Reporting at Counterpunch suggests that the Pentagon is resigned to the failure of the much touted offensive in Helmand Province earlier this year{"Afghanistan"}. Dubbed "Obama's surge" by the media, the offensive code named Moshtarak (Together), was intended to dislodge the Taliban and retake the province's infrastructure and population. Based upon General Stanley McCrystal's assurances of success, the President secured funding for a 30,000 man increase in force. The dislodging was achieved, but after the area was turned over to Afghanistan security forces the Taliban returned. Just three months later, villagers say the Taliban control the market town of Marjah at night. Shops are still closed and schools have not reopened. Central government workers have fled. The Taliban is replacing IEDs removed by US troops, and executing collaborationists. Local people also believe that the Taliban are stronger than ever in Kandahar, the latest target of western forces. Winning the hearts and minds of the Pashtun, a tribal people infamous for their xenophobia, will be next to impossible as US and NATO forces disrupt everyday life in their preparations for battle against the Taliban. The work of US assassinations teams has also raised the ire of the population. The quick turn around in the war General McChrystal envisioned has not appeared.
The conditions in southern Afghanistan are nothing new. Alexander faced them in the fourth century BC. After two years of fighting the region became the Greek province of Bactria, but the great Macedonian general did not succeed in subduing the tribes south of the Oxus. The Soviets had a similar experience during their ten year occupation beginning in December, 1979. McChrystal planned to forman arc of control in the densely populated south (green shaded area) fixed on Marjah in the west and Kandahar in the east. Once Marjah was secure, he would expand the security footprint eastward to Kandahar, the city founded by Alexander in 330 BC. The maps shows this strategy is a familiar one following both the routes of Alexander (blue line) and the Soviet armies (red line). But the failure of the extraordinarily weak Kabaul government to hold Marjah once it was returned to it, puts the entire strategy in question. If western troops are redeployed to hold Marjah, they will be unavailable to takeover and hold Kandahar, the home base of the Taliban--a situation not anticipated by McChrystal's planning. Warnings from US ambassador Karl Eikenberry about government ineptitude and corruption were ignored[1]. One positive development in the war is the recapture of the Pakistani tribal areas on the northeast border that serve as safe havens for Taliban fighters. That gain is offset by the failure of the secure and hold strategy in the south. Once again the US seems to be stalemated in a far-off civil war, this one between the predominately Pashtun Taliban, and the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara opponents in the central government.
The House will take up the $58.8b war supplemental spending bill this week. American deaths in the war have passed 1000, as the rate accelerates dramatically in the face of a newly resurgent enemy.
[1] at a White House briefing last week the Ambassador refused to directly endorse Karzai as an "adequate strategic partner" saying only that he was the elected president of Afghanistan. The election is widely considered to have been tainted by vote fraud. Hamid Karsai's brother, Ahmed Wali, is the strong man of Khandahar. He is reputed to be deeply involved in the opium trade with contacts to both the Taliban and the CIA. President Karsai told an audience member during a recent Washington visit that he "could not fire his brother". Secretary Clinton, sharing the forum with him, was silent.
[images: counterpunch.org/spinney05132010.html]