"That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on" -Seeger
A Christmas Day military advance on Taliban territory in Afghanistan by British, Afghan and coalition forces - which had soldiers trench-fighting in knee-deep mud - is reportedly threatened to be reversed by returning Afghan resistance fighters. Like in Vietnam, where scores of Americans and Vietnamese were killed to move a line on a map, the new influx of American soldiers into Afghanistan is expected to help confront the Taliban again and move that line back one more time.
Operation Sond Chara - Pashto for Red Dagger, was intended to effect better security for the provincial capital Lashkar Gah ahead of the voter registration drive. Heavily equipped troops hiked through miles of mud, slept in watery trenches, and endured mortars, missiles and tank fire as they fought for days to hold their positions.
"Working in these conditions was really difficult," a corporal, section commander of the 77th Armoured Engineer Squadron which was tasked with constructing a patrol base south of Nad-e-Ali,
said: At times we were constructing in torrential rain with mud up to our knees, at others whenever the enemy saw us building they would have a go . . ."
"Almost every day we were involved in intense fire-fights ranging from rocket-propelled grenades and small arms 'shoot-and-scoots' to four-hour battles with the enemy forces as close as 30 metres,"
said Captain Dave Glendenning, commander of the marines' artillery support team.
Despite military reports that as many as 100 'Taliban fighters' were been killed in that offensive, in the aftermath, British soldiers reveal a more tenuous stand-off has developed with antiquated equipment and sparse forces hindering their ability to resist the re-forming resistance.
"We are just marking time and losing blokes,"
said a 38-year-old from 42 Commando Royal Marines. "We can clear an area of Taliban, put in Afghan police checkpoints but when we go the Taliban come back and it slowly goes back to what it was before."
The NATO forces should take heed of instructions in a new Canadian
counterinsurgency manual which admits the futility of the tit-for-tat skirmishes with the Taliban.
"It is unlikely that the conflict will be suddenly ended with a major military victory against the insurgents, who will rarely offer the opportunity for decisive military engagement and are typically organized into small clandestine cells," the manual says.
"Insurgency is a political problem," it said. "The mere attrition of insurgents is highly unlikely to result in defeat."
Indeed, in Pakistan, where the government has organized a cease-fire with Taliban in their Swat valley region, the effort has been
extended and, perhaps, made permanent in anticipation by the government of an end to the violence and a release of prisoners held by the Islamic fighters.
"Today, the shoora met under Maulana Fazlullah and decided to hold a ceasefire for an indefinite period," his spokesman Muslim Khan
said yesterday. "We are releasing all prisoners unconditionally. Today we released four paramilitary soldiers and we will release all security personnel in our custody as a goodwill gesture."
Even Obama's Defense Secretary Gates has
said in the past week that he could accept such a truce in Afghanistan.
"If there is a reconciliation, if insurgents are willing to put down their arms, if the reconciliation is essentially on the terms being offered by the government then I think we would be very open to that . . . We have said all along that ultimately some sort of political reconciliation has to be part of the long-term solution in Afghanistan," Gates told a Pakistani reporter.
Top diplomats for Pakistan and Afghanistan are in Washington today for
talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi will meet with Clinton Tuesday. On Thursday, Clinton will meet with Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta as well as Pakistan's Qureshi.
If the U.S. is serious about their official admonitions about the limits of these line-on-a-map-moving military missions, the efforts of these diplomats must be backed with resources and primacy in any new strategy forward.
Four U.S. troops were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday. Three more soldiers in the US-led coalition were killed in Afghanistan on Friday.
The plan President Obama and his administration outlines for Afghanistan in his speech tonight, or at the end of the review he's initiated, should acknowledge the limits and risks in achieving the nation-building goals that are at the forefront of the NATO deployment efforts.
He should also lay out how the administration intends to reconcile the grudging, destabilizing original mission against the 9-11 terror suspects with the new effort to facilitate political progress and reconciliation intended behind the upcoming elections that our forces are defending. Hopefully, that new plan forward from the administration will emerge before our military forces go from knee-deep to waist deep in the muddied Afghanistan landscape.
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