Afghanistan: Where Do We Go From Here?
There's a few articles floating around this week that don't paint a pretty picture for the ongoing war in Afghanistan, weeks from a new President being sworn in who promised to shift the military's focus away from Iraq and to the war there.
From The Associated Press:
Army Gen. David Petraeus, who became a household name overseeing the war in Iraq, now oversees the older, smaller and less promising fight in Afghanistan as well. He predicted a long war in Afghanistan, without quantifying it.
Petraeus told a Washington audience that a winning strategy in Afghanistan will look different from the one in Iraq. He offered few specifics as the incoming Obama administration assess its options in the 7-year-old Afghanistan war that has gone much worse than anticipated, just as U.S. fortunes have improved in Iraq. He also suggested the United States and its partners may one day have common purpose with Iran, another Afghanistan neighbor, in stabilizing and remaking that country.
Afghanistan is something of a forgotten war, compared to the causalities of the Iraq war, the causalities of Afghanistan have been relatively light, 561 members of the U.S. military have died. Of that number, 408 have been the victims of enemy action. However, over a quarter of all deaths came last year, there were a 151 deaths in 2008, marking the worst year for military deaths in the seven-year conflict.
Even less encouraging is the release of a new independent study showing that the U.S. had "unrealistic goals" in the Afghan conflict.
The United States and its partners have shortchanged Afghanistan by focusing on short-term goals pursued without a cohesive strategy or a clear understanding of the way the poor, decentralized country works, an independent study concludes.
Without editorializing too much its not a major surprise that the Bush administration ran headlong into something without a cohesive plan, an exit strategy, or a well-articulated end goal. The report stresses something most of us have probably not really considered in these terms:
The Bush administration has had all but eight months of its entire tenure to stabilize Afghanistan...
Which doesn't speak volumes for the two-term Bush Administration, and leaves quite a bit for President Obama to clean up.
It isn't just a matter of increasing violence, the tactics of the Taliban are changing as well, according to the Seattle Times:
Taliban fighters increasingly are deploying precision marksmen to fire on U.S. troops at greater distances throughout opium-producing southern Afghanistan, according to the top two commanders for the southern region.
The increased use of marksmen is the latest Taliban shift to asymmetrical warfare and away from confronting U.S. troops in conventional fights, commanders said.
The expanded use of precision marksmen comes as the fighting shifts from eastern Afghanistan to the south, where the Taliban are trying to protect opium production, which is reputed to be its economic base.
The number of coalition troops killed in southern Afghanistan has increased sharply in the past two months.
Tactics are changing on the ground in Afghanistan, Admr. Michael Mullen, current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says:
I think the level of violence in 2008 surprised us all. The sophistication of the tactics of the insurgency surprised us all.
None of which bodes particularly well for the incoming Obama Administration, and the ongoing conflict in Gaza isn't helping much either:
Hundreds of people in southern Afghanistan have burned Israeli flags and shouted anti-Israel and anti-American slogans to protest Israel's military action in Gaza, according to eyewitness accounts from a CNN stringer.
According to to the CIA World Fact Book Afghanistan has a population of about 34 million people, so hundreds of them protesting might not sound like a major issue, but if we're being at all realistic, we have to recognize that Israeli's actions and our continued support of them –– right or wrong –– are stoking a fire in the Muslim world and the eventual backlash could be a terrifying sight to see.
Worse still, it's long been a recognized problem that Al-Qaeda members have been slipping across the border into northern Pakistan, retreating to regroup and rearm before returning to Afghanistan to fight American forces. And the situation there has not been improving as Pakistan fires their national security adviser for arguing that Indian and Pakistan should have closer ties and for allegedly being too "pro-American."
Pakistan's decision to fire its national security adviser has exposed cracks within the shaky, civilian government as it faces growing U.S. and Indian pressure to punish the alleged plotters of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
...
Political analyst Talat Masood said Durrani's national security appointment was controversial from the start because some considered him too pro-American — so the government may have been looking for a pretext to get rid of him.
In addition to Gen. Petraeus' comments regarding the ongoing battle he adds:
Petraeus linked Afghanistan's fortunes directly to Pakistan's, where a U.S.-backed civilian government is struggling and the country's ability to control militants along its border with Afghanistan is in doubt.
Tensions have risen considerably between India and Pakistan in the wake of the recent attacks in Mumbai. If conflict comes about, one wonders what effect it could have on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan as the U.S. prepares to step up its efforts there. Pakistan has already moved troops from its Afghan border to its Indian border.
The reported movement of troops toward Pakistan's border with India on Friday raised the threat of war between the two nuclear-armed rivals and will distract Pakistan from fighting Taliban-led militants, security analysts said.
The end result of all this is a more porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, while the population may begin to turn against U.S. forces and the insurgents change tactics to become more effective.
If that were not enough, there's also the big question of where all Afghanistan's heroin is going and how much all this is going to cost.
The future of Afghanistan looks bleak right now, and I offer this as news and not commentary since I have no answers, just a long, ugly list of observations and questions as to where we go from here.
PAGE:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Comments
IDGAS
Portland, ME
March 2004
JUN 14, 2010 04:11 PM
motorfirebox
Pittsburgh, PA
March 2004
SEP 03, 2010 02:58 AM
IDGAS
Portland, ME
March 2004
SEP 03, 2010 11:02 AM
motorfirebox
Pittsburgh, PA
March 2004
SEP 07, 2010 06:07 AM
IDGAS
Portland, ME
March 2004
SEP 13, 2010 06:36 PM
Kus
San Fernando, CA
February 2009
SEP 19, 2010 12:01 AM
PAGE:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5