Posts Tagged ‘afghanistan’

US military presence in Afghanistan faces many stresses and pressures ranging from sectarian violence, poor health care, infrastructure, insurgency, and now, volcanos.

The Iceland volcano explosion has delayed flights from US airbases and slowed down medical relief and other vital activities.

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — Hovering debris from an Icelandic volcano kept U.S. military flights in Europe on the ground for a second-straight day Friday, slowing troop and supply transport to the war zones and diverting some medical evacuation flights.

Will there be a congressional response to this latest threat to US military presence in Afghanistan?

A sign that things might be turning for the best, or an act of desperation? Only time will tell:

“To bring peace and accelerate the reconciliation process, we are determined to form the High Council of Peace and Reconciliation,” Karzai told a press conference here at the Presidential Palace.

He said the members of the peace council will be governmental officials and tribal elders.

He also disclosed the plan to call a national Jirga, or a national assembly, on peace in the near future to discuss on the ways of implementation of the peace process.

Karzai, at the press briefing, repeated his offer for talks with Taliban and called on the insurgent group and other anti- government elements to renounce violence and accept the country’s constitution.

As a result of Obama’s pledge to boost United States’ military presence in Afghanistan by over 30,000 troops, NATO allies have been pledging their own troop increases as well:

A NATO-led international conference on Afghanistan strategy will be held in London on Jan. 28. German allies are expecting Merkel’s government to send more soldiers to Afghanistan, as a response to U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to increase 30,000 additional combat troops. Merkel had insisted that any decision on additional forces would not be made until the NATO-led conference.

Obama continues to face internal divisions on many of his proposals for Afghanistan, including levels and logistics of troop deployments. Look for the in-fighting to continue as casualties mount:

Obama settled the question of how many additional troops the United States would commit to the war this year — 30,000. But on almost everything else, the debate between White House civilians and Pentagon strategists has continued without pause.

Obama says he’ll start bringing troops home in July 2011; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says the drawdown will be modest and could be postponed. Obama says we won’t be doing nation-building; Army Gen. David H. Petraeus says nation-building is inescapable. Vice President Joe Biden says the strategy is not counterinsurgency; the generals insist that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Even the least controversial piece of Obama’s plan — the sped-up deployment of troops — has gotten muddied. The target of getting 30,000 fresh troops into the war zone by the middle of 2010 has slipped at least two months, to the dismay of some Obama aides, although the Pentagon says it’s not a big deal because most of the force will arrive by July.

While Obama has promised a substantial surge of troops in Afghanistan, frustration is apparently mounting over the slow pace of pentagon troop ramp ups. The New York Times reports of new infighting within the administration.

A rapid deployment is central to President Obama’s strategy, to have a jolt of American forces pound theTaliban enough for Afghan security forces to take over the fight. Administration officials said that part of the White House frustration stemmed from the view that the longer the American military presence in Afghanistan continued, the more of a political liability it would become for Mr. Obama. But beyond the politics, the speeded up deployment — which Mr. Obama paired with a promise to begin troop withdrawals by July 2011 — is part of Mr. Obama’s so-called “bell curve” Afghanistan strategy, whereby American troops would increase their force in Afghanistan and step up attacks meant to quickly take out insurgents.

With poor weather and other difficulties, it will be challenging to even enact Obama’s Afghanistan plan fully by the fall.

Looks like a giant foreign policy topic coming up next year! We know how busy you are prepping for your poverty debates, but we are excited for the upcoming topic.

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce its military and/or police presence in one or more of the following: South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey.

What do you think? Comment on this thread!

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IL – AFGHANISTAN IS A BIG QUESTION MARK FOR 2010- US DOMESTIC POLITICS WILL BE A KEY DETERMINANT OF THE WAY FORWARD***

AVIATION WEEK 1-6-2010

PIVOTAL YEAR FOR IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN, MCLEARY

What the fight of 2010 and after will look like is a matter of debate. A recent paper by a Maj. Jim Grant of the Special Forces is gaining traction in Washington. The paper calls for a stronger focus on tribal engagement and empowering tribal chiefs. Other voices insist that training and partnering with government forces is the right direction. Almost everything in Afghanistan is a question mark as 2010 begins—even if the rural population is tribal or not. Given the troop surge and the focus Obama is putting on the war, this may be the year that U.S. domestic politics catches up with the war.

CORRUPTION A WAY OF POLITICS AND LIFE IN AFGHANISTAN

NPR 12-26-2009

CORRUPTION IGNORED, NORTHAM

When the Obama administration formulated its new strategy for Afghanistan, it included certain demands on the government in Kabul. First and foremost was tackling corruption, a practice that seeps into virtually every aspect of life and leaves many Afghans angry and frustrated.

Bribery and extortion — baksheesh andreshwat in the local language — have become routine.

Mohammed Nazir Habibzoi runs a busy trucking company on the far edge of Kabul. His 250 trucks crisscross Afghanistan and the region, shuttling all sorts of supplies.

But it costs him, he says. For example, his company transports goods from Tajikistan to Kabul. To prevent his trucks from getting delayed at the border, Habibzoi says, the drivers have to pay customs officials.

“Sometimes $50, sometimes $200,” he says. “We also have to negotiate bribes at checkpoints along the way. If they ask for $100, we may settle on $50.”

In 2005, Transparency International, a Germany-based organization that charts corruption in government, rated Afghanistan 117th out of 180 countries. Now, the group ranks Afghanistan second from the bottom — the only country deemed more corrupt is Somalia.

US ARMED INTERVENTION IN AFGHANISTAN FAILS – WITHDRAWAL IS THE BEST WAY TO WEAKEN THE TALIBAN

GALLAGHER 12-23-2009 – FRMR HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE

BUT AFGHANISTAN IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN VIETNAM, COMMONDREAMS.ORG

The argument against continuing the Afghanistan War, then, does not lie in denying that there would not be a downside – and a major one – to another Taliban victory, but rather in recognizing that our country cannot and should not try to shape that country’s future by force of arms. As to the question of whether the U.S. can deal with the Taliban, and perhaps even influence it, let’s remember that our government found no problem financing its ideological predecessors when they served as useful proxies in an earlier war against the Soviet Union. And certainly, the sooner the U.S. announces it intention to withdraw, the sooner the Taliban loses its main recruiting point.

US TROOP SURGE REQUIRES CREATING A COUNTER-INSURGENCY CAMPAIGN TO DRUM UP DOMESTIC SUPPORT

VOA NEWS 12-19-2009

2010 KEY YEAR FOR OBAMA AFGHAN STRATEGY, PESSIN

Strategic implications

It is a daunting logistical challenge.  But the strategic implications are even more significant.

During a visit to Afghanistan in December, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. troop increase, and at least seven thousand more from other nations, demonstrates “unwavering resolve” to help Afghanistan for the long term.

“The United States and our many friends and allies around the globe are determined to defeat those who stand between you and a peaceful and prosperous future,” he said. “Together we will succeed and our partnership will flourish for decades to come.”

But the first part of that, defeating the insurgency, will be the most difficult.

“What we would expect to see over the course of 2010, as the forces flow into the theater [of war], is a spike in violence levels and casualty levels as the enemy challenges their entry into theater,” said Kim Kagan, founder and director of the Institute for the Study of War.

She says in the coming months U.S., international and Afghan forces need to secure Afghan towns, fight hard-core insurgents and convince Taliban foot soldiers to change their allegiance to the government.

“What we have seen work so well in Iraq, that we need to replicate appropriately in Afghanistan is a counterinsurgency campaign that really makes it possible for the population to support the government, or at the very least to reject the insurgency,” said Kagan.

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