General Stanley McChrystal reportedly indicated that he might
have to request up to 20,000 additional troops for Afghanistan.
The initial White House reaction was to send national security
adviser Gen. Jim Jones to Kabul to make sure McChrystal would do
no such thing.
Apparently contrary orders from Defense Secretary Gates and the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, were given to
the hard-charging former Spec. Ops. Commander who was encouraged
to ask for what was needed no matter the WH political reaction.
To create some insurance for whatever Gen. McChrystal’s final
recommendation might be, several think tanks were hired to send
representatives to Kabul to conduct a strategic review. The
interim results of this study were the subject of a special
meeting of all these personalities plus General David Petraeus
and the NATO Supreme Commander held at Chievres Air Base in
Belgium on August 2.
The White House focus, however, is on domestic political reaction
rather than the real problems of Afghanistan that, quite frankly,
are not going to be solved by another limited commitment of
20,000 U.S. troops. In the long history of foreign nations
contesting for power in Afghanistan — a period long and
complicated enough to have given the region the name “Graveyard
of Empires” — it hasn’t been the lack of foreign troops on the
ground that has been the problem. In the past, as now, the
ancient heterogeneous grouping of the Afghan people has
successfully resisted foreign conquest and all but the most
modest socio-cultural change.
Vast amounts of money have infiltrated the Afghan economy in
recent years through drug cultivation and trade. Nonetheless the
flow of cash into farmers’ hands ($732 million in 2008 out of a
total of $4 billion crossing the border) has provided little or
no constructive investment in local economies other than to
enrich tribal and government leaders, and provide a 10%
zagat to the Taliban. There is no shortage of money
locally, yet there have been repeated calls in Washington and
London for more aid to “reeducate and rebuild” Afghan local
economies. Apparently the people who need reeducation must reside
in those two cities and not Kabul and Kandahar.
The theme currently in vogue among strategic planners is to add
more troops to U.S./U.K. and other NATO forces so as to augment
the type of operation elsewhere currently in effect in Helmand.
Only now, in addition to seizing key areas, these foreign forces
will secure and control them. This purportedly would be
accomplished by a policy of friendly contact with the local
tribal people so as to encourage them not to assist or harbor
Taliban fighters.
If this sounds a bit too fanciful for the rugged murderous
reality that is Afghanistan, then it’s apparently not so for the
military and political strategists of the Obama and Brown
governments. No one wants to admit it in so many words, but what
is touted as a war against insurgents (Taliban) and radical
Islamic gangsters (al Qaeda) is now being paired with
nation-building. Supposedly that’s not why we are there.
In theory the plan is to take and expand control, step by step,
of areas of Afghanistan and hold them long enough for an enlarged
Afghan Army to take over. The trouble — or rather one of the
troubles — with that is while Afghans make brave and innovative
irregular warriors, they don’t make very good regular troops.
There is no modern tradition of a disciplined national army. It’s
just not part of their cultural makeup, and old rivalries still
divide them. These are not the descendants of the subcontinent
who, British-led, created the historic regiments of India. They
are the same rival Pathan (Pushtun), Tajik, and Hezira tribesmen
who fought by family and clan from mountain and valley ambush to
prevent the advance of those self-same foreign troops.
The strategy that calls for what military officials
term “top-to-bottom partnership between Afghan and NATO
security forces” is a great idea if the foreign forces represent
an imperial power with the desire and ability to remain
in-country for decades, even generations. But this isn’t the
1800s, and there is no British Raj or East India Company to pay
the bill in blood and treasure.
Blaming the Karzai regime and the corruption that has flowed from
it as the reason for U.S., British and NATO failure to destroy
the Taliban may be convenient, but false. British Foreign
Secretary David Miliband has said that the Taliban’s power base
can be dismantled (his term) by, among other things, “offering
bigger incentives to switch sides and stay out of trouble.”
Apparently his strategic plan is to teach the Afghan government
how to corrupt more efficiently.
The bottom line is to fully commit U.S./U.K. and other NATO
forces or get out of Afghanistan by phased withdrawal — except
for Special Forces anti-Taliban training cadre — and fight al
Qaeda by the only way to beat them: Uncompromising and
uninhibited covert warfare!
