With President Obama's order to inject more troops into Afghanistan, tension has risen among the ordinary Afghans in the countryside, especially in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, where most of the new troops are expected to be deployed to tackle the spreading insurgency.
With 30,000 new American troops and another 7,000 to 10,000 NATO forces the number of the foreign forces in Afghanistan will reach over 140,000, which will match the number of Soviets solders during their occupation.
These days there is a famous saying among regular Afghans -- more troops need more targets. This is true. The more solders there are, the higher the number of attacks there will be. Then more civilians will be killed by the crossfire between the coalition forces and the insurgents. In their recent air raid in Laghman province, American forces killed civilians, including women and children. This triggered a violent demonstration in Laghman the next morning. This and hundreds of similar incidents can widen the gap between the Afghan government, foreign forces and regular Afghans even more.
Besides, with the increase of troops, insurgents will double their size and with every surge and raid by the Americans, new waves of young Afghans will be pushed to the insurgency. So far this has been one of the main reasons for the spread of the insurgency. Americans say that new waves of troops will drive out the insurgents from restive areas and will pave the way for social and development projects. People here believe solders are not trained to bring security, they are trained to kill. The only thing they are good at is killing.
Moreover, American solders know little about Afghanistan. They don't know the culture and traditions and they can't get along with people. In their eyes, every Afghan who has a turban and wears a shalwar kamis is a Talib or is a part of al Qaeda. They treat Afghans like war prisoners and behave like occupiers. For example, when an American convoy passes, everybody should stop and all vehicles should move away. That is why anti-American sentiments are growing every day. During the first two or three years of the occupation only people in the countryside hated the Americans but today even in big cities people hate them and consider them not as friends but as occupiers and enemies.
Today, insurgents are active in every chunk of the country and it seems that the insurgency is growing beyond the Pashtun provinces. Until early 2008, the north was pretty safe and hardly any foreign forces' convoys were attacked. But that didn't last long because the Taliban managed to extend the insurgency to the north as well. That means that the insurgency is not confined to one part of the country -- it is all over the country. Besides, there are different groups of insurgents fighting the foreign forces. Therefore, focusing on one part of the country and sending more troops there to tackle insurgency cannot solve the problem. In order to tackle the insurgency effectively, the United States needs a couple of hundred thousand solders, which is something the US is not capable of.
Most experts believe that if Afghanistan had a military solution, the Soviets would still be ruling it. The only way to break the current deadlock is diplomacy and negotiation. Otherwise, military escalation will bring prosperity neither to Afghans nor to the people of the United States.
Asheel Qayum, a pseudonym, works for a major American news outlet in Kabul, and has lived in Afghanistan all his life. His name and appearance are withheld in the interest of his personal safety.
The writer makes one thing perfectly clear: it is the brutality and the ignorance of the American soldier that spurs the Afghan resistence.
In the American debate - as was the case in Irak and Vietnam - the cultural issue is rarely discussed.
Soldiers brainwashed by a consumerist culture must deal with an immensely complex archaic culture
with roots in Antiquity. Not only do they screw up culturally, but ,when they don't understand, they kill.
The imperial power is creating so much hatred against it, that it is bound to lose the war.
So the geo-political goals of the American administration will succumb to the carefully nurtured ignorance and contempt for old-world complexity drummed into American minds by the US establishment and its media.
It's an endless war, and that is the point. Because to end our wars now might mean no more American wars. We are too interconnected, through communication technology and our economies, to continue to pretend that there is any difference between the people of America and the people of Iran or Afghanistan or Iraq. We're humans, and we want the same things, and we feel the same emotions. Remember that the people profiting will profit no matter if we ever "win" or achieve "victory" in the Middle East. And they will keep profiting as long as we keep fighting, and that's the point.
These days with spin replacing truth, it is convenient and politically correct to call the use of military force against “persons and organizations” a WAR, but this is a legal-institutional impossibility. OK it’s a lie. It is this lie that has doomed our military efforts in Afghanistan from the beginning. Since “victory” is not possible, at least tell the truth and call it a police action taken against insurgents and criminals, and admit that the goal is actually a convincing show of force. That’s what cops do.
BINGO.
With one well planned raid we would have easily finished them off. Our status in the world would have been assured.
Our power would not again be so easily challenged.
We wouldn't have played right into bin ladens hands by bankrupting ourselves. (though Wall street and their bought politicians have succeeded that even beyond bin ladens fondest dreams.
I could go on and on as you I'm sure are well aware.
The bush administration will never go away until the harm they have done to this country goes away. That will not happen for generations, if ever.
Everyone knows but will not admit that al queda’s goal is to get us out of the middle east.
Everyone knows that the only reason we are there is oil but even Obama will not admit it.
We are not there or anywhere else in this world for humanitarian reasons.
Helen Thomas at today’s white house briefing asked what their motive was.
I found Helen's frustrating 2 minutes here,
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/01/07/HP/R/28090/Pres+Obama+We+did+not+connect+the+dots+on+the+attempted+bombing.aspx starting about 19:00.
Mr Brennan's non answer sounded just like something GWB would say. Obviously, the question is considered a 3rd rail thing, by both Democrats and Republicans.
Let us beat our swords into fuel cells and our spears into windmills. The total for defense spending is between $859 billion and $1160 billion in 2009. Replace the Military-Industrial Complex with a Green Energy complex with just a portion of this and it will cost us nothing.
The cause of our wars is oil. No need for oil means there is no need for most wars. No wars, more money for progress toward better conditions, as in society or government.
We were able to switch from the gold standard to the oil standard and thrive.
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it. — Ashleigh Brilliant
You are 180 degrees wrong. Al Queda's strategy is call "the far enemy" strategy. Pulling us into the "middle east" is essential to that strategy. That is what 911 was, a successful attempt to humiliate us into occupying a Moslem country so that the locals would rise up to oppose the occupation and do it through supporting our avowed enemy. It worked and is still working.
Don't take my word for it - I'm quoting bin Laden. The "far enemy strategy" he proposed in the late 90's split the global jihadist movement into two warring camps. When Ayman al-Zawahiri joined bin Laden he (and his group) was literally banished from Egypt by Egyptian jihadists.
The opposite is true if the people do not support the government; a guerrilla movement becomes extremely effective.
We need to realize that in fighting terrorism we're fighting mainly ideas. We're not going to wipe these ideas out with a conventional army. Turning an illegitimate government into a legitimate one is simply beyond the capacities of foreigners.
The point is that they are, as General Petraeus points out, transnational terrorists." We would need to occupy not only Afghanistan but Pakistan, Somalia, North Korea, Uzbekistan, and countless other small African and Southeast Asian countries. His argument to stay does not make sense unless we are willing to invade every country including our own that has terror cells.
Afghanistan, for a moment, was ground zero in our war on terror. We lost our chance at Tora Bora to do what we originally went to Afghanistan for.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora …. and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.
We cannot turn back the clock.
Biden is right in favoring a strategy that directly targets al-Qaida fighters. That was our goal before mission creep, and we should return to it.
Has anyone ever tried to squeeze a balloon full of water? You apply pressure at one point and it pops up at another point. Move troops from one part of Afghanistan to another and guess what happens?
Told ya it was simplistic.
Itchy.
There will never be a military solution in Afghanistan. Only a political solution.
If I were the President, after our troop build up I would issue only one non negotiable demand.
That who ever is hiding bin Ladin. Zawahiri and the rest of the al Qaida leadership give them up.
Nearly every other issue would then be negotiable.
All the good will in the world is meaningless if Taliban and Al Qaeda believe that they're winning militarily.
Hearts and Minds.