Afghanistan, Bombing, Development and Peace Negotiations
October 15th, 2010
US has begun in Afghanistan what seems to be a tactic taken out of the Vietnam War playbook. First there was the troop buildup and then the secret negotiations with the Taliban and now news of a fifty percent increase in the bombing over last year. What we are seeing is similar to the US bombing of Hanoi during the Vietnam War in an attempt to force the enemy to come to terms at the negotiating table, at least that was the logic in Vietnam. Now in Afghanistan there are similar attempts but there is no Hanoi. There is even less infrastructure in enemy hands to destroy. Other than targeted assassinations of leaders and massive destruction of the opium fields to destroy the economic base, there is little to blow up in Afghanistan.
The USA has decided to take a hands off approach to the Opium crop, deciding winning the minds of the farmers is more appropriate than winning the war on drugs. Perhaps if they used a similar approach in Mexico that war would be less violent. The increased bombings, if we are talking about targeted drone attacks on specific leaders might make a difference, but just blasting territory will not do any more than the Russians were able to do with their helicopter assaults.
Below are excerpts from the American establishment press and the Russians talking through Pakistani and American sources. It is interesting to note that the Russians think the USA has failed to take note of the lessons learned from the Russians.
This is an excerpt from the report in the NY Times
"U.S. Uses Attacks to Nudge Taliban Toward a Deal
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: October 14, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Airstrikes on Taliban insurgents have risen sharply here over the past four months, the latest piece in what appears to be a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.
American pilots pounded the Taliban with 2,100 bombs or missiles from June through September, with 700 in September alone, Air Force officers here said Thursday. That is an increase of nearly 50 percent over the same period last year, the records show.
The stepped-up air campaign is part of what appears to be an intensifying American effort, orchestrated by Gen. David H. Petraeus, to break the military stalemate here as pressure intensifies at home to bring the nine-year-old war to an end. In recent weeks, General Petraeus has increased raids by Special Forces units and launched large operations to clear territory of Taliban militants.
And it seems increasingly clear that he is partly using the attacks to expand a parallel path to the end of the war: an American-led diplomatic initiative, very much in its infancy but ultimately aimed at persuading the Taliban — or large parts of the movement — to make peace with the Afghan government.
In recent weeks, American officials have spoken approvingly in public of new contacts between Taliban leaders and the Afghan government. On Wednesday they acknowledged their active involvement by helping Taliban leaders travel to Kabul to talk peace.
Members of Special Operations units have been unleashed with particular ferocity. In a three-month period ending Oct. 7, the units killed 300 midlevel Taliban commanders and 800 foot soldiers, and captured 2,000 insurgents.
Some Afghan experts believe that NATO's two-track strategy is flawed — that bleeding the Taliban may actually make the insurgents less inclined to negotiate. Matt Waldman, an independent analyst who has worked extensively in the region, said that it was unlikely that many Taliban leaders could order their men to stop fighting."
For more of the article
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/world/asia/15afghan.html?th&emc=th
The only peace the Taliban want is one where the NATO forces leave the country.
The Russians had plenty of firepower and they failed.
This is from a Pakistani policy institute PKH
"The West has Made Even More Mistakes in Afghanistan Than us, says Russian Envoy to Kabul
Submitted by admin on September 12, 2010 – 9:38 am
Andrey Avetisyan, a veteran Kabul diplomat, said talk of a handover to the Afghans was currently unrealistic because the coalition had failed to build the nation's forces or economy.
The rampant corruption riddling the administration was the West's fault for ploughing huge sums into badly-coordinated, opaque aid projects he said.
Moscow's envoy spoke as his country again seeks to assert influence by reviving up to 150 Soviet-era infrastructure and business ventures.
An estimated 1 million Afghans were killed and millions fled abroad during the Soviet Union's decade-long occupation.
The Red Army lost some 15,000 troops fighting the Western-backed Mujahideen resistance.
Barack Obama has promised a gradual military withdrawal from July 2011, but Mr Avetisyan said Nato had "wasted" nine years not building an Afghan army to replace them.
"But it is not possible to do in several months, or years. If serious training of the Afghan army is started now, it will take in my opinion at least five years." "If the international community had started this several years ago, then now it would be realistic to talk about transition timetables and withdrawal." He said when the Soviets left in 1989, their ally Mohammad Najibullah remained in power for three years because he inherited a strong army and economy.
"For the last eight years, there have been no big projects, not infrastructure projects," he went on.
Russia is worried that an unstable Afghanistan could become a launch pad for Islamist militant attacks and wants to stem the heroin which kills 30,000 Russians annually.
Dmitry Medvedev, Russian prime minister, met Hamid Karzai in Sochi last month as Afghanistan's neighbours jockey for influence before an eventual Nato withdrawal."
For more of this
http://www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com/2010/09/12/the-west-has-made-even-more-mistakes-in-afghanistan-than-us-says-russian-envoy-to-kabul/
This is from McClatchy Newspapers
"Russian advice: More troops won't help in Afghanistan
By Tom Lasseter | March 9th 2010
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/03/09/63581/russian-advice-more-troops-wont.html#ixzz12Tssajuu
"The fundamental problem in Afghanistan is that it isn't a country in the way the West thinks of countries, said retired Lt. Gen. Ruslan Aushev, who did two tours there and left as a regimental commander.
"There has never been any real centralized state in Afghanistan. There is no such nation as Afghanistan," said Aushev, who's a former president of the Russian Caucasus republic of Ingushetia and now heads a veterans group in Moscow. "There are (ethnic groups of) Pashtuns, Uzbeks and Tajiks, and they all have different tribal policies."
As a result, any occupation force will spend much of its time propping up a government that has little relevance outside Kabul and trying to corral disparate ethnic groups and tribes into a national army that's often unwilling to fight, Aushev said.
"We made the same mistake when we put the weak Babrak Karmal as the head of state," Aushev said of a former Afghan president. "He was so weak that no one obeyed him. He was hiding behind the backs of Soviet soldiers. . . . Today the situation is the same; (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai is being protected by U.S. special forces."
Retired Gen. Pavel Grachev, who spent two tours in Afghanistan, including commanding an airborne division, offered some advice: Post soldiers to guard road projects and irrigation systems, and send in an army of engineers, doctors, mining experts and construction advisers.
Pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure would be a lot more productive than firefights in far-flung villages, he said.
"You have to understand that in the economic sphere, Afghanistan is now at a stage lower than the Middle Ages," Grachev said.
Unlike Iraq, which has relatively large cities and highways, much of the Afghan population is dispersed across small villages of mud houses connected by dirt paths and crumbling roads. In many regions, there are no jobs other than tending poppy fields. Health care and education levels are among the worst in the world."
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/03/09/63581/russian-advice-more-troops-wont.html#ixzz12TrYaGP0
The Russians are advising that what they need in Afghanistan is infrastructure and to build up the military. But as the Russians pointed out even with a strong military the regime they left in power lasted only three years. There is no real reason for the USA to be in Afghanistan except to protect oil pipelines and to project a presence in central Asia to counter the Russian and Chinese influence. The Indians have long been allied with the Russians and the Pakistanis have had the Chinese backing them up. Afghanistan has been a crossroads long dominated by tribal groupings which from time to time come together under the leadership of a dominant force or from an outside power, sometimes out of central Asia, sometimes out of Iran or India, as those are the local powers that would have a real interest in the region.
It is a fallacy to say that Afghanistan has never been ruled by outsiders. The outsiders though have been invaders who came in to stay and annexed the region to larger empires to which Afghanistan was contiguous. It is not that Afghanistan is unconquerable, it is that you have to have a damn good reason to be there and you have to be willing to hunker down and go native.
Nation building, which is what the Russians seem to be suggesting is another approach, but it is expensive and unless you are willing to simply pour the money in and send in the engineers, and really spend the time to develop the country, you will fail. It certainly is a better approach that military occupation, and certainly if you give the people there jobs in nation building, then you are going a long way to winning the hearts and minds. This probably would be better done through secular Muslims, perhaps a strong democratic civilian government in Pakistan would be worth supporting in efforts to modernize Afghanistan, or Iran their neighbor on the other side, would be a good source of aid and development.
The USA is not in a good position to aid Afghanistan. We should get out and help their neighbors help them out. I think the Russians want us to fund their efforts at nation building. China is already in there planning railroads and development of mines.
Perhaps they will simply inherit the Afghanistan region.
This is from Wikipedia
"During different periods in history, Afghanistan was known by different names, such as Ariana, Arachosia, and Khorasan. It is the land where many powerful kingdoms established their capitals, including the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Indo-Sassanids, Kabul Shahi, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Kartids, Timurids, Mughals, Hotakis, and Durranis. On many trade and migration routes, the land of Afghanistan is called the "Central Asian roundabout" since routes converge from the Tigris-Euphrates Basin via the Iranian Plateau, from India through the passes over the Hindu Kush, from the Far East via the Tarim Basin, and from the adjacent Eurasian Steppe.
In the early 18th century, Mir Wais Hotak followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani unified Afghan tribes and founded the last Afghan Empire. Afghanistan's sovereignty has been held during the Anglo-Afghan Wars, the 1980s Soviet war, and the 2001-present war by the country's many and diverse people: the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Baloch and others."
For more info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan
This from Politics Daily
"China's footprint in Afghanistan is growing, and its investments will help shape the Afghan mineral business. In addition to the Aynak Mine, the largest investment in Afghan history, China is pursuing a second mine near Kabul that is said to contain more than 60 billion tons of iron, according to Congressional Research Services, the nonpartisan research center for Congress.
With an estimated $1 trillion in untapped minerals, Afghanistan should be the new frontier for Chinese investment. While Aynak is not yet operating, officials have big hopes. Aynak, in Logar province in eastern Afghanistan, could add more than $200 million to the Afghan national revenue each year and create an estimated 30,000 new jobs, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace.
So far, the Chinese have relied on U.S. and international troops to keep their investors and mining projects safe. The Chinese are responsible for their own security at Aynak, but because they do not have their own troops Afghanistan, they hire Afghan National Police. U.S.-led ISAF (International Security Assistance Force, the coalition fighting in Afghanistan) troops are responsible for building and training the Afghan police force, and work side-by-side with them."
For more of this
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/29/mary-growing-fears-china-will-bring-heartbreak-not-wealth/
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