Please Send More Than Troops
PakistanPal
the ground won't matter.
BY ASHRAF GHANI
The end of Afghanistan's election last week leaves the Barack Obama
administration with a narrow window of opportunity to implement a new
strategy. While much attention has been paid to such questions as
troop levels and counterinsurgency tactics, real success will depend
on much less tangible things: personal security, economic growth, and
better governance on the ground. Only a strategy aimed at this
political progress -- as much as military gains -- has any chance of
success.
Now is the time to implement a framework for progress that focuses on
protecting civilians, institutionalizing good governance, and spurring
economic growth. It will take hard work and even tougher decisions on
the part of both the NATO troops and the Afghan government. The risks
of further engagement are grave, but there are several reasons why the
time is ripe for such a strategy to finally take root.
Opponents of the war in Afghanistan argue that the International
Security Assistance Forces' (ISAF's) mission is fundamentally flawed
because Afghans, and Pushtuns particularly, simply don't want foreign
forces on their land. This is not true. For years as finance minister,
I watched as tribal leaders came to the government to ask for more
foreign troops. What they wanted then and still want now is security,
justice, and a military operation that does not endanger civilians.
Indeed, one of the few positive outcomes of August's presidential
election has been an emerging Afghan national consensus on the need
for good governance, peace, and reconciliation. As a result, the
aspirations of the Afghan people coincide more than ever before with
the objectives of President Obama: security and development.
Both Afghans and the international community today share a better
understanding of the urgency of rule of law, justice, economic
activity, and reconciliation than they have since the start of the
war. Even the ISAF has acknowledged that good governance is a
prerequisite for peace. ISAF Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's
recent strategy report concluded that the illegal behavior of
government officials and its cronies poses as much of a threat to the
future of Afghanistan as the violent insurgency.
Internationally there are also positive signs that major global
players are taking the threat of al Qaeda more seriously, and
significant cooperation can be achieved. Saudi Arabia, China, and
Russia have said they can agree to the Saudi proposal to work together
to defeat the insurgency. As articulated by Prince Turki, that
proposal argues that it is necessary to differentiate between al Qaeda
and the Taliban. While al Qaeda should be treated as a common, global
enemy, the Taliban should be treated separately, as a more manageable
domestic challenge for Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia's position of
leadership in the Muslim world brings badly needed legitimacy to a new
counter insurgency and peace and reconciliation plan.
Perhaps most important of all, the joint action by global powers is
finally helping persuade Pakistani decision-makers to take a more pro-
active, constructive role in regional security. Already communication
and coordination has improved between Afghan President Hamid Karzai
and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zadari, as recent military
initiatives in South Waziristan have shown. Faced by a coherent front,
Afghanistan can now become an ally, not just a liability.
Economic development will of course be vital to sustaining security
gains. After narcotics have helped cripple the economy, there is a
sense abroad that Afghanistan is destined to be poor and needs to be
rescued. In reality, Afghanistan has the natural resource wealth to
sustain itself. The U.S. Geological Survey has confirmed large
deposits of iron, copper, gold, gas, and several gemstones under the
country's soil. Afghans are ready to do business with the world but
are held back by insecurity.
The failures of the last eight years, on top of a legacy of 30 years
of conflict, will pose formidable challenges to any strategy. The
Afghan public is losing confidence both in its government and in the
international community, as even ISAF has acknowledged. The former
mistrust is the result of the government cutting deals with warlords,
tolerating corruption and injustice, and failing to deliver basic
services. The latter is the result of the ineffectiveness and
corruption of foreign assistance and civilian casualties.
Despite talk of coordination and good intentions, foreign assistance,
with few exceptions, has been generally ineffective. The United
Nations' refusal to publish the results of its agencies' work has cost
it credibility. U.S. indictments of a U.N. official and U.S. military
contractors for corruption have only reinforced skepticism of foreign
motives.
Only an Afghan administration truly committed to good governance will
have any success against these challenges. The international community
should therefore help design a five-year road map of governance in
Afghanistan that lays out mechanisms for restoring the country's full
sovereignty through the building-up of strong, transparent state
institutions. Meanwhile, the Afghan government should lay out its
framework for national peace-building and cooperation with ISAF.
Rules of governance must be enforced, while limits must be imposed on
government officials and elites. Oversight of foreign aid and
extractive industries must be created to ensure accountability and
efficiency. Government credibility requires both an ability to listen
to grievances and the mechanisms for resolving them. Ordinary
civilians should be the center of gravity of the state and the
international forces.
The debate over Gen. McChrystal's proposed strategy has been reduced
to the number of troops, but the issue is more complex. Military
success will depend not simply on troop levels, but on political
victory in creating security, governance, development, and peace.
Article Source : http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/10/Please_Send_More_Than_Troops
Jack Linthicum
The question may seem to be troops to those outside that little group
in the White House Situation Room. The word leaking out is that Obama
wants Karzai to understand that the U.S. is not his private army. The
word is that Karzai will be given "benchmarks" to fulfill and meet in
six months or the U.S. will pull all but a token force out of
Afghanistan.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jD5OJBTK7ITl1TpOpfzjcttT1gnw
Jack Linthicum
U.S. envoy resists increase in troops
CONCERNS VOICED ABOUT KARZAI
Cables sent as Obama weighs deployment options
By Greg Jaffe, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington
in the past week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S.
troops to Afghanistan until President Hamid Karzai's government
demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and
mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban's rise, senior U.S.
officials said.
Karl W. Eikenberry's memos, sent as President Obama enters the final
stages of his deliberations over a new Afghanistan strategy,
illustrated both the difficulty of the decision and the deepening
divisions within the administration's national security team. After a
top-level meeting on the issue Wednesday afternoon -- Obama's eighth
since early last month -- the White House issued a statement that
appeared to reflect Eikenberry's concerns.
"The President believes that we need to make clear to the Afghan
government that our commitment is not open-ended," the statement said.
"After years of substantial investments by the American people,
governance in Afghanistan must improve in a reasonable period of
time."
On the eve of his nine-day trip to Asia, Obama was given a series of
options laid out by military planners with differing numbers of new
U.S. deployments, ranging from 10,000 to 40,000 troops. None of the
scenarios calls for scaling back the U.S. presence in Afghanistan or
delaying the dispatch of additional troops.
But Eikenberry's last-minute interventions have highlighted the
nagging undercurrent of the policy discussion: the U.S. dependence on
a partnership with a Karzai government whose incompetence and
corruption is a universal concern within the administration. After
months of political upheaval, in the wake of widespread fraud during
the August presidential election, Karzai was installed last week for a
second five-year term.
In addition to placing the Karzai problem prominently on the table,
the cables from Eikenberry, a retired three-star general who in
2006-2007 commanded U.S. troops in Afghanistan, have rankled his
former colleagues in the Pentagon -- as well as Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal, defense officials said. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO
commander in Afghanistan, has stated that without the deployment of an
additional tens of thousands of troops within the next year, the
mission there "will likely result in failure."
Eikenberry retired from the military in April as a senior general in
NATO and was sworn in as ambassador the next day. His position as a
former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is likely to give added
weight to his concerns about sending more troops and fan growing
doubts about U.S. prospects in Afghanistan among an increasingly
pessimistic public and polarized Congress.
Although Eikenberry's extensive military experience and previous
command in Afghanistan were the key reasons Obama chose him for the
top diplomatic job there, the former general had been reluctant as
ambassador to weigh in on military issues. Some officials who favor an
increase in troops said they were surprised by the last-minute nature
of his strongly worded cables.
In these and other communications with Washington, Eikenberry has
expressed deep reservations about Karzai's erratic behavior and
corruption within his government, said U.S. officials familiar with
the cables. Since Karzai was officially declared reelected last week,
U.S. diplomats have seen little sign that the Afghan president plans
to address the problems they have raised repeatedly with him.
U.S. officials were particularly irritated by a interview this week in
which a defiant Karzai said that the West has little interest in
Afghanistan and that its troops are there only for self-serving
reasons.
"The West is not here primarily for the sake of Afghanistan," Karzai
told PBS's "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" program. "It is here to
fight terrorism. The United States and its allies came to Afghanistan
after September 11. Afghanistan was troubled like hell before that,
too. Nobody bothered about us."
Karzai expressed indifference when asked about the withdrawal of most
of the hundreds of U.N. employees from Afghanistan after a bombing
late last month in Kabul. The blast killed five foreign U.N.
officials.
"They may or may not return," he said. "I don't think Afghanistan will
notice it."
Eikenberry also has expressed frustration with the relative paucity of
funds set aside for spending on development and reconstruction this
year in Afghanistan, a country wrecked by three decades of war.
Earlier this summer, he asked for $2.5 billion in nonmilitary spending
for 2010, a 60 percent increase over what Obama had requested from
Congress, but the request has languished even as the administration
has debated spending billions of dollars on new troops.
The ambassador also has worried that sending tens of thousands of
additional American troops would increase the Afghan government's
dependence on U.S. support at a time when its own security forces
should be taking on more responsibility for fighting. Before serving
as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Eikenberry was in
charge of the Afghan army training program.
Each of the four options that were presented to Obama on Wednesday
were accompanied by troop figures and the estimated annual costs of
the additional deployments, roughly calculated as $1 billion per
thousand troops. All would draw the United States deeper into the war
at a time of economic hardship and rising fiscal concerns at home.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert
M. Gates have backed a major increase in U.S. forces to drive the
Taliban from populated areas and provide Afghan security forces and
the government the space to snuff out corruption and undertake
development projects. They have argued that only a large-scale
counterinsurgency effort can produce a strong Afghan government
capable of preventing the country from once again become an al-Qaeda
haven.
Those views have been balanced in internal deliberations by the hard
skepticism of other Obama advisers, led by Vice President Biden. They
have argued for a more narrow counterterrorism strategy that would not
significantly expand the U.S. combat presence.
The most ambitious option Obama received Wednesday calls for 40,000
additional U.S. troops, as outlined by McChrystal in his stark
assessment of the war filed in late August.
Military planners put the additional annual cost of McChrystal's
recommendation at $33 billion, although White House officials say the
number is probably closer to $50 billion. The extra troops would allow
U.S. forces to attempt to take back and hold several Taliban havens in
the southern and eastern regions of Afghanistan.
One compromise option put forward by the Pentagon, with the backing of
Gates, would deploy an additional 30,000 to 35,000 U.S. troops --
fewer than McChrystal's optimal number to carry out his strategy --
and rely on NATO allies to make up the 5,000- to 10,000-troop
difference. The third option, known by military planners as "the
hybrid," would send 20,000 additional U.S. troops to shore up security
in 10 to 12 major population areas. In the rest of the country, the
military would adopt a counterterrorism strategy targeting forces
allied with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, primarily in the north and east,
with fighter jets, Predator drones and Special Operations troops that
leave a light U.S. footprint on the ground. The military puts the
annual cost of that option at $22 billion.
The most modest option calls for deploying an additional 10,000 to
15,000 troops. While under consideration at the White House, the
proposal holds little merit for military planners because, after
building bases to accommodate 10,000 or so additional soldiers and
Marines, the marginal cost of adding troops beyond that figure would
rise only slightly.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111118432_pf.html
Ray O'Hara
"Jack Linthicum" <jackli...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:78bb44c1-f4f0-42a4...@e20g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
On Nov 12, 6:57 am, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net>
U.S. envoy resists increase in troops
CONCERNS VOICED ABOUT KARZAI
Cables sent as Obama weighs deployment options
=========================================================================
When the Chimpenfurer/Cheney Cabal decided to ignore Af-stan in favor of the
Iraq war we lost in Af-stan. anything we hoped to achieve was out the
window.
we can't change the place, we aren't going to catch Bin Laden. best just to
pull out. and let them go back to their eons old feuds.
Jack Linthicum
> "Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
Defense Sec. Gates 'Appalled' By Leaks On Afghanistan And Threatens
Firings
Christina Bellantoni | November 12, 2009, 3:11PM
:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has threatened to fire Pentagon
employees who are leaking details of President Obama's deliberations
on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan.
Gates addressed the leaks today in a press briefing while flying to
Wisconsin, according to an article in the Pentagon's own American
Forces Press Service.
"I am appalled by the amount of leaking that has been going on," he
said.
From the article:
Gates said he has little doubt that some of those leaks have come
from within the Defense Department. "If I found out who" was involved,
he said, "it would probably be a career ender."
The official line from the White House and Pentagon is that Obama
remains undecided on how many troops to send.
He also condemned leaks on the Ft. Hood shootings, saying: "Everybody
out there with their own little piece of the action" doesn't
understand how it fits into the big picture.
"Everybody out there ought to just shut up."
Ray O'Hara
From the article:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He should relive the ranking officer .
Then make it clear to his replacement the same fate awaits him.
and speaking of leaks how about the Republican Pete Hoekstra spilling the
beans about the CIA reading the 9/11 cleric's e-mails.
Hoekstra has also in the past accused the CIA of lying to him and then he
led the attack on Nancy Pelosi when she said the CIA lied to her.
what a piece of..er...work
David E. Powell
>
> He should relive the ranking officer .
> Then make it clear to his replacement the same fate awaits him.
>
> and speaking of leaks how about the Republican Pete Hoekstra spilling the
> beans about the CIA reading the 9/11 cleric's e-mails.
>
> Hoekstra has also in the past accused the CIA of lying to him and then he
> led the attack on Nancy Pelosi when she said the CIA lied to her.
>
> what a piece of..er...work
So, you think it was wrong to read the emails of a guy connected to
the 9/11 attacks?
It seems to me if they hadn't been so concerned about such things they
may have prevented the Ft. Hood attack, given the communications this
shooter was having.
Jack Linthicum
wrote:
More to the point it is better to leave the question of what is being
read open. Sooner or later Hoekstra would have come up with something
that revealed an access the al Q never suspected was being watched.
Ray O'Hara
=========================================================================
the CIA always claims that having to give info to Congressmen causes leaks.
and here we have their fears confirmed.