghanistan's army and police, as have illiteracy and corruption. Those continuing obstacles provoked skepticism from Congress this week about whether the U.S. military can train the Afghans quickly and effectively enough to begin to replace American forces by Obama's proposed exit start date of July 2011.
"It seems to me that the large influx of U.S. combat troops will put more U.S. Marines on street corners in Afghan villages, with too few Afghan partners alongside them," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said at one hearing.
The untested Afghan force is the linchpin in Obama's twinned surge and exit strategy. It would have to grow and improve rapidly to take up the fight against the Taliban as the Americans start to leave.
In announcing his reworked approach to the war Tuesday, Obama said the 30,000 extra U.S. troops and a smaller contingent of new allied forces "will increase our ability to train competent Afghan security forces and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight."
The theory is that Afghan soldiers can be sufficiently motivated to defeat insurgent groups, including the Taliban, if given the proper resources. But, as in Iraq at the height of its insurgency in 2006-07, instilling basic competence is an easier task than forging a sense of national purpose.
As in Iraq, there is a risk of rushing the transfer of security responsibility from U.S. and NATO forces to the Afghans. The tide turned there after President George W. Bush decided that the handoff to Iraqis was failing, and sent extra U.S. combat troops to step up the fight in early 2007. That bought more time for the Iraqi forces to prepare to stand on their own.
With 30,000 American troops now bound for Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO officers plan to push more Afghan recruits through the training pipeline over the critical next 18 months while also trying to increase their staying power and professionalism on the battlefield.
The key to improving their performance, often spotty in the past, will be pairing newly trained Afghan combat units with U.S. and NATO units, said the top U.S. military official in charge of the training operation.
"That partnering is absolutely essential and we're putting a lot of emphasis on that," said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, who recently arrived in Afghanistan as the new head of the training mission.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a similar point Wednesday in defending the new approach during testimony on Capitol Hill. He said the U.S. military saw in Iraq that partnering with local troops gave them confidence, which led to improved performance.
Nearly a brigade-sized complement of U.S. trainers — between 3,000 and 4,000 — is expected to be part of the new influx of forces. Administration officials said that the rest of the combat troops will also play a role in training or mentoring.
Caldwell's first task is to increase the size of the Afghan national army to 134,000 troops by Oct. 31 next year. Today it stands at about 97,000, according to Lt. Col. David Hylton, a U.S. spokesman in Kabul. The Afghan police force of 94,000 is also pegged to rise by nearly 3,000 officers.
But those numbers will not be sufficient to replace U.S. forces. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional panel Wednesday that the administration aims for 170,000 Afghan soldiers by the July 2011 start of the U.S. exit.
Overall U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal set a goal of 400,000 Afghan forces by 2013 in his review of the war strategy. But that high goal is being reconsidered by Pentagon officials. A skeptical Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said Tuesday that she believes the numbers will fall well short.
"My two visits to the region this year persuade me that less than half this number is achievable," Harman said. "This means that any 'exit' based on a trained Afghan force is years or decades away."
Caldwell insists he is building on a solid foundation, but he acknowledges progress has been slow in a country torn by wars.
"They had warlord-type armies around the country but there wasn't a national army," Caldwell said in a telephone interview from Kabul. "So we really have been growing this from the ground up."
Trainers are still in short supply, and it remains to be seen whether allies will provide more on top of the infusion of American help. NATO has promised at least 5,000 new troops, and talks to be held in Brussels in coming days are likely to give an early indication of how many will be trainers.
Building a competent Afghan army begins with Caldwell, who took on the job after a stint as commander of the U.S. Army's Combined Armed Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan. He previously spent a year in Iraq as chief spokesman for the U.S. military command.
Among the officials Caldwell consulted before beginning his new assignment was James Dubik, a retired three-star Army general who headed training of Iraqi forces during the "surge" of U.S. troops.
Dubik said the idea is to build on the Afghans' basic training by having them operate under battlefield conditions with veteran U.S. forces.
"If you just crank out numbers and send them immediately into the battlespace," he said, "you end up with units that are inproficient and unconfident in themselves."
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Afghans See Sharp Shift in U.S. Tone
The New York Times By Carlotta Gall 12/03/2009
KABUL - For Afghans, the change in tone was unmistakable. Unlike Bush-era speeches pledging unending support, President Obama suddenly introduced a timeline and a period of 18 months before the start of a drawdown of troops.
The timetable set off alarm here. It was the subject of television discussions and journalists' questions to the American ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general, as well as to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of American forces here.
If Tuesday night was about President Obama sending a message to the American public that the war in Afghanistan would not be open-ended, then Wednesday in Kabul was about reassuring the Afghans of America's long-term commitment.
To underscore that, General Eikenberry signed an agreement with the Afghan foreign minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, at a ceremony to open the first United States consulate in Afghanistan in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, with another planned in the city of Herat.
“I want to emphasize that we have a very comprehensive approach and a long-term friendship and partnership with Afghanistan,” General Eikenberry said. President Obama discussed further assistance in energy, water management, mines, agriculture and improvement of the civil service in his video conference call on Tuesday with President Hamid Karzai, he added.
He explained to the mostly Afghan journalists gathered that when the drawdown begins in 18 months, the number of troops on the ground would be as much as 35,000 more than at present and the Afghan forces stronger.
Mr. Spanta said he was reassured in an hourlong call on Tuesday with his counterpart, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. But he admitted that the 18-month timeline for the start of a transition to Afghan authority had served something of a shock therapy to the Afghan government.
“Can we do it?” he said. “That is the main question. This is not done in a moment. It is a process. They have to have strategic patience with us.”
In a clear sign of his government's uneasiness at the flagging American enthusiasm for the Afghan war, Mr. Spanta said he had just presented a proposal to Mr. Karzai to work out a new strategic partnership with the United States to secure the kind of predictable, long-term assistance that close American allies like Israel and Egypt enjoy.
All parties involved agreed that a great deal of the job ahead was about managing perceptions.
“We have to manage the public,” said a senior Afghan government aide, speaking anonymously so he could talk more freely.
President Obama was very much speaking to the American public in his speech, he said. American military officials had assured them that the 18-month timeline was more for the American public opinion than any unmovable deadline for the Afghans.
The Afghans had to persuade their own public, the aide said. “Our own problem is that people have a war-torn mentality; they will side with the winner, and we have to show them that the Afghan government can be the winner,” he said.
The Taliban jumped in with their own draft of reality. President Obama was ignoring the interests of his own people, who were suffering an economic downturn, the group said in an e-mail message. “It clearly indicates that the United States has broad, long-term, brazen plans not only for Afghanistan but also for the region,” said the statement, bearing the heading of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan.
The Taliban are prepared for a long and patient resistance against the increase of American troops, the statement said, warning that sending more troops will only lead to more casualties for NATO and American troops and cause more Afghan civilian casualties.
For Mr. Karzai, who is under exceptionally strong pressure to choose a clean and competent cabinet, and to move decisively to combat corruption, the speech itself was not overly harsh. “Tough love,” one aide called it. Far stronger words are being used in private to push for reforms and the appointment of effective minister and officials, one Western official said.
One idea that has raised concern in the Karzai government was a plan to bypass the central government and give direct assistance to effective regional governors and ministers, and Mr. Spanta soundly rejected the idea.
Mr. Karzai, who has been smarting ever since he was forced to accept that he did not win the presidential election outright, avoided any comment on the president's speech.
A statement from the presidential palace stated only that the government welcomed President Obama's new strategy for the support it offered in development and training for Afghan institutions and in protecting the Afghan people, and commended it for the recognition that terrorists were operating in the region beyond Afghanistan's borders in Pakistan.
“Afghanistan will spare no effort in achieving the above objectives,” it said.
Mr. Spanta was the only minister who commented on the speech. He praised Mr. Obama's comments pinpointing that Afghanistan suffered from extremist safe havens in Pakistan, the first time an American president had stated it so publicly that the center of terrorism was across the border in Pakistan, Mr. Spanta said. “This is the first time we heard that from the president,” he said. “It is a tremendous change and progress.”
But for some it was not enough. “Faced with a surge the Taliban will go to Pakistan,” said Nader Khan Kutawaisi, a member of Parliament from Paktika province, which borders Pakistan's tribal areas. “It is better to concentrate on their safe havens. As everyone knows they have a big headquarters in Quetta and shadow governors living there and I know people went to congratulate one governor for Id,” he said, referring to Id al-Adha, the Muslim holiday celebrated last week.
Yet generally Afghan officials have commended the new strategy — much of which has already been in place since General McChrystal took command for six months — to lower civilian casualties, protect the Afghan people, train more Afghan forces and hand over more responsibility to them.
In particular, those officials pitted on the front line against the Taliban insurgents said a rapid surge of 30,000 troops this winter was desperately needed, since Afghan forces could not fight off the current insurgency on their own.
“It's a very good idea,” said a senior security official who has been in the forefront of tracking Al Qaeda and Taliban since 2001. The United States had very good human intelligence on Taliban on both sides of the border in Afghanistan and Pakistan but they did not have enough good fighters in the Afghan army and police, he said.
“They need the Americans,” he said. A surge of extra forces could undercut the insurgency in six months since many of the Taliban were ready to negotiate and could be persuaded to swap sides with a concerted effort, he said.
In Kabul, an increase in troops was generally seen as a gesture of welcome strength. Yet in the south, where the civilian cost has been highest and there is a deep weariness of the war, the mood has been generally against an increase in troops since many fear it would only increase the civilian cost. The test would be in how the extra troops perform, one government official said.
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Take the War to Pakistan
New York Times By SETH G. JONES December 3, 2009
Kabul, Afghanistan - PRESIDENT OBAMA'S decision on a timetable for withdrawal of American troops only makes official what everyone here has known for a while: the clock is ticking in Afghanistan. The Taliban have long recognized this, and many captured militants have reminded their interrogators that “you have the watches, but we have the time.”
As we quicken the pace, the top American commander here, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has repeatedly noted that there are many issues to focus on: building more competent Afghan Army and police forces, adopting more effective anticorruption measures and reintegrating “moderate” Taliban and other insurgent fighters into Afghan society and politics.
But perhaps the most difficult issue is largely outside of General McChrystal's control (and got short shrift in President Obama's speech at West Point): undermining the Taliban's sanctuary in Pakistan. Thus far, there has been no substantive action taken against the Taliban leadership in Baluchistan Province, south of the Pashtun-dominated areas of Afghanistan. This is the same mistake the Soviets made in the 1980s, when they failed to act against the seven major mujahadeen groups headquartered in Pakistan.
This sanctuary is critical because the Afghan war is organized and run out of Baluchistan. Virtually all significant meetings of the Taliban take place in that province, and many of the group's senior leaders and military commanders are based there. “The Taliban sanctuary in Baluchistan is catastrophic for us,” a Marine told me on a recent trip to Afghanistan's Helmand Province, across the border from Baluchistan. “Local Taliban fighters get strategic and operational guidance from across the border, as well as supplies and technical components for their improvised explosive devices.”
Like a typical business, the Taliban in Pakistan have an organizational structure divided into functional committees. It has a media committee; a military committee; a finance committee responsible for acquiring and managing funds; and so forth. The Taliban's inner shura, or governing council, exerts authority over lower-level Taliban fighters. It is composed of the supreme Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, his principal deputy, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, his military commander, Abdullah Zakir, and roughly a dozen other key leaders. Many Taliban leaders have moved their families to Baluchistan, and their children attend Pakistani schools.
Mullah Baradar is particularly important because he runs many of the shuras involving senior Taliban commanders, virtually all of which are in Pakistan. “Omar is reclusive and unpolished,” one Taliban figure recently said to me, “and has preferred to confide in a small number of trusted advisers rather than address larger groups.”
Yet Pakistan and the United States have failed to target them systematically. Pakistani Army and Frontier Corps forces have conducted operations in Pakistan's tribal areas to the north, and the United States has conducted many drone strikes there. But relatively little has been done in Baluchistan.
The United States and Pakistan must target Taliban leaders in Baluchistan. There are several ways to do it, and none requires military forces.
The first is to conduct raids to capture Taliban leaders in Baluchistan. Most Taliban are in or near Baluchi cities like Quetta. These should be police and intelligence operations, much like American-Pakistani efforts to capture Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other Qaeda operatives after 9/11. The second is to hit Taliban leaders with drone strikes, as the United States and Pakistan have done so effectively in the tribal areas.
The cost of failing to act in Baluchistan will be enormous. As one Russian diplomat who served in the Soviet Army in Afghanistan recently told me: “You are running out of time. You must balance counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan by targeting the leadership nodes in Pakistan. Don't make the same mistake we did.”
Seth G. Jones, the author of “In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan,” is a civilian adviser to the American military.
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Afghanistan is mission impossibleBy Fawaz A. Gerges, Special to CNN
December 3, 2009
Editor's note: Fawaz A. Gerges is a professor of Middle Eastern politics and international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, London University. He has taught at Oxford, Harvard and Columbia, and is a research scholar at Princeton and holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in Middle Eastern Studies and International Affairs at Sarah Lawrence College. Among his books is "The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global" (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
London, England (CNN) -- President Obama's decision to deploy an additional 30,000 soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan by early 2010 was not a surprise. In Obama's War Cabinet meetings, the question was not whether to send more troops but how many.
Obama's second major military escalation of the conflict this year, the largest single U.S. deployment since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, will bring the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to almost 100,000. There are also 50,000 NATO troops stationed in the country.
Notably, there will be as many troops in Afghanistan as in Iraq at the height of the war between 2003 and 2008.
In his televised speech Tuesday, Obama stressed the limits of the American presence in Afghanistan and set a goal of starting to bring forces home after only 18 months.
"These additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011," he said.
If Obama thinks he will be able to transfer security to an Afghan central authority in two years, he will be in for a rude awakening. That tall order requires more than a decade of nation- and institution-building.
By pressing that his strategy has an endgame starting in July 2011 and that he will not pass this military campaign on to the next president, this conflict has the possibility of outlasting his administration, just like Iraq has outlasted his predecessor's.
Obviously, the Obama foreign policy does not recognize the gravity of the institutional, societal and security crisis in Afghanistan.
It is a broken country. More than 30 years of war and political turmoil have wrecked most of the ties that bind a community together. Civil society is deeply fragmented and splintered along tribal and sectarian lines. Sadly, Afghanistan is a social and institutional wasteland. Each tribe and sect fends for its own, with no concept of the collective good.
President Hamid Karzai's government is an empty shell whose authority does not extend beyond the outskirts of the capital, Kabul. Its claim to fame is that it is listed by Transparency International as second only to Somalia in levels of perceived corruption worldwide in 2009.
U.S. strategy includes plans to build up the Afghan army to 134,000 troops in 2010 and increase the size of the police force so that the transfer of authority can begin in summer 2011.
It is mind-boggling that the Obama administration intends to begin to secure Afghanistan, a huge, complex and volatile country, with 134,000 troops or even double that number.
At the moment, only one of Afghanistan's 34 provinces is entirely under Afghan military and police control. Empowering the Afghans themselves will take considerable time, space, setbacks and resources.
The task of building a professional Afghan army is huge in light of its frighteningly high level of desertions. The Afghan National Army lost a fourth of its personnel during the year ending in September, the Asia Times reports, citing U.S. Defense Department figures. As to reforming the hopelessly corrupt police force, that is a Herculean challenge.
Regardless of how powerful they are, the United States and NATO do not possess a magic wand to mold and shape local Afghan life in their image, a lesson, one would have thought, allies painfully and expensively learned in Iraq's blood-soaked shifting sands.
More alarming, Obama has not been forthcoming with the American people about the diminishing nature of the threat posed by al Qaeda Central and like-minded factions.
He has also bought the false, technical claim that the Afghan Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda function more or less as a single entity. The Obama foreign policy views the Taliban, regressive and brutal at home, through the lens of al Qaeda and the global war on terror.
While at the height of power in the late 1990s, al Qaeda was made up of about 3,000 to 4,000 terrorists. Today, bin Laden's ranks are down to about 400 to 500. According to the most credible intelligence estimates, perhaps 100 al Qaeda operatives are in Afghanistan and another 300 in neighboring Pakistan.
Does the presence of 100 al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, lethal as they are, justify the new military escalation and its inherent risks and costs? Shouldn't the U.S. public be fully informed about the changing nature of the threat before plunging into another military venture?
Yes, there are operational links between the Taliban in Afghanistan and some al Qaeda operatives who provide training and expertise in roadside bombs.
The Taliban have recently deployed al Qaeda-style suicide attacks with deadly effect. But few Taliban chiefs publicly boast about their connection with bin Laden's men.
Notwithstanding, it would be dangerously misleading to lump al Qaeda, a transnational, borderless jihadist group waging a worldwide terrorist campaign, with the Taliban, a local armed insurgency whose focus has always been the home front. U.S. authorities have never accused the Afghan Taliban of carrying out strikes or attacks outside Afghanistan.
In the past year, the Afghan Taliban nearly quadrupled their numbers, going from 7,000 to more than 25,000, according to U.S. intelligence, and have gained more followers from within the Pashtun tribes, who are a majority in Afghanistan.
The struggle in Afghanistan is much broader and more complex than al Qaeda pitting Pashtun tribesmen against what they see as a foreign threat to their identity and way of life.
The war has drawn a few hundred militant Islamists, not only al Qaeda types, from Kashmir, the Arab world and even Central Asia. In Afghanistan, al Qaeda is a very small element in this coalition, a side effect, a parasite nourished on lawlessness and instability.
Surely, 100 al Qaeda operatives cannot drive and lead a potent insurgency composed of tens of thousands of fighters and several local groups with their own differing agendas.
A close reading of Obama's speech and statements by his senior advisers shows conceptual misunderstanding and confusion about the Afghan and Pakistani theaters. They interchangeably use Afghanistan and Pakistan, while in reality they refer to Pakistan.
One gets the impression that the "surge" should be in Pakistan, where al Qaeda rank-and-file is based, rather than Afghanistan.
If the new "surge" in Afghanistan is designed to kill the remnants of bin Laden's al Qaeda, it might prove to be another catastrophic analytical failure.
Military escalation provides motivation and life support for a parasite group like al Qaeda. It will be empowered by a stepped-up war.
A convincing argument could be made that ridding the Pashtun tribal lands of al Qaeda and other foreign extremists demands a region-wide political settlement that addresses the legitimate grievances of the tribal communities as well as the geo-strategic concerns of Pakistan, Iran and India.
One hopes that Obama's desperate and risky move would succeed in creating favorable conditions for a political settlement in Afghanistan that leads to the formation of a durable representative and legitimate government.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Fawaz A. Gerges.
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US favours signifianct role for India in Afghanistan
December 04, 2009 rediff.com
The US favours a significant role for India [ Images ] in ensuring peace in Afghanistan but said it has to decide whether it wants a military presence in the war-ravaged country, a top American military commander said on Friday.
"The US and the coalition in Afghanistan are all interested in Afghanistan succeeding, Pakistan remaining stable and solving their own internal problems, and there is a sense of urgency in things being accomplished. So the US should welcome all assistance in the region in Afghanistan and Pakistan challenge that I think we all face," US Pacific commander, Chief Admiral Robert F Willard told media-persons in New Delhi [ Images ].
However, "it is for the Indian military and the Indian government to decide" if it wanted a role in post-withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, Willard, who took over as US Pacific Command chief six weeks ago after serving in the Asia-Pacific region as Fleet Commander, said. He was replying to questions if America was satisfied with the quantum of Indian participation in the Afghan peace process and if it would favour a military presence for India post its troops withdrawal.
Willard, however, replied in the negative when asked if he had discussed any ground-level joint military operations by India and US in Afghanistan in the future. "No, that has not been part of my dialogue (during my current visit)". "On the other hand, I have been talking to India about their assistance to Afghan people and humanitarian assistance, and their continued support to see Afghanistan stabilise and see that infrastructure in Afghanistan improves," he said.
Willard said the US and India have discussed the latter's role in Afghanistan and Pakistan during every engagement, including during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's [ Images ] recent talks with US President Barack Obama [ Images ] in Washington. "This is a subject we continue to discuss as nations. During Prime Minister Singh's discussions with President Obama, the subject of Afghanistan, Pakistan stability and India's role in the region figured," he said.
India was playing a responsible role in Afghanistan, Willard said adding, "whether India should see or desire to contribute more is entirely for India to decide." On India-America relations, the commander said they were one of the most important to the US and would be the focus of the US Pacific Command which wants to foster the relationship.
Willard, who met the Indian military leadership on Thursday to hold talks on topics of common interest, said the two sides had talked about the importance of both the Communications Inter-operability Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) for information sharing and Logistics Support Agreement (LSA) that envisages cashless supplies at each other's military bases.
"Those agreements are continuing to progress through the administrative process in India. We think that the information sharing agreement and LSA are in India's best interests," he said, adding India has to examine the document and explore if it met its needs. "So when we encourage their passage and acceptance, at the same time we understand India's need to examine the agreements carefully and ensure that they meet the interests of India when they are finally signed," he added.
To a query if the US was reducing its military presence in the Indian Ocean, Willard said it was not on the decline and that their 60 ships and air presence remained the same due to the "importance of the region." He said the greater importance of India as an economic and military power was evident to both the US and its coalition partners, particularly in areas of counter-terrorism and protection of the sea lanes in the Indian Ocean region.
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Obama borrows Soviet's Afghan endgame
The Associated Press By Douglas Birch 12/03/2009
MOSCOW - The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan bears ominous similarities to the disastrous Soviet war there 20 years ago, when a modern army was humbled by small guerrilla bands and the invaders struggled to prop up an unpopular government in Kabul.
But comparisons like these, often cited by critics of President Barack Obama's planned surge, have emphasized similarities while ignoring key differences in the position of the Soviet Union then and the U.S. and NATO today. A close reading of history suggests there is still a chance that the allies can succeed where the Soviet Union failed.
While more than 850 members of the U.S. military have died as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, those losses still represent a fraction of 14,500 Soviet deaths in Moscow's Afghan adventure.
During the 10 years the U.S.S.R. fought in Afghanistan, the country was a Cold War battleground, pitting a Kremlin-backed atheist government against Muslim fighters clandestinely supported by the U.S., Pakistan, Iran, China and Saudi Arabia.
By the late 1980s, the U.S. and the others were supplying the rebels with everything from transport mules to advanced weaponry, including the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that played a crucial role in neutralizing Soviet air power.
Today the Western allies face an insurgency in Afghanistan that is largely homegrown and self-financed, in part through opium production. No government in the world publicly supports the Taliban.
Dark assessments of the West's chances in Afghanistan typically dwell on Moscow's setbacks while ignoring its successes, including the creation of a relatively stable Afghan government and a 300,000-strong army.
Afghanistan's Communist regime defied all predictions and outlasted the Soviet Union, collapsing only after post-Soviet Russia halted massive economic aid.
In the current conflict, militants have turned parts of Pakistan into sanctuaries, as they did during the Soviet war. But unlike the Soviets, the U.S. has been able to extend its airpower into these ungoverned regions.
The U.S. has alienated many Afghans through its bombing raids, which have caused numerous civilian casualties.
But U.S. and Western troops have trod far more lightly than Soviet military forces, some of whom robbed farmers, looted markets and used air power indiscriminately, sometimes wiping out villages.
Russian veterans of the Soviet Afghan war have long predicted that the U.S.-led battle against the Taliban was doomed, based on their own experience fighting among the arid peaks of the Hindu Kush. But these judgments perhaps are colored by bitterness over the Soviet defeat.
While mindful of Soviet failures, Western forces have been slow to learn from Moscow's successes.
Kabul's Kremlin-backed Communist regime was generally brutal, corrupt and represented a small minority of the population.
But the Afghan Communist leaders arguably had far more control of their country than the government of President Hamid Karzai.
After the mid-1980s the Soviet Union implemented a strategy of securing cities and the roads between them, strengthening the central government's grip.
And to some extent this approach worked, creating islands of stability where the government could run schools and hospitals, organize police and train soldiers.
Older residents of Kabul recall that the city was safer during the era of the Soviet occupation.
President Obama's plan for ending the U.S.-led war against the Taliban bears a striking resemblance to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's scheme for ending his country's Afghan war 20 years ago.
After Gorbachev took power in 1985, he authorized a surge in military forces. But he gave his generals a year to win the war. After that, he warned, they would have to withdraw.
Obama on Tuesday proposed a similar strategy, calling for 30,000 additional American troops, bringing the U.S. total to nearly 100,000. But he also said troop withdrawals would begin in the summer of 2011.
Gorbachev's exit from what he called "our bleeding wound" took four years instead of one and cost the lives of an additional 7,000 Russian soldiers.
But the government they left behind hung on for another 1 1/2 years, and might have survived far longer with international support.
So if the parallels between the U.S.-led Afghan war and the Soviet defeat there aren't as simple as they seem, why isn't the U.S. winning in Afghanistan?
Some blame the lack of a clear strategy or commitment on the part of Washington.
"I think that we spent eight years under the Bush administration just wasting time and making things worse," said Gregory Feifer, author of "The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan."
Feifer said he is concerned it could be too late to reverse eight years of failed U.S. military policies. But, he added, "I do believe we've taken a big step in the right direction."
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst based in Moscow, said the West's military advantage over the guerrillas should not be underestimated.
"It's a much better situation for the U.S. than it was for the Russians," he said. "And that makes it at least theoretically winnable."
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Has Obama lost his oratorical touch?
Reuters 04 Dec 2009
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's gift of oratory has been credited with propelling him to the U.S. presidency and even helping him to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
But after what was widely regarded as a less-than-soaring speech on Tuesday to pitch his new Afghanistan war strategy, many people are asking: Where was Obama's oratorical magic?
The primetime address had been billed as the most momentous of his young presidency, a time to summon all his powers of persuasion to shore up American resolve in an unpopular war while sending multiple messages to friends and foes.
What Obama offered was a detailed, point-by-point case for his 30,000-troop buildup in Afghanistan but delivered mostly in such a restrained, methodical manner that it may not sway the hearts and minds of many skeptical Americans.
Political analysts cast Obama's speech as a sign of the limits of his rhetorical skills in pushing a daunting agenda.
But the White House insisted Obama's sober language and demeanor were fitting for the weight of the matter at hand -- sending more U.S. forces into harm's way.
"The president was clear and concise. His tone was very serious. But he wasn't inspiring, and that's what he needed to shake up public opinion," said Stephen Wayne, a political scientist at Georgetown University in Washington.
STARK CONTRAST
It was a stark contrast to the telegenic politician who thrilled crowds with soaring paeans to hope and change on the campaign trail and rode that momentum into the White House.
Though Republican critics have sought to depict him as more style than substance, aides have seen him as the Democratic heir to Ronald Reagan, the original "Great Communicator."
Even as Obama's job approval ratings have eroded, the White House has rarely missed a chance to put him in front of the cameras to calm the public over their economic troubles or advance policy priorities like healthcare reform.
Some commentators have even suggested Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize more for making speeches -- like his outreach to the Muslim world -- than for any concrete achievement.
However, the frequency of Obama's public speaking has raised questions whether he has become overexposed.
Some analysts believe that may have diluted the impact of Tuesday's speech to the American people on his Afghanistan policy from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
"We had a president oratorically impaired in George W. Bush. People were craving a speaker like Obama," said Thomas Schwartz, a political history professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. "But after a while, you reach a saturation point."
But Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser and senior speechwriter, said the president was "absolutely not" spending too much time in the public eye. "There's an extraordinary amount of challenges facing this country and the president has to go out and talk about it," he said.
OBAMA'S CHALLENGE
Obama's challenge at West Point was to speak to multiple audiences, from the American public to the Afghan and Pakistani governments to NATO allies and al Qaeda.
In trying to calibrate those messages, he sometimes sounded more like the constitutional law professor he used to be than one of the most skilled political orators of his generation.
"Barack Obama is no Churchill" was the headline of a blog in the online edition of Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper.
But Rhodes defended Obama, saying, "The tone of the speech was necessarily serious and sober and intended to provide in very clear detail the way forward in Afghanistan."
There was no promise of victory in the 8-year-old war. Instead, Obama started off telling Americans he wanted to speak to them about "the strategy that my administration will pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion."
Obama's tone was somber as he swept his gaze back and forth between twin TelePrompters. His stone-faced audience of Army cadets had been told by their superiors to maintain decorum.
Obama was often on the defensive, pushing back against opposition Republicans who had accused him of dithering on his decision, against anti-war Democrats who oppose any further troop deployments and against fiscal conservatives unhappy with the additional war costs during hard economic times.
He avoided framing the fight in Afghanistan as a battle of good versus evil, for which Bush was sometimes criticized.
But like Bush, Obama invoked the attacks of September 11, 2001 in his bid to rally American public support.
Unlike some of his presidential speeches, this one appeared light on rhetorical flourishes and inspirational words.
Rhodes pointed out, however, while the speech was heavy on detail, Obama concluded on an uplifting note. "We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might," he said.
There is little reason to think Obama has lost the oratorical powers he has displayed at critical junctures, like his speech on race during the presidential campaign. Just weeks ago, Obama was lauded for the eulogy he delivered for 13 people gunned down by a military psychiatrist at Ft. Hood, Texas.
"There is no doubt Obama is an inspirational speaker," Wayne said. "But governing is different from campaigning ... and he's finding it can be hard to be motivational when you're promoting certain policies."
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Down the wrong path in Afghanistan
Washington Post By Eugene Robinson Friday, December 4, 2009
President Obama should have declared victory in Afghanistan and begun a withdrawal. His escalation of the war may achieve its goals, but at too great a cost -- and without making our nation meaningfully safer from the threat of terrorist attacks.
I hope I'm wrong. But my fundamental question about Obama's approach was illustrated Thursday by events far from the war zone: In Mogadishu, Somalia, a suicide bomber infiltrated a university graduation ceremony and killed at least 19 people, including three ministers of the Somali government.
I use the term "Somali government" ironically, because there hasn't really been one since 1991. A long-running, multisided battle for control among heavily armed clans and warlords remains unresolved. The most important recent development in the civil war has been the emergence of a religious-based insurgency, al-Shabab, which now controls a large swath of the country -- and which was immediately suspected in Thursday's bombing.
Where have we seen this movie before?
No, Somalia isn't a carbon copy of Afghanistan. But it shares the distinction of being a failed state where the ideology of violent, fundamentalist Islam has taken hold and the technique of suicide "martyrdom" attacks is proving effective.
I doubt that Obama's "extended surge" of 30,000 additional U.S. troops will be successful on its own terms, but let's assume that it is. According to senior White House officials, this would mean that U.S. and allied forces are able to "degrade" the Taliban to the point where it poses no threat of taking power in Kabul and no longer controls substantial areas of the countryside.
These benchmarks have to be met, the White House says, so that it's impossible for al-Qaeda to return to Afghanistan, establish a base of operations and plan new attacks against the United States and other targets.
My belief is that if the Taliban begins losing ground, many of its fighters will just melt back into the population and bide their time until the president's July 2011 deadline arrives. At that point, will the Afghan military really be able to stand alone against even a latent Taliban threat? If not, Obama's deadline will be meaningless and U.S. forces will be stuck in Afghanistan, in large numbers, for the foreseeable future.
But even if the surge works, why wouldn't al-Qaeda -- or some like-minded group -- simply set up shop in Somalia? Or in Yemen, another failing state? Or in some other wretched corner of the world where central government authority is weak and resentment of the West's dominant power is high?
Afghanistan happened to be Osama bin Laden's choice for a headquarters, but he and his top aides were driven out of the country shortly after the Taliban government was toppled in 2001. Al-Qaeda is believed to be based in Pakistan, with the freedom of movement of its leadership severely restricted. The Pakistani government's obvious reluctance to finish the job is problematic, but I think it's likely that someday a missile from a Predator drone will find its mark.
The problem is that al-Qaeda's murderous philosophy, which is the real enemy, has no physical base. It can erupt anywhere -- even, perhaps, on a heavily guarded U.S. Army post in the middle of Texas.
Look at what's necessary for the surge in Afghanistan to succeed. President Hamid Karzai has to forswear corruption -- which will require more than a stern lecture from Obama. The Afghan military not only has to be trained to fight but also must expand from its current strength of 92,000 soldiers to as many as 260,000 -- a level that Karzai's weak, cash-strapped government can scarcely afford. And a nation known as the "graveyard of empires" for its legendary resistance to foreign occupation would have to experience a sudden change of heart.
In the end -- even if conditions in July 2011 are such that Obama can order a real withdrawal, not a token one -- the larger threat of terrorism will remain. The "drain the swamp" approach to fighting terrorism doesn't work if the virulence can simply infect the next swamp, and the next.
It never made sense to think of the fight against terrorism as a "war" because it's not possible to defeat a technique or an idea by force of arms. George W. Bush chose a path toward a more or less permanent state of costly, deadly, low-level war. Barack Obama should have taken a different course.
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The reality of Afghanistan
Los Angeles Times By Tim Rutten 04 Dec 2009
As his address at West Point on Tuesday night suggests, Barack Obama's presidency is turning out to be historic in more than the obvious way.
Obama and Harry Truman are the only presidents to take office with the country engaged in two wars. (Although history lumps them together as World War II, the conflicts with Germany in Europe and with Japan in the Pacific were — in military terms — distinct struggles.) And even if he wins a second term, Obama also is very likely to be the first chief executive since Abraham Lincoln called on to function as a wartime commander in chief for the entirety of his presidency.
War and economic crisis are certain to define Obama's presidency, despite his hopes for a dramatic expansion of opportunity through domestic reforms, such as universal access to affordable health care. Tuesday's address thus will long stand as a milestone, and a reminder that history dishes out its challenges without respect to the agendas of politicians or parties.
By meeting Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for tens of thousands of additional troops to fight the war in Afghanistan, the president has done two things: He has reaffirmed the sincerity of his campaign declaration that the Afghan war is one of necessity while that in Iraq is one of choice. Equally important, he has accepted his advisers' belief that the hard-won lessons of the Iraqi conflict are transferable to Afghanistan.
As we now know, the war in Iraq turned around when three forces conjoined under Army Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy:
* Troop levels surged so that territory cleared of insurgents could be held while Iraqi civil institutions began to take root.
* The so-called Anbar awakening managed to persuade increasing numbers of Sunni Iraqis to abandon al-Qaida-style jihadism for nationalism.
* Semi-secret technologies and tactics were used to kill insurgent leaders while limiting civilian casualties.
Even if some combination or variant of these tactics works in Afghanistan, it will be many months — probably years — before the results are apparent. In the meantime, Obama will face intense criticism, not only from partisan antagonists such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, who already is denouncing the president as weak, but also from within his own party. When high-ranking Democratic congressmen such as David Obey, John Murtha and Charles Rangel announce they're going to demand an income surtax to fund the war, it's a legislative shot across the president's bow, an implicit demand that he choose between his domestic agenda and what he perceives as his duty to national security.
However the costs are borne, moreover, no one should fool himself about the real endgame here. The most the United States can hope to achieve in Afghanistan is to pacify the countryside and empower the military and police sufficiently so that the Taliban don't reopen the country to internationally minded jihadis like al-Qaida. The United States will not remake Afghan society nor create a recognizable democracy there, nor will we emancipate the country's wretchedly treated women. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, it was a desperately poor, mainly illiterate, deeply traditional, xenophobic and backward place. It still is. The Soviets' occupation added an overlay of brutality and lawlessness, while the Islamic fighters who flocked to resist them introduced a virulently intolerant version of Islam previously unknown there. On any given day, it's a coin toss as to whether the most dangerous failed state in the world is Somalia or Afghanistan.
A great deal has been made about the time that elapsed between McChrystal's request for additional troops and Obama's decision to order their deployment. The word "dithering" has been used more than once, and when the president recently made a nighttime journey to Dover Air Force Base to see and salute the bodies of U.S. troops being unloaded there, there was a reflexive impulse to treat the occasion as a campaign-style photo op.
Obama's decision to announce this new "surge" before a military academy audience of future Army officers and their instructors suggests something different. Like the unexpected visit to Dover, the West Point address was an unspoken acknowledgment that some Americans will die and some American families will grieve so that the rest of us can be safe. Even necessary wars exact almost unbearable costs. Like Lincoln, Obama is a president who appears to feel this reality personally, which is why he repeatedly has told his military audiences that he never will casually put them in harm's way, nor deny them the resources required to execute their duties as safely as possible. Tuesday's speech affirmed that laudable resolve.
The Afghan conflict is a war of necessity, and the troops sent to prosecute it now appear to have the means required to bring it to a successful conclusion. And although Obama's strategy will not transform Afghanistan, it may someday make that country safe enough to leave.
The notion that anything more can be achieved in that backward and tragic place is folly, as is the wishful fantasy that American casualties will do anything but climb in the months ahead. Too little has changed in Afghanistan in the century since Britain was forced to police what was then India's northwest frontier and Rudyard Kipling bitterly foresaw the fate of the men sent to do that work:
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
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