The US and NATO sinking in Afghanistan

[IndianaGreen]

Sri Lanka Guardian, November 30, 2009

The US and NATO sinking in Afghanistan

What has the US and the NATO achieved in Afghanistan? They failed to get Osama bi Laden and Mullah Omer. They failed to secure the country.

By Saybhan Samat

It is now very clear that the US and NATO have achieved nothing of substance in their adventure into Afghanistan and are sinking in the quagmire deeper every day.

The US now desperately needs an exit strategy that looks like a win for two reasons: First its reputation as a mighty military power that can’t be beaten, and especially by tribal clansmen. Second if it withdraws empty-handed, how does it explain the rising number of troop deaths and the billions that are still being poured into a narco-state that is corrupt, in the middle of an economic down-turn at home.

The insurgency in Afghanistan is spreading rapidly as the latest survey conducted by the International Council of Security and Development (ICOS) shows. Its latest research indicates that 80% of the country has a permanent Taliban presence up from72% in 2008, and that 97% of the country has “substantial Taliban activity.” The organization has tracked Taliban movement throughout Afghanistan since 2007. Even with such alarming figures the organization’s president, MS Norine Mc Donald QC told the internet web-site Huffington Post that she believed the figure was “conservative.” “Its bad numbers and bad news” she said. “They (the Taliban) have the momentum, their strategies and tactics are working and our’s are not….. its not a question of where they are operating its more a question of where they are not.”

Increased resistance activity has led to more occupation soldiers dying and an alarming escalation in air-strikes that have caused massive civilian causalities. On September 4th, an air strike on two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban who were dispensing fuel to locals in Kunduz resulted in more than 90 civilians deaths. Villagers were able to retrieve only fragments of their loved one’s body parts after the Americans deployed one of their favourite strategies of winning hearts and minds by dropping 1000 pound bombs from the air.

Combined with instability arising from the recent presidential election in which allegations of wide spread electoral fraud were made and the country even more divided between the majority Pashtuns and the minority Tajiks, this is a sure recipe for disaster. Hitherto, northern Afghanistan was relatively calm and there was little resistance activity there but as the Kunduz episode shows, this has now spread much further.

What has the US and the NATO achieved in Afghanistan? They failed to get Osama bi Laden and Mullah Omer. They failed to secure the country. They failed to introduce Western democracy. They failed to better the lot of women and girls. They failed to halt the poppy trade, they failed in their reconstruction efforts and they failed to win the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan. All In all both the US and NATO have failed miserably. The only way out is to adopt an exit strategy to look like a win.

http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2009/11/us-and-nato-sinking-in-afghanistan.html

http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/11/30/the-us-and-nato-sinking-in-afghanistan.html

[madrchsod]

1. 30,000 troops and off to oslo!

[SandWalker1984]

2. We can't leave Afghanistan until Unocal's pipeline is secured

from
Let's Speak the Truth About Afghanistan
By Eric Margolis:

Today, 80,000 U.S. and NATO troops are waging war against the Taliban. Having accompanied the mujahidin fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980's, witnessed the birth of Taliban, and penned a book about the Afghan struggle, "War at the Top of the World," I can attest that Taliban is not a terrorist organization as the U.S. and its allies wrongly claim.

Taliban was created in the early 1990's during the chaos and civil war that engulfed Afghanistan after the Soviet invaders were driven out. Drawn from Pashtun tribes of southern Afghanistan, who make up half that nation's population, Taliban was a religious movement that took up arms to battle the Afghan Communists, stop the wide-scale rape of Afghan women, and halt banditry and the drug trade. Both Pakistan and the U.S. secretly aided Taliban.

The ranks of Taliban were filled with young religious students -- "talibs" -- and veteran mujahidin fighters whom the U.S. had armed and hailed as "freedom fighters." By 1996, Taliban took Kabul, driving out the Northern Alliance, the old rump of the Afghan Communist Party and its Russian-backed Tajik and Uzbek tribal supporters. Taliban, most of whom were mountaineers, imposed a draconian medievalist culture that followed traditional Pashtun tribal customs and Islamic law.

The U.S. quietly backed Taliban for possible use in Central Asia, against China in the event of war, and against Iran, a bitter foe of the Sunni Taliban. U.S. energy giants Chevron and Unocal negotiated gas and oil pipeline deals with Taliban. In 2001, Washington gave $40 million in aid to Taliban until four months before 9/11. The U.S. only turned against Taliban when, at Osama bin Laden's advice, it gave a major pipeline deal to an Argentine consortium rather than an American one.

Read the rest of the story at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20386.h...


*****
IN 2001, WASHINGTON GAVE $40 MILLION IN AID TO THE TALIBAN, UP UNTIL 4 MONTHS BEFORE 9/11, AND ONLY TURNED AGAINST THE TALIBAN WHEN IT GAVE A MAJOR PIPELINE DEAL TO AN ARGENTINE CONSORTIUM RATHER THAN AN AMERICAN (UNOCAL) ONE.......