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NATO backs US escalation of war in Central Asia

April 6, 2009
By Chris Marsden | wsws.org, 6 April 2009

The NATO 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany, ended with a headline commitment for Europe to provide “up to” 5,000 additional troops for Afghanistan.

This was the smallest commitment the European leaders could make without delivering an open rebuke to the United States. Nevertheless it paves the way for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan and its extension across the border into Pakistan—aims which are at the centre of the foreign policy of the Obama administration.

While keeping substantial troop forces in Iraq, President Barack Obama has championed the shift in military focus long demanded by sections of the US bourgeoisie towards Central and indeed Southern Asia, which is a strategic focus for US imperialism. A military success in Afghanistan is seen as key in countering both Russian and Chinese global influence and securing US hegemony over strategic concerns such as oil, pipelines, transit routes and markets.

Control over Afghanistan gives the US access to traditional areas of Russian influence such as the Caucasus, ex-Soviet Central Asia, as well as Iran. It also threatens China’s main ally in the Indian sub-continent, Pakistan.

To this end Obama has announced an Iraq-style military “surge” ahead of the Afghan presidential elections in August. The US is to send 21,000 additional troops, and Obama is considering a further deployment of 10,000. America already has 38,000 troops out of the total of 70,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, and its forces make up a considerably larger proportion of those engaged in a combat role.

Fully 12,000 US troops operate separately from NATO.

By bringing America’s military presence to over 60,000, Obama hopes to reinforce US control of this strategic territory. But he still wants a substantial increase of European logistical and military backing to offset spiralling costs and to tie Europe firmly to the war.

At a public address in Strasbourg, France, on Friday, Obama emphasized that the war in Afghanistan will continue despite the change in presidencies. While the administration has ceased referring to the “war on terror,” Obama said, “I think that it is important for Europe to understand that even though I’m now president and George Bush is no longer president, Al Qaeda is still a threat…. It is going to be a very difficult challenge”.

In continuing the US occupation of Iraq and escalating attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama has adopted the same basic pretexts employed by the Bush administration to justify its neo-colonialist actions—including the supposed threat posed by Al Qaeda. These pretexts have not been challenged by any of the European powers.

The European powers are happy to maintain a foothold in the Afghan operation to avoid it becoming the exclusive province of the US, and they do not want to see it degenerate into a worse debacle than Iraq. But they are also anxious to avoid being sucked into a worsening conflict that is deeply unpopular at home—a situation indicated by the 30,000 protesters gathered at the two-day summit in Kehl, Germany, and then Strasbourg, France.

Obama proclaimed that the NATO partners had agreed to deploy about 5,000 troops and trainers “to advance [Washington’s] new strategy”. The White House claimed a total of ten countries had pledged new forces. Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer stated, “The bottom line is that when it comes to Afghanistan, this summit, and this alliance, have delivered”.

This is not the case. Even these small numbers are only temporary—up until the presidential elections—and are largely in a non-combat capacity.

Obama’s main ally in seeking a troop expansion is British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The day before the summit, Brown had offered up to 1,000 troops in agreement with Obama, in the hope of pressuring others to follow suit. Britain currently has 8,100 troops in Afghanistan. However, the Independent noted that Obama had in fact pressed for 2,000 to 3,000 additional UK troops permanently in the country, but this had met with “stiff opposition within the government, including the Treasury, which blocked the move on cost grounds”.

This smaller temporary deployment ending in October also includes 250 already sent earlier this year.

In any event, Brown’s gambit failed. The summit’s co-host, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, rejected any additional military commitment from France, only agreeing to 150 military police to help train Afghan civilian police.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not shift from an earlier agreement to send another 600 soldiers up to the Afghan election, bringing Germany’s troop levels to 4,100. These are operating in a non-combat capacity in the north.

Steve Flanagan, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, described the commitments as “the basic minimum…. The hard part of the mission is going to become more and more a US-led coalition. You still have the NATO flag, but when you look at the numbers, it’s not a great division of labour”.

Obama could not hide his disappointment, calling the commitments only a “strong down payment”. The Sunday Times commented acidly, “He is right, but he may also be optimistic if he expects further payments to follow. If a new American president armed with the most goodwill that he will ever have in office cannot persuade NATO to do more now, he never will”.

Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been a consistent demand for a greater and more independent European military role, with a disagreement only over whether this should be within or external to the NATO alliance.

Obama wanted the Strasbourg summit to re-cement US-European ties. He has been championing a new “Declaration on Alliance Security”, endorsed at Strasbourg, which states, “NATO recognizes the importance of a stronger and more capable European defence and welcomes the European Union’s efforts to strengthen its capabilities and its capacity to address common security challenges…. We are determined to ensure that the NATO-EU relationship is a truly functioning strategic partnership as agreed by NATO and by the EU”.

At the public meeting prior to the Strasbourg summit, Obama declared, “We must be honest with ourselves. In recent years we have allowed our alliance to drift. I know there have been honest disagreements over policies, but we also know there has been something more that has crept into our relationship”.

Europe has a 25,000-strong NATO Response Force and the EU Rapid Defence Force of 60,000 soldiers. But continued collaboration with NATO comes with a price and is conducted in the European bourgeoisie’s own interests—as a means of projecting itself as a military force globally in a way it cannot do alone.

Strasbourg came after Sarkozy had secured the agreement for France to rejoin the command structures of NATO, 43 years after President Charles de Gaulle withdrew and set up an independent nuclear deterrent.

Sarkozy took the decision with the support of Merkel as part of their combined efforts witnessed earlier during the G20 summit to project a stronger and unified European position. At the summit Sarkozy made clear that providing troops to Afghanistan and elsewhere depended on asserting French influence. “We commit the lives of our soldiers, but do not participate in the committee that defines strategy and operations”, he said. “The time has come to put an end to this situation”.

The growing tensions between the US and Europe notwithstanding, the NATO summit will nevertheless signal a continued resort to colonial-style militarism led by Washington with the blessings and assistance of Paris, Berlin, London and Rome.

The only open conflict over Afghanistan, other than over troop numbers, was Afghan President Hamid Kharzai’s endorsing of a law governing family relations for the Shia minority. The United Nation’s Fund for Women said the law “legalises rape” within marriage by obligating wives to have sex when this is demanded, states that women should not leave their homes without a husband’s permission, gives automatic custody of children to fathers and made provision for marriage between minors. It is now to be reviewed.

Nothing was said in opposition to either the surge in Afghanistan, the US missile attacks on Pakistan’s border that have flattened entire villages and left over half a million people officially refugees, or the threat of a full-scale war in the nation of 173 million.

Rather, Obama, Merkel and Sarkozy combined together to make sure that Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was nominated as the new secretary-general of NATO. Rasmussen was a staunch ally and friend of Bush in the war against Iraq, hailing his defence of “the ideals of liberty and against submission” and supporting the imprisoning without trial carried out at Guantanamo Bay. A leading figure in defending the provocation by the Jyllands-Posten daily, when it published cartoons of Mohammed, his nomination is itself provocative if not aggressive in its implications. Turkey’s opposition was bought off with various NATO jobs and a promise that its appeal for accession to the EU would move forward.

Even now what still unites the US and Europe is a common desire to face off any challenge from Russia and China to their global influence. Two new eastern European states joined NATO at Strasbourg: Albania and Croatia. The continued integration of former Warsaw pact countries into NATO has angered Russia, leading to sharp conflicts over US plans to establish its so-called Nuclear Missile Shield stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic and over NATO support for Georgia on the ongoing conflict over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The “Declaration on Alliance Security” combines praise for NATO enlargement as “an historic success in bringing us closer to our vision of a Europe whole and free” and a promise that “NATO’s door will remain open to all European democracies” with pledges to maintain a “strong, cooperative partnership between NATO and Russia”. And there has even been talk of offering Russia NATO membership.

Moscow, however, knows that it is under threat. During the G20 summit, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned of further NATO expansion eastwards. “Before making decisions about expanding the bloc, one must think about the consequences”, he said. “I said this frankly to my new comrade, US President Barack Obama. NATO needs to think about preserving its unity and not harming relations with its neighbours”.

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“Af-Pak: Obama’s War”

April 3, 2009

by Immanuel Wallerstein ,  commentary No. 254, April 1, 2009

Af-Pak is the new acronym the U.S. government has invented for Afghanistan-Pakistan. Its meaning is that there is a geopolitical concern of the United States in which the strategy that the United States wishes to pursue involves both countries simultaneously and they cannot be considered separately. The United States has emphasized this policy by appointing a single Special Representative to the two countries, Richard Holbrooke.

It was George W. Bush who sent U.S. troops into Afghanistan. And it was George W. Bush who initiated the policy of using U.S. drones to bomb sites in Pakistan. But, now that Barack Obama, after a “careful policy review,” has embraced both policies, it has become Barack Obama’s war. This comes as no enormous surprise since, during the presidential campaign, Obama indicated that he would do these things. Still, now he has done it.

This decision is likely to be seen in retrospect as Obama’s single biggest decision concerning U.S. foreign policy, one that will be noticed by future historians as imprinting its stamp on his reputation. And it is likely to be seen as well as his single biggest mistake. For, as Vice-President Biden apparently warned in the inner policy debate on the issue, it is likely to be a quagmire from which it will be as easy to disengage as the Vietnam war.

There are therefore two questions. Why did he do it? And what are likely to be the consequences during his term of office?

Let us begin with his own explanation of why he did it. He said that “the situation is increasingly perilous,” that “the future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan,” and that “for the American people, [Pakistan’s] border region [with Afghanistan] has become the most dangerous place in the world.”

And why is it so dangerous? Quite simply, it is because it is a safe haven for al-Qaeda to “train terrorists” and to “plot attacks” – not only against Afghanistan and the United States but everywhere in the world. The fight against al-Qaeda is no longer called the “war on terrorism” but is hard to see the difference. Obama claims that the Bush administration had lost its “focus” and that he has now installed a “comprehensive, new strategy.” In short, Obama is going to do this better than Bush.

What then are the new elements? The United States will send more troops to Afghanistan – 17,000 combat troops and 4000 trainers of the Afghan forces. It will send more money. It proposes to give Pakistan $1.5 billion a year for five years to “build schools and roads and hospitals.” It proposes to send “agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers” to Afghanistan to “develop an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs.” In short, Obama says that he believes that “a campaign against extremism will not succeed with bullets or bombs alone.”

However, implicitly unlike Bush, this will not be a “blank check” to the two governments. “Pakistan must demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders.” As for Afghanistan, the United States “will seek a new compact with the Afghan government that cracks down on corrupt behavior.” The Afghan and Pakistani governments are pleased to be getting the new resources. They haven’t said that they will meet Obama’s conditions. And Obama hasn’t said what he will do if the two governments don’t meet his conditions.

As for the way forward, Obama asserts that “there will be no peace without reconciliation with former enemies.” Reconciliation? Well, not with the “uncompromising core of the Taliban,” or with al-Qaeda, but with those Taliban “who’ve taken up arms because of coercion, or simply for a price.” To do this, Obama wants assistance. He proposes to create a new Contact Group that will include not only “our NATO allies” but also “the Central Asian states, the Gulf nations and Iran, Russia, India and China.”

The most striking aspect of this major commitment is how little enthusiasm it has evoked around the world. In the United States, it has been applauded by the remnants of the neo-cons and McCain. So far, other politicians and the press have been reserved. Iran, Russia, India, and China have not exactly jumped on the bandwagon. They are particularly cool about the idea of reconciliation with so-called moderate Taliban. And both the Guardian and McClatchy report that the Taliban themselves have reacted by creating unity within their hitherto divided ranks – presumably the opposite of what Obama is trying to achieve.

So, where will we probably be six months from now? There will be more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the U.S. commanders will probably say that the 21,000 Obama is sending are not enough. There will be further withdrawals of NATO troops from there – a repeat of the Iraq scenario. There will be further, perhaps more extensive, bombings in Pakistan, and consequently even more intensive anti-American sentiments throughout the country. The Pakistani government will not be moving against the Taliban for at least three reasons. The still very influential ISI component of the Pakistani army actually supports the Taliban. The rest of the army is conflicted and in any case probably too weak to do the job. The government will not really press them to do more because it will only thereby strengthen its main rival party which opposes such action and the result may be another army coup.

In short, the “clear and focused goal” that Obama proposes – “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future” – will probably be further than ever from accomplishment. The question is what can Obama do then? He can “stay the course” (shades of Rumsfeld in Iraq), constantly escalate the troop commitment, while changing the local political leadership (shades of Kennedy/Johnson and Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam), or he can turn tail and pull out (as the United States finally did in Vietnam). He is not going to be cheered for any of these choices.

I have the impression that Obama thinks that his speech left him some wiggle room. I think he will find out rather how few choices he will have that are palatable. I think therefore he made a big, probably irreparable, mistake.

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No to War, No to NATO

April 2, 2009

by Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Nation, March 31, 2009

With President Obama announcing his new strategy for US/NATO escalation in Afghanistan, the April 3-4 NATO Summit in Baden-Baden and Kehl, Germany, and in Strasbourg, France, takes on added urgency — as will the demonstrations by thousands of protestors from over 20 European countries and the US.

Member states will attempt to use the summit as an occasion to celebrate the alliance’s 60th anniversary, France’s return to NATO, and perhaps offer a new “Strategic Concept” as an interventionist force around the world. Activists will articulate an alternative vision focused on securing global peace and confronting domestic challenges at home, including a call for the dissolution of NATO.

Beginning April 1, a diverse coalition of activists will participate in training camps, demonstrations, conferences, workshops, and non-violent blockades. At a moment when international cooperation on economic and human security interests is needed more than ever, the protestors view a US-led, expansionist NATO as destabilizing and dangerous. What was originally designed as a defense alliance against the Warsaw Pact has taken on a very different post-Cold War, global interventionist role.

Activists see a NATO with bases on every continent; a military force that organizers say accounts for more than 75 percent of global military expenditures and drains resources that might otherwise address needs like education, job creation, and poverty; “out of area” operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Mediterranean Sea, and a training mission in Iraq; a destabilizing presence pushing a “missile defense” system, ignoring international law, expanding to Russia’s doorstep, and maintaining a first-strike option — all fueling a renewed arms race. (Recently, popular opposition to the proposed Czech-based radar system for US missile defense was a key factor in bringing down the ruling government there. Peace activist Jan Tamas led a hunger strike that galvanized opposition and he will be speaking at the “counter summit” in Strasbourg.)

Elsa Rassbach, a US citizen and filmmaker who has lived much of the time in Berlin since the mid-1990s, is a member of the International Coordinating Committee that is planning many of the activities of this broad coalition. She said that the need to respond to the occasion of NATO’s 60th anniversary has brought “a lot of different strands” together to collaborate since last June. “For example,” she said, “in the German peace movement — not only the large peace organizations and some Members of the German Parliament, but also smaller groups concerned about military bases used to conduct US/NATO wars, people concerned about atomic weapons…the social movements — the fact that militarization is costing too much. German youth and people concerned with soldier resistance and conscientious objector issues…. We’re bringing disparate movements and organizations together — both large and small — for the NATO action.”

Participants will include national and international groups representing the peace, human rights and anti-globalization movements, as well as students and youth groups. Also represented are trade unions, parliamentary Left and Green parties, and Attac. In all, 600 organizations from 33 countries — including Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Georgia, Brazil, Guinea, the Philippines and Turkey — have endorsed the campaign’s “No to War, No to NATO” appeal.

US participants include United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), Code Pink, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW), Peace Action, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and others.

Perhaps no issue will be more prominent at the Summit and the protests than the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan. EU and NATO troops and resources are key to President Obama’s new plan for escalation, and most Europeans are strongly opposed to the war (though many favor humanitarian aid, reconstruction projects, etc.) In Germany, for example, surveys suggest opposition as high as 70 percent.

Andreas Speck, member of the International Coordination Committee, and also the War Resisters’ International which is participating in non-violent, civil disobedience, said: “This Summit is really important to NATO for taking its next step in becoming a global intervention force — obviously, NATO’s operation in Afghanistan will be an important topic. We want to show that Afghanistan is no better than Iraq — it’s a war that is not justified and we are completely opposed to this military operation.”

Rassbach agreed. “We want Americans to understand that the reason this opposition to NATO is emerging is that NATO — originally supposed to be a defensive alliance — is being converted into a very aggressive force to intervene around the world, and Afghanistan is a prime example,” she said. “Afghanistan is a key test for the ‘out of area’ intervention concept.”

The current schedule calls for: a camp near Strasbourg April 1-5; a conference on NATO and Human Rights on April 1; a hearing on the War in Afghanistan in Karlsruhe, Germany on April 2; a congress/counter summit of leading intellectuals, activists, and representatives of European political parties in Strasbourg on April 3 and April 5; actions in Baden-Baden on April 3 in conjunction with German Chancellor Merkel’s dinner for the heads of state; and also on the morning of April 4 in Strasbourg when a photo-op is scheduled at the pedestrian bridge Passerelle des deux Rives, and the NATO Summit begins in the Palais De La Musique Et Des Congres; the climactic international demonstration in Strasbourg on the afternoon of April 4.

The organizing challenges are enormous.

Just for the civil disobedience coalition — “Block NATO“, which is smaller than the broader coalition — Speck said there will be thousands of people coming in from Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Britain “and a few other countries.”

“It’s a big challenge for us in terms of communication — during the actions, the trainings, and the conference” he said. “Because we will need translation for a lot of these things.”

The coalition has also reached out to the French police to let them know they will be protesting non-violently. They will meet with them on the morning of April 1.

“We fear that the police will not act non-violently against us, so we want them to know that there’s no threat from our side,” Speck said. “The problem is we never know what the police will do and also if they will use agent provocateurs to create the images that they want.”

Perhaps even more pressing is the proposed route for the larger demonstration. The French authorities have relegated it to the outskirts far from the cordoned off Strasbourg city center where the Summit will be held. (The security within the city is extreme and controversial. The French court is currently hearing complaints from residents who are already being asked by police to take down peace flags hanging from their balconies, and who will be forced to wear badges during the summit to move about the city.) Under French law, there are no opportunities to appeal the demonstration route but organizers continue to press their case.

“Nobody’s demanding that we demonstrate very close to the Summit, just something reasonably close,” Speck said. “My fear is that if it’s very far out then people will not accept this…. And maybe that’s what [the authorities] want — a confrontation. Because then you have people upset, trying to make their way to the center of the city, and that will give the police the opportunity to provoke some violent confrontation. I hope that’s not going to happen, we don’t want this to happen.”

(Speck said people in the US can help by writing the French Embassy and speaking out against this infringement on the human right to freedom of expression and assembly.)

Of course, there will be no such negotiations regarding time and place for acts of civil disobedience. “The aim is… to effectively blockade the NATO summit venue basically with our bodies… And to obstruct the functioning of the summit by cutting off the leaders from the infrastructure that they need. There will be no material-blockades or actions which, for example, attack the police.”

Joanne Landy, co-director of the Campaign for Peace and Democracyin the US, said these events and the fervor surrounding them are something the US should be paying attention to. “NATO is very much part and parcel to how the US tries to marshal other countries to do some of the heavy-lifting for an imperial policy,” she said. “This imperial policy is catastrophic for us…. it completely distorts our resources, and it’s just fundamentally the wrong relationship to have with the rest of the world. I would like to have a world in which we could actually be in solidarity with labor movements and women’s movements and so forth. But right now whatever the US does is suspect and for good reason. So you really need a very different foreign policy all together in which the military wouldn’t play the role that it does now, and where the US could really support the needs of ordinary people everywhere.”

“American activists can see this anti-NATO protest as how Europe is protesting the Afghanistan War,” Rassbach said. “But it’s also more than that. It’s against all the military costs and the military bases in Europe and NATO’s nuclear first-strike policy that includes the proposed missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Cold War is over, so why should NATO continue?”

There is another important achievement here that the American peace movement is working towards as well.

“For many people it’s new to work in such a broad coalition,” Speck said. “Sometimes there is quite a bit of tension in the international committee. But on the other hand, everyone wants to work together, with our differences, to counter what NATO is doing, what the EU is doing, and all the militarization that we see going on…. That’s what our work in diverse movements is about, to deal with the differences. We want to create a much more diverse and democratic society so we need to learn to live with these kinds of differences.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.

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Afghanistan unrest kills more than 70: officials

March 21, 2009

KABUL (AFP) — A wave of clashes in Afghanistan killed more than 70 people, including 18 policemen and four Canadian soldiers Friday, officials said, amid alarm about the country’s mounting Taliban-led insurgency.

The growing unrest has led Washington to deploy 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, due in the coming weeks, in a move a NATO general said would trigger more violence but would help improve security in the longer run.

The four Canadians, part of the international assistance force, were killed in two separate explosions that also killed an interpreter and injured eight soldiers and an Afghan national, the Canadian military said.

The first incident happened at 6:45 am local time, Brigadier-General Jon Vance, the Canadian commander in Kandahar, said in an address televised in Canada from a base in southern Afghanistan.

“Two Canadian soldiers were killed and five wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated in the vicinity of their dismounted patrol in Zari district, 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Kandahar City,” he said.

A local interpreter was also killed during this attack. Another Afghan national was injured.

The second blast occurred two hours later, killing two more Canadian soldiers and wounding three. Their vehicle struck a roadside bomb about 20 kilometres (12 miles) northeast of Kandahar City, said Vance.

Nine of the policemen were killed along with a district chief in a clash Friday with Taliban in the northern province of Jawzjan, an unusual battlefield for the extremists, who focus on southern and eastern Afghanistan.

“Today in a clash between Taliban and police, the district chief and nine police were killed,” provincial police chief Khalil Aminzada told AFP.

The fighting was in a district called Koshtipa, on the border with Turkmenistan, he said.

Nine other policemen were killed and three wounded in the southwestern province of Farah when a mob of Taliban attacked them, provincial governor Rohul Amin told AFP. Six of the attackers also died in the fighting, he said.

The clash followed fighting earlier in the day when Afghan and US-led troops were called in after intelligence was received of a plan to attack the governor’s home, Amin said. Seven Taliban were killed in that exchange, he said.

Elsewhere in Farah Friday, a suicide bomber blew up a bomb-filled police vehicle and killed one policeman and wounded two, the governor said. The vehicle had previously been stolen by the insurgents.

The deadliest fighting was on Thursday, when Afghan and US-led troops killed 30 militants in the flashpoint southern province of Helmand, in a district where a key anti-Taliban lawmaker was killed in a bomb attack the same day.

The Afghan army led a joint patrol into an area of Gereshk district where gunmen were known to operate and they came under attack, the US military said in a statement.

The “combined element returned fire with small-arms and close air support, killing 30 militants,” it added.

The toll was the highest from a single clash announced by the military in more than two months, with Afghanistan gearing up for another year of intense fighting after the winter.

The US military also announced Friday that six more alleged insurgents were killed in operations in Kunar, Logar and Helmand provinces.

The escalating conflict in a Taliban-led insurgency has caused concern among the international community trying to stabilise the war-torn nation.

US President Barack Obama has ordered 17,000 extra US troops for southern Afghanistan and a top-to-bottom review of his war policy, shifting the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Dutch commander Major General Mart de Kruif, who heads NATO troops in the south, said Friday that the arrival of more US troops would trigger a rise in violence but improve security in the longer run.

“I’m absolutely sure that we will see a very important year in RC (Regional Command) South, that we will see a spike in incidents once the US force hits the ground, but the situation will significantly change in a positive way within the next year,” Kruif told reporters by video link.

There are currently 75,000 international soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, about 38,000 of them Americans, to help Kabul fight the insurgency, which last year reached its deadliest point yet.

Copyright © 2009 AFP

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Obama’s Coalition of the Unwilling

March 5, 2009

by Amy Goodman | TruthDig.com, March 3, 2009

President Barack Obama met recently with the prime ministers of Canada and Britain. This week’s meeting with Britain’s Gordon Brown, who was pitching a “global New Deal,” created a minor flap when the White House downsized a full news conference to an Oval Office question-and-answer session, viewed by some in Britain as a snub. The change was attributed to the weather, with the Rose Garden covered with snow.It might have actually related not to snow cover, but to a snow job, covering up the growing divide between Afghanistan policies.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan includes a troop surge, already under way, and continued bombing in Pakistan using unmanned drones. Escalating civilian deaths are a certainty. The United Nations estimates that more than 2,100 civilians died in 2008, a 40 percent jump over 2007.

The occupation of Afghanistan is in its eighth year, and public support in many NATO countries is eroding. Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, told me: “The move into Afghanistan is going to be very expensive. … Our European NATO partners are getting disillusioned with the war. I talked to a lot of the people in Europe, and they really feel this is a quagmire.”

Forty-one nations contribute to NATO’s 56,000-troop presence in Afghanistan. More than half of the troops are from the U.S. The United Kingdom has 8,300 troops, Canada just under 3,000. Maintaining troops is costly, but the human toll is greater. Canada, with 108 deaths, has suffered the highest per capita death rate for foreign armies in Afghanistan, since its forces are based in the south around Kandahar, where the Taliban is strong.

Last Sunday on CNN, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “We’re not going to win this war just by staying … we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency.” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine: “The United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory.” Yet it’s Canada that has set a deadline for troop withdrawal at the end of 2011. The U.S. is talking escalation.

Anand Gopal, Afghanistan correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, described the situation on the ground: “A lot of Afghans that I speak to in these southern areas where the fighting has been happening say that to bring more troops, that’s going to mean more civilian casualties. It’ll mean more of these night raids, which have been deeply unpopular amongst Afghans. … Whenever American soldiers go into a village and then leave, the Taliban comes and attacks the village.” Afghan Parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai, a woman, told Gopal: “Send us 30,000 scholars instead. Or 30,000 engineers. But don’t send more troops-it will just bring more violence.”

Women in Afghanistan play a key role in winning the peace. A photographer wrote me: “There will be various celebrations across Afghanistan to honor International Women’s Day on Sunday, March 8. In Kandahar there will be an event with hundreds of women gathering to pray for peace, which is especially poignant in a part of Afghanistan that is so volatile.” After returning from an international women’s gathering in Moscow, feminist writer Gloria Steinem noted that the discussion centered around getting the media to hire peace correspondents to balance the war correspondents. Voices of civil society would be amplified, giving emphasis to those who wage peace. In the U.S. media, there is an equating of fighting the war with fighting terrorism. Yet on the ground, civilian casualties lead to tremendous hostility. Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, recently told me: “I’ve been saddened and shocked by virulent anti-American responses to those wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. They’re seen as occupations. … I think it’s very important we learn from mistakes of sounding war drums.” She added, “There’s such a connection from the Middle East to Afghanistan to Pakistan which builds on strengths of working with neighbors.”

Barack Obama was swept through the primaries and into the presidency on the basis of his anti-war message. Prime ministers like Brown and Harper are bending to growing public demand for an end to war. Yet in the U.S., there is scant debate about sending more troops to Afghanistan, and about the spillover of the war into Pakistan.

© 2009 TruthDig.com


Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.

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Afghanistan, the Next US Quagmire?

February 20, 2009
by Thalif Deen | Antiwar.com, Feb 20, 2009

The United States is planning to send an additional 17,000 troops to one of the world’s most battle-scarred nations – Afghanistan – long described as “a graveyard of empires.”

First, it was the British Empire, and then the Soviet Union. So, will the United States be far behind?

“With his new order on Afghanistan, President (Barack) Obama has given substantial ground to what Martin Luther King Jr., in 1967 called ‘the madness of militarism,'” Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS.

“That madness should be opposed in 2009,” said Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

The proposed surge in U.S. troops will bring the total to 60,000, while the combined forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including troops from Germany, Canada, Britain and the Netherlands, amount to over 32,000.

When in full strength, U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan could reach close to 100,000 by the end of this year.

Still, in a TV interview Tuesday, Obama said he was “absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban (insurgency), the spread extremism in that region solely through military means.”

“If there is no military solution, why is the administration’s first set of decisions to continue drone attacks and increase ground troops?” Marilyn B. Young, a professor of history at New York University, told IPS.

She said the uncertainty around Afghan policy seems to be spreading even while the Obama administration announces an increase in troops.

“This is one of the ways events seem to echo U.S. escalation in the Vietnam War,” said Young, author of several publications, including “Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past.”

On Tuesday, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report revealing that in 2008, there were 2,118 civilian casualties in Afghanistan, an increase of almost 40 percent over 2007.

Of these casualties, 55 percent of the overall death toll was attributed to anti-government forces, including the Taliban, and 39 percent to Afghan security and international military forces.

“This is of great concern to the United Nations,” the report said, pointing out that “this disquieting pattern demands that the parties to the conflict take all necessary measures to avoid the killing of innocent civilians.”

During his presidential campaign last year, Obama said the war in Iraq was a misguided war.

The United States, he said, needs to pull out of Iraq, and at the same time, bolster its troops in Afghanistan, primarily to prevent the militant Islamic fundamentalist Taliban from regaining power and also to eliminate safe havens for terrorists.

But most political analysts point out that Afghanistan may turn out to be a bigger military quagmire for U.S. forces than Iraq.

Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy said Obama’s moves on Afghanistan have “the quality of a moth toward a flame.”

In the short run, Obama is likely to be unharmed in domestic political terms. But the policy trajectory appears to be unsustainable in the medium-run, he added.

“Before the end of his first term, Obama is very likely to find himself in a vise, caught between a war in Afghanistan that cannot be won and a political quandary at home that significantly erodes the enthusiasm of his electoral base while fueling Republican momentum,” Solomon argued.

Dr. Christine Fair, a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation and a former political officer with UNAMA in Kabul, told IPS she is doubtful that more troops will secure Afghanistan.

“Perhaps several years ago more troops would have been welcomed. My fear is that more troops means more civilian losses and further erosion of good will and support for the international presence,” Fair said.

“I would personally prefer a move from kinetics and towards using this increased capacity to help build Afghan capacity,” she noted.

“I also think greater support from the international community for reconciliation is needed. Afghans need to own this process,” said Fair, a former senior research associate with the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the U.N. Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington.

However, she said, the international community has legitimate interests in remaining in some capacity to ensure that Afghanistan does not again emerge as a safe haven for al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.

Fair also co-authored (along with Seth Jones) a USIP report released early this week, titled “Securing Afghanistan,” which spelled out the reasons why international stabilization efforts have not been successful in Afghanistan over the last seven years.

“Security issues in Afghanistan are extraordinarily complex, with multiple actors influencing the threat environment – among them, insurgent groups, criminal groups, local tribes, warlords, government officials and security forces,” the report said.

Afghanistan also presents a multi-front conflict that includes distinct security challenges in the northern, central and southern parts of the country, the study declared.

In Afghanistan, Solomon argued, the U.S. president is proceeding down a path that can only be too steep and not steep enough.

The basic contradiction of his current position – asserting that the situation cannot be solved by military means yet taking action to try to solve the problem by military means – signifies that Obama is bargaining for short-term wiggle room at the expense of longer-term rationality, he added.

“In a very real sense, Obama is kicking a bloody can down the road, unable to think of any other way to confront circumstances that will grow worse with time in large measure because of his actions now,” he said.

Even while disputing some thematic aspects of the “war on terrorism” at times, Obama is reinvesting his political capital – and re-dedicating the Pentagon’s mission – on behalf of a U.S. war effort that is probably doomed to fail on its own terms, Solomon said.

“Reliance on violence is a chronic temptation for a commander-in-chief with the mighty U.S. military under its command. We’ve seen the results in Iraq – or, more precisely, the people of Iraq and many American soldiers have seen and suffered the results,” he added.

(Inter Press Service)

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Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing’ abandons Iraq

November 29, 2008
From The Times, November 29, 2008

Deborah Haynes in Baghdad

President Bush’s “coalition of the willing” is set to all but disappear from Iraq by the end of the year, with 13 countries, including South Korea, Japan, Moldova and Tonga preparing to withdraw their few remaining troops.

Britain, Australia, Romania, Estonia and El Salvador are the only nations, apart from the US, that plan to remain after a UN mandate authorising their presence expires on December 31.

London must still reach an agreement with Baghdad, however, to keep its 4,100-strong contingent on the ground into the new year. Failure to do so in time would leave British troops without legal cover and they too would have to leave.

“We are going to say farewell to 13 different nations in the space of two and a half weeks,” said Brigadier-General Nicolas Matern, a deputy commander for Multi-National Corps Iraq, which oversees the US military’s coalition partners.

“We started off with 35 countries but it has steadily been going down … As from December it is going to go all the way down,” he told The Times.

A farewell ceremony took place on Wednesday for 76 Macedonian soldiers. Another is due today for 86 troops from Bosnia and Herzegovina and a third is scheduled for South Korea’s contingent tomorrow. Others set to follow suit include soldiers from Albania, Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Lithuania and Ukraine.

President Bush and Tony Blair scrambled the coalition together in the build-up to the Iraq invasion in a bid to put an international face on what was fast becoming an unpopular war. But the list of participants drew scorn for failing to include a greater number of powerful states, with the US and Britain the main contributors.

The size of the outgoing contingents ranges from just 4 Lithuanians to 300 South Koreans. Many countries have reduced their presence over the past five years, but it has always been a fraction of the US deployment, now standing at 146,000.

Bulgaria – with only 150 troops left in Iraq – has had forces south of Baghdad since June 2003, taking part in various operations, including patrols and guard duty. Thirteen Bulgarian soldiers have been killed and 81 injured in that time.

Lieutenant Colonel Valeri Kolev Valchanov said: “I think we have contributed somehow towards the stabilisation of the country.”

Bulgaria’s troops are also preparing to pull out next month, a move that triggers mixed emotions for the Bulgarian officer. “I will never forget my friendships with Romanian soldiers, Ukrainian soldiers, Polish soldiers, American soldiers,” he said. “We were in dangerous conditions together and celebrated good moments together.”

Major Mario Ernesto Argueta is from El Salvador, which has 200 troops working on humanitarian projects in Wasit province, south of the Iraqi capital. He too believes that the efforts of a tiny contingent make an impact.

“It doesn’t matter how many we are, the most important part is that you made a difference, not for the whole country but for the person who got the aid,” he said.

El Salvador is one of four coalition countries – excluding the United States and Britain – which have been invited to stay in Iraq beyond the end of the year.

“The US approached the Government of Iraq asking that we consider asking a few countries other than the United Kingdom to continue to provide some specialist forces for non-combat tasks after 31 December,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s National Security Adviser. “After considering the request, the Prime Minister agreed and those countries were invited to continue to assist us.”

Formal agreements will be made with El Salvador, Australia, Romania and Estonia once a long-awaited security pact with the United States, which was approved by Parliament on Thursday, becomes law.

Outside the coalition, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which has 200 troops from 15 countries in Iraq, is also trying to finalise an accord with Baghdad to continue a training mission in the country beyond the end of 2008.

In addition, the United Nations has a number of Fijian troops working in Iraq.

While the coalition is dissolving, another force of foreigners is still thriving in the country: thousands of private contractors from developing countries such as Peru, Uganda, the Philippines and Bangladesh.

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Obama’s Foreign Policy Team

November 27, 2008

Robert Dreyfuss | The Nation, Nov 23, 2008

I hate to say I told you so, but here it goes.

In late September, in this column, I criticized Barack Obama for what I called a “pathetic” debate with John McCain, in which Obama got nearly everything about foreign policy wrong:

“He checked all the boxes. Barack (“Senator McCain is right”) Obama couldn’t find anything to disagree with the militarist Arizonan about. Support for NATO expansion? Check. Absurd anti-Russian diatribes? Check. Dramatic escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Check. I’m ready to attack Pakistan? Check. (Actually, on this one, McCain was the moderate!) Painful sanctions against Iran, backed up by the threat of force? Check. Blathering about the great threat from Al Qaeda? Check. It went on and on.”

I pointed out that Obama went out of his way to say things like: “I believe the Republican Guard of Iran is a terrorist organization.” And: “A resurgent and very aggressive Russia is a threat to the peace and stability of the region.”

Last July, in a major feature piece for The Nation on Obama’s foreign policy, I wrote:

“But in many respects, Obama seems likely to preside over a restoration of the bipartisan consensus that governed foreign policy during the cold war and the 1990s, updated for a post-9/11 world. … Even as he pledges to end the war in Iraq, Obama promises to increase Pentagon spending, boost the size of the Army and Marines, bolster the Special Forces, expand intelligence agencies and maintain the hundreds of US military bases that dot the globe. He supports a muscular multilateralism that includes NATO expansion, and according to the Times of London, his advisers are pushing him to ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to stay on in an Obama administration. Though he is against the idea of the United States imposing democracy abroad, Obama does propose a sweeping nation-building and democracy-promotion program, including strengthening the controversial National Endowment for Democracy and constructing a civil-military apparatus that would deploy to rescue and rebuild failed and failing states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.”

So are we surprised that now, as president-elect, Obama is selecting people whose views are coherent with Obama’s frequently stated views? Are we surprised that the views of Obama’s conservative and centrist advisers are, in fact, coherent with Obama’s own? And are we surprised that his choices for his foreign policy and national security appointments are drawn exclusively from conservative, centrist, and pro-military circles without even a single — yes, not one! — chosen to represent the antiwar wing of the Democratic party? No, we are not.

What does it mean, then? Do we still believe that Obama was pretending to be conservative and cautious on foreign policy during the campaign, in order to get himself elected? Or is the truth, like Occam’s razor, far simpler? Perhaps what Obama (and his advisers) said during the campaign reflects what they really believe.

We could all make lists of people that we might have chosen for secretary of state, defense, attorney general, homeland security, intelligence, and national security adviser. (True, not all of Obama’s appointments are certain, yet, but the writing is on the wall.) It’s now likely that not one of those posts will be filled with someone who either voted against the war in Iraq as a member of Congress or who, from outside Congress, vocally opposed the war. Not one.

What about Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Chris Dodd, Sherrod Brown, and Jim Webb from the Senate? Where is John Kerry? What about Gary Hart and Al Gore? What about any one of a dozen or more prominent members of the antiwar and progressive caucuses in the House of Representatives, such as Lynn Woolsey, Jim McDermott, or Jim McGovern? What about the generals who, unlike General James E. Jones, didn’t campaign with McCain and who spoke out against the war? What about the many prominent experts on disarmament and nonproliferation, like Lt. General Robert Gard, Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, and Peter Galbraith, all of whom serve on the board of directors of the Center for Arms Control? Or Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, a leading arms control expert? Well, you get the idea.

Here’s the likely lineup so far: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and National Security Adviser James E. Jones. For director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, a retired admiral tangled up in the military-industrial complex? Key Obama advisers such as Richard Danzig, a former secretary of the Navy; Tony Lake, a former national security adviser; Susan Rice, an Africa specialist and former State Department official; and Mark Lippert, Obama’s top Senate foreign policy aide are likely to get important deputy-level jobs, though Danzig — who is on record supporting Gates for the job — may yet get the top Pentagon post.

As I pointed out in my July piece for The Nation, Rice and Lake — along with outside advisers Samantha Power and Sarah Sewell — are on record supporting tough military action overseas in case of humanitarian crisis. Rice and Lake have said explicitly that they favor war against Sudan. Two years ago, they wrote in the Washington Post:

“The United States, preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. It could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan’s oil exports flow. Then U.N. troops would deploy — by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing.”If the United States fails to gain U.N. support, we should act without it. Impossible? No.”

Clinton, who now seems to be a lock for the State Department, would be likely to hire a passel of hardliners for her own aides, including people like Richard Holbrooke, Dennis Ross, and Leslie Gelb, all three of who serve on the advisory board of the ultra-hawkish group, United Against Nuclear Iran. She’d also draw on relatively conservative officials from the Center for a New American Security, the Brookings Institution, and other Washington thinktanks who are in tune with her own hawkish views on Israel, Iran, and projecting U.S. muscle abroad.

And then there is General Jones.

Out of the blue, in the third presidential debate, Obama cited Jones as someone he trusts on national security. He is an advocate for stepped-up defense spending. And, notes CNN, it’s all one big, happy family:

“One person close to the transition noted Jones is a bipartisan figure who has warm relationships with both current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who may stay on the job for at least a brief period, as well as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who is now on track to be nominated as Secretary of State after Thanksgiving.”

Not once, but twice he was asked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be her deputy secretary of state. Adds the London Times, in an analytical story on Jones:

“Last year he conducted an investigation on behalf of Congress on the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.”‘Make no mistake, Nato is not winning in Afghanistan,’ he said. He also said that the war in Iraq had caused the US to ‘take its eye off the ball’ in Afghanistan, and gave warning that the consequences of failure there were just as serious as defeat in Iraq – views publicly expressed by Mr Obama.

“Before Mr Obama travelled to Afghanistan during the presidential campaign he was briefed by General Jones, who in 2007 was appointed by Dr Rice as a special envoy for Middle East Security.”

National Review Online calls the idea of Jones at the NSC “a pretty good sign for hawks, a pretty bad sign for doves,” which just about sums it up.

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Pakistan Aided in NATO Shelling of South Waziristan

November 19, 2008

Antiwar.com, Posted November 18, 2008

After coming under rocket fire from across the border, NATO troops in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province fired 20 artillery rounds into Angoor Adda, South Waziristan. The incident occurred on Sunday, but it is unclear as of yet if anyone was killed in the shelling.

Significant however is that NATO reports the shelling was carried out with assistance from the Pakistani military, the first acknowledged coordination between the two in a strike into Waziristan. The announcement will likely come as something of an embarrassment to the Pakistani government, who has made it a point to publicly oppose the unpopular strikes. Particularly coming at a time when Pakistan is loudly denying reports that it has a tacit agreement with the US about attacks in Waziristan, NATO claims of direct assistance may be politically damaging to President Zardari’s fragile coalition government.

Also significant is the location. In late October NATO launched a similar shelling in Angoor Adda, and the shells nearly hit a Pakistani security post, and reports have the Pakistani military returning fire (though the military denies this).

Related Stories

compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

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‘US missiles’ hit Pakistan village

November 19, 2008
Al Jazeera, Nov 19, 2008

At least four people have been killed after a suspected US missile attack struck the North West Frontier province of Pakistan, near the Afghan border, security officials said.

A senior security official told the AFP news agency on Wednesday that “the strike overnight destroyed the house of a tribesman Sakhi Mohammad in the Bannu district”.

“At least two foreigners were among five killed,” the official said.

Pakistani security forces often use the term “foreigners” to refer to suspected al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters.

Pakistani officials said the missiles were launched from Afghanistan, where at least 32,000 US troops are fighting the Taliban and other fighters.

Officials also said that several other people were wounded in the attack in Jani Khel, a city in the northwestern district of Bannu just outside the tribal areas where al-Qada and Taliban fighters have found refuge in recent years.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder in Islamabad said that locals believe that the US was involved in the attack, which comes at a time when “…the Pakistani military chief was visiting Brussels to brief Nato commanders on his country’s apprehensions regarding drone attacks that are shifting public opinion against the US and Pakistani government”.

“There was a report recently in the Washington Post that the Americans had a tacit agreement that they would be able to use Pakistani airspace wherever they thought there were targets,” Hyder reported.

“While the government has been denying that there has been any secret agreement with the Americans, they have not been able to come out with a formula to stop such attacks, and that is likely to cause considerable anger within Pakistan because its own military forces are not in a position to defend its citizens within its territory.”

US ‘blamed’

The US has been blamed for at least 20 missile attacks and a ground assault in northwest Pakistan since mid-August.

Meanwhile, all the attacks since August have been in villages in north and south Waziristan, two semiautonomous tribal regions where the government has a very limited presence.

Islamabad has protested over the raids, saying they are a violation of the country’s sovereignty.

US officers in Afghanistan have stressed improved Pakistani co-operation in squeezing fighters nested along the border.

Colonel John Spiszer, the US commander in northeast Afghanistan, said that pressure on Aghanistan and Pakistan will eventually mean that fighters will be “running out of options on places to go”.

But Pakistani officials said the US missile strikes are counterproductive because they often kill civilians and deepen anti-American and anti-government sentiment.

However, General David Petraeus, the US chief commander, defended them, saying at least three senior fighters, whom he did not identify, have been killed in recent months in the attacks.

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