Afghanistan, Pakistan, India....the domino effect, etc...NY Times, The Nation:

[amborin]

US plans a shift in focus in Afghanistan....
Most of the additional American troops arriving in Afghanistan early next year will be deployed near the capital, Kabul, American military commanders here say, in a measure of how precarious the war effort has become. ...reflects the rising concerns among military officers, diplomats and government officials about the increasing vulnerability of the capital and the surrounding area.....There are about 62,000 international troops currently in Afghanistan, including about 32,000 Americans, a military spokesman said, but they are spread thinly throughout the country, which is nearly the size of Texas......<snip>
.....American military officials say that if General McKiernan’s requests are met, deployments in the next year and a half or so will include four combat brigades, an aviation brigade equipped with attack and troop-carrying helicopters, reconnaissance units, support troops and trainers for the Afghan Army and the police, raising American force levels to about 58,000. ....<snip>
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/world/asia/07troops.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp>
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The Quagmire in Afghanistan....from The Nation:

<snip>
...assertions by the US command and the Obama team that we can both "surge" and negotiate overlook the glaring reality that sending more troops into the Afghan quagmire and urging the Pakistani government to escalate the war it is fighting against its own people will make the crisis worse, not better.... <snip> ....a central part of a new US policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan must be to facilitate a peace process between Pakistan and India, its giant neighbor to the east. For decades, Pakistan's military and the ISI have lent covert support to Islamist terrorist groups, in Afghanistan and in the disputed territory of Kashmir, as part of a strategy of asymmetric warfare against India. A Pakistan-India accord would strengthen Pakistan's civilian government and undercut the rationale for the army and ISI's ties to the Taliban, allied Afghan Islamist warlords and Kashmiri Islamist militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, suspected of involvement in the Mumbai terror attack..."

<snip> ....National Intelligence Estimate, representing the views of sixteen US intelligence agencies, warns that Afghanistan is in a "downward spiral" and, according to the New York Times, "casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban's influence there." The enemy has also evolved as a fighting force. Already by 2006, according to a report for West Point by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Taliban were fielding battalion-size units of more than 400 fighters. In some provinces the Taliban and their allies are creating a parallel state, appointing governors and provincial officials and establishing Sharia-style courts. ....<snip> ....What we conveniently have been labeling 'the Taliban' is a phenomenon that includes a lot of people simply on the Islamic right." In all, the US military has identified at least fourteen separate insurgent organizations in Afghanistan, and according to Riedel, there are as many as fifty separate Islamist formations in neighboring Pakistan . ....

<snip> ....But surging troops into Afghanistan would be akin to sending the fabled 600 into the valley of death. As in Vietnam, tens of thousands more troops will only provide the Taliban with many more targets, sparking Pashtun nationalist resistance and inspiring more recruits for the insurgency. Advocates of sending additional US forces into this maelstrom have yet to articulate exactly how another 25,000 can turn the tide. Tariq Ali says that pacifying the country would require at least 200,000 more troops, beyond the 62,000 US and NATO forces there now, and that it would necessitate laying waste huge parts of Afghanistan. Many Afghan watchers consider the war unwinnable, and they point out that in the 1980s the Soviet Union, with far more troops, had engaged in a brutal nine-year counterinsurgency war--and lost. British Ambassador to Afghanistan Sherard Cowper-Coles has warned against precisely the escalation that Obama and Petraeus advocate. Sending more troops, he says, "would have perverse effects: it would identify us even more strongly as an occupation force and would multiply the targets ." A top British general, Brig. Mark Carleton-Smith, says, "We're not going to win this war.... It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat."

<snip>

<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081222/dreyfuss?rel=hp_picks>

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South Asia's Deadly Dominos

ELENE COOPER

Published: December 6, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Mumbai attacks may have begun with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani guerrilla group known in the West mostly for its preoccupation with Kashmir. But by the time the crisis finally ends, foreign policy experts say, the fallout may have expanded to include the United States, NATO, Afghanistan and Iran....<snip>

President-elect Barack Obama during the campaign laid out an intricate construction for what might happen in South Asia with the right American push. He advocated increasing American troops in Afghanistan and pressing Pakistan to do more to evict foreign fighters and to attack training camps for radical terrorists along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border....Mr. Obama did hint at trying to make a diplomatic push to mediate the Kashmir issue. But most of his South Asia focus has been on Afghanistan and Pakistan.The trouble, South Asia experts say, is that just about every issue in the region is somehow interconnected, and they all have a tendency to set each other off....<snip>
“Step back and consider the situation the Mumbai attackers have created,” said George Friedman, chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis company. Mr. Friedman laid out a frightening domino theory of possible repercussions of Mumbai. Warning: it gets scary fast.
1. India’s already weak government decides it has to retaliate against Pakistan or risk falling.....<snip>

2. Pakistan responds by withdrawing forces from western Pakistan, where they can fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban, to the India-Pakistan border.....Pakistan security officials have already warned that if the situation with India worsens, they will shift troops from western areas, and pointedly noted during a news conference that such a step would likely upset the United States because it would mean resources were being moved from the fight against Islamic militants along the Afghan border. The Americans have been pressing Pakistan for more military action against the militants, not less.
<snip>

3. Taliban forces, freed from having to watch out for Pakistani troops, are strengthened along the Afghan border; Qaeda operatives are more secure.
A resurgent Taliban that is freed from having to fight a two-front war will turn its full attention to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama has already said he wants to send two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, where violence has climbed — allied military deaths there have reached 267 this year, the most ever. The American military plan for the war in Afghanistan assumes some help from Pakistani troops on the border.....<snip>.....4. The United States’ situation in Afghanistan goes from bad to worse....<snip>.....5. Iran, watching Pakistan and India rattling their nuclear sabers, concludes that it is in a better position to insist on pursuing its nuclear program. ...Mr. Obama has said he will do whatever he can to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, including breaking with years of American foreign policy and sitting down with Iran’s leaders, if necessary. But for decades, some Iranians have argued that their country needs a nuclear weapons capacity to match the influence of, or deter, neighbors like India, Pakistan and Israel — not to mention Russia and China. Foreign policy experts say that persuading Iran’s leaders to stop their current uranium enrichment program before it makes such a goal attainable would only get harder if they could point to a nuclear standoff taking place between Pakistan and India. ...<snip>
The Mumbai attacks, said Mr. Friedman, of Stratfor, “could leave Obama’s entire South Asia strategy in shambles.”

<snip>

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/weekinreview/07cooper.html?ref=asia>