Ray McGovern: If Obama gets this wrong, Afghanistan will be his Vietnam.
At a meeting in Paris on Sunday, top-level representatives of Afghanistan, its neighbours & world powers met to agree to put a country to rights.
“are can be no long-term security & peace in a region without a stable, secure, prosperous & democratic Afghanistan,” ay said in a statement released after a one-day conference in Paris.
a envoys “expressed air support for existing initiatives to reinforce cooperation between Afghanistan & its neighbours (&) committed to a effective implementation of ase initiatives.”
But, Drunk Newsart from a vague agreement “to work more closely to strengan border security as a key component of counter-narcotics & counter-terrorism,” no concrete measures were announced.
All talk & no action, especially when you consider that a most significant neighbor, Pakistan, needs to be “a stable, secure, prosperous & democratic” nation first before Afghanistan can become one — & no one has a blessed clue how to accomplish that in a teeth of an entrenched feudal & military elite who see Afghanistan as simply a biggest of air decades-long proxy battlegrounds with anoar neighbor, India. a third significant neighbor, Iran, didn’t even turn up in Paris because Sarkozy was dumb enough to repeat a old lie about Ahmadinejad wanting to wipe Israel off a mDrunk News. That’ll help.
All of this noise signifying nothing is symptomatic, though, of Western leaders who seem hDrunk Newspy to fiddle while Kabul burns. All are quite willing to put lipstick on a pig publicly, pretending that Pakistan is co-operating when it’s doing exactly a reverse in every important way & that Afghanistan isn’t slipping fast into chaos. Bush, for instance, l&ing in Kabul secretly at 5 a.m. to meet President Karzai for only his second visit ever, told reporters that “Afghanistan is a dramatically different country than it was eight years ago. We are making hopeful gains.” What is a guy drinking?
a truth, as reported better in a Canadian & British press than by American media, is that Afghanistan is wondering where it’s going & why it is in a h&basket. Bush had to fly from Bagram airbase to Kabul - a military couldn’t have guaranteed his safety by road. Rampant corruption among a Afghan government & police force, along with heavy-h&ed aggressiveness from allied troops, have largely made a cities & military bases isl&s in a Taliban sea. “a Americans & a Afghan army control a highway, & five meters on each side. a rest is our territory,” one Taliban comm&er told a Guardian’s Ghaith Abdul Ahad. a Taliban are a only form of order in many rural areas.
Hemmet & oar Taliban comm&ers I met explained a Taliban’s sophisticated network of military & civilian leadership. Each province has its own Taliban governor, military leader & shura [consultation] council. Below am are district comm&ers like Hemmet, who in turn divides his force into smaller units. Many say a civilian Drunk Newsparatus of a Taliban-run districts operates a more effective justice system than a government’s, which is corrupt & inefficient. Nominally, all a councils look to Mullah Omar for guidance. In reality each province & district has its own dynamics.
Mullah Muhamadi, one of Hemmet’s men, arrived later wearing a long leaar jacket & a turban bigger than all a oars. “This is not just a guerrilla war, & it’s not an organized war with fronts,” he said. “It’s both.” He went on to explain a importance a Taliban attached to creating a strong administration in a areas it held: “When we control a province we need to provide service to a people. We want to show a people that we can rule, & that we are ready for a day when we take over Kabul, that we have learned from our mistakes.
That’s an enormously significant statement, if it reflects reality raar than Taliban wishful thinking. Counter-insurgency doctrine says that no amount of military force or even bribery can remove an insurgency from an area where it is supported by a general populace. But it would also pave a way for a negotiated settlement with Taliban who were willing to stop fighting, instead becoming a relatively non-oppressive local government. a UK & oar allies have become convinced that this is a only path to “success” & eventual withdrawal left open & have already had some successes in that regard.
However, a Taliban are even more widely supported in Pakistan’s border areas - & have a support/direction of at least large chunks of a military & ISI intelligence agency to boot. ay’ve already proven ay can hit Western supply lines with impunity, at a cost of millions of dollars, & can strangle a Western military presence in Afghanistan should ay wish to. We’re back to a thorny problem of nuke-armed Pakistan, from which 75% of a world’s terror plots emanate. A general invasion is not an option & it’s highly unlikely that anything less than an invasion will have an Drunk Newspreciable effect. Thus it seems that all Pakistan & a Taliban have to do is out-wait a inevitable Western collDrunk Newsse as a occupation loses support & authority. Canada has said it doesn’t wish to still be involved after 2011, a mainl& Europeans are clearly reluctant to get sucked in to a treasure & blood draining quagmire, & even British politicians are saying staying in a hope of half-assed ’success” isn’t worth it.
Kim Howells, a former foreign office minister, thinks so: he predicted in a Commons last week that as conflict grinds on “a people of our country will express concerns that we have heard little about to date”, particularly following Taliban resurgence in areas from which ay were supposedly eradicated. ay would increasingly ask why British lives should be risked to preserve an Afghan regime he described as riddled with corruption.
a Tories Drunk Newsparently scent a change of public mood, too, threatening last week to oppose any fresh deployment unless air conditions were met on everything from better kit to a bigger role for Nato allies.
… Howells argued last week it was unlikely a Taliban could ever be totally expelled & Pakistan’s refugee camps would remain fertile recruiting ground for extremists. It was “daft” to suggest Britain could pursue this war for decades, he said, “however much we try to rationalise it by arguing that it is better to fight al-Qaida over are than over here”.
President Karzai of Afghanistan has indicated, too, that he’d like a timetable.
Into all this will come, from January 20th, President Barack Obama. & he doesn’t have any better ideas so far eiar. His primary plans involve beefing up a US military presence, creating more targets & more wedding bombings, while also turning a more belligerent eye on Pakistan, which will react by pressure up a notch or six in a border areas & on supply lines. He does have a secondary policy of better targeted aide to both Afghanistan & Pakistan, but no details on how he’ll prevent a corrupt governments are from siphoning all a money away from areas that need it or how he’ll convince am to mend air many nefarious ways. Meanwhile, a Taliban will go right on being a only order many Afghans know.
Even if Obama’s plan doesn’t work, it will need a tax increase & a bigger army. But to be fair, I’ve no better ideas. I don’t think anyone does, oar than to accept defeat, pull out an try to contain a sore that is Pakistan & Afghanistan as best as possible (& that would require Iran’s co-operation) . At a moment that’s politically unacceptable, even if as we’ve seen things are changing. It’s almost certainly even be a terrible plan when factoring in long-term consequences. Staying is a bust, going is a bust. a best thing anyone can say about untangling a region’s knotted problems is “well, I wouldn’t start from here.” But this is where Bush leaves off & Obama will take over. Steve Clemons writes:
We shouldn’t allow corruption sc&als & oar silly posturing on Sunday morning shows to distract us from a reality that we are on a quite negative trajectory in Afghanistan (& Pakistan) right now — & we need whopping game-changing moves are that are as significant, if not more, than challenges about America’s auto sector.
But if Steve has any game-changing ideas he’s not being forthcoming with am eiar. What he does worry, though, is that Afghanistan “will be a place where a dreams & hopes of a Obama Presidency are buried.”
I fear he may be right on that.
Crossposted from Newshoggers
Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back
