bobdina
07-21-2010, 11:03 AM
Can Afghanistan be saved?
By William M. Welch and Jim Michaels - USA Today
Posted : Wednesday Jul 21, 2010 8:13:46 EDT
KALAKAN, Afghanistan — It was nearly nine years ago that Taliban fighters burned everything standing in this dusty village on the Shomali Plain as they fled for the mountains ahead of invading U.S. and allied troops.
The United States vowed to help Afghanistan form a democratic government, raise standards of living and crush the remnants of the Islamist regime.
Safiullah, 27, a villager who like many here goes by one name, is still waiting for that to happen.
"We consider America a failed state because America could not fulfill its promises," Safiullah said after a recent meeting of village leaders here. "Instead of bringing peace and development, they brought destruction and fighting."
The Afghanistan war is at a critical juncture. The surge of 30,000 troops ordered by President Obama will be complete soon. A new commander has arrived. A full offensive against the birthplace of the Taliban — Kandahar — has been delayed.
Taliban attacks are rising as are U.S. operations against insurgent strongholds. Coalition deaths are at a high. And Afghans such as Safiullah say they are losing faith in America's ability to deliver on its promises.
Progress "is not moving at the pace that anyone would like," says Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a public policy research institute.
Into this situation steps Gen. David Petraeus, the counterinsurgency expert who spearheaded the dramatic drop in militancy in Iraq and the stabilizing of its government. Tuesday, Petraeus took a break from his tour of the Afghan theater to greet Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who arrived in Kabul for an international conference on Afghanistan's future.
That future is on the minds of the American public and U.S. senators, who peppered Petraeus with questions at his confirmation hearing on whether he can do in Afghanistan what was done in Iraq and pointed out several obstacles to success. Among them:
• A resurgent Taliban operating in a country much more vast than Iraq and getting assistance from terrorist groups in Pakistan.
• Corruption and cronyism in the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, who courts warlords and some Taliban leaders in peace talks.
• Afghans who might not be ready to take over their own security before President Obama's deadline for U.S. troop withdrawals in 2011.
• Indifference among some village elders about supporting Karzai or the coalition.
• Rules of engagement that prevent U.S. troops from using maximum force against enemy fire in situations where civilians may be harmed.
Petraeus has not said whether he intends to make changes in the war plan. He said he expects hard fighting ahead to accomplish the goals laid out by President Obama to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future."
Questioning U.S. tactics
Fatalities and Taliban attacks have increased. A record number of coalition troops were killed in June — 102, including 59 Americans. In July, 57 coalition members have been killed, 42 of whom were Americans.
Before he was dismissed for making critical remarks about White House officials, Gen. Stanley McChrystal pursued the same counterinsurgency strategy he and Petraeus used successfully in Iraq.
There, President George W. Bush ordered a surge in troops to stop violence so the government could take control of Iraq and Iraqi troops could be trained to take over security. A cornerstone of the strategy was U.S. encouragement of "Awakening Councils," Sunni leaders who joined in the fight against al-Qaida.
In Afghanistan, McChrystal encouraged shuras (meetings of Pashtun tribal elders) to garner support for the Karzai government and prompt abandonment of the Taliban. Coalition officers in southern Afghanistan have attended weekly shuras for years to sort out issues and persuade elders to assist them in tracking down insurgents.
"Fake," is how former Afghan army lieutenant general Abdul Hadi described the shuras.
Hadi, who has held several positions in the Karzai government, says the elders have never signed on to combating the Taliban because they are not sure who will make their lives worse, the Islamists or Karzai. Hadi says the bigger problem for the coalition is corruption.
At his home in Kabul, he rails against the cronies of Karzai, who he says have been handed NATO contracts for troop supplies and construction projects in regions where the residents are awarded nothing.
"U.S., NATO, they are indifferent to that," he says.
Karzai has denied such allegations, but Khalid Pashtoon, member of the Afghan legislature from Kandahar province, says it is happening. He says many contractors who supply things such as air conditioners or gravel to coalition forces do poor work and cut out local workers.
"Some of the contracts are going to the wrong people," he says. "Every Afghan would agree with this."
A survey of Afghan citizens released July 8 by the Kabul-based Integrity Watch Afghanistan says corruption "has become more entrenched in all areas of life" and not only threatens the legitimacy of the Karzai government but feeds support for the insurgency. Of the 6,500 people surveyed, 28 percent said their households paid a bribe to at least one public service in 2009.
"People of Afghanistan do not see any change in their life, and this makes them disappointed with the foreign aid," says Rahmat Khan Faqirzadah, governor of the Kalakan district about 20 miles north of Kabul.
Frederick W. Kagan, a former professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who was a leading proponent of a troop surge in Iraq, recently argued in The Weekly Standard magazine that a "sound" strategy in Afghanistan would try to remove "malign actors" from power or persuade them to end their misbehavior. He said Petraeus did that in Iraq, working with U.S. diplomats, and "with his record of judgment and creativity," he can repeat that success in Afghanistan.
The surge of 30,000 troops that Obama ordered in December should be in place in August, bringing the total number of coalition forces in Afghanistan to 142,000, of which 94,000 are American.
Many of those troops move against the enemy in the regions around Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, hence the stepped up fatalities, according to the Pentagon.
At the same time, Karzai has invited representatives of forces fighting U.S. troops to Kabul for peace talks.
Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others have expressed concern that the talks could complicate efforts by the coalition to bloody the Taliban enough so its fighters will lay down their arms and their dreams for an Islamic state allied with al-Qaida.
"The problem is ... it is unclear how far Karzai is prepared to go" in the talks, Cordesman says.
There are Afghans prepared to help the coalition get rid of the Taliban, Afghan officials say.
"People are ready to fight them," Faqirzadah says.
Enayat Shah Quraishi, 57, of Karanda says the U.S. military needs to be more aggressive. He does not understand why the United States, which has an advantage in sophistication and technology, cannot wipe out the insurgents.
"Today, we see Taliban speaking on television, and we know their location," Quraishi said. "Yet foreign troops do nothing. When we see this getting longer and longer ... it makes people very disappointed."
Service members have complained to their superiors that the U.S. military's rules of engagement prevent them from going after insurgents aggressively. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged the complaints and said Petraeus can review the rules, which were issued by McChrystal to keep civilian deaths down and avoid alienating the very locals he was trying to woo. Petraeus told the Senate confirmation hearing that he would "review" the rules.
'People want quicker results'
There are examples of success in the current approach, and Petraeus may seek to expand on them. One is the city of Marjah.
Col. Randall Newman, who commands a Marine regiment in Helmand province in the south, says the coalition pushed the Taliban out of safe havens there and is keeping insurgents out.
Taliban forces had ruled the city of 40,000 with impunity until U.S. Marines and Afghan troops forced them out in a two-week battle, the largest operation since the invasion in 2001. The Taliban lost control of a stronghold where it raised significant funds through opium production.
Though militants still mount attacks, the residents are starting to realize the coalition is a better ally than the Islamists, Newman says. That kind of turnaround takes time, he says.
"I know people want quicker results," he says. "We will go as quickly as the people, their willingness, their desires, will allow us to go."
Time may not be on the coalition's side.
Obama has set a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawals to begin one year from this month in 2011. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and many Afghans say the deadline will only encourage the Taliban to wait out the Americans and mount serious attacks after U.S. troops depart.
Pashtoon says Taliban adherents warn villagers that they should not support U.S. troops because once those troops leave, they will have to deal with a vengeful Taliban.
Obama appears to have softened his stand on the deadline, making it a point recently to state that the pace of the withdrawal will be governed by conditions in Afghanistan. Vice President Biden said Sunday that the withdrawal may begin with as few as "a couple of thousand" troops.
When pressed recently on the deadline, Petraeus said it "is not a date when we will be rapidly withdrawing our forces and switching off the lights and closing the door behind us."
Nearly all sides agree that success will be unlikely if Pakistan fails to step up efforts against militants. Karzai complains that Pakistan must stop the flow of weapons and terrorists from jihadist safe havens within its borders.
"Pakistan is still trying to play a political game with the international community," Pashtoon says. "The key to Afghanistan peace is in Pakistan."
Pakistan's intelligence services helped the Taliban come to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s and many of the terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan have their leadership located in the border areas of Pakistan, according to the International Security Assistance Force, the U.S.-led coalition that oversees Afghan military operations.
Clinton said this week in an interview with the BBC that Pakistan must take stronger actions against terror networks.
"If you double the troops in Afghanistan, the problem will still not be solved until you stop Pakistan," said Sayed Mukim, 51, secretary of the Kalakan shura.
Self-defense groups, sometimes referred to as militias, may be part of that strategy.
In Iraq, tribal leaders alienated by al-Qaida formed and armed security forces that allied with U.S. forces. Their recruits were approved by U.S. and Iraqi officials, and they kept al-Qaeda terrorists out of their communities while passing on intelligence to U.S. and Iraqi combat commanders. The "Anbar Awakening" helped turn the tide in the Iraq war.
On July 14, Karzai approved Petraeus' plan to establish as many as 10,000 "community police." Such local participation in defense is already happening in Marjah. Newman says residents came forward to form a group to protect themselves. One goal is to get the groups to provide Afghan police with intelligence on Taliban movements, he says.
"We are getting more and more information from the people," Newman says. "That's a good sign."
Establishing an effective police force and army is the ultimate exit strategy for U.S. forces. Karzai said Tuesday that Afghan police and soldiers will not be able to take charge of security nationwide until 2014.
Marine Col. Gregory Breazile, a spokesman for the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, said that until recently, the coalition lacked the trainers and resources to build effective fighting units.
"We were failing miserably to train both the police and army," Breazile said. "They were just shoving units through."
This year, the Afghan government boosted monthly pay for police and soldiers to $165, up from $120, and it nearly doubled the number of coalition trainers during the past year to more than 3,100. As a result, coalition forces believe they can meet a goal of 243,000 police and soldiers by Oct. 31, Breazile says.
Petraeus has warned that the war in Afghanistan will be a hard fight, tougher than Iraq in some ways. Success is not guaranteed, he said.
Those who know Petraeus say Obama made the right choice.
"Putting Petraeus in has the potential to be a game-changer for the whole war," says David Barno, a retired three-star general who once commanded allied forces in Afghanistan.
"He's coming off the experience of turning around a particularly difficult, some judged it impossible, situation in Iraq," Barno says. "He has a lot of scar tissue from what it takes to turn something around."
Welch reported from Afghanistan; Michaels from Washington.
By William M. Welch and Jim Michaels - USA Today
Posted : Wednesday Jul 21, 2010 8:13:46 EDT
KALAKAN, Afghanistan — It was nearly nine years ago that Taliban fighters burned everything standing in this dusty village on the Shomali Plain as they fled for the mountains ahead of invading U.S. and allied troops.
The United States vowed to help Afghanistan form a democratic government, raise standards of living and crush the remnants of the Islamist regime.
Safiullah, 27, a villager who like many here goes by one name, is still waiting for that to happen.
"We consider America a failed state because America could not fulfill its promises," Safiullah said after a recent meeting of village leaders here. "Instead of bringing peace and development, they brought destruction and fighting."
The Afghanistan war is at a critical juncture. The surge of 30,000 troops ordered by President Obama will be complete soon. A new commander has arrived. A full offensive against the birthplace of the Taliban — Kandahar — has been delayed.
Taliban attacks are rising as are U.S. operations against insurgent strongholds. Coalition deaths are at a high. And Afghans such as Safiullah say they are losing faith in America's ability to deliver on its promises.
Progress "is not moving at the pace that anyone would like," says Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a public policy research institute.
Into this situation steps Gen. David Petraeus, the counterinsurgency expert who spearheaded the dramatic drop in militancy in Iraq and the stabilizing of its government. Tuesday, Petraeus took a break from his tour of the Afghan theater to greet Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who arrived in Kabul for an international conference on Afghanistan's future.
That future is on the minds of the American public and U.S. senators, who peppered Petraeus with questions at his confirmation hearing on whether he can do in Afghanistan what was done in Iraq and pointed out several obstacles to success. Among them:
• A resurgent Taliban operating in a country much more vast than Iraq and getting assistance from terrorist groups in Pakistan.
• Corruption and cronyism in the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, who courts warlords and some Taliban leaders in peace talks.
• Afghans who might not be ready to take over their own security before President Obama's deadline for U.S. troop withdrawals in 2011.
• Indifference among some village elders about supporting Karzai or the coalition.
• Rules of engagement that prevent U.S. troops from using maximum force against enemy fire in situations where civilians may be harmed.
Petraeus has not said whether he intends to make changes in the war plan. He said he expects hard fighting ahead to accomplish the goals laid out by President Obama to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future."
Questioning U.S. tactics
Fatalities and Taliban attacks have increased. A record number of coalition troops were killed in June — 102, including 59 Americans. In July, 57 coalition members have been killed, 42 of whom were Americans.
Before he was dismissed for making critical remarks about White House officials, Gen. Stanley McChrystal pursued the same counterinsurgency strategy he and Petraeus used successfully in Iraq.
There, President George W. Bush ordered a surge in troops to stop violence so the government could take control of Iraq and Iraqi troops could be trained to take over security. A cornerstone of the strategy was U.S. encouragement of "Awakening Councils," Sunni leaders who joined in the fight against al-Qaida.
In Afghanistan, McChrystal encouraged shuras (meetings of Pashtun tribal elders) to garner support for the Karzai government and prompt abandonment of the Taliban. Coalition officers in southern Afghanistan have attended weekly shuras for years to sort out issues and persuade elders to assist them in tracking down insurgents.
"Fake," is how former Afghan army lieutenant general Abdul Hadi described the shuras.
Hadi, who has held several positions in the Karzai government, says the elders have never signed on to combating the Taliban because they are not sure who will make their lives worse, the Islamists or Karzai. Hadi says the bigger problem for the coalition is corruption.
At his home in Kabul, he rails against the cronies of Karzai, who he says have been handed NATO contracts for troop supplies and construction projects in regions where the residents are awarded nothing.
"U.S., NATO, they are indifferent to that," he says.
Karzai has denied such allegations, but Khalid Pashtoon, member of the Afghan legislature from Kandahar province, says it is happening. He says many contractors who supply things such as air conditioners or gravel to coalition forces do poor work and cut out local workers.
"Some of the contracts are going to the wrong people," he says. "Every Afghan would agree with this."
A survey of Afghan citizens released July 8 by the Kabul-based Integrity Watch Afghanistan says corruption "has become more entrenched in all areas of life" and not only threatens the legitimacy of the Karzai government but feeds support for the insurgency. Of the 6,500 people surveyed, 28 percent said their households paid a bribe to at least one public service in 2009.
"People of Afghanistan do not see any change in their life, and this makes them disappointed with the foreign aid," says Rahmat Khan Faqirzadah, governor of the Kalakan district about 20 miles north of Kabul.
Frederick W. Kagan, a former professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who was a leading proponent of a troop surge in Iraq, recently argued in The Weekly Standard magazine that a "sound" strategy in Afghanistan would try to remove "malign actors" from power or persuade them to end their misbehavior. He said Petraeus did that in Iraq, working with U.S. diplomats, and "with his record of judgment and creativity," he can repeat that success in Afghanistan.
The surge of 30,000 troops that Obama ordered in December should be in place in August, bringing the total number of coalition forces in Afghanistan to 142,000, of which 94,000 are American.
Many of those troops move against the enemy in the regions around Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, hence the stepped up fatalities, according to the Pentagon.
At the same time, Karzai has invited representatives of forces fighting U.S. troops to Kabul for peace talks.
Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others have expressed concern that the talks could complicate efforts by the coalition to bloody the Taliban enough so its fighters will lay down their arms and their dreams for an Islamic state allied with al-Qaida.
"The problem is ... it is unclear how far Karzai is prepared to go" in the talks, Cordesman says.
There are Afghans prepared to help the coalition get rid of the Taliban, Afghan officials say.
"People are ready to fight them," Faqirzadah says.
Enayat Shah Quraishi, 57, of Karanda says the U.S. military needs to be more aggressive. He does not understand why the United States, which has an advantage in sophistication and technology, cannot wipe out the insurgents.
"Today, we see Taliban speaking on television, and we know their location," Quraishi said. "Yet foreign troops do nothing. When we see this getting longer and longer ... it makes people very disappointed."
Service members have complained to their superiors that the U.S. military's rules of engagement prevent them from going after insurgents aggressively. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged the complaints and said Petraeus can review the rules, which were issued by McChrystal to keep civilian deaths down and avoid alienating the very locals he was trying to woo. Petraeus told the Senate confirmation hearing that he would "review" the rules.
'People want quicker results'
There are examples of success in the current approach, and Petraeus may seek to expand on them. One is the city of Marjah.
Col. Randall Newman, who commands a Marine regiment in Helmand province in the south, says the coalition pushed the Taliban out of safe havens there and is keeping insurgents out.
Taliban forces had ruled the city of 40,000 with impunity until U.S. Marines and Afghan troops forced them out in a two-week battle, the largest operation since the invasion in 2001. The Taliban lost control of a stronghold where it raised significant funds through opium production.
Though militants still mount attacks, the residents are starting to realize the coalition is a better ally than the Islamists, Newman says. That kind of turnaround takes time, he says.
"I know people want quicker results," he says. "We will go as quickly as the people, their willingness, their desires, will allow us to go."
Time may not be on the coalition's side.
Obama has set a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawals to begin one year from this month in 2011. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and many Afghans say the deadline will only encourage the Taliban to wait out the Americans and mount serious attacks after U.S. troops depart.
Pashtoon says Taliban adherents warn villagers that they should not support U.S. troops because once those troops leave, they will have to deal with a vengeful Taliban.
Obama appears to have softened his stand on the deadline, making it a point recently to state that the pace of the withdrawal will be governed by conditions in Afghanistan. Vice President Biden said Sunday that the withdrawal may begin with as few as "a couple of thousand" troops.
When pressed recently on the deadline, Petraeus said it "is not a date when we will be rapidly withdrawing our forces and switching off the lights and closing the door behind us."
Nearly all sides agree that success will be unlikely if Pakistan fails to step up efforts against militants. Karzai complains that Pakistan must stop the flow of weapons and terrorists from jihadist safe havens within its borders.
"Pakistan is still trying to play a political game with the international community," Pashtoon says. "The key to Afghanistan peace is in Pakistan."
Pakistan's intelligence services helped the Taliban come to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s and many of the terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan have their leadership located in the border areas of Pakistan, according to the International Security Assistance Force, the U.S.-led coalition that oversees Afghan military operations.
Clinton said this week in an interview with the BBC that Pakistan must take stronger actions against terror networks.
"If you double the troops in Afghanistan, the problem will still not be solved until you stop Pakistan," said Sayed Mukim, 51, secretary of the Kalakan shura.
Self-defense groups, sometimes referred to as militias, may be part of that strategy.
In Iraq, tribal leaders alienated by al-Qaida formed and armed security forces that allied with U.S. forces. Their recruits were approved by U.S. and Iraqi officials, and they kept al-Qaeda terrorists out of their communities while passing on intelligence to U.S. and Iraqi combat commanders. The "Anbar Awakening" helped turn the tide in the Iraq war.
On July 14, Karzai approved Petraeus' plan to establish as many as 10,000 "community police." Such local participation in defense is already happening in Marjah. Newman says residents came forward to form a group to protect themselves. One goal is to get the groups to provide Afghan police with intelligence on Taliban movements, he says.
"We are getting more and more information from the people," Newman says. "That's a good sign."
Establishing an effective police force and army is the ultimate exit strategy for U.S. forces. Karzai said Tuesday that Afghan police and soldiers will not be able to take charge of security nationwide until 2014.
Marine Col. Gregory Breazile, a spokesman for the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, said that until recently, the coalition lacked the trainers and resources to build effective fighting units.
"We were failing miserably to train both the police and army," Breazile said. "They were just shoving units through."
This year, the Afghan government boosted monthly pay for police and soldiers to $165, up from $120, and it nearly doubled the number of coalition trainers during the past year to more than 3,100. As a result, coalition forces believe they can meet a goal of 243,000 police and soldiers by Oct. 31, Breazile says.
Petraeus has warned that the war in Afghanistan will be a hard fight, tougher than Iraq in some ways. Success is not guaranteed, he said.
Those who know Petraeus say Obama made the right choice.
"Putting Petraeus in has the potential to be a game-changer for the whole war," says David Barno, a retired three-star general who once commanded allied forces in Afghanistan.
"He's coming off the experience of turning around a particularly difficult, some judged it impossible, situation in Iraq," Barno says. "He has a lot of scar tissue from what it takes to turn something around."
Welch reported from Afghanistan; Michaels from Washington.