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Richard :munchin
U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Calls for New Strategy
AP, 31 Aug 2009
The commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan said Monday in an assessment of the war that a new strategy was needed to fight the Taliban, while NATO officials disclosed he is expected to separately request more troops.
Increasing U.S. forces is a hot-button issue that could ignite furious debate in Washington on the U.S. military's future in an increasingly unpopular war. Some Democratic senators have increased calls for a timeline to draw down troops.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal sent his strategic review of the Afghan war to the Pentagon and NATO headquarters on Monday. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered the 60-day review to size up the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan as Taliban attacks rise and U.S. deaths spiral upward.
''The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort,'' McChrystal said in a statement Monday.
A NATO statement said McChrystal's assessment seeks to implement President Barack Obama's strategy ''to reduce the capability and will'' of insurgents and extremists, including al-Qaida, and support the growth and development of Afghan security forces and Afghan governance.
McChrystal did not ask for more troops but is expected to do so in a separate request, two NATO officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
The U.S. already has some 62,000 troops in Afghanistan -- a record number -- and will have 68,000 by the end of the year. In total there are more than 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops in the country.
The deaths of two U.S. forces Monday in the south -- the country's most violent region -- underscored the spiraling violence those troops face. The deaths brought to 47 the number of U.S. forces killed in Afghanistan in August -- the deadliest month of the almost-eight year war for American troops.
Thousands of U.S. forces moved into the Afghan south this summer after Obama ordered 21,000 more troops to the country this year, forces who helped protect the country's Aug. 20 presidential election. McChrystal, who took over command in Afghanistan on June 15, delayed the release of the review so that it would not interfere with the vote.
New vote tallies released Monday showed President Hamid Karzai with a strong lead over top challenger Abdullah Abdullah. Karzai had 45.8 percent of votes counted, while Abdullah had 33.2 percent. Ballots have been counted from almost half of the country's voting stations, meaning results could still change dramatically. Karzai will need 50 percent of the votes to avoid a two-man runoff.
Hundreds of allegations of fraud and voter intimidation threaten to mar the election, and female turnout was low. Voters who cast ballots faced retaliatory attacks from militants who told Afghans not to vote. Results are not expected to be finalized until mid- or late September, after officials work through the fraud allegations.
In an example of the extreme threats that voters faced, an Afghan man said Monday that Taliban militants cut off his nose and both ears as he tried to vote.
''I was on my way to a polling station when Taliban stopped me and searched me. They found my voter registration card,'' Lal Mohammad said from a hospital bed in Kabul. He said they cut off his nose and ears before beating him unconscious with a weapon.
''I regret that I went to vote,'' Mohammad said, crying and trying to hide his disfigured face. ''What is the benefit of voting to me?''
The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan hinges on increasing the number of Afghan soldiers and police so U.S. forces can one day withdraw. Some 134,000 Afghan troops are to be trained by late 2011, but U.S. officials say that number will need to be greatly increased, an expansion that will be paid for by U.S. funds.
Afghanistan has long been seen as the ''good'' war by many in the United States, especially in comparison with U.S. efforts in Iraq, where U.S. troops are now drawing down. But some Democratic senators are beginning to question whether U.S. goals in Afghanistan are achievable, and when U.S. troops will be brought home.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/31/world/AP-AS-Afghanistan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
From Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, the longtime director general of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service, the Al Mukhabarat Al Aamah, and former Saudi ambassador to the United States.
Work with Karzai, stop calling the Taliban 'terrorists,' weigh in on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, convene a security meeting on Al Qaeda, focus on Kashmir, make sure to target terrorists in Afghanistan, and take on the heroin trade.
And so it goes...;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Seven Steps To A Secure Afghanistan
Prince Turki al-Faisal, CSM, 13 Oct 2009
As President Obama considers what to do about Afghanistan, it is important that he hear perspectives from all sides concerned about that critical region.
In Riyadh, it is clear that the Taliban are not becoming more popular in Afghanistan, as some have claimed. Their record in government is well remembered by Afghans who, including large numbers of the Pashtun, suffered greatly at the hands of Mullah Omar's Taliban cohorts.
Nor are the Taliban a cohesive or uniform political party, with a chain of command and a political manifesto. Rather, any disaffected, rebellious, or aggrieved Afghan who overtly opposes the government by military means and otherwise has come to be identified as Taliban.
Nor is merely disabling Osama bin Laden enough, as some suggest. He has become not only the symbol of opposition to the world order, in general, and the US, in particular, but he is looked upon by disaffected youth – and not just Muslims – as the indomitable, untouchable, and indestructible Robin Hood. Even if he did not organize and execute terrorist acts, the fact that he survives, every day, reinforces that appeal and adds to his charisma. Bringing him to account is a necessity, not a choice, whether by capture or by death.
What should Mr. Obama and the US do?
First, overcome the misguided handling of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was initially shunned and denigrated by the administration, forcing him to reach out to unsavory politicos and "warlords" in order to win the recent elections. If there were a viable opposition to him, then you could undermine him. But there is not.
Abdullah Abdullah, President Karzai's main opponent in the election, is a Tajik, and in Afghan terms will not be accepted to lead the country by either the Pashtuns or the Uzbeks, the two largest components of Afghanistan's tribal structure.
Mr. Abdullah's "westerly ways" further undermined his credibility among nationalists. Once the commission investigating the election fraud declares its conclusions, the US should move on and concentrate on setting benchmarks for Karzai, especially on development projects.
Second, change the media theme from attacking the Taliban and calling them terrorists to concentrating on Al Qaeda and "foreign terrorists." By removing the stigma of terrorism from the Taliban, you can pursue meaningful negotiations with them. Mullah Omar has never enjoyed the full support of the Pashtuns. He is a lowly figure, in tribal terms, and he is blamed by many of them for the calamity that has befallen Afghanistan. Reaching out to the tribal leaders is what will move negotiations.
Third, fix the Durand Line. As long as this border drawn by the British is not fixed, Pakistan and Afghanistan will be at loggerheads, with suspicion between them being the rule. That is why Pakistan, in 1995, created the Taliban, because they wanted the Afghan Pashtuns to be on their side.
A joint development project for the border area, announced by both Pakistan and Afghanistan and supported by the US and the world community, will direct people's eyes to the future, rather than the past.
Fourth, convene a meeting of the security-intelligence departments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia to devise ways of eliminating Al Qaeda's leadership. China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have a longstanding vendetta against Al Qaeda and will contribute intelligence and other resources to rid the world of this pestilence.
Fifth, push India and Pakistan to fix Kashmir. That is doable, once both countries see a determined effort by the US in that direction. Both countries are beholden to the US: Pakistan for the military and financial support it receives and India for the atomic energy agreement it has signed with the US. Saudi Arabia can play a supporting role because of the good relations it has with both and its standing in the Muslim world.
Sixth, having deployed extra military forces on the ground, make the terrorists their target, not the people. While Predators (drone aircraft) have killed a few terrorists, they have killed too many innocent civilians. Making sure that the intelligence is right is an imperative.
Seventh, take on the heroin trade. It is a challenge that can be met by a program that America used in the 1960s in Turkey, where heroin was extensively grown and processed. The US bought the entire crop from the farmers directly and allowed them to plant alternative crops for their livelihood. There is no more heroin trade in Turkey.
Resolution, reflection, and determination are the key characteristics of Obama's personality. He should stick with them. As in all difficult issues, when people see these qualities on display, most of them will be persuaded to follow.
When the Pashtuns, among whom Mr. bin Laden hides, see the determination to get him, they will calculate differently from when they see that nobody cares. When Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari see resolution in Obama's demands for benchmarks and for settling the border dispute between their countries, they will adhere.
When India and Pakistan feel the strength of the American push on Kashmir, they will come along.
When Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia sense a seriousness of purpose on eliminating the Al Qaeda leadership, they will gladly provide whatever support they can.
When the US's financial commitments on development are met, the people of Afghanistan will regain their confidence in America's word.
Mr. Obama, when your advisers or your interlocutors tell you that you can't do this or that, just say to them: "Yes, we can."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1013/p09s02-coop.html
The debate over sending more US troops frames a larger clash over counterinsurgency strategy as the new template for war.
Richard :munchin
Is US strategy in Afghanistan working?
Dan Murphy and Ben Arnoldy, CSM, 4 Oct 2009
Part 1 of 2
Lt. Col. Edward Stein, a US Army Ranger, had a specific task for the Afghan soldiers he was training: Do a security check in Kabul ahead of a speech by President Hamid Karzai to mark Afghan Independence Day.
Not long into their sweep, the soldiers found something ominous: three heavily armed enemy fighters holed up in a bank that was under construction. The soldiers on patrol, members of the Afghan National Army (ANA), didn't storm the building as they might have in the past and settle the problem with the snout of a rifle.
Instead, they called in civilian police to secure the area and take the plotters into custody – just the way they had been trained by Stein and his officers. "They understand they are under civil control," says Stein, who calls the ANA's restraint an important achievement for the military in a nascent democracy like Afghanistan.
Stein's small victory is one example of the counterinsurgency warfare that has taken root in Afghanistan, which puts as much emphasis on institution- building and protecting populations as it does on killing the enemy.
Almost eight years into the war, Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Iraq, now offer the purest test yet of a fighting doctrine that is rapidly sweeping the US military. While counter-insurgency methods were used by the US Army at various times throughout the 20th century, they have now become the preferred method of conducting warfare in an era of global terrorism and stateless enemies.
As wariness over the two wars mounts in the US, however, tension is building within the Obama administration over how much the US should embrace the use of counterinsurgency doctrine. Is it simply one tactic among many in the military tool box? Or should it be the central component of a grand strategy to pacify Afghanistan and guide the future development of US forces?
While President Obama has defined the mission in Afghanistan as rooting out Al Qaeda and preventing a return of the Taliban to power, a deeper debate over US strategy has surfaced with the recent leak of a confidential assessment of the situation by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man Mr. Obama hired to turn around and win the war.
"This new strategy must also be properly resourced and executed through an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign that earns the support of the Afghan people and provides them with a secure environment," McChrystal wrote, appearing to ask for more troops.
If his advice is accepted, it will underscore how much the mission in Afghanistan has shifted from the narrow focus of "get Al Qaeda" that prevailed at the start of the war to one where US soldiers and civilian aid workers are expected to reduce corruption at the local and national levels, train Afghan cops and soldiers, improve local economies, and aid in building a democratic central government.
To proponents of counterinsurgency warfare, this strategy represents the best chance the US has of achieving some sort of enduring victory in a country that has denied invaders for centuries. More than that, they see it as the archetype of how the US should fight the "long war" against terrorism around the globe.
Yet critics say the US is discovering in Afghanistan that counterinsurgency is no silver, or even lead, bullet. Many worry that the US has tilted too far toward a trendy new type of warfare that is eroding its conventional capabilities and might lead it to commit to more expensive, open-ended conflicts 40 years after Vietnam.
"I think the notion of using the Army to change entire societies ... is highly problematic," says Col. Gian Gentile, head of the military history program at the US Military Academy at West Point.
AS RECENTLY AS SEVEN years ago, counterinsurgency tactics, or COIN as it is known, was an arcane debating topic among academics, military tacticians, and the denizens of think tanks. One among the cognoscenti was John Nagl. In 1991, he was a young officer in charge of a tank platoon that helped crush Saddam Hussein's conventional forces in the Gulf War.
After the conflict, he took time off to earn his PhD in international relations at Oxford University in England, where his research took him in a direction far from the military fashion of the time: COIN. His doctoral thesis focused on the successful British counterinsurgency campaign in Malaya (now Malaysia) against a communist uprising in the 1950s and the American experience in Vietnam. He argued that the key to Britain's success was to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible and have a robust strategy to win uncommitted local populations to the British side. In Vietnam, he concluded, the US relied on firepower and "kill ratios" to the detriment of winning over locals.
The book that emerged from his thesis, "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife," was probably destined for good reviews, appreciation among specialists, and public obscurity. But when it was published in 2002, the US was confronting the trauma of Sept. 11. Two years later, as a largely Sunni Arab insurgency blossomed against US forces in Iraq (where Mr. Nagl was serving not far from Fallujah), many politicians and commanders came to believe that something different had to be done. Counterinsurgency doctrine beckoned, and Nagl was charged with helping to change the way the Army thinks about war.
Of course, the tactic of using light forces that blend among local populations to defeat insurgents is probably as old as organized warfare itself. Herodotus recorded a successful insurgency campaign the Scythians waged against Darius of Persia 450 years before the birth of Christ, and insurgents harassed the British Empire on its fringes for centuries. The US Marines carried out counterinsurgency campaigns in a number of contexts in the last half of the 19th century. The hard lessons they learned in places like the Philippines, China, and Haiti were compiled in the "Small Wars Manual" in 1935. And while there was much talk of "kill ratios" in Vietnam, the US also applied – however unevenly – counterinsurgency tactics there.
But by and large since World War II, the US military has been designed to win conventional wars. America's loss in Vietnam spawned the Powell Doctrine – bringing absolute military force to bear on enemies to achieve narrowly defined objectives. This thinking led to successfully repelling Mr. Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and the choice to declare victory with the "butcher of Baghdad" still in power.
But later, after the US overthrew the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, it discovered that accomplishing specific objectives – removing Hussein and the Taliban – did not necessarily lead to achieving broader ones of winning over local populations and ensuring that enemies wouldn't return. COIN gathered momentum.
"We did not adapt quickly for the first 15 years of the post-cold-war world," says Nagl, who now heads the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank in Washington. "But driven by some of the mistakes we made in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact of change became inescapable."
In 2006, the military wrote a new counterinsurgency field manual, and Nagl was a lead author. The central lessons of the manual, as Nagl put it in a piece he co-wrote in Foreign Policy magazine in February, are "simple, but radical: Focus on protecting civilians over killing the enemy. Assume greater risk. Use minimum, not maximum, force."
Others were even more expansive in their vision of the future of war. Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, who guides the development of Army doctrine as the commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., put it this way in an article he co-wrote in Military Review last summer.
"The future is not one of major battles and engagements fought by armies on battlefields devoid of population; instead, the course of conflict will be decided by forces operating among the people of the world," he wrote. "Here, the margin of victory will be measured in far different terms than the wars of our past. The allegiance, trust, and confidence of populations will be the final arbiters of success."
That shift in focus may rankle some officers, but it is hardly radical today. On Aug. 26, McChrystal, head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO command for US and allied efforts in Afghanistan, issued a six-page memo on counterinsurgency guidance that showed how much he's committed to the new way of war. Its first two sentences: "ISAF's mission is to help the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan defeat the insurgency threatening their country. Protecting the Afghan people is the mission."
Nowhere in McChrystal's memo did the words "Al Qaeda" appear. The definition of what it means to defeat Al Qaeda had expanded – from disrupting, capturing, or killing its operatives to creating conditions that wouldn't allow their return.
(cont'd)
Is US strategy in Afghanistan working?
Dan Murphy and Ben Arnoldy, CSM, 4 Oct 2009
Part 2 of 2
HOW WELL COIN IS WORKING on the ground remains the subject of fierce debate. In Iraq, the US is on schedule to end its combat presence there by the end of 2011, and the war has gone much better in the past two years than it did in the first four, at least in part due to the tactics favored by men like Nagl. The common narrative is that the surge – counterinsurgency strategy plus additional troops – helped turn the situation around.
But experts such as Gentile believe any progress was due more to a new US willingness to pay off Sunni insurgents. "I think we have a wrongheaded view of how the surge worked in Iraq," he says.
Nor does the endgame in Iraq now look much like what was promised at the beginning of the war – to transform Iraqi society and, by example, the Middle East. In interviews and conversations with numerous commanders over the past year, it's clear the goal posts have moved much closer in. US expectations now include keeping violence down to a level that Iraq security forces can handle and that doesn't threaten the viability of the central government. "Victory now is a stable, somewhat democratic Iraqi government – whatever this turns out to be," says Col. Pete Newell, who has served through all phases of the Iraq war. "Democratic is a very loose term – as democratic as you can be in this part of the world."
In 2004, Newell, who commands the 1st Armored Division's 4th Brigade, a prototype for the advisory and assistance forces the US intends to keep in Iraq after the withdrawal of combat troops, was focused on killing and disrupting Al Qaeda and their allies. Now he spends his time fostering relationships with Iraqi Army and police commanders.
"I think we have a much more realistic view than we did years ago," says Newell. "But the question is, did we do a poor job of managing expectations? Now, for me and for a lot of the soldiers who have invested two or three years of their lives in this, [victory means] being able to walk out of the country knowing there is a viable security force and a government that is reasonably functioning."
Afghanistan will provide a much fuller and more difficult test of COIN. To be sure, the success of any strategy may hinge as much on the size of the force in the country as its tactics. McChrystal has recommended sending in more troops – some experts have predicted as many as 15,000 could be added to the 68,000 already there by next spring – or risk "failure." But the Obama administration is reported to be reevaluating whether it wants to narrow the mission – away from protecting the Afghan population and rebuilding the government and more toward thwarting Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
On the ground, some commanders such as Stein, the officer training Afghan troops, see definite gains being made. He urges patience from politicians and increasingly restive civilians in the US.
"Wars are a lot like football games: You can have a game very close up through half time [that] ends up being a blowout," he says. "You don't know what the point in the game is going to be where you know that, but you know it's going to happen."
Yet even some officers like Stein are unsure what more US forces can do, since the end state the US seems to be after involves governance. "I don't think the majority of what's left is in the Afghan military's purview," says Stein. "I think what's left to do mainly falls into the areas of the civilian leadership."
Others believe the US counterinsurgency strategy remains the right approach, but believe it's being carried out poorly. "US troops are not integrated in with the community," says Tim Lynch, a retired marine with 22 years of service who is now a private security and development contractor based in the Afghan city of Jalalabad. "If you aren't living in the community you can't protect them. That's what the Taliban do. That's how they send their night letters – they live there."
Some critics, however, wonder if the US military is going too far with its emphasis on COIN. Gentile, for one, doesn't have a problem with soldiers being schooled in such tactics. He just worries about soldiers learning too much Pashto at the expense of how to fire artillery accurately.
As the center of gravity has shifted to counterinsurgency, he believes a "serious degree of atrophy" has set in at senior Army levels. He thinks the same thing happened to the Israelis in their disastrous war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006: their skills at "combined arms" – blending infantry, tanks, and artillery – had eroded because they had spent so much time carrying out counterinsurgency operations in the Palestinian territories.
IF IT IS AN AXIOM THAT THE WARS of the present prepare us for and determine the wars we fight in the future, then the conflict that is winding down in Iraq and our current open-ended military effort in Afghanistan will have a profound effect on the next generation of strategic thinkers. That's one reason the political and philosophical debate going on over COIN now is so important.
No one is suggesting the US is, or should be, adopting COIN at the expense of conventional warfare. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters earlier this year: "I think what people have lost sight of is [that] I'm not trying to have irregular capabilities take the place of the conventional capabilities. I'm just trying to get the irregular guys to have a seat at the table."
Even Nagl rejects the notion that the future will be an all-COIN-operated world. "We have to maintain the ability to deter and, if necessary, defeat adversaries in conventional combat, tank on tank, ship on ship, and plane on plane warfare," he says. "But that's not the only thing we're going to be asked to do. The key thing is to find the right balance, to maintain a deterrent and a fighting force ... while building the capabilities we need to succeed in the much more likely irregular wars."
He and others believe that 9/11 was as much a failure of foresight as it was of airport security. They argue the right mix of civilian and military expertise, coupled with a willingness to use it, could make future large-scale interventions unnecessary.
"I think it's important to point out that we didn't start the war in Afghanistan, and I think that's an important lesson: We may not be interested in war but war may be interested in us," he says. "I hope that we will not have to intervene in a big way as we did after the September 11 attacks by working to avoid the instability that allowed Al Qaeda to find a home base in Afghanistan. With what the military calls phase zero, or shaping operations, small groups of American advisers [can] help our friends increase their stability."
Yet when critics hear too much talk of winning over populations and reshaping societies, they get visions of the military turning into a global nanny. Col. Andrew Bacevich (ret.), a professor of international relations at Boston University, is among those who believe that America's emerging view of war is potentially dangerous to US interests. Bacevich notes that he was the "only Afghanistan skeptic" to speak at a CNAS conference held in June. He was particularly struck by the extent to which the belief that American power should be used to change foreign societies had taken root.
"It was at that CNAS meeting that I heard Nagl ... describe that we are in a global counterinsurgency campaign. My head snapped back," says Bacevich. "If counterinsurgency implies that we have to secure the people, that implies not only protecting them but providing them economic development, creating the institutions of good governance and the elimination of corruption, and that seems to imply that we have to do this everywhere. The phrase 'protecting the people' contains enormous ambitions."
He argues that if the US public and military become convinced that the way to defeat Al Qaeda means creating societies where they can't operate at all, the US may have to engage in warfare of one kind or another for decades. "If we win in Afghanistan and we deny the jihadists Afghanistan as a sanctuary, is it then that we have to deny them Somalia, then move on to Yemen?" he asks. "I'm a Vietnam-era guy and the big lesson of Vietnam was never again would the military allow itself to be dragged into this kind of open-ended conflict," he says. "Fast-forward 40 years ... and it seems likely."
Others concur that the US may be putting the cart before the cannon. Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass., notes that how America fights future wars isn't the question. First it has to decide whether it should be fighting them at all. He says that having spent about $1 trillion in Iraq already and about $60 billion a year in Afghanistan, America needs to do a "rigorous cost-benefit analysis."
"Is it really worth doing all this to stop the kinds of things jihadis might be able to accomplish?" he asks. "Even if Al Qaeda could pull off a 9/11 every 10 years, which I think is asking a lot of them, it's not obvious to me that committing the United States to a 10-, 20-, 30-year campaign to remake the politics of South Asia makes sense."
In other words, the war of words over war will continue.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1004/p06s10-usmi.html
Warrior-Mentor
10-14-2009, 07:52
Washington Post
October 14, 2009
Pg. 22
The Taliban Threat
By Editorial
DURING THE past 10 days, Pakistan's conflict with the Taliban movement has escalated toward full-scale war -- and the extreme Islamist movement has mostly held the initiative. On Tuesday, government warplanes bombed targets in the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan in what may be the prelude to a major army offensive there. Over the previous eight days, however, the Taliban carried out four major attacks that demonstrated both its growing power and its ambitions. One, against Pakistan's army headquarters, was staged with the help of a terrorist organization from the country's ethnic Punjabi heartland. That alliance underlines the fact that the Taliban no longer aims merely at controlling the ethnic Pashtun areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan but at gaining control over a nuclear-armed state.
All of this is bad news for the United States, which has a vital national interest in preventing an extremist takeover in Pakistan and the destabilization of the region stretching from Afghanistan to India. So it's curious that spokesmen for the Obama administration continue to talk down the Taliban threat and to describe it as unequal to that posed by al-Qaeda. "I think the Taliban are, obviously, exceedingly bad people that have done awful things," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said last week. "Their capability is somewhat different, [from al Qaeda] though, on that continuum of transnational threats."
That analysis -- which is being used by many who oppose sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan -- made some sense in the first years after Sept. 11, 2001. Now it is badly out of date. Al-Qaeda, though still dangerous, has suffered serious reverses in the past several years, while the Taliban has gone from struggling for survival to aiming for control over both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Though it is not known to be planning attacks against the continental United States, success by the movement in toppling the government of either country would be a catastrophe for the interests of the United States and major allies such as India.
For years the United States has been trying to persuade Pakistan to fully confront the threat of the Taliban, even as its government and army dithered and wavered. Now that the army at last appears prepared to strike at the heart of the movement in Waziristan, the Obama administration is wavering -- and considering a strategy that would give up the U.S. attempt to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Adopting such a strategy would condemn American soldiers to fighting and dying without the chance of winning. But it would also cripple Pakistan's fight against the jihadists. With the pressure off in Afghanistan, Taliban forces would have a refuge from offensives by Pakistani forces. And those in the Pakistani army and intelligence services who favor striking deals or even alliances with the extremists could once again gain ascendancy. After all, if the United States gives up trying to defeat the Taliban, can it really expect that Pakistan will go on fighting?
And so it goes...
Richard
U.S. Lacks Enough Troops For 'low-risk' Afghan Option
Nancy A. Youssef and Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy, 15 Oct 2009
The U.S. military can send only about 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan in the next three months without putting excessive strains on the Army and Marine Corps , but the top Afghanistan commander has said he needs more than twice that number to have the best chance of success, military and administration officials told McClatchy .
Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal has said that even if it sent 30,000 additional troops, the U.S. would risk failure in Afghanistan under the current strategy. His resourcing plan offers President Barack Obama three options based on the estimated risk, said two U.S. military officials, who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly and because the proposal remains classified.
The low risk option, which McChrystal has said offers the best chance to contain the Taliban -led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan , calls for 80,000 additional U.S. troops, while his medium risk option puts the number at 40,000 to 45,000, the officials said.
"This is a fully resourced COIN (counter-insurgency) strategy with the low-risk option," one official said. The current Army counterinsurgency manual, however, estimates that an all-out COIN campaign in a country with Afghanistan's population would require about 600,000 troops.
Some 20,000 additional forces would be deployed under McChrystal's high-risk option, but that would mean the greatest risk of failure, the same official said. There now are 67,000 U.S. troops and 52,000 coalition forces in Afghanistan .
White House officials have leaked word that McChrystal's maximum option calls for 60,000 to 80,000 or more troops, but that many aren't available in the near future.
According to Army readiness figures, four lighter brigades needed for Afghanistan's rough terrain -- three from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. , and one from the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. -- will be ready by December. A fifth brigade, also from the 101st Airborne, could deploy by March. Those would total roughly 25,000 troops who'd be accompanied by several thousand support troops.
Marine Corps Commandant James T. Conway has said the Marines could deploy no more than 18,000 troops in Afghanistan , where 10,600 Marines already are serving. Marine officials said an additional 7,400 Marines could be available in three months.
The Army and Marines could deploy that many more troops to Afghanistan without extending tours of duty or reducing time at home between tours, which could further strain the forces. Indeed, the Army , led by Gen. Peter Chiarelli , the vice chief of staff of the Army , has said that extending tours to 15 months, as the military did during the 2007 surge in Iraq , could break the forces.
Army soldiers serve now one year of combat and get a minimum of one year off. Marines serve seven-month deployments and get at least 14 months off.
In addition, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates could order airmen, seamen and members of National Guard and Reserves, but military officials said that wouldn't substantially boost the total number of troops available.
Military readiness figures are fluid, and today's numbers are a snapshot of what the military could deploy. If the military accelerated the drawdown in Iraq , which would present serious logistical hurdles, the number of troops available for Afghanistan could rise, for example.
A change in strategy also could alter the size and type of forces needed. The Obama administration could ask for more trainers and fewer combat troops to build up the Afghan National Army , which currently has 95,000 troops.
Afghanistan also could demand more U.S. troops, however. Many coalition countries, including Britain , Germany and Italy , are facing mounting domestic pressure to leave Afghanistan . Earlier this week, however, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown authorized an additional 500 troops to reinforce the roughly 9,000 British forces serving there.
The Obama administration is reviewing its Afghanistan strategy as violence against U.S., coalition and Afghan forces are at their highest levels of the war, which entered it ninth year earlier this month.
"McChrystal has already said that the status quo cannot be sustained," the U.S. military official pointed out, referring to a separate assessment written by the U.S. commander that described the situation in Afghanistan as "dire." It was delivered to Obama last month.
In that assessment, McChrystal argued for more resources.
"Our campaign in Afghanistan has been historically under-resourced and remains so today. Almost every aspect of our collective effort and associated resourcing has lagged behind a growing insurgency," he wrote. "Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/3334293;_ylt=AtS0P1VRx_yZBqclbyr3fJe7e8UF;_ylu=X3o DMTJoaDVsaWR2BGFzc2V0A21jY2xhdGNoeS8yMDA5MTAxNS8zM zM0MjkzBGNwb3MDMgRwb3MDMgRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXM Ec2xrA3VzbGFja3Nlbm91Zw--
The new strategy may be complicated by economics.
It seems that Kabul Bank is in trouble. A 2:43 video discusses the present bank run along with official denials and some implications.
LINK (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN7uEiekeDE&feature=player_embedded)
Thank God their auto industry and real estate markets are still intact though. I'm sure China will buy their Afghanis.