The battle of Marja, in Afghanistan’s southern poppy belt has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Some 11,000 U.S. and Afghan troops fighting to defeat a few hundred Taliban fighters won’t really change much in Afghanistan. The greater significance of the battle appears to be in how it is perceived in the rest of Afghanistan and in America.

The operation’s true goals are to convince Americans that a new era has arrived in the eight-year-long war and also to show Afghans that U.S. forces and the Afghan government can protect them from the Taliban.

Marja is indeed a Taliban stronghold and despite the fact that the Talib fighters are seriously outnumbered and even more seriously outgunned, at least nine coalition soldiers have died so far and dozens have been wounded. It is a serious, hard, no holds barred battle on the most basic level.

It is being hoped that a swift victory over the Taliban in Marja, followed by a robust development effort, could sway some Afghan fence sitters.

The important thing to realize is that Marja is not a place of any meaningful strategic, or even tactical importance, that even the quickest of victories there – although that doesn’t appear to be possible any longer – will not really influence the outcome of the war, except that the symbolism of a victory might somewhat help the coalition politically.

What might be more meaningful is actually straightening out the situation in Kandahar, with its tangled political rivalries. Among the local power brokers is Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Ahmed Karzai has been accused of being a drug kingpin and, also, a paid CIA asset. He has of course denied both allegations.

So, it seems to us, that the battle of Marja is really just an excuse not to tangle with a much more difficult situation in Kandahar as yet. Too bad, that its cost in dead and wounded is as high as it is.

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, battle of Marja, corruption, Kandahar, Karzai, politics, Taliban

As we get deeper and deeper into the Afghan quagmire, ostensibly to defeat al-Qaida, along with its ever-mysterious Osama bin Laden and to defeat the Taliban, in order to prop up the Karzai government, it appears that the Taliban is always a step, or two ahead.

At this point, nearly every Afghan province has two governors – one belonging to the Karzai regime and the other to the Taliban one.

At the same time, it appears that many Afghans prefer a decisive rule to the disarray of the Karzai government.

The Taliban has established an elaborate shadow government of governors, police chiefs, district administrators and judges that in many cases already has more bearing on the lives of Afghans than the real government.

U.S. military officials say that getting rid of the Taliban’s shadow government and establishing the authority of the Karzai administration over the next 18 months will be critical to the success of President Obama’s surge strategy. But this has been complicated by the fact that in many areas, Afghans prefer the severe but decisive authority of the Taliban to the corruption and inefficiency of Karzai’s appointees.

For many Afghans, there is little, or no choice. Across broad areas of the country, especially Afghanistan’s vast rural areas, the government has little to no presence, leaving the Taliban as the only authority.

After been forced underground or into exile in 2001, the Taliban has returned not just to wage war but also to demonstrate that it is capable of delivering a different model of governance from the one offered by Karzai and his allies. Afghans who live under Taliban control say the group’s weaknesses remain the same as during the movement’s previous five-year rule. The Taliban provides virtually no social services, leaving Afghans on their own when it comes to health care, education and development.

Most Afghans celebrated Taliban’s ouster on 2001, but after eight years of Karzai’s government, many say they would happily welcome the Taliban’s return.

It appears then that whatever is defined as a “victory” in Afghanistan will not be a military one, but rather a very strong push to improve the efficiency of the central government, while cleaning out the ever-present corruption. In addition, the Afghan government forces will have to actually establish a strong, viable presence even in areas presently considered to be Taliban strongholds.

Whether the U.S. and NATO will be able to achieve that within the next 18 to 24 months remains to be seen, but the prospects do not look promising at all at this point.

Maybe if we finally gave up the search for the mythical Osama bin Laden, more resources could be channeled into actually fighting for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and to offer them a viable future, which for so many decades has seemed to slip almost out of reach?

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, government, politics, shadow, Taliban

While everybody is awaiting President Obama’s Tuesday evening speech on Afghanistan strategy to be broadcast out of the United Military Academy at West Point, we are still awaiting some definition of what it is that we are trying to achieve there. To the best of our knowledge nobody has defined either the Iraqi, nor the Afghan war’s mission objectives – not Bush and not Obama.

At least, the president is reportedly going to address his planned exit strategy. That’s better than nothing, but are we waiting for a few more ministers of the Karzai government to be indicted for corruption, before we withdraw the troops which – at a cost of $1 million per year, per soldier – are propping up his regime?

The mission objectives should of course be the absolute first thing to be addressed and that’s why we have decided to re-post this article, originally published here on November 3, 2009.

Since the original article was posted there have been some overtures by the Karzai government to engage “moderate elements” of the Taliban, so we stand corrected on that point.

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While the Obama administration ponders whether to send tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, as General Stanley McChrystal proposed and as everybody is trying to figure out what impact the Afghan run-off election, which has never taken place will have on the overall situation there, we still haven’t really figured out what it is that we are trying to achieve there.

“A foreign army alone cannot beat an insurgency; the insurgency in Afghanistan requires an Afghan solution,” wrote General McChrystal. In view of that probably sound assessment, why would we need an additional 40,000 U.S. troops?

Lets first of all decide what is it that we are trying to achieve in Afghanistan. Is it hunting down the remains of al-Qaida and maybe finally catching up with Osama bin-Laden? Or maybe something that sells in Washington, DC, but it doesn’t sell in Afghanistan – a stable Karzai government? Or maybe we are trying to defeat the resurgent Taliban? Or are we trying to transform the Afghan society? Are we including Pakistan in our grand plan?

Speaking of the Taliban, we haven’t heard any proposals to include this group in possible talks about forming a coalition government. No doubt that this omission is a really big mistake.

As things stand, eight years into an occupation of Afghanistan even the military are saying that we have not achieved anything, but that the situation on the ground has in fact deteriorated. What in fact appears to be the main problem is not the remains of al-Qaida, or the Taliban itself, or even the rampant corruption among the ruling clique, but rather the militarization of the Afghan conflict.

The military “solution” is obviously not working in an environment as complex as the one in Afghanistan and Pakistan for that matter.

One cannot expect the average U.S. serviceman to understand the very complicated tribal, ethnic, or language problems of the country he, or she has been shipped to.

The actual solution to the problem staring us in the eye appears to be getting the foreigners out of Afghanistan, rather than increasing their number.

When in 2001-2003 troops were truly needed in Afghanistan, they got diverted to the insane invasion and occupation of Iraq.

To make a long story short: we don’t even know what problem, or problems that we are trying to solve in Afghanistan are and we are still talking about changing our military strategy and increasing the number of troops. What are those troops supposed to do there? What do we expect from them? What is their mission? Nobody seems to have an answer to any of these questions.

Our advice to the White House team is to first come up with a mission statement, to nail down what it is that we are trying to achieve in Afghanistan and whether getting involved in that country is really in the U.S., or the world’s interest.

Throwing more troops into the Afghan quagmire, without even having a clear objective is clearly not the way to proceed.

Technorati Tags: Afghan, al-qaida, election, mission, obama, objectives, Pakistan, politics, Taliban, war

Civilians always seem to suffer the most in war. Although the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur seem to have been going forever and although probably over a million civilians have died there over the last several years, those conflicts are still going on and the civilians continue to die, get hurt and displaced as well as often lose all of their meager possessions on an almost daily basis.

Besides reports on a particularly bloody, or gruesome event, such as another suicide, car, or air bombing somewhere we seem to hear less and less about the high human cost of those conflicts, almost as if they have become an every day event.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to merit solid reporting only when hundreds of civilians get killed in a matter of days. Otherwise, all we hear is a deafening silence.

Now that the media has gotten off the swine flu horse, there’s quite a bit more reporting on the horrific situations unfolding in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Once again, there are thousands of civilian casualties, for which, similarly like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Darfur both sides are blaming each other.

The situation in both Sri Lanka and Pakistan are somewhat similar. In both cases an ethnic/religious minority (Tamils and Pashtuns respectively) is fighting against government forces.

In Sri Lanka the Tamil Tiger rebels have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for the minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization at the hands of governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority.

In Pakistan we have the Pashtuns – composed of many tribes and clans, who do not recognize the British-drawn borders (the Durand Line) between Pakistan and Afghanistan and at over 40 million constitute one of the largest, or maybe even the largest ethnic group without their own homeland. The main problem in Pakistan is the fact that the once applauded and now dreaded Taliban is largely composed of Pashtuns. Instead of the traditional Pashtunwali, a traditional code of conduct and honor, the Taliban has embraced a very strict – some call it barbaric – version of Islam, along with an extra strict interpretation of the Sharia law.

The Taliban received valuable training, supplies and arms from the Pakistani government, particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and many recruits from Madrasahs for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, primarily ones established by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI).

The Punjabi majority has pretty much a stranglehold on Pakistan’s government. Some have even hinted that Pakistan as a whole is pretty much owned by the Punjabi military elite.

This could become a very long article on the Pakistani and Afghan ethnic groups and interrelations, but that is not our aim today.

The point is that the Pakistani government has finally realized with the help of an overwhelming U.S. and international pressure that they must face up to the Taliban – whose units have advanced to almost within sight of Islamabad – and launch a decisive offensive against their insurgency.

As usual, despite the real, or inflated Taliban body counts, the main victims of this whole mess is once again the civilian population. According to the UNHCR up to 500,000 desperate people are already believed to have left their homes in Swat and nearby Lower Dir and Buner districts crowding into hastily set up camps. Another 100,000, or more civilians were expected to flee Pakistan’s battle-torn northwest today, after the government eased a curfew so people could escape the war zone.

The fighting has sunk the controversial February deal between the government and an Islamist hardliner that aimed to put three million people under Sharia law in a bid to end the Taliban uprising.

That’s the developing situation in Pakistan. Let’s now move on to Sri Lanka, where the minority Tamils have been fighting the dominant Sinhalese since 1983, trying to establish a Tamil homeland on the northern tip of Sri Lanka.

The Tamil Tigers, or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been declared a terrorist organization by many countries. After years of relative stalemate, the Sri Lankan army recently made dramatic advances and now has the Tigers trapped in a 2-square-mile, or smaller area on the island’s northern coast surrounded by 50,000 troops. The civilian population of the area is in a terrible situation. Thousands have been killed, many more displaced, as of late crowding by the thousands on isolated beaches, waiting and hoping to be rescued.

Despite establishing a “safe zone” in the northern tip of the island, the Sri Lankan military has been shelling and bombing the area for some time now. Just today 378 bodies and more than 1,100 wounded have been found so far after a government forces’ shelling of a sliver of remaining Tamil territory. Some 2,000 civilians have reportedly died since Saturday. The Sri Lankan military is blaming the Tamils and the Tamils, along with most news organizations place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the government.

As a matter of fact Sri Lankan police arrested three journalists for London-based Channel-4 television news Saturday on charges of tarnishing the image of the government security forces. It is believed that the arrests were connected to a recent report the crew filed on conditions for war refugees and alleged sexual abuse in camps for those who fled the northern war zone.

One wonders what India – Sri Lanka’s closest neighbor – is doing in this situation, or the British – former colonial masters of former Ceylon, and of course our very own U.S. diplomacy…

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, civilians, darfur, gaza, iraq, Pakistan, palestinians, Sri Lanka, Taliban, Tamils, war