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Obama's Afghan surge offers more of the same

By Marko Beljac - posted Thursday, 12 March 2009


The conflict in Afghanistan has undergone a number of significant escalations in its long and miserable history. The first was the Soviet invasion in 1979. The latest is to be a surge of the US led coalition's military footprint, which will lead to a significant increase in the coalition's operational tempo in the Afghan theatre. The US looks set to request that Australia also increase its military presence in the region.

The surge led by Obama will be implemented by the US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates.

One of the most consequential decisions in the history of the Afghan wars was the US decision, made by the Reagan Administration, to escalate the war in Afghanistan by deliberately facilitating the transfer of Arab Jihadi's to the region in 1986. It was felt that these Arab fighters provided a more hard-core corps of cadres to take the fight to the Soviets, even though it was understood that they had their own agenda.

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We now know (PDF 11KB) that the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party, the highest ranking decision making body in the former Soviet Union, made an in-principle decision to withdraw the Soviet Army from Afghanistan on October, 17 1985. On March 14, 1985 the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, informed (PDF 60.5KB) the Afghan President, Babrak Karmal, that a decision of this nature was going to be made in a Kabul meeting. The available account of the October session shows the Soviet military leader, Marshal Sokolov, twice forcefully intervening in favour of a troop withdrawal.

The policy of the United States to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan played a very important role in placing a structural constraint on the Soviet withdrawal, as declassified Soviet documents reveal. This policy merely served to prolong the conflict by helping to delay the implementation of the Politburo's, in principle, decision. It also enabled the Arab Jihadi's to cement their influence in the region.

If the Reagan Administration did not escalate the conflict for short-term ends then most likely the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 would not have occurred and nor would have the conditions been ripe for the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s. The desire to pursue short-term strategic gains proved problematic over the longer term.

Robert Gates, then serving as an official in the Reagan Administration, played a key role in this escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

In 1998, the Clinton Administration bombed al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, in retaliation for al-Qaida's terrorist attacks against the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Declassified US Clinton era studies reveal that this escalation in the conflict with al-Qaida had far-reaching consequences.

A 1999 Sandia National Laboratory report concluded that the attacks most likely would prove counter-productive and that a "war" against terror cannot be won. The al-Qaida threat needs to be met by diplomatic and political means, the report concluded.

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Furthermore, the studies indicate that the US attacks in Afghanistan may have cemented the al-Qaida-Taliban alliance. If so, then the US attacks may have played a significant role in facilitating the 9-11 plot. Declassified State Department documents speak of a turn towards radical pan-Islamic ideology by the senior Taliban leadership during this period.

This additional escalation also proved counter-productive; which is to say nothing of its morality. In fact, the Sandia Report states that the US may have "given up" the "moral high ground" because the missile attacks "mirror imaged certain aspects of bin Laden's strategy".

The Taliban has increased its influence over much of the Pashtun based south of Afghanistan, including in areas around the capital, Kabul. It is assessed that the Taliban has the capability to capture major towns such as Kandahar, but not to hold them in the face of any determined coalition counter-attack. The situation very much resembles a classic strategic stalemate.

The Obama Administration, mirror imaging the previous administration, has decided upon another escalation in response to this strategic stalemate. In so far as the Afghan war goes, the more things change the more things stay the same.

The Bush Administration's response to the Taliban insurgency in the south, which came after years of neglect, had actually fuelled the insurgency given the wanton use of military power. This has made the foreign troop presence in Afghanistan deeply unpopular.

The escalation in the conflict has also seen public opposition against the war rise in the West. It is highly significant that the escalating conflict is increasing popular opposition to the war in both Afghanistan and the West. This tells us something about democracy, both over here and over there.

The war has also been taken into Pakistan, especially through missile attacks from drone aircraft. The Pakistani Army has also launched a large ground offensive along the border areas in a co-ordinated offensive with the US known as Operation Lionheart.

One US drone attack on a Pakistani Madrassa, that killed 80 people, immediately preceded the upsurge in violence in Bajaur Agency. The Mumbai attacks may have been designed to open a new front for the Pakistani Army with India, thereby diverting resources from the Afghan border given the escalation.

Again, despite the escalation of violence, the cycle shows no signs of abating.

The joint US-Pakistani military offensive threatens to undermine the legitimacy of the fledgling government in Pakistan, bringing the nuclear armed nation to the brink of collapse for this offensive is also deeply unpopular. The prospect of nuclear terrorism is often cited in support of escalation. However, this escalation can only increase the probability that Pakistan will become a failed state. Should Pakistan go over the edge it cannot be excluded that its nuclear weapons would most likely fall into the “wrong hands”.

As the US and Pakistan escalate the conflict, the al-Qaida-Taliban alliance is further cemented; on the logic that the Taliban would elect to maintain a strategic relationship with al-Qaida in order to meet a common foe.

The escalation in the conflict will inevitably see to it that more innocent people are killed, and more refugees will abandon areas already racked by war. The Bajaur offensive inside Pakistan has seen at least 250,000 flee to Peshawar.

In 1985 Gorbachev told Karmal in Kabul to "forget socialism" and reach out to Islamists and moderate elements in the Afghan resistance. This would outflank the more extreme elements, Gorbachev advised.

Arguments made in Australia that increasing the tempo in Afghanistan is needed to defend Australia from terrorism are fanciful. For Canberra, one of the main factors revolves around the strategic relationship with Washington. The Prime Minister has long stated that allies can disagree and there are times when Australia can caution the US on the follies of military action.

This is just such a time.

Rather than escalate the conflict President Obama would do well to heed Gorbachev's advice, pull-out of Afghanistan and enable a broader based government, including elements from the Taliban, to be established under a completely reconfigured international presence.

In addition, a comprehensive strategy designed to address the human security needs of the people of the region would do more to destabilise al-Qaida's alliance with the Taliban and to stabilise both Pakistan and Afghanistan than more troops, artillery, and aircraft.

The coalition strategy for Afghanistan seems to involve nothing more than Tacitus' famous refrain on the Roman conquest of Britain: "they created a desolation and called it peace."

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About the Author

Mark Beljac teaches at Swinburne University of Technology, is a board member of the New International Bookshop, and is involved with the Industrial Workers of the World, National Tertiary Education Union, National Union of Workers (community) and Friends of the Earth.

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