Page 1 of 2 A surge towards disaster By Anthony Fenton
As United States President Barack Obama simultaneously escalates and crafts a
new strategy for the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led
counter-insurgency war and occupation in Afghanistan, critics say that the
"surge" will send the country toward an "unmitigated disaster", the brunt of
which will be borne by the civilian population.
Since Obama announced an increase in the US footprint by 17,000 soldiers on
February 17, the debate over the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has
reached a fever pitch. The topic now garners more headlines than the ongoing
war in Iraq.
During his presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly pledged to escalate the war.
In a speech last July, Obama called for "at least
two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan", and said that "we need more
troops, more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones". [1]
Although unreported at the time, Obama's campaign pledges were already
beginning to be fulfilled by the outgoing Bush administration. While Obama has
made frequent references to the US's having "taken [its] eye off the ball" in
Afghanistan, and that his administration will correct the course, he has
omitted mentioning that a "quiet surge" had already begun under his
predecessor, George W Bush. [2]
Dating the surge
While the presence of foreign occupation forces have risen steadily in
Afghanistan since at least 2004, when an anti-occupation resurgence became
increasingly evident, the first signs of a more concerted escalation emerged in
January 2008 when it was announced that 3,200 members of the 24th Marine
Expeditionary Unit would deploy to bolster NATO's efforts in the south of the
country.[3]
By April 2008, Bush announced that an additional 7,500 to 10,000 soldiers would
be added in 2009. According to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the time,
it was owing to "very broad bipartisan support" for a surge in Afghanistan that
"this was a very safe thing for [Bush] to say".[4]
Several bipartisan reports, beginning with the report of the Iraq Study Group,
of which Gates was a member, began to emerge by late 2006. In late 2007 and
early 2008, several other reports, including two co-chaired by Obama's eventual
National Security Advisor (retired) General James L Jones, were published. All
advocated more soldiers, a better counterinsurgency strategy, and "unity of
effort" among allies. [5]
In July of 2008, according to the March 2009 issue of Freedom Builder Magazine,
a publication of the US Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan, a small group
of soldiers arrived in Afghanistan "to do the base camp master planning and
infrastructure design ... for an estimated 17,000 to 30,000 soldiers and
marines, and their equipment". [6]
With all of this already underway, president Bush boasted to a National Defense
University audience in September 2008 that the increased foreign presence from
2006 to 2007 from 41,000 to 62,000 "represent[s] a 'quiet surge' in
Afghanistan". [7]
By late 2008, during the transition from Bush to Obama, reports indicated that
the escalation was "already so detailed that the Pentagon has plans down to the
last latrine and bullet". [8]
All told, the 17,000 additional US forces combined with additional forces
pledged by US allies - the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Australia - will
raise the foreign troop presence to 90,000 by 2010. [9]
Obama owns Bush's legacy
Some critics of the war have decried the continuity that Obama has shown with
the policies of his predecessor. In a statement e-mailed to Asia Times Online,
the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) stated that
"we can clearly see that there is no difference between Obama and Bush for our
country".
According to RAWA, Bush and subsequently Obama's "wrong and devastated strategy
... has pushed Afghanistan and the region towards disaster and deeper
conflicts". [10]
While the Obama administration will surely try and put its own mark on the
prosecution of the war, following the completion of a series of strategic
reviews that are currently underway, one analyst is skeptical of the outcome.
As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor in the Department of Politics at California State
University, Stanislaus, feels that Obama is repeating the same practice as the
Bush administration by re-defining the parameters of the purported success of
the "surge" in Iraq.
During a telephone interview, AbuKhalil, who also runs the popular Angry Arab
blog, told ATol that "the ability of these governments to deceive on these
types of decisions is so easy because they redefine the goals and then claim
success" after the fact. [11]
Indeed, one of the first things the Obama administration did was publicly
redefine the goals of the war. In testimony to Congress at the end of January,
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that "our primary goal is to prevent
Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists to attack
the United States and our allies, and whatever else we need to do flows from
that objective". [12]
In an interview with Canada's CBC prior to his first official visit to one of
America's closest allies in the war on terror, Obama reiterated that the war is
"winnable, in the sense of our ability to ensure that it is not a launching pad
for attacks against North America". [13]
As with the case of Iraq, the purported goal of implanting Western-style
democracy has been abandoned.
Despite the perception that Obama is scaling down the war in Iraq, AbuKhalil
also cautioned that an end to that war is still not in sight, "The language
[Obama] has used about Iraq and about the so-called withdrawal is so vague and
flexible that it gives him room for leeway in order to back out of it."
If he's not careful, Obama could find himself with two quagmires on his hands.
Thomas E Ricks, author of the recently released book about the US surge in
Iraq, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in
Iraq, 2006-2008, writes, "I don't think the Iraq war is over, and I
worry that there is much more to come than any of us suspect." [14]
Greater risk for civilians
Drawing from the lessons learned from the Iraq surge, US generals have
acknowledged that the expansion of the war in Afghanistan will result in higher
levels of violence.
During a February 18 press briefing at the Pentagon, the top US general in
Afghanistan, David McKiernan said, "I would expect to see a temporary time
where the level of violence might go up until we transition into holding and
setting conditions to build." [15]
Any increase in violence will add to the already skyrocketing levels of
civilian casualties in recent years. According to a report released last
January by the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, the 2,118
civilians killed in 2008 was an increase of 40% over 2007. [16]
Highlighting the anticipated effect of the war's expansion on Afghans, RAWA
stated, "The very first outcome of the surge for Afghan people will be increase
in the number of civilian casualties ... In the past seven years, thousands of
innocent people have been killed or wounded by the US/NATO bombardments. In the
past weeks under Obama's rule, around 100 Afghan civilians have been killed."
One US-based analyst of the war in Afghanistan, Marc Herold, who has been
compiling a database of Afghan civilian casualties since 2001, agrees with
RAWA's assessment.
Herold, a professor of Economic Development and Women's Studies at the
University of New Hampshire, told ATol that the surge will prove to be "an
unmitigated disaster" that is likely to "make the situation much, much worse
for everybody". [17]
Herold has calculated that the "lethality ratio" of Afghan civilians
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