Obama Orders 17,000 US Troops to Afghanistan
President Barack Obama has decided to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, on the grounds that "the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention". Civilian deaths from political violence increased about 40% in 2008 over 2007, reaching over 2000. They will be sent to the Pushtun south and east of the country, where guerrilla fighting is expected to pick up with the advent of warm weather. The BBC says, "The deployment will be made up of 8,000 marines, and 4,000 army soldiers, plus another 5,000 support staff." The Marines will begin arriving in May.
What we saw in Iraq was that the sheer number of troops did not matter so much as how they are deployed and for what purpose. I hope that these troops are used well.
McClatchy reports that the new troops will mainly be sent to Helmand Province, a major poppy-producing areas, and will have poppy eradication as a major mission. If this report is true, it is very troubling. There is reason to think that forcible poppy eradication has produced the growing insurgency. Poppies are used to make heroin, and exports of the drug account for over a third of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. But many Afghan farmers are destitute after 30 years of war, and this crop is their one hope of escaping poverty. They grow irate when someone comes in with helicopters and torches to destroy the crop.
There are currently 38,000 US troops in Afghanistan. Last I knew, there were 10,000 under a US command and 18,000 serving under the NATO ISAF command (which has 32,000 non-US NATO troops), which totals 50,000. But given the determination of Canada to pull its troops out within three years, and the flagging commitment of other NATO allies, it could be that the increase of US troops will just offset draw-downs of NATO forces.
Meanwhile, NATO is worried about the terms of the truce just concluded between Pakistan and militants in Swat, which involves imposition of Muslim canon law on that area. (Most of Pakistan is ruled by cviil law, which may be drawn in part from Islamic law but also has a heritage in British law.)
Aljazeera English, in contrast, sees the agreement in Swat as hopeful.
Suspicions linger that ousted military dictator Perzez Musharraf presided over a military that was glad to do a double deal with the Taliban.
Aljazeera English reports on child labor and 'ragpicking' in Afghanistan, which is exploiting 36,000 children in Kabul.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/18/2009 12:37:00 AM
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17 Comments:
Why doesn't anyone see this as folly compounded by stupidity?
My comment was, of course, directed at the idea that the allies should increase their contribution.
We are talking about a strategy and overall policy that is fundamentally wrong
How's he going to supply those troops?
Time for a deal with Iran? Does he have the cojones to soft-pedal the disastrous alliance with Israel?
One doubts it.
This is somewhat bewildering. The Afghan economy is overwhelmingly dependent upon opium and foreign aid. Barnett Rubin has given us an extensive explanation about how the opium economy needs to be replaced by a deliberate and vigorous replacement of the opium economy.
On top of that, I have heard and read that “reconciliation” is a frequent discussion topic in Kabul. Consider that along with the factor that the warlords, that are in the government and are the recipients of massive military and other aid, are as active and probably more active in the opium business as are the Taliban.
The underlying basis of this situation is that Afghan politics are an ever-changing web of very pragmatic networks of alliances and counter alliances. Political alliances depend upon equitable trade-offs of things like security and wealth. Pragmatic politics are the source of isolating the Taliban and eventually gaining control over them. Their leaders can pragmatically make alliances with whatever side/faction fits their personal plans, etc.
Afghan local community leadership and social structures and culture of consensus-building provide enormous potentials for providing stability and growth. They provide the starting point for replacing the opium production and alleviating any threat that the Taliban poses to anyone.
Unless the American military can somehow protect the development of the more wholesome and productive community networks, the military will, in the long run, be irrelevant. Our military will become more and more isolated---not the Taliban.
For some reason, I keep remembering a comment by the Vietnamese general that captured Saigon from the Americans. He said, “I hope the Americans can defeat the terrorist, but if they try to do it with the military, they will only add fuel to the fire.”
Bob Spencer
Interesting that we send in troops to kill poppies and to handily be there when the Taliban comes in response.
Reminds me how I used to hunt bear in Montana:
Go to the old homestead, knock a bunch of apples to the ground, walk all over the apples so they throw off a big aroma, and then in the evenings wait in ambush for the bears to come for the apples.
If the troops are involved in counter-narcotics, it will be in interdiction, not eradication. The McClatchy story says they will help combat the drug trade, not poppy production. NATO ROEs call for action against traffickers funding the insurgency, not participation by troops in eradication.
Obama bombs are like Bush bombs only more so, or whatever. Wonderful to have voted for change.
Obama is making a mistake in looking for a military solution in Afghanistan. However, he does not have any good options at his disposal. What the Afghan people need is economic assistance to lift the country out of the extreme poverty so conducive to religious extremism. The U.S. is not willing or able to supply such assistance. Reading the first-hand reports coming out of that place is disheartening. Any good ideas on this matter will be greatly appreciated. This writer is fresh out.
The solution is quite simple, stop vilifying Afghans and Pakistanis, leave Afghanistan and stop bombing in Pakistan and offer economic assistance. We will not move in this direction however, and Obama has complete political support for more and more war.
We have no idea what, specifically, we are trying to accomplish in Afghanistan. Sometimes we hear about combatting terror. Sometimes we hear that we need to be there because the Taliban are oppressive. Now it's (fairly predictably) morphing from the bogus War on Terror to the bogus War on Drugs. The bottom line is that Empire and Military Industrial Complex require that we always have enemies and that we always be at war.
Note too the typically bushian way that Obama assumes that there are only two possible choices, in the face of conflict: surrender or military eradication.
Eradication is good, if and only if, you replace it with a similar cash incentive. Such as offering to purchase Helmand carrots for $5/kg. Add to that a strategy of placing crop cutting robots in the major fields. These robots can be manned by any number of troops, who would in reality be watching from the hills.
If that same robot is to "drip" seeds that can overcome the poppy plant, a farmer, is a farmer. If they are really looking to be peaceful, make the steps to step up to this ugly drug.
Nobody has said that the local is a poppy grower and then must be a Taliban. This extension to Taliban ideology will follow their source of income. If we (and the NATO troops there) can offer much higher prices for the crops that do not supply a drug that kills many thousands, LETS DO IT.
Drugs are bad. Food is Good.
What helped in Iraq was a major shift in strategy, what shift is being planned for Afghanistan? Maybe if the troops and the locals lit up some pipes of opium everything would be okay.
Cheers, Randy
Dr. Cole
President Obama is getting ready to send another 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. No doubt, things are not going well in that war and Taliban have gained ground lately. But is sending more troops a wise move or will Afghanistan become for Obama what Vietnam became for Johnson - a great folly?
I wrote in detail about the new strategy required in Afghanistan on my blog today at:
http://blameislam.blogspot.com/
I hope your readers will give their opinions on it.
The Taliban and opium; where to start?
The Taliban while in power acted very agressively to eradicate poppy cultivation to the point where they were awarded about $43 million by BushCo in early 2001, and praised for their efforts by the "International Community." Islam also provides brutal discipline to the drug user, trafficker and cultivator--they're beheaded. So it's very counterintuitive to believe the Taliban are deeply involved with opium cultivation as implied by western propaganda. As Rashid describes in his book about the Taliban, despite their brutality, there was a period of economic recovery within Afghanistan, which might have been greater had it not been for the very deep, systemic drought plaguing the region, which makes it easy to grow poppies as they are basicly weeds and thrive when other (food) plants perish. What chances Afghans had for further economic recovery was buried by the US's blizzard of bombs. And with the country's destabilization, poppy cultivation returned.
There is also the huge issue regarding the USA and its deep involvement in the drug trade via the CIA, a history going back to the Opium Wars, when the US joined the UK in forcing China to import opium for sale to its masses. So anything the US governemnt, or any western government, says on the topic is highly suspect.
I suggest the South Asians work out their problems under the auspices of the SCO, while all western forces go home. The crisis the region faces from Global Warming is worse than anything the Taliban, US or NATO can pile onto the region's peoples. For this reason alone, peace must be established before events make matters much worse.
17,000? Make that ...
The 17K will bring the combined Iraq and Aghan deployments to 200,000, a bit more than it was at the peak of the Iraq 'surge' in late 2007.
I was considering whether to grump about expecting the 17 to turn into 25 or 30K, when I saw that Gen McKiernan and the LA Times beat me to it. Can you say "escalation..."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-us-afghan19-2009feb19,0,7355093.story
"McKiernan said that last year he had forecast the need for an additional 30,000 troops for 2009 and beyond. The 17,000 ordered Tuesday, combined with the earlier assignment of an Army brigade of about 3,500 from the 10th Mountain Division, provides two-thirds of the need, he said.
The other 10,000 or so troops could be sought this year or next if military reviews indicated the need for them, McKiernan said."
I agree with karlof 1 that South Asia could face catastrophic effects of global warming. The Himalayan ice caps are melting and if warming were to increase substantially, massive flooding could wipe off almost all of Pakistan (main food source for Afghanistan)western part of India (the breadbasket of India) leaving 1.5 billion people hungry. Seems like a doomsday scenario, it is.
Meanwhile US bombing is killing more and more civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan which is playing right in the hands of the Taliban.
Can we get cell phone alerts on these deals?
Hilly's in China and Obama knows who his boss is; the money should be okay even with the foreclosure.
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