General Says US Must Make up Its Mind on Afghanistan

[Nickdfresh]

Analysis: Escalate or scale back in Afghanistan?
President Obama faces stark choice as highlighted by McChrystal report
ANALYSIS
By ROBERT BURNS
National Security Writer
The Associated Press
updated 4:27 p.m. ET, Mon., Sept . 21, 2009

WASHINGTON - Escalate or scale back.

The blunt conclusion laid out by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan — "The status quo will lead to failure" — poses a stark and urgent choice for President Barack Obama: intensify the foundering conflict with more troops or narrow the mission to targeting terrorists instead of protecting Afghans.

In his report to Obama, Gen. Stanley McChrystal makes clear his view that ultimate success in Afghanistan requires overcoming two main threats: the insurgency and a "crisis of confidence" among Afghans in their own government. Both must be addressed, and together they require more resources, he says.

"Insufficiently addressing either principal threat will result in failure," the general concludes.

The McChrystal assessment puts to the test Obama's assertion just six months ago that he would put the war effort on a path to success by providing what the previous White House didn't.

"For six years, Afghanistan has been denied the resources that it demands because of the war in Iraq," Obama said March 27. "Now, we must make a commitment that can accomplish our goals." He approved the dispatch of 21,000 more U.S. troops and promised a comprehensive improvement in the U.S. effort to stabilize the country, train its security forces and advance justice and economic opportunity.

Election adds doubts
Obama also said then that he would reevaluate after the Afghan presidential election, which was held Aug. 20. The charges of widespread fraud and ballot-rigging that emerged after the election have only added to doubts in Washington about whether the Afghan government can be counted on as a reliable partner.

The president thus far has not endorsed the McChrystal approach, saying in television interviews over the weekend that he needs to be convinced that sending more troops would make Americans safer from al-Qaida. Tellingly, Obama reiterated in those interviews that his core goal is to destroy al-Qaida, which is not present in significant numbers in Afghanistan. He did not focus on saving Afghanistan.

"I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face," Obama told NBC television's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

McChrystal's report, first made public Monday by The Washington Post, was not intended to present Obama with a list of military options. The general left no doubt where he stands. He believes a full-scale, comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign is what is required, and that time is of the essence.

But White House officials say the president is considering more than the McChrystal assessment as he weighs courses of action. He is relying on the views of key Cabinet aides, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said last week that he has yet to make up his mind on the wisdom of committing more troops.

Problems with scaling back
Gates has said, however, that he does not believe that a scaled-back approach that focuses mainly on killing al-Qaida leaders — rather than the McChrystal view that counterterrorism operations should be part of a broader campaign to build up Afghan support for their government — is the right answer.

"The notion that you can conduct a purely counterterrorist kind of campaign and do it from a distance simply does not accord with reality," Gates told reporters earlier this month. "The reality is that even if you want to focus on counterterrorism, you cannot do that successfully without local law enforcement, without internal security, without intelligence" — without a major presence in Kabul.

McChrystal's immediate superior, Gen. David Petraeus, sees it similarly.

"He (McChrystal) is the first to recognize not just the extraordinary capabilities but also the limitations of counterterrorism forces in Afghanistan," Petraeus wrote in an opinion article published Friday in The Times of London.

Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who advised McChrystal in Kabul this summer, said in a telephone interview Monday that Obama has invited doubt about his commitment to succeeding in Afghanistan by putting off a decision on devoting more resources.

"The truth is that we don't have that much time," Cordesman said. "Waiting to see what happens with existing resources and existing troop levels, when the commanding general has already said that's an unacceptable risk, basically invites defeat." He added: "The president has yet to show he can lead in this war."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Analysis: Escalate or scale back in Afghanistan? - Afghanistan- msnbc.com (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32957421/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/)

[Nickdfresh]

Fuck the Afghan gov't. Scale back to strictly a counter-terrorist mission...

[Nickdfresh]

U.S. to shift from Afghanistan to Pakistan?
White House could focus war on Pakistan and use drones, not more troops
The Associated Press
updated 6:50 p.m. ET, Mon., Sept . 21, 2009
WASHINGTON - The White House is considering expanding counterterror operations in Pakistan to refocus on eliminating al-Qaida instead of mounting a major military escalation in Afghanistan, two senior administration officials said Monday.

Earlier in the day, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan reported to Obama that without more troops, the U.S. risks failure in a war it's been waging since September 2001.

The senior administration officials said the renewed fight against the terrorist organization could lead to more missile attacks on Pakistan terrorist havens by unmanned U.S. spy planes. They spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made.

Top aides to President Barack Obama said he still has questions and wants more time to decide.

The officials said the administration would push ahead with the ground mission in Afghanistan for the near future, still leaving the door open for sending more U.S. troops. But Obama's top advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, have indicated they are reluctant to send many more troops — if any at all — in the immediate future.

Dismantling al-Qaida a ‘core goal’
In weekend interviews, Obama emphasized that disrupting al-Qaida is his "core goal" and worried aloud about "mission creep" that moved away from that direction. "If it starts drifting away from that goal, then we may have a problem," he said.

The proposed shift would bolster U.S. action on Obama's long-stated goal of dismantling terrorist havens, but it could also complicate American relations with Pakistan, long wary of the growing use of aerial drones to target militants along the porous border with Afghanistan.

The prospect of a White House alternative to a deepening involvement in the stalemated war in Afghanistan comes as administration officials debate whether to send more troops — as urged in a blunt assessment of the deteriorating conflict by the top U.S. commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

The two senior administration officials said Monday that one option would be to step up the use of missile-armed unmanned spy drones over Pakistan that have killed scores of militants over the last year.

The armed drones could contain al-Qaida in a smaller, if more remote area, and keep its leaders from retreating back into Afghanistan, one of the officials said.

Most U.S. military officials have preferred a classic counterinsurgency mission to keep al-Qaida out of Afghanistan by defeating the Taliban and securing the local population.

However, one senior White House official said it's not clear that the Taliban would welcome al-Qaida back into Afghanistan. The official noted that it was only after the 9/11 attacks that the United States invaded Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban in pursuit of al-Qaida.

Another shift in strategy?...

The Rest of the Article Here (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32952295/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia)

[Nickdfresh]

Pakistan is the new Cambodia.... :frown:

NYT: Taliban boosts Pakistan base
Officials: Militants push into areas in which they previously had little sway
By Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti
The New York Times
Thurs., Sept . 24, 2009

WASHINGTON - Senior Taliban leaders, showing a surprising level of sophistication and organization, are using their sanctuary in Pakistan to stoke a widening campaign of violence in northern and western Afghanistan, senior American military and intelligence officials say.

The Taliban’s expansion into parts of Afghanistan that it once had little influence over comes as the Obama administration is struggling to settle on a new military strategy for Afghanistan, and as the White House renews its efforts to get Pakistan’s government to be more aggressive about killing or capturing Taliban leaders inside Pakistan.

American military and intelligence officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were discussing classified information, said the Taliban’s leadership council, led by Mullah Muhammad Omar and operating around the southern Pakistani city of Quetta, was directly responsible for a wave of violence in once relatively placid parts of northern and western Afghanistan. A recent string of attacks killed troops from Italy and Germany, pivotal American allies that are facing strong opposition to the Afghan war at home.

These assessments echo a recent report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, in portraying the Taliban as an increasingly sophisticated shadow government that sees itself on the cusp of victory in the war-ravaged nation.

General McChrystal’s report describes how Mullah Omar’s insurgency has appointed shadow governors in most provinces of Afghanistan, levies taxes, establishes Islamic courts there and conducts a formal review of its military campaign each winter.

Support from Pakistan
American officials say they believe that the Taliban leadership in Pakistan still gets support from parts of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military spy service. The ISI has been the Taliban’s off-again-on-again benefactor for more than a decade, and some of its senior officials see Mullah Omar as a valuable asset should the United States leave Afghanistan and the Taliban regain power.

The issue of the Taliban leadership council, or shura, in Quetta is now at the top of the Obama administration’s agenda in its meetings with Pakistani officials.

At the same time, American officials face a frustrating paradox: the more the administration wrestles publicly with how substantial and lasting a military commitment to make to Afghanistan, the more the ISI is likely to strengthen bonds to the Taliban as Pakistan hedges its bets.

American officials have long complained that senior Taliban leaders operating from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, provide money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan, where most of the nearly 68,000 American forces are deployed.

Taliban has ‘outmaneuvered’ foreign forces
But since NATO’s offensive into the Taliban-dominated south this spring, the insurgents have surprised American commanders by stepping up attacks against allied troops elsewhere in the country to throw NATO off balance and create the perception of spreading violence that neither the allied military nor the civilian Afghan government in Kabul can control.

“The Taliban is trying to create trouble elsewhere to alleviate pressure” in the south, said one senior American intelligence official. “They’ve outmaneuvered us time and time again.”

The issue has opened fresh rifts between the United States and Pakistan over how to combat the Taliban leadership council in Quetta. American officials have voiced new and unusually public criticism of Pakistan’s role in abetting the growing Afghan insurgency, reviving tensions that seemed to have eased after the two countries worked closely to track and kill Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in an American missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas last month.

General McChrystal said in his assessment, which was made public on Monday, “Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with Al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups,” and are reportedly aided by “some elements” of the ISI.

The United States ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, said in a recent interview with the McClatchy newspapers that the Pakistani government was “certainly reluctant to take action” against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency.

Pakistani officials take issue with that, adding that the United States overstates the threat posed by the Quetta shura, possibly because the American understanding of the situation is distorted by vague and self-serving intelligence provided by Afghanistan’s spy service.

A senior Pakistani official said that the United States had asked Pakistan in recent years to round up 10 Taliban leaders in Quetta. Of those 10, 6 were killed or captured by the Pakistanis, 2 were probably in Afghanistan and the remaining 2 presented no threat.

“Pakistan has said it’s willing to act when given actionable intelligence,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “We have made substantial progress in the last year or so against the Quetta shura.”

Pakistani officials also said that a move against militant leaders in Quetta risked inciting public anger throughout Baluchistan, a region that has long had a tense relationship with Pakistan’s government in Islamabad.

Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric, recently rallied his troops with a boastful message timed for the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr.

In the message, he taunted his American adversaries for ignoring the lessons of past military failures in Afghanistan, including the invasion of Alexander the Great’s army.

And he bragged that the Taliban had emerged as a nationalistic movement that “is approaching the edge of victory.”

‘Amorphous group’
A half-dozen American military, intelligence and diplomatic officials said in interviews that the Taliban leadership in Baluchistan, which abuts the portion of southern Afghanistan where most of the fighting is taking place, is increasing its strategic direction over the insurgency.

“The Taliban inner shura in Baluchistan is certainly trying to exercise greater command and control over the Taliban in Afghanistan,” said one American official in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his assessment involved classified intelligence.

The official said that Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a former inmate at the American military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is now a top Taliban lieutenant, was involved in replacing Taliban shadow governors and commanders, as well as reorganizing the Taliban throughout the country. “The Quetta shura — you can’t knock on their clubhouse door,” a Western diplomat said. “It’s much more of an amorphous group that as best we can tell moves around. They go to Karachi, they go to Quetta, they go across the border.”

American officials grudgingly acknowledge the Taliban’s skill at using guerrilla-style attacks to manipulate public impressions of the insurgency. “We assess that the primary focus of attacks in northern provinces such as Kunduz is to create a perception that the insurgency is spreading like wildfire,” the American official in Afghanistan said. “But I think it’s more of an ‘information operations’ success than a substantive one of holding any territory.”

Another American intelligence official who follows Pakistan closely said the insurgents had sought to exploit allied countries’ political vulnerabilities, like elections in Germany on Sunday. “The Taliban have proven themselves capable of strategic planning,” the official said.

General McChrystal said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that he had been surprised by “the growth of the shadow government, the growth of its coercion and its growth into the north and west.”

Germany, which has suffered 33 combat deaths in Afghanistan, has remained committed to the Afghan mission, although it has placed strict limits on where its soldiers can serve, refusing to send them to the south.

But that commitment is now being hotly debated in the coming parliamentary elections, after an airstrike called in by a German commander this month. The NATO airstrike, directed at two tanker trucks carrying alliance fuel that had been hijacked by the Taliban, killed scores of people; the number of dead civilians remains unclear.

Other allies are also rethinking their presence in Afghanistan. A bomb that killed six Italian soldiers in Kabul last Thursday prompted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy to declare that his nation had begun planning to “bring our young men home as soon as possible.” Italy has 3,100 troops in Afghanistan.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.

This article, "Taliban Widen Afghan Attacks From Base in Pakistan," first appeared in The New York Times.


Copyright © 2009 The New York Times (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32998293/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/):pullinghair:

[ELVIS]

Fuck the Afghan gov't. Scale back to strictly a counter-terrorist mission...

They can't do that from here with Special Ops and very few specialized troops on the ground in the hot spots around the world ??

[ELVIS]

So, we are to believe (according to the last article) that the Taliban are outsmarting the US military ??

[Nickdfresh]

They can't do that from here with Special Ops and very few specialized troops on the ground in the hot spots around the world ??

That's what they should do. Obviously, there's going to be numbers training the Afghans, but small units can kill individual terrorists when they pop up as they did recently in Somalia...

[ELVIS]

Thought so...

[binnie]

So, we are to believe (according to the last article) that the Taliban are outsmarting the US military ??

Yes.

This is not a war that is going well for the US or UK.

[binnie]

Fuck the Afghan gov't. Scale back to strictly a counter-terrorist mission...

This is an interesting issue. Part of me thinks it would be better to go the long haul and try to bring a completly new regime in Afghanistan - better for their people, the stability of the middle and far East, and certainly better for defense against terrorist activity against the West in the long run. The other part of me wonders if its feasible (given that Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, the British Empire and Russia have all failed miserably in military strikes in the past) and doubts whether we can justify the sheer loss of life in gambling to find out.