Afghanistan: What the hell do we do now?

[Johnny_Ace]

@Evan_Drake

As I indicated, he doesn’t decide in this case. You think the American war machine can be turned on and off like a switch ? I doubt even if he would be allowed to nuke NK without approval. Whatever a president wants goes through a lot of ‘advisers’.
Anyway the pacific sites like Anti-War and CounterPunch still feel Hillary was the greater risk — for foreigners .
An article from the latter after the election:

*Neither is there much point in debating which of the two, Clinton or Trump, actually was the lesser evil.

For most liberals, the answer is obvious: Hillary was. I disagreed – mainly, but not only, because I thought that she was the more likely of the two to unleash a Third World War. I still do; and that trumps all.

Trump is hardly a pacifist or an anti-imperialist, but while running for office, he did, for the most part, advance anti-interventionist positions. Who knows if he meant any of it – like any good huckster, he says what he intuits his marks want to hear, and now that the campaign is over, he seems to agree with whomever he spoke with last.*

Must We Now Rethink the Hillary Question? Absolutely, Not
and
*Libya, Syria and Iraq are the jewels in the crown of the Queen of Chaos, as Diana Johnstone has aptly described her. But nearly everything that the Madam Secretary did at State went awry. She is the Empress of Ineptitude too.

And yet, conventional wisdom has it that she is a foreign policy whiz.

Conventional wisdom is often wrong, but this is extreme. How did it come about that the conventional wisdom and the truth got to be so wildly out of line?*

Hillary: Ordinarily Awful or Uncommonly Awful?

At least Trumpo the Magnificent hasn’t started any more new wars.

Both of those articles are from before the Inauguration, the former from December and the latter from July of last year. So ‘still feel Hillary was the greater risk’ is a false conclusion.

[Johnny_Ace]

@AK84

That ain’t new. And not unexpected in Pakistan.
Which means tha Pakistan is likely tomove closer to Russia and China.

I had to laugh when Trump stated he wanted more Indian involvement in Afghanistan. Clearly the Donald (or more likley his advisors) have been spending too much time with the erstwhile Afghan exiles. Yes, a Hinduvata Government in India, one which is bannig cow slaughter is going to helpwin over a country of conservative muslims.

Akram seems very well-informed. He called the speech (and the troop increase) pretty much exactly.

[Evan_Drake]

Perhaps you haven’t been reading CounterPunch recently.

Still, here’s an article from ConsortiumNews linked to AntiWar from this very month showing the feelings remain the same:

Clinton also favored escalation in other hot spots. On Iran, the Clinton campaign outlined “a plan to counter Iran’s other malicious behavior” which included pledges to “deepen America’s unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security”; “expand our military presence in the region”; “increase security cooperation in areas like intelligence sharing, military backing and missile defense with our Gulf allies, to ensure they can defend themselves against Iranian aggression”; and “build a coalition to counter Iran’s proxies.”

…
Indeed, those who threw their support behind Clinton’s vision of American world leadership, like those associated with the “Alliance for Democracy,” really, with the notable exception of Trump’s abandonment of the Paris Climate Accord, have little to complain about.

*Trump has done much as Clinton would have done by, among other things: slapping sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea; pledging unlimited support to Israel; reassuring “our allies” in the Persian Gulf and eastern Europe; condemning Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine; expanding military operations in eastern Syria; and lobbing none-to-veiled threats at the left-wing government in Venezuela.
*
*So while it’s easy and almost certainly emotionally satisfying to the legions of Clinton supporters to tell themselves (and their readers) that **of course *Hillary would have been a better of steward of U.S. foreign policy than Trump, that assertion remains both unprovable and, given her record, highly questionable.

Hillary Clinton Promised Wars, Too
And from AntiWar itself an article on Afghanistan showing how Trump, whom they despise, had his mind changed re Afghanistan.
MacMaster wanted enlargement, ‘We Are Coming, Father Abraham, 50,000 Strong’; Bannon wanted out, but if anything a tiny privatized force as beloved by people who read too much McClancy; tiny Sessions wants America out yesterday.

Which Way for the Trump Administration? - Antiwar.com Original

[voltaire]

@XT

You should be more worried about India and China at this stage. Not sure why this doesn’t get mentioned much around here, but the whole situation is pretty scary IMHO.

While that situation may be concerning, it doesn’t go to the roots of Afghan instability like the India/Pakistan situation does.

This recent article, and particularly this older one from 2013, are very good primers. I’ll quote a relevant part from the latter, but they’re both worth reading.

The hostility between India and Pakistan lies at the heart of the current war in Afghanistan. Most observers in the West view the Afghanistan conflict as a battle between the U.S. and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on one hand, and al-Qaida and the Taliban on the other. In reality this has long since ceased to be the case. Instead our troops are now caught up in a complex war shaped by two pre-existing and overlapping conflicts: one local and internal, the other regional.

Within Afghanistan, the war is viewed primarily as a Pashtun rebellion against President Hamid Karzai’s regime, which has empowered three other ethnic groups—the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras of the north—to a degree that the Pashtuns resent. For example, the Tajiks, who constitute only 27% of the Afghan population, still make up 70% of the officers in the Afghan army.

Although Karzai himself is a Pashtun, many of his fellow tribesmen view his presence as mere window-dressing for a U.S.-devised realignment of long-established power relations in the country, dating back to 2001 when the U.S. toppled the overwhelmingly Pashtun Taliban.

The Pashtuns had held sway in Afghan politics ever since the state assumed its current boundaries in the 1860s. By aligning with the Tajiks of the northern provinces against the Pashtuns of the south, the U.S. saw itself making common cause with the forces of secularism against militant Islam; but it was unwittingly taking sides in a complex civil war that has been going on since the 1970s—and that had roots going back much further than that. To this day, because the Pashtuns feel dominated by their ancestral enemies, many support or at least feel some residual sympathies for the Taliban.

There is also an age-old Pashtun-on-Pashtun element to the conflict. It pits Taliban from the Ishaqzai tribe, parts of the Nurzais, Achakzais, and most of the Ghilzais, especially the Hotak and Tokhi Ghilzais, against the more “establishment” Durrani Pashtun tribes: the Barakzais, Popalzais and Alikozais.

Beyond this indigenous conflict looms the much more dangerous hostility between the two regional powers—both armed with nuclear weapons: India and Pakistan. Their rivalry is particularly flammable as they vie for influence over Afghanistan. Compared to that prolonged and deadly contest, the U.S. and ISAF are playing little more than a bit part—and they, unlike the Indians and Pakistanis, are heading for the exit.

Since the Partition of the Subcontinent in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars—the most recent in 1971—and they seemed on the verge of going nuclear against each other during a crisis in 1999, when Pakistani troops crossed a ceasefire line and occupied 500 square miles of Indian Kashmir, including a Himalayan border post near the town of Kargil. As tensions rose, the Pakistanis took ominous steps with their nuclear arsenal. President Bill Clinton mediated a solution. In intense negotiations at Blair House in Washington over the Fourth of July weekend, Clinton persuaded Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to order a pullback of his country’s forces to the Pakistani side of the line. That concession cost Nawaz his job and, very nearly, his life. The army commander, Pervez Musharraf, mounted a coup and sentenced Nawaz to death. Clinton intervened and Nawaz was exiled to Saudi Arabia.

It is easy to understand why Pakistan might feel insecure. India’s population (1.2 billion) and its economy (GDP of $1.4 trillion) are about eight times the size of Pakistan’s (180 million Pakistanis generating an annual GDP of only $210 billion). During the period of India’s greatest growth, which lasted from 2006 to 2010, there were four years during which the annual increase in the Indian economy was almost equal to the entire Pakistani economy.

To defend themselves, Pakistani planners long ago developed a doctrine of “strategic depth.” The idea had its origins in the debacle of 1971, when, in less than two weeks, India crushingly defeated Pakistan in their third war. That conflict ended with East Pakistan, which had risen up against West Pakistan, becoming the independent state of Bangladesh. According to the Pakistanis’ narrative, the dismemberment of their country—which they blame on India—made it all the more important to develop and maintain friendly relations with Afghanistan, in large measure in order to have a secure refuge in the case of a future war with India. The porous border offers a route by which Pakistani leaders, troops and other assets, including its nuclear weapons, could retreat to the northwest in the case of an Indian invasion.

For the idea to work, it is essential that the Afghan government be a close ally of Pakistan, and willing to help fight India. When the Taliban were in power, they were seen as the perfect partner for the Pakistani military. Although widely viewed in the West as medieval if not barbaric, the Taliban regime was valued in Pakistan as fiercely anti-India and therefore deserving Pakistani arms and assistance.

After the Taliban were ousted by the U.S. after 9/11, a major strategic shift occurred: the government of Afghanistan became an ally of India’s, thus fulfilling the Pakistanis’ worst fear.

<SNIP>

or the Pakistani military, the existential threat posed by India has taken precedence over all other geopolitical and economic goals. The fear of being squeezed in an Indian nutcracker is so great that it has led the ISI to take steps that put Pakistan’s own internal security at risk, as well as Pakistan’s relationship with its main strategic ally, the U.S. For much of the last decade the ISI has sought to restore the Taliban to power so that it can oust Karzai and his Indian friends.

To achieve this goal, the Pakistani military has relied on “asymmetric warfare”— using jihadi fighters for its own ends. This strategy goes back over 30 years. Since the early 1980s, the ISI has consciously and consistently funded and incubated a variety of Islamic extremist groups. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid calculates that there are currently more than 40 such extremist groups operating in Pakistan, most of whom have strong links with the ISI as well as the local Islamic political parties.

Pakistani generals have long viewed the jihadis as a cost-effective and easily-deniable means of controlling events in Afghanistan—something they briefly achieved with the Taliban capture of Kabul in 1996. By the same means, the Pakistanis have kept much of the Indian army bogged down in Kashmir ever since the separatist insurgency broke out in 1990. The generals like using jihadis because they help foster a sense of nationalism based on the twin prongs of hatred for India and the bonding power of Islamic identity.

[AK84]

sigh
Voltaire, the articles are how does one put it gently, pure Horse Manure.
Pakistan’s problems with Afghanistan are not related to India at all, except insofar as it becomes another region for rivalry between the S Asian giants, which is the fate of every country in the region. There was (and is) a lot of rivalry over Sri Lanka, do the authors think that is also a “secure refuge”? (FYI, if the Indian Army has reached the Afghan border, at that juncture there is no longer a Pakistan anymore, so secure refuge is a out of the question.).

The issue is thus. Afghanistan lost a lot of territory which is now in Pakistan (basically all of Pakistan was part of Afghanistan for nearly 150 years). Which no Afghan Government has ever accepted. The British forced them to accept the current border as is. When the British left, the Afghanis said that they did not recognize the border and claimed vast territories. Pakistan faced that problem. If there had been no Pakistan and we had an undivided independant India, there still would be this issue, only now between Delhi and Kabul, not Islamabad/Kabul.

And your hypothetical undivided India would have followed the same policy, which was try and ensure a compliant and non threatening Government in Kabul, of whatever stripe. Pakistani support of the Taliban was due to those issues, the fact that Taliban were extremists was irelebvant, they would have supported Kali worshippers if the same had been on the table. Or do you think that Benezir Bhutto approved of Taliban’s treatment of women, when she decided to support them? Or that her chief advisor, a communist former General did? And don’t conflate Kashmir, with Afghanistan. Different groups with very different aims.

What I do fail to understand is what exactly are US interests in this dispute, I mean actual verifable interests, not post facto justifications. How does the recent 300 years flow of S Asian history affect the US?

[Ramira]

@Velocity

Also, Middle Eastern culture and priorities are…different than those of Western Europe’s.

This will be news to the Italians and the Greeks.

But what the Middle East culture has to do with the South Asian Afghans?

@HurricaneDitka

angential benefit that may be accrued by maintaining airbases east of Iran, but some of his military advisers may have clued him in on that.

The tangential benefit of having insecure land bases that are expensive and difficult to resupply?

@adaher

As long as it’s just a counter terror mission there’s no reason to ever leave other than Afghanistan no longer being a haven for terrorists. That’s the nature of war when you’re attacked: you fight until you win, no matter how long that takes. Should we have stopped WWII after Guadalcanal …

The americans and their vision of the world through the WWII… not understanding at all it is no way applicable to the colonial wars at all.

It is nice to advocate the King Pyrrhus strategy of war. It worked so well in the long run for the famous empire of the greeks, so well known…

[Latro]

@AK84

What I do fail to understand is what exactly are US interests in this dispute, I mean actual verifable interests, not post facto justifications. How does the recent 300 years flow of S Asian history affect the US?

@HurricaneDitka

The only “calculated strategic advantage” I can think of is that we get to maintain airbases that are relatively close to Iran, and perhaps the missions with live ordnance to keep skills sharp, but Syria is providing us plenty of that too.

I think** HurricaneDitka** has it right, in the first part of his answer.
Afghanistan is part of the encirclement of Iran.

[voltaire]

@AK84

sigh
Voltaire, the articles are how does one put it gently, pure Horse Manure.
Pakistan’s problems with Afghanistan are not related to India at all, except…

For pure horse manure, you do seem to confirm the general thrust. I agree, there are tangential nits to be picked in the older piece. I quoted only that one because it was a good summary of the various dynamics, but I thought it was too long to quote even more from the more recent article. Maybe that was a mistake, since the more recent developments reinforce the point.

India/Pakistan is just the current*,* primary regional conflict driving the proxy war and preventing any hope of stability. Of course there’s long been a revolving cast of players major and minor that have done and are doing their part, as well. Point is, don’t look for things in Afghanistan to improve much, if at all, until things between Pakistan and India improve.

And no, I don’t think increasing US troops and dissing Pakistan while aligning more with India is likely to help matters at all, so I’m not very upbeat on that.

[AK84]

@voltaire

For pure horse manure, you do seem to confirm the general thrust. I agree, there are tangential nits to be picked in the older piece. I quoted only that one because it was a good summary of the various dynamics, but I thought it was too long to quote even more from the more recent article. Maybe that was a mistake, since the more recent developments reinforce the point.

India/Pakistan is just the current*,* primary regional conflict driving the proxy war and preventing any hope of stability. Of course there’s long been a revolving cast of players major and minor that have done and are doing their part, as well. Point is, don’t look for things in Afghanistan to improve much, if at all, until things between Pakistan and India improve.

Some of the worst tensions on the Afghan-Pakistan border took place between 1950-1965, when there were border clashes in 1950 and a full scale war in 1961. That era is also the time when Pakistan India relations were the best they ever have been, with open borders, large volumes of trade and agreement on most of the outstanding issues from Partition. I repeat while Indo-Pak rivalry makes for a rotten cherry on top of the whole mess, its not the cause of it and the issue on the Afghan border occur regardless of India.

(For a good read on some of the issues between Afghanistan and Pakistan in that era, read this (pdf))

[asahi]

@John_Mace

The reason I want to set a timeframe is so we are clear with our intentions to the Afghan government. It wouldn’t be fair to just exist all at once (which we probably couldn’t do, logistically anyway), but make it 100% crystal clear that they will be on their own at X point in the future. If they think they can always fall back on us, they’ll never get their shit together (assuming that is something that is even possible for them to do).

Yeah, the “Afghan” “government” - as if Afghanistan is a nation-state with a single identity, and as if it has a stable, functional government that’s remotely capable of doing anything once the puppeteer leaves the country.

This war has been over for a long time. We lost any chance of winning it in late 2002 when the powers that be decided that they were going to invade Iraq and divert resources from the war that should have been prosecuted into a disastrous invasion that has had ongoing ripple effects throughout the Middle East and Europe. Afhganistan is historically one of the most difficult, ungovernable places on the planet. We’re not going to change that with a troop build up. We might temporarily take some ground held by Taliban or ISIS, but the situation will not soon fundamentally change.

[glee]

Which will Trump win first?

• War on Drugs
• War in Afghanistan

:smack:

[John_Mace]

@Johnny_Ace

The first rule of Trump Club is…you don’t talk about Trump Club.

@asahi

This war has been over for a long time. We lost any chance of winning it in late 2002 when the powers that be decided that they were going to invade Iraq and divert resources from the war that should have been prosecuted into a disastrous invasion that has had ongoing ripple effects throughout the Middle East and Europe. Afhganistan is historically one of the most difficult, ungovernable places on the planet. We’re not going to change that with a troop build up. We might temporarily take some ground held by Taliban or ISIS, but the situation will not soon fundamentally change.

The first rule of war club in Afghanistan is you don’t win wars in Afghanistan.

[AK84]

Oh you do. To do so you need to

1. Go in
2. Trash the living daylights out of the locals
3. Withdraw
4. Occassionally payoff some local bigwig to maintain some semblance of order.
   The US seems incapable of understanding No 3. Like Gorby and the British did. Of course, you should not expect better from Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, all of whom served in senior military posts in country and did sweet fuck all then. What makes anyone thing they would know better now? Like giving Gul Dukat command of… oh wait.
   **
   HurricaneDitka**, Latro, the gaping hole in that theory is that Afghanistan is a 1000 miles inland and the US requires access across an enemy country (Russia) a hostile one (Iran) and another one which may become disinclined (Pakistan).

[BobLibDem]

The only decent argument for staying, in my opinion, is the humanitarian mission. These are real people who will be suffering if the Taliban regains control. They are innocents whose fate must be factored into the decision. Strategically, I see less of an argument for staying. There are so many guns in the hands of so many tribal groups and the terrain provides them with plenty of places to hole up securely. It doesn’t seem possible to eliminate enough threats to make any central government feasible.

So it seems to me that there will always have to be an occupying force, but I don’t think it has to be exclusively the US and its allies. Bring in the Russians, Chinese, and Pakistanis, maybe split it up like postwar Germany. We have to do right by the innocent Afghans. Unfortunately, they’re just pawns for the moment being used by a fool in the Oval Office wanting to distract from both his white supremacy and his ongoing criminal investigation.

[John_Mace]

@BobLibDem

The only decent argument for staying, in my opinion, is the humanitarian mission. These are real people who will be suffering if the Taliban regains control. They are innocents whose fate must be factored into the decision. Strategically, I see less of an argument for staying. There are so many guns in the hands of so many tribal groups and the terrain provides them with plenty of places to hole up securely. It doesn’t seem possible to eliminate enough threats to make any central government feasible.

So it seems to me that there will always have to be an occupying force, but I don’t think it has to be exclusively the US and its allies. Bring in the Russians, Chinese, and Pakistanis, maybe split it up like postwar Germany. We have to do right by the innocent Afghans. Unfortunately, they’re just pawns for the moment being used by a fool in the Oval Office wanting to distract from both his white supremacy and his ongoing criminal investigation.

Emphasis added. If you don’t see the contradiction there, I’m no sure what I can say.

I’m not claiming that the US is always “the good guys”, but I can you tell you right now that the Russians are not. But, frankly, I don’t see that the US has some obligation to the Afghan people that we don’t have to the people of any number of countries that as fucked up or just about so as Afghanistan.

[BobLibDem]

@John_Mace

Emphasis added. If you don’t see the contradiction there, I’m no sure what I can say.

I’m not claiming that the US is always “the good guys”, but I can you tell you right now that the Russians are not. But, frankly, I don’t see that the US has some obligation to the Afghan people that we don’t have to the people of any number of countries that as fucked up or just about so as Afghanistan.

I’m not sure that the Russians would be worse than the Taliban. Good point about other countries, there are many innocent people under many despotic regimes. The one thing that we might owe the Afghans for is going in there and upending the existing order of things.

[XT]

@BobLibDem

I’m not sure that the Russians would be worse than the Taliban. Good point about other countries, there are many innocent people under many despotic regimes. The one thing that we might owe the Afghans for is going in there and upending the existing order of things.

Why would we owe them for that? It’s not like we asked the Taliban to shelter and assist AQ, or asked AQ to attack us. We don’t owe the Afghani’s because we overthrew the Taliban.

Mainly, while all of this discussion is touching and all, the key point is that we are there to ensure that the Taliban doesn’t regain power in the region, and ensure that AQ and ISIS are hammered over there instead of over here. I think people have this impression that terrorist is so yesterday and that there aren’t any threats anymore, and if only the US would leave the region that everything would go back to being goodness and light. The reality is that the Taliban back in power would be a serious threat not just to the US but to other countries as well…as it was before the US invasion. It’s not a threat in the form of it’s going to invade someone or launch conventional attacks, but a threat in that it’s a breeding ground for the worst sorts of Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism. Hell, those groups, even in the midst of fighting (ISIS for its very life, AQ to become relevant again, the Taliban to regain its former power) are still able to get support enough to launch periodic attacks, such as the recent one in Spain. I shudder to think what they could or would do if they weren’t fighting for their lives and under constant threat of eating a missile.

[adaher]

The thing is, at our current spending and casualty rate, we actually can stay there forever. Since the Taliban and ISIS cannot be allowed to conventionally control territory, we won’t give them the opportunity to do so, which in theory should prevent the kind of skilled, organized terrorist attacks that we saw on 9/11.

We aren’t repeating the mistakes of Vietnam. We aren’t doing a huge occupation and giving our enemies endless targets. Our footprint is small, it’s out elite troops rather than draftees, and their mission, poorly defined as it is, centers on just kiling the enemy. We do this well. And we’ll keep doing it as long as these morons think they can accomplish anything useful.

[HurricaneDitka]

@AK84

HurricaneDitka, Latro, the gaping hole in that theory is that Afghanistan is a 1000 miles inland and the US requires access across an enemy country (Russia) a hostile one (Iran) and another one which may become disinclined (Pakistan).

Huh? We’re talking about potentially using airbase in Afghanistan to bomb Iran, like in a situation where the President decides to destroy their nuclear program. It’s a safe assumption that if we decided to do that, it would be without Iran’s permission. What does Russia or Pakistan have to do with it? We wouldn’t have to cross either one: take off from Bagram, fly west, drop bombs on Iran, turn around and fly east, land back at Bagram.

[BobLibDem]

Except for the humanitarian angle, I don’t see where having the Taliban back in power would bother us much. Keep an eye on things with satellite, and if we see terrorist training camps spring back up take them out with drones.