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By William Pfaff at Antiwar.com
There are two tried and disproved methods for dealing with insurrection in a non-Western country. The third and reliable method is not to go there in the first place. The fourth is get out with such grace as is possible, as rapidly as possible. President Barack Obama may be looking at the last option, hitherto not on the policy menu.
(Declare ALL American objectives achieved........the elimination of "al-Qaeda" from Afghanistan, and the substantial degrading of the once mighty 40--50,000 Taliban militia. Politicians of all shades should be able to create the relevant narrative/hyperbole for public consumption......that is one of the usefulness's of having politicians.
Second negotiate with the Taliban via the Pakistan military, the real power brokers in all this. The Taliban have offered their own peace terms, so lets explore their proposal for its usefulness.
Establish a national unity government in Kabul there after, which includes all the political fractions, including the Taliban {defacto Pakistan military}, with the tacit understanding by all Afghan fractions that America will leave by 2011, once a national unity government is established. The fact that all parties in Afghanistan know that America will leave, will allow all the interested parties to concentrate their minds in establishing some sort of government.
It then becomes wholly their responsibility, and ...burden....and struggle.
Whether such a government actually survives after America leaves, is not America's problem, but at least nobody will be able to claim in Afghanistan that it was an unpopular imposed foreign American puppet government.
.....................AND most important, ordinary Afghans will no longer have a disparate reason to join the dreaded Taliban. There after support for the Taliban should wane and their very real ability to control and take over the country. Then America can seek to find a genuine partner for regional influence in Afghanistan, but not based on their criminal record.
America will no longer need to work with criminals in Afghanistan for the drugs profits to flow.
The criminals in the Pentagon/London who annually make the $50--$80 billion Afghan narco profit can use that time {2009---2011} to fix their local contacts in Afghanistan, and the international shipment routes outside of Afghanistan into North America, Europe and Russia. This is what happened with the Opium from South East Asia after the Vietnam war 1963--1973.
The Vietnam war was about controlling the drugs in South East Asia, and not about winning against the Vietcong....Air America (1990) ....the problem looked at as a light hearten comical satire..American Gangster (2007)...the same problem looked at more seriously, but portrayed substantively as an African-American problem. African Americans didn't run the American military in the 1960's, and the international banks in Wall Street and London who launder the narco profits
But I see some have fixed the portrayal of this $600 billion industry as being run by blacks and Latino's. Such a huge industry of the source, international supply, and intricate laundering could not possibly be organized so well by blacks, or even Latinos....this is a business run by International banker Jews based in London, and NY and their gentile lieutenants, in such places as American/British security who for the sake of money forget their national loyalties. It has been going on since the good old days of the East India company (Jew run company} over 200 years back.
As suggested above in Afghanistan, this way the criminals in the Pentagon/London will not lose out on the narco profits; their business can continue, without the high profile inquisitive media attention of "why is our boys fighting a wholly none war?".
Once America leaves, the locals can be encouraged to protect the pipelines from Central Asia, where they are seen as a boon for their local economy, and not as a target to destroy. It does not make sense for Corporate America to spend $1 million per soldier per year to protect a mettle pipe running through Afghanistan carrying what? $5 billion worth of gas and oil annually? Educate the locals to do it.
America is a big country. America is the richest country in the world. America is the most powerful country in the world. Americans are optimists, not manic depressive pessimists like the Israelis, who see enemies every where. Civilization, human civilization would end if Americans generally became like the Israelis, covert attempts, subliminal attempts through the MSM not withstanding.
With such abundance of so much, perhaps there can be some magnanimity from America to say finally in relation to Afghanistan, "OK we have done our part, we have achieved our objectives, and now its your responsibility to truly run your own affairs....in this we will help you with good intentions, but no longer as an occupier."
This surely is not too much to ask??)
The first method is treat the insurrection as a conventional military challenge. Attack en masse to destroy the uprising and its infrastructure, employ shock-and-awe tactics, search for and destroy the rebels’ sources of supply, even when this means invading neighboring countries. Make the enemy stand up and fight the way Americans fight wars. Rely on mass, overwhelming logistical superiority, and the huge American technological advantage.
This was Gen. William Westmoreland’s strategy at the start of the Vietnamese war. Outkill the enemy. Make body counts the measure of success. By 1969, this program had failed and Westmoreland had been relieved.
In Iraq, in 2003, the United States again went in with fast, high-powered and overwhelming armed force, blasting to shreds whatever was in its way. It was a great success in getting to Baghdad. But the enemy had not been interested in fighting. Several of the most important Iraqi generals had secretly been bought off (through the head of Saddam's intelligence service, who was working for America!!!!......and the same formula being applied to Pakistan, NOW, Kiani and Suja Pasha). The ordinary soldier had no enthusiasm in fighting for Saddam Hussein, nor had the mid-level officers.
(Saddam's Iraq by 2003 was a spent force, which could have just as easily imploded had the Americans not invaded the country. The 400,000 Iraqi military was a sham force on paper, lacking equipment and regular pay, through the sanctions and misrule of Saddam....therefore the invasion of Iraq was not necessary from America's REAL security perspective {never mind yellow cakes from Niger; Saddam WMD's; Saddam/al-Qaeda.....all verifiable as false through the American intelligence high echelon contacts within Iraqi security}, ....but Israel wanted an invasion, the destruction of the country into 3 ethnic parts, blood letting, where 1.3 million Iraqis have died since, with 4.5 million refugees, and Bush II obliged at a cost to America of a $trillion or 2 eventually, and the death of 20,000 servicemen unofficially and 80,000 overall casualties, unofficially)
The Iraq army expected to be taken over by the conquerors and put to work cleaning up and re-establishing order in the country. Instead the soldiers were told to go home: that they were untrustworthy Baathists — nationalists, socialists and pan-Arabists — members of Saddam Hussein’s old party. So they went home and found other things to do, such as taking part in an insurrection to drive the occupiers out, not without success.
The Americans have started to leave Iraq, having gained nothing except to make Iran the regional great power, and to create hostility for American oil companies who wanted but are not getting oilfield development contracts.
(Hopefully without any prior overt criminal baggage, the vast majority of Ba'athist, will be allowed to run for public office in Iraq...very soon, as in NOW; they are the sorely needed technocrats who can make Iraq work...they have the administrative skills, which the religious parties funded by Iran do not...and can be allies of America, why not? ...Former Nazis in Germany...former militarists in post war Japan.....both groups were critical to the rebuilding of those two countries, and the same rule applies to Iraq now)
Iraq is still a very unsettled country, with a difficult national election scheduled at the beginning of the new year.(Get all the Israeli military advisers out of the country) American troops are supposed to leave the country in two years, but doubt about that remains. Mideastern, Turkish, European, Russian and Far Eastern companies are highly actively looking for business there. (The U.S. State Department advises American businessmen against traveling to Iraq; it’s too dangerous.)
A second classic strategic theory for defeating insurrections is "clear and hold." This is very much in fashion in Washington now thanks to its advocacy by Gen. David H. Petraeus at Central Command and Stanley A. McChrystal in Afghanistan, and also in two recent books, one by Lewis Sorley, the other by David Kilcullen, both arguing that the Vietnam War was actually won by such a strategy — but too late for the fickle American press, public opinion and Congress to recognize the victory.
(victory around the corner, after 10 years of fighting, sounds familiar)
Clear and hold means ejecting guerrillas from an area and then protecting it from their return. This began in postwar Malaya (as it was then) in 1948, when an insurrection from inside the Chinese minority population caused much of that population to be confined in guarded villages, leaving British troops free to deal with the Chinese who escaped this treatment. Eventually a political solution was found.
(No two insurgency campaign scenarios are alike...so does not make sense to copy one successful counter-insurgency campaign onto another different culture/country/different history/different people...even though they may look similar.
The Chinese were brought into Malaysia by the British imperialists to work as coolies........when an alien is brought to a strange new environment, in theory they tend to be subordinate, and very obedient...the basic theory of European colonial plantation labor, recruited not from the locals, but as imported bonded labor. Thus Africans used in the America's instead of the local American Indians. So a subject race, who are not traditional locals, not self confident in their new environment, where they have not lived for centuries.
Also the Chinese population in Malaysia were a minority of about 30%......on the fringes of a society. Not the dominant majority. We are talking about 3.6 million ethnic Chinese in Malaysia in 1948???? Not a huge number. Few if any of the Chinese Malay communists had military back grounds, extensive training, or access to arms, save for those captured from the surrendering Japanese and stored. The Malay Chinese had no obvious supply routes......these weaknesses of the Malay Chinese Communists, despite their euphoria and encouragement from Mao's China, the British colonials, with their experience of the area for over 100 years were able to contain, without using Soviet/Afghanistan style ham fisted brutality.
In Vietnam you had in the 1960's 40 million Vietnamese????..one ethnic group, with a sense of history; a people who had lived in the area for millennium upon millenarian.....with supply routes via Communist China, and North Vietnam's ports etc. Where perhaps, elements of the criminal American elite were more interested in other pursuits like securing the opium supply routes to America, and else where, rather than focusing on an out right military victory over the Communists of Vietnam. Many Jews consider Communism as an extension of their Talmud religion.............from 1940--1962, the USA covertly armed, trained, and supplied with arms the Communist North Vietcong.
The "Victory" in Vietnam was the perceived belief that Communism had been prevented from spreading to the whole of South East Asia......but overall America's approach was ham fisted, clumsy and destructive, propping up criminals in Saigon...4 million Vietnamese dead, and a credible case for war crimes at the Hague.
The problem with America in the Third World scenario is that because of the inherent racist background and beliefs of certain government officers, existing in a specific set institutional climate, despite all the eloquent sugary rhetoric, they have always maintained that America's SOB in the Third Third scene should always be recruited from the lowest common denominator of any given society; societies fringe dregs and marginal characters like psycho fagot Gaddafi of Libya trained in America/UK, serving in Libyan military intelligence initially, until a "coup" was staged in 1969, and he was anointed by America as the leader of the country, with armies of Green Berets propping up his nasty, brutal, "Socialist" regime, sponsoring terrorism/insurgency from around the world for the last 40 uninterrupted years.
In Vietnam, where the U.S. copied the method, these villages were called Strategic Hamlets and were employed in conjunction with the Phoenix program to "clear" areas of enemy or unreliable elements, and defend against the return of the Viet Cong. The Sorley and Kilcullen books notwithstanding, the Communists won that war, the American part of it having lasted from 1963 to 1973.
In the Afghanistan case, Gen. McChrystal has suggested that his war, if fought on his terms (with troop reinforcements rising to a total of over 100,000 men at least), would take between 10 and 50 years to succeed.
(There are now approaching 70,000 American troops {November 2009}...Obama has sent 20,000 already this year, and another 13,000 under a stealth program?????????.....75,000 private contractors....40,000 NATO allies; 260,000 ANA projected, with 100,000 Afghan police paramilitary projected for 2012????; 50,000 warlord militia.........AND MacCrystal wants 40,000---80,000 more on top of all that, with more commitments from NATO...10,000---20,000 more= Grand total lets see......655,000 Occupation and Afghan forces, against.........10,000 regular Taliban fighters depending on the season.......66 government forces for every Taliban, though of course the Taliban numbers may increase, with greater occupation activity.
Such a force cannot be cohesive, and really America does not have a real enemy to fight in Afghanistan, but useful if you want to start a war with Pakistan and further destabilize that sorry country.....but, but ,but as with Saddam's Iraq what would the point of that be if the top echelon of the Pakistan military is in your pay already, and they obey your orders.....in the Iraq sense?)
Afghanistan consists of 652,230 square kilometers (251,827 square miles), many of them more or less vertically inclined, populated by an estimated 28.4 million people. Iraq has an estimated population of 28.9 million people and 438,317 square kilometers (169,235 sq. miles), much of them flat. The estimates of how many civilians died in Iraq range around the figure of 100,000, with some — the Johns Hopkins-Lancet study — much higher.
(Pashtun Afghanistan:
Pashtun's are the dominant group in Afghanistan.....they have dominated Afghanistan for the last 1000 years. They constitute between 45--50 % of the overall population of Afghanistan concentrated in the East and South East. Including the Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran still. {2 million + 2 million} The Taliban is a wholly Pashtun movement.
So why do Pashtun's exclusively join the Taliban?
The Pashtuns first came to Afghanistan/Ariana about 2200--2500 years ago from what is now Kazakhstan {Siberia, Central Asia, Mongolia, Sinkiang were once occupied by Iranian people}......the harsh climate, and often prolonged seasons of poor weather drove these nomadic tribes into more green areas, South towards India, as one example; they went into Iran, Eastern Turkey, and also towards Eastern Europe....The Pashtuns lived in Afghanistan adopting the local religion whether Hinduism or Buddhism. About 1000 years ago they gradually converted to Islam.
They played a prominent role in South Asian history, providing Kings, soldiers, administrators, and philosophers.
More recently, as a people and race they have been restricted to Afghanistan, and now under foreign occupation they find themselves as the main victimized group within Afghanistan, and Pakistan. There are 42 million of them in that area, with 6/7 million of military age....and unemployment in Afghanistan around 40%. Maintaining a low intensity guerrilla war will not be that difficult for them, since they have good supply routes from Pakistan, from the 26 million Pashtuns who reside in Pakistan, and who share the aspirations and worries of their Afghan kin across the "border"...and are themselves subjected to military operations from the Pakistan military.
America is big enough to accommodate the Pashtuns of Afghanistan's aspirations...indeed the Pashtuns can become good allies of America if the right inducements are made to the people. Where America ditches the mafia/narco barons that certain Americans are soooo comfy with, then for this small price, Pashtun Afghanistan can become a good reliable ally of America that is no longer a source of international problems which affect America.
The Taliban is not an international jehadi organization with global pretensions which threatens America, but an ETHNIC movement which through engagement and discourse begun at varying levels by Karzai before the elections, the British and the Pakistan military, can bear fruit for America in Afghanistan......certainly America should not expend unnecessary energy fighting them, it serves no purpose....it proves nothing except the sheer futility and waste of war, and a diversion of vital resources away from what America should be expending its true energy in, healthcare, education, social welfare, creating a sound manufacturing base away from the the MIC.
President Obama, who’s been part of videoconferences on Afghan policy prior to his Asia trip this week, ought to have interest in talking again with the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl W. Eikenberry. A former U.S. military commander there (2005-2007), now retired from the Army, Eikenberry has expressed on paper his reservations about sending any more U.S. combat troops at all to the country. He would cut back to a few thousand more trainers, and wait to see if the Afghans improve in their ability to look after their own country. If not… ?
