2 Americans Killed in Afghanistan;
Pakistani Army advances on Mingora, Peochar
A roadside bomb hit a US convoy 35 miles outside Kabul, killing one American soldier and one civilian, on Wednesday morning.
Aljazeera English reports on the arrival of further US troops in Afghanistan:
Meanwhile, the State Department foreign service officers are behind the scenes seething at the possibility that Neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad may attempt to insert himself, unelected, into Afghanistan politics.
On the other AfPak front, the Pakistani army continued its advance on the city of Mingora, at 200,000 the largest in Swat District, on Wednesday morning, according to the newspaper Jang and Geo TV. The operation is in its sixth day, and has cut the local population off from most services, as well as resulting in large-scale displacements. The News reports:
'The military said there were fierce clashes in the Taliban-held town of Matta, as well as in Kanju, which is a short distance from Mingora, with four soldiers and 14 insurgents killed in the two towns. In the last 24 hours, 16 militants were also killed, the army said. Footage broadcast on a private TV channel showed armed soldiers standing outside locked shops in Matta, a bastion of the Swat Taliban. “Troops continue to close in on Mingora, from where the Taliban are trying to escape but our strategy is not to let them flee,î a security official said.'Dozens of persons have been killed in the fighting, including militants and Pakistani troops.
In other words, the Pakistani military appears to be attempting to avoid a Tora Bora-type scenario where the Taliban slip out the back door in the face of a frontal assault. Its ultimate goal is to close in on the obscure town of Peochar or Peuchar, the HQ of Pakistan Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah. See Shaun Appleby at MyDD for analysis and map of the operation. H/t The Agonist
The Pakistani president claimed that his forces had taken Maidan and Matta, though other sources talk about ongoing fighting in those areas.
The desperate Taliban are conducting forced marriages with local families, presumably to bind them politically to the movement and raise operatives' morale. They are also said to be forcibly inducting local young men into their forces. It is hard to gauge the accuracy of these charges, since some may emanate from families that had shifted to the Taliban but now are afraid of the central government reasserting itself.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged $110 mn for the 1.5 million Pakistani refugees created by the current military campaign. The I.D.P. crisis is among the biggest since the 2006-7 exodus of Iraqis in the Sunni-Shiite civil war there, which was on a similar scale. Whether such massive displacement calms things or makes for more radicalism is yet to be seen. Part of the answer lies in whether the Pakistani government can and will actually assert itself and provide needed services in Swat after the campaign ends. Pakistan, like many third world countries, does not collect much money in income taxes. As a result, it is inadequate in providing services and security, since the state is poor, and tends to try to extract strategic rent from the international community to strengthen its security forces against outside threats. (Strategic rent would include the $10 bn the US gave the military dicatatorship in the past 8 years.)
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/20/2009 05:15:00 AM
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5 Comments:
It is interesting to explore "What is The Mission?" [a.k.a. "The War in Afghanistan"] as it is formally stated by NATO on their website — NATO's role in Afghanistan : “NATO’s main role in Afghanistan is to assist the Afghan Government in exercising and extending its authority and influence across the country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance. It does this predominately through its UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force, the ‘ISAF’. Since NATO took command of ISAF in 2003, the Alliance has gradually expanded the reach of its mission, originally limited to Kabul, to cover Afghanistan’s whole territory. The number of ISAF troops has grown accordingly, from the initial 5,000 to around 50.000+ troops...” imho, Interesting because there is no mention, whatsoever of either "the Taleban" or "al Qaeda", nor of any other defined enemy other than "illegally armed groups".
THE STATE of ‘Afghanistan’, then, is seen by NATO and the West (through the lens of their early 20th-century philosopher, Max Weber) as being nothing more than: “An entity which claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.” And a VICTORY for US, thus, would be for NATO/American occupation forces to realize this idealized notion of nation being a Status Of Forces Agreement whereby ‘The State’ achieves and sustains: a monopoly on the use of violence throughout all ‘Afghanistan’.
The US military now states that only 30 Afghan civilians were killed in the recent bombing raid where civilian casualties were previously reported at 130. Boy am I relieved! I thought it might be 50 or 80 or a 100 or maybe even more than the Afghans themselves reported, and we might actually have to be embarrassed. Only 30! Now that's a good deal.
It sounds like the Pakistani government's military strategy is well designed - which is suprising in view of the fact that the whole offensive seems to have been forced on Pakistan by Obama. The encirclement strategy combined with pre-positioned refugee camps - this is the kind of massive use of power, at the same time apparently minimizing civilian casualties, that the US should have used in their initial assault on Afghanistan, and should be using now, ASSUMING THAT THE TALIBAN REALLY ARE THE THREAT TO WORLD PEACE THAT OBAMA CLAIMS. But they aren't. They are primarily a natioalist movement that isn't even popular in their own backyard, because of their religious extremism, a nationalist movement primarily dependent on the presence of US forces and US power for a raison d'etre, primarily dependent on the chaos the US has been fomenting for an environment in which to survive. Basically, the Taliban are a US client force, even assuming that there has been no direct support since the Russians left Afghanistan. They need the conditions the US creates.
I find it horrible to see how enthusiastically the Democratic Party has become the New War Party. One might argue that Pakistan's apparently well coordinated campaign against the Taliban shows that Obama really is a smarter warrior. His expanded bombing campaign, with it's enormous civilian toll, would seem to argue otherwise. But in any case, being a 'smart' fighter doesn't make fighting the right solution. The logic Democrats seem fixated on runs like this: 1) the situation is complex --->2) there is no easy solution ---> 3)ergo force is required. No. This logic SHOULD argue AGAINST expanded use of force; it is precisely a Bushian mentality that responds to complexity with Gordian Knot application of force.
The Obama strategy is founded on a lie to begin with. Al Queda was defeated years ago. We should continue to hunt them down, but this has long since ceased to be a military issue - and in fact it never was -as Bush's half-hearted initial Afghanistan campaign showed. As we saw again recently, with the Bronx 4, the FBI seems reduced to practically designing and forging terror 'cells' to bust, in order to have some numbers to show.
The same logic applies now that applied in the first place, when Bush invaded Afghanistan with 'one hand behind his back' (ie, used proxy forces, the Northern Alliance), but it applies even more now: if Al Queda really is the continuing threat that Obama claims it is, we should have half a million soldiers in Afghanistan now and we should sweep all the way through Pakistan if we need to.
But no, the real issue in the Pushtun area is chaos plus nationalism, which means that the real issues in Afghanistan and Pakistan are governmental legitimacy and effective governance, related issues. Karzai's government was always at best a composite creature, subordinate to the warlords proximately and to the overarching dominion of the US. Karzai's government seems to be losing ground, both in terms of legitimacy and effective governance. Obama's solution seems to be more aggressive application of power - more control over the Karzai government and more soldiers and bombs.
In Pakistan, the central government seems to have gained ground, in terms of legitimacy and even governance, but most of this was despite the US, which long propped up the seemingly pliable Musharraf dictatorship. Pakistan has a distorted military strategy, however. This strategy, caused by its longrunning feud with India, involves an over concentration of forces on one border, and a kind of semi-officially open border on the other side, where Pakistan has for decades been concerned about India's apparent schemes to acquire a client state. India has been playing a dangerous game that Pakistan has had every right to fear - direct threat on one border, subversion on the other. India has its own extremists, who arguably play a more substantial role in India's politics than Pakistan's extremists play in its politics. As we have seen again and again, extremism on one side contributes to extremism on the other side, and on the vicious circle goes.
Every move made by the Taliban seems to demonstrate how little power they really have. Personally, I suspect that the current conflict between them and the Pakistani Army is mostly kabuki. I suspect the young and impressionable are being sent to die, by the Taliban, just as in the US invasion of Afghanistan, so that the attacking force can boast of its great victories. But even if it's not kabuki, then the overall strategy would appear to be a Vietnam-like strategy of winning the battles while losing the war. And this at enormous human cost- the part of the equation that almost always seems to be forgotten as soon as the news cycle changes.
So if we are facing in the AfPak region a Taliban movement that is inherently weak, that depends larger geopolitical struggles for its relevance, such as US interventions and Pakistan-India tensions (and perhaps the deeper issue of Central Asian resource wars/trade route wars?), then was massive upscaling of war in the region by Obama, attended by human suffering, the right 'imperfect solution' to the 'complex situation', or a solution at all? Was it even decent or humane?
No. I don't think so. I think it was the predictable recourse of a Pub/Dem political establishment that is obsessed with power, force, world domination, etc.. - a political establishment that has a deep distrust of human nature, if not a sneering disdain for human nature. People all over the world want peace more than anything, and we give them war and call it peace.
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