The last time there was a troop surge in Afghanistan, 3M people fled to Pakistan

juan cole...

The last time a foreign military staged a 'surge,' i.e. the Soviets in the early 1980s, it produced so much violence that 3 million Afghans were forced to flee to northern Pakistan. Islamabad is wary lest that patter be repeated.

which would explain why pakistan has more than a few concerns about obama's proposed escalation in afghanistan... i know quite a few afghans who had to beat feet across the khyber pass to peshawar and beyond to save their skins when things got too hot in kabul... the refugee existence was unimaginably miserable for most of them, one which nobody i know desires to repeat any time soon...

al jazeera...

Pakistani government officials have expressed concern about President Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy, which calls for Pakistan to step up its co-operation against the Taliban in exchange for a pledge of a long-term partnership.

In an address to unveil a new strategy for the eight-year conflict in Afghanistan, Obama said on Tuesday a cancer had taken root in Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan and promised US help to end it.

The Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a cautious response that stressed the "need for clarity" in the new US policy.

"Pakistan looks forward to engaging closely with [the] US in understanding the full importance of the new strategy and to ensure that there would be no adverse fallout on Pakistan," the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Pakistan and the US need to closely co-ordinate their efforts to achieve shared objectives. There is certainly the need for clarity and co-ordination on all aspects of the implementation of the strategy."

what puzzles me the most is that job creation and poverty alleviation, two critical elements that almost every afghan i talk with says could significantly reduce the level of violence, were nowhere to be found in obama's speech ... it was only two weeks ago that i posted (here) on a poll taken by oxfam in afghanistan that unequivocally said this...

Poverty and unemployment are overwhelmingly seen as the main reasons behind conflict in Afghanistan, according to a survey in that country.

[...]

Oxfam said the survey showed that the country needed more than military solutions.

so, who the hell is obama listening to anyway...? oh, never mind... silly me... it must be the defense contractors...

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An Afghanistan civilian "surge"

now we're talkin'...

A civilian "surge" of hundreds of additional U.S. officials in Afghanistan would accompany the already approved increase in U.S. troop levels there under a new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy being completed at the White House, according to administration officials.

[...]

Some of the proposed new civilian force in Afghanistan -- diplomats, specialists from federal departments such as Agriculture and Justice, and hundreds of new "full-time, temporary" hires -- would work at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, officials said. Others would be assigned to U.S. provincial reconstruction teams, or PRTs, located primarily in eastern Afghanistan, and to other efforts to build Afghan civilian capacity around the country. Patterned on a program first established in Iraq, the PRTs assist and advise Afghans in economic and local governance development.

i do have some reservations and they're not minor... i've never had a particularly favorable impression of state department or other federal department types (including usaid), or their lackeys... most of them are bureaucratic functionaries intent on covering their own asses and maintaining their cushy incomes... however, given the choice between that kind of people and heavily armed troops, i'll opt for bureaucratic functionaries every time...

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Boot, Kagan, and Kagan - the neocon dogs of war attempt to justify more troops and more war in Afghanistan

why in god's name are these discredited, blood-thirsty hacks still getting prime op-ed space in the new york times...?

In addition to sending more soldiers, we must also increase our efforts to expand the Afghan security forces. It may be impossible to speed up the pace of building the Afghan National Army, but the current proposed end-strength of 134,000 troops is far too low. We should immediately commit to a goal of 250,000 troops for the army, and a substantial increase in the national police as well. Afghan troops also need lots of better equipment — everything from armored vehicles to night-vision goggles.

[...]

The key question for those who advocate pulling back is this: Where will we get the intelligence to direct the raids? If we have few troops on the ground, we will have to rely on intercepted communications. But seven years into the fight, the terrorists have learned a thing or two about keeping their communications secret. The only way to get the intelligence we need is from the residents, and they won’t provide it unless our troops stay in their villages to provide protection from Taliban retribution.

This struggle is not just about Afghanistan. It is also about tracking and effecting what is going on in Pakistan’s tribal areas. That is where the global Qaeda leadership is. It is the nexus of terrorist groups including the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is implicated in the Mumbai, India, attacks last November; the Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi, which now has control of the Swat region in Pakistan; and Baitullah Mehsud’s Pakistani Taliban, which are said to have plotted the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister.

From their positions across the border in Afghanistan, American forces can literally see these areas. They can also gather invaluable intelligence from, and spread our influence to, the tribes that straddle the frontier. But we get that vantage point only as long as we have something to offer the Afghans — security, improved quality of life, hope for a better government. If we abandon them, we will become blind to one of the most dangerous threats to our security, and also hand our most determined enemies an enormous propaganda victory — their biggest since 9/11.

Make no mistake: there is hard, costly fighting ahead in Afghanistan. But the fight is worth pursuing, and the odds of success are much better than they were in Iraq when we launched the forlorn hope known as the surge.

Max Boot is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Frederick Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Kimberly Kagan is the president of the Institute for the Study of War.

good lord, please spare me... (special note to the nyt: please keep this crew the hell away from the op-ed page...)

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More troops to Afghanistan...? Nonsense...!

i'm about ready to make a fourth extended visit to afghanistan as part of my work as an organization development consultant working with business and professional organizations in that country... i just concluded a very successful intervention here in jordan where my colleagues and i assisted the leading members of the community and the local government in establishing the foundation for productive and on-going dialogue...

here's my point...

going in with a mindset that categorizes one set of people as "the enemy," an "enemy" that must be destroyed, is bound to fail... that very mindset contains the seeds of its own defeat... why...? because when one group is treated as a dangerous "enemy," it is only natural that they will rise to that expectation...

if you go in with the mindset that all stakeholders are human beings who only want what we all want - safety, security, a roof over their heads, food on the table, and the opportunity to live dignified lives together with their families in peace, it's absolutely amazing what can be accomplished...

the taliban may have, to our way of thinking, a too-rigid interpretation of their religious beliefs, but that doesn't mean they should be treated as some kind of diabolical force... i've had dealings with mujahedin and taliban commanders and they feel just as trapped as we do... they're sick and tired of the never-ending killing and destruction and they're just as much at a loss about how to break the cycle as we are... relying on military force as a solution will definitely NOT break the cycle...

i can guarantee you this... if the u.s. announced that it was committing to talking, to engaging in a serious dialogue to explore ways to bring all the parties together to bring peace in afghanistan, and that the afghans would be the ones who would take the lead in that process, there would be celebrations on the streets of kabul...

i'm glad to see that i'm not the only one thinking this way...

The administration won't be able to give a negotiated reconciliation real credence until it gets away from the perverse foreign policy thinking that couples diplomacy with military escalation. Stop listening to the same military experts who have cost our country hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives, and stop giving them promotion after promotion. Tom Engelhardt gets to the heart of this today in his discussion about the pervasive hawkishness in Washington. As it becomes clearer the crisis in Afghanistan cannot be solved militarily, then for God's sake, quit trying to solve it militarily! No one wants to eat a carrot after they've been beaten and bloodied by a big stick.

agreed...

here's a video clip that essentially makes the same points...

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The truth about the "success" of the Baghdad "surge," the truth you won't see on U.S. news

we seem to have forgotten that the term "surge" was a political talking point designed to minimize what was, in fact, an escalation... now, even the liberals and progressives seem content to call it a "surge" and, worse yet, are passively accepting the bush administration characterization of it as a "success"...

Baghdad, 5 years on (part 1): City of walls



Baghdad, 5 years on (part 2): killing fields



Baghdad 5 years on (part 3): Iraq's lost generation



(thanks to panicbean at daily kos...)

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