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This
month, the first members of President Obama’s
call-up of 30,000 military reinforcements are being transported to Afghanistan. Foreign military strength
in the country is scheduled to swell to about 140,000 troops by summer,
including about 98,000 from the United States.
At
the same time, Washington and its allies are expanding what can only be
called a war of terror, in which alleged Islamic militants, and their
families, are assassinated in their homes. Over a thousand civilians
have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Pakistan due to U.S. drone missile raids.
A
secret army of commandos, private “contractors,” and CIA “Special
Activities” operatives has been turned loose for assassinations and
other armed forays against Islamist radicals in the region. These
clandestine death squads began under President Bush, and Obama has increased their role in the region.
Such
measures have yielded little success so far for the U.S.-led coalition
against the Taliban and other resistance militia, and European
governments are becoming increasingly wary of getting bogged down in
the morass. As a result, the Afghanistan war and occupation is more
and more becoming an American campaign—as it is in Iraq.
In
response to Washington’s urging or bullying, a few
U.S. allies (including aspiring
NATO members Ukraine, Georgia, Montenegro, and Macedonia) have promised to send a
total of about 7000 more soldiers to Afghanistan. But these units will
barely replace the troops from other countries that are being
withdrawn.
The
Afghan war is deeply unpopular among the European public; in response
to antiwar pressure, the Netherlands will withdraw its 2200
troops this year. The Canadian government, likewise acceding to antiwar
sentiment at home, has decided that its 2800 troops will be withdrawn
in 2011.
Some
military spokespeople have expressed optimism for the coming year, due
mainly to the increased U.S. troop strength. Canada’s top general in the field,
Daniel Menard, boasted that with over 5000 Canadian and U.S. troops under his command,
the Taliban insurgency would be “marginalized” in Kandahar province by Canada’s 2011 pull-out date.
But
Canada’s chief of defense, Gen.
Walter Natynczyk, was less ebullient in his
predictions, conceding that 2009 had been a “rough year” in Afghanistan. He cited the
corruption-marred presidential election in the summer, a rise in
Taliban attacks, and heightened allied casualties (Canwest
New Service, Dec. 27, 2009).
A
recent Canadian government report suggested that although there has
been some progress in training Afghan National Army battalions,
training the Afghan National Police has been an uphill battle:
“The ANP suffers from frequent incidents of corruption, extortion and
drug abuse; as well, poor pay, substandard equipment and targeted
violence from insurgents.”
Working
with “friendly” Afghan soldiers and civilian collaborators presents the
U.S. and European trainers with
constant risks. For example, the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA
agents on Dec. 30 at a base for coordinating drone missile attacks was
reported to have been able to enter the base as a presumed CIA
operative.
Anti-U.S.
forces gain ground
Jonathan
Burch, reporting for Reuters on Dec. 27, noted, “Foreign forces have
only a year to turn the tide of the war in Afghanistan, and the Taliban
have a shadow government in place that could run the country if the
West fails, a senior NATO intelligence official said on Sunday. The
official said that the Taliban has expanded its influence across Afghanistan and was now running a
“full-fledged insurgency.”
“Time
is running out. We’ve got about a year to prove that our strategy can
actually work. The Taliban has shadow governors in 33 out of the 34
provinces,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told a
small group of reporters. “So he [the “Taliban,” a catch-all term used
to refer to a number of allied militias] has got a
government-in-waiting. He has got ministers.”
The
NATO official said that the Taliban had found a successful weapon in
roadside bombs; IED attacks rose from merely 81 in 2003 to 7200 last
year. Twice as many U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan in 2009 compared
to 2008 (310 deaths compared to 155 the previous year), while
fatalities among British soldiers more than doubled (106 last year
compared to 51 in 2008). “This is not meant to be a joke,” the official
said, “but whoever is their logistics chief, you know, we oughta be taking lessons from them. Because that’s
pretty darn good ... for an enemy insurgent force to generate that kind
of capability.”
While
the ground war appears to be at a stalemate, or worse, the U.S.-led
coalition has ramped up its one-sided air war—though the spiraling
civilian death toll has increased resentment against the presence of U.S. and NATO troops in the
country. According to UN figures, 10 percent more civilians were killed
during the first 10 months of 2009 than during the same period of the
previous year.
In
one of the most highly publicized recent massacres, operations by
international forces in Kunar province on
Dec. 19 killed 10 civilians, including eight young students. Popular outrage
forced Afghan President Hamid Karzai to order a probe into the circumstances of
the attack. Barely three days later, however, at
least four civilians were killed by NATO airstrikes
in northern Baghlan province. The dead,
according to Pajhwok Afghan News, included a
father and his three sons who were caught while running to escape the
bombardment.
Air
attacks, chiefly by unmanned drones, have also raised the number of
civilian casualties in the neighboring Tribal Territories of Pakistan. Seven U.S. missile attacks
in December killed at least 44 people in the same area of North Waziristan, according to the liberal Pakistani
journal, Dawn. U.S. and Pakistani authorities claim that the
dead were all pro-Taliban and al-Qaida
members, but this is unclear. The U.S. carried out over 50 airstrikes in Pakistan in 2009, and estimates of
the number of Pakistani civilians killed by these attacks range from
over 600 to as many as 1000 since August 2008.
Reports
state that people of the region are panicked by the constant presence
of drones overhead, often accompanied by higher-flying B-52 heavy
bombers. At present, the B-52s are used to aid in surveillance—but they
can also be lethal. During Desert Storm in Iraq, B-52s were responsible for
40 percent of all the bombs dropped by the U.S.
Secret
assassination squads
In
recent weeks, the U.S. media—including the Washington
Post and New York Times—have reported on the increasing use
of secretive Special Operations units in combat against Islamist forces.
An article by Eric Schmitt in the Dec. 26 Times cited unnamed
officials in stating that these units are being sent into areas to
soften them up before the introduction of regular troops. Often they
are assigned to assassinate insurgent leaders, a task they share with
the CIA.
“The
commandos, from the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s classified Seals
units, have had success weakening the network of Sirajuddin
Haqqani, the strongest Taliban warrior in
eastern Afghanistan, the officers said. …
Guided by intercepted cellphone
communications, the American commandos have also killed some important
Taliban operatives in Marja, the most
fearsome Taliban stronghold in Helmand
Province in the south.” More than 1000 U.S. Marines, as well as Afghan
and British forces, are being readied for a major confrontation in Marja early this year.
“American
commanders in Afghanistan,” The Times
reported, “rely on the commando units to carry out some of the most
complicated operations against militant leaders, and the missions are
never publicly acknowledged. The commandos are the same elite forces
that have been pursuing Osama bin Laden,
captured Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 and led the hunt that ended in
2006 in the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader in Iraq of the insurgent group
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.” The use of secret
commando forces is due to be increased in the coming year, according to
military officials.
Citing
interviews with former “contractors” from Blackwater
(now XE Services) and U.S. intelligence agents, The
New York Times reported Dec. 11 that Backwater employees
“participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most
sensitive activities—clandestine raids with agency officers against
people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of
detainees.”
According
to The Times, the Blackwater guards
“were supposed to only provide perimeter security during raids, leaving
it up to C.I.A. officers and Special Operations military personnel to
capture or kill suspected insurgents.” The newspaper added, “But in the
chaos of operations, the roles of Blackwater,
C.I.A. and military personnel sometimes merged.” Blackwater
was also employed to assist the CIA with the use of Predator drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The
Times
article pointed out that the new details of Blackwater’s
activities come at a time when the House Intelligence Committee is
investigating the company’s role in the CIA’s assassination program,
and a federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating a wide
range of allegations of illegal activity by Blackwater
and its personnel, including gun running to Iraq. But the tactics of the
Afghan war, employing secret assassination squads and bombings that
result in high civilian casualties, are not under review; the
government’s concern seems to be merely that these activities were
taken over by a private company.
It
is up to the American people, and those of other countries, to speak
out against such barbarities—and against the Afghanistan war as a whole. An
opportunity will come on March 20, when mass antiwar marches in
Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles will take place. For
more information on how to get involved, contact: National Assembly to
End the Iraq & Afghanistan Wars & Occupations, www.natassembly.org
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