Patrick Cockburn: US surge will only prolong Afghan war

[laststeamtrain]

Patrick Cockburn: US surge will only prolong Afghan war

Analysis: Just as in Iraq, more Western troops on the ground will deepen an ongoing civil conflict and drive ordinary Afghans into the arms of the insurgents

Sunday, 6 December 2009

It will be a long and unnecessary war. President Barack Obama is sending 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan to prove that the US can impose its will on the country and crush by military means what is still a relatively small-scale insurrection.

The real reasons for escalating the conflict are very different from those declared by Mr Obama. He claims that al-Qa'ida might re-establish itself in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban and once again threaten the US and its allies with a repeat of 9/11. But there is no evidence that this is happening.

The remnants of al-Qa'ida are in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. If Osama bin Laden listened to Mr Obama's speech it will have been with mounting pleasure and a sense of achievement. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qa'ida's chief strategist, explained just after 9/11 that the aim of the attack was to lure the US into a ground war against Muslims which would enable them to wage "a clear-cut jihad against the infidels".

The US escalation means that this wider war will now happen. The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, spelled out what the US intends to do soon after Mr Obama's speech. He had to deal with the problem that US intelligence estimates that al-Qa'ida has only a few hundred fighters by relabelling the Taliban as somehow being the same as al-Qa'ida. "The Taliban and al-Qa'ida have become symbiotic, each benefiting from the success and mythology of the other," Mr Gates said. Yet US officials on the ground in Afghanistan say that the insurgents are members of the embattled Pashtun community, fighting the Americans as they once fought the Soviets. Their connection to the Taliban is often vague.

By treating Pashtun villagers as if they were all Taliban, and Taliban as being the equivalent of al-Qa'ida, Mr Obama is increasing, not reducing, the threat of terrorist attack on the US or Britain. He is providing the battleground Bin Laden hoped for and, like President George Bush before him, has jumped willingly into the al-Qa'ida trap.

<snip>

One of the most foolish and misleading claims by US and British generals is that fighting a guerrilla war can successfully be combined with dispensing aid and building bridges and roads. But, as one commentator puts it, such a mixture of Wyatt Earp and Mother Teresa is not feasible. Soldiers are trained to get what they want by force and that is generally what they do. Afghans whose families have just been killed by a bomb will not be conciliated by a fine new drainage system.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/patrick-cockburn-us-surge-will-only-prolong-afghan-war-1835054.html

[chill_wind]

1. Some points of importance. K & R.

The Obama plan outlined last week envisages training 100,000 new Afghan soldiers and 100,000 new policemen over the next three years. But where are these recruits to come from? Given the high desertion rate, the combat strength of the Afghan army is reportedly only 46,000 troops in a country that is larger than France. These troops, and particularly the officer corps, are already disproportionately Tajik, the ethnic group to which a quarter of Afghans belong. The US can only increase the military strength of the Afghan state swiftly by skewing it towards the Tajiks, who were always the core of opposition to the Taliban. This will increase sectarian hatreds.