Losing Afghanistan (Reduxed Again)
Posted by StormWarning on 31 Jan 2008 at 09:12 pm | Tagged as: Afghanistan, Commentary, Current Affairs
Anyone who has spent time reading my ramblings already knows that I have maintained a dismal outlook for Afghanistan’s future. The Afghanistan Study Group’s Report paints a bleak picture of the downward slope. Afghanistan risks sliding into a failed state and becoming the “forgotten war” because of deteriorating international support and a growing violent insurgency. The assessment, co-chaired by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones and former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, serves as a warning to the Bush administration at a time military and congressional officials are debating how best to juggle stretched warfighting resources.
The Study Group proposes to establish an Eminent Persons Group to develop a long-term, coherent international strategy for Afghanistan and a strategic communications plan to garner strong public support for that strategy.
Within the U.S., the Study Group calls for decoupling Iraq and Afghanistan…Decoupling these two conflicts likely will improve the overall U.S. approach to fighting global terrorism…tying together Afghanistan and Iraq also creates the false impression that they consist of the same mission, while in reality the challenges in these countries differ significantly from one another…
Others, including people involved in writing the report, and those in the State Department and at the “expert” websites will analyze and parse this report. Rather than spend time spent better elsewhere (and given the extreme workload that I face), I leave you all with the following observations and reflections. If you don’t spend the time to review and read, then arguing over one candidate or another is meaningless…the World around us will not change just because one candidate wins in November. We’d all better hope and pray that whoever leads this Nation in the next decade realizes how precipitously it is perched on the edge…not just the U.S., but its interests…and especially, its most important priority, in my opinion of course, the Global War on Terrorism, and defeating the enemy that President Bush refused to name just the other night in his State of the Union Address.
As I wrote in my post on 2008 Predictions:
I believe that “we” have miserably missed the mark in understanding the cultural backdrop in which our military now fights this War on Terrorism. This is shown in the way in which Pakistan and Afganistan have devolved as the Taliban/al Qaeda have become reinvigorated. The Bhutto assassintation and the recently announced delays in the January elections all lead to continuing and potentially broadening unrest and violence. The possibility of al Qaeda or the Taliban (or some other clone of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement) gaining control in Pakistan, and its nuclear stores, offers enough of a nightmare scenario for anyone…our next President will be dealing with this one for years. Further, despite “patriotic” arguments to the contrary, I do not believe that we can superimpose democratic ideals upon an unwilling populace or on a society in which the very concepts of freedom (as defined by Western culture) are foreign, without great stress and a high degree of risk.
In Afghanistan, I still see Karzai losing control (if not his life) as the warlords re-exert their influence. Karzai’s willingness to appease the Taliban (as did Musharraf) can only lead to problems for the U.S. Added January 6 - If you want an example of where Karzai’s future is dimming, its important to place the recent announcement that Afghan Clerics Warn Karzai Against Missionaries as an indicator.
Afghanistan’s Islamic council has told President Hamid Karzai to stop foreign aid groups from converting local people to Christianity and has demanded the reintroduction of public executions…The council said it was concerned about the activities of some “missionary and atheistic” groups, saying that the actions were “against Islamic Shariah, the Constitution, and political stability,” according to a copy of the statement. “If not prevented, God forbid, catastrophe will emerge, which will not only destabilize the country, but the region and the world.”
I see the pressures mounting on Karzai from a number of different directions.
If you choose to go further:
White House - “Limited Progress” in Deteriorating Afghan War
Posted by StormWarning on 25 Nov 2007 at 07:57 am
Posted by StormWarning on 23 Nov 2007
Oct 5 2007: Looking at Six Years in Afghanistan
Jan 27, 2007: Facing Reality in Afghanistan
Dec 15, 2006: Afghanistan & the Taliban: The “Rule Book” (Layeha)
Dec 4, 2006: Afghanistan - Counterpoints
Nov 29, 2006: Losing Afghanistan - The Taliban’s Re-Emergence
Mar 3, 2006: Afghanistan - Unraveling?
Other posts:
Afghanistan - Winning and Losing
Post Taliban Afghanistan – The New Parliament
Afghanistan: CENTCOM, NATO and Narcotics
Terrorist Resurrection
Tribal Unrest in Pashtunistan Poppies and Afghanistan
Post Taliban Afghanistan – The New Parliament
Afghanistan - Winning and Losing
I apologize for being repetitive. But frankly its a bit tedious to continue analyzing a situation like this, and yet to fail on so many levels. Does it sound like I am frustrated? Sure thing!
Vote once and vote often…seems like its the “thing” to do.
Department of State, Karzai, Winning and Losing
So what’s the solution? Do we withdraw and keep the cruise missiles cooling their bays, ready to fire at a moment’s notice? Or do we turn on a surge, etc?
The solution is for people more directly involved in the issues that I am. From my perspective, a series of things need to be done:
1) as recommended by the Study Group, delink Iraq and Afghanistan (one of my earlier posts somewhere discusses a paper written by a Prof. at the Army War College in Carlyle Pa. basically saying that the invasion of Iraq was a strategic distraction). Even if the strategy aspect is wrong, the quesiton of diverted resources is on target.
2) Hopefully be able to define the problem in Afghanistan. That starts as it usually does, is providing food and income for the people, all the way down to the Afghan equiv. of a sharecropper. Until poppies are no longer the only cash crop, there will be a problem.
3) chances are that Afghanistan is an easier target for naiton building than Iraq…send in teams of people (professionals from the State Dept. for example) to help them understand how gov’t works.
4) deal with the warlords (might not be possible)
5) I dunno