PENTAGON DOUBTS McCHRYSTAL WAR PLAN
McChrystal hopes for extension past mid-2011
"Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban... have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan is going to work... even more serious concerns are being expressed behind the scenes... The key finding is that the Taliban have "reinfiltrated the cleared areas" of Helmand and "dissuaded locals from meeting with the Afghan government" by executing some who had initially collaborated. The overall negative tone of the analysis of what happened in Helmand appears to reflect a decision by Pentagon officials to withhold its vote of confidence in the McChrystal war plan...
"McChrystal's staff has made no secret of their hope to convince the U.S. public that his strategy... should be extended past mid-2011, when President Obama has said he would begin a U.S. military withdrawal and transition to Afghan responsibility for security..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51376
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
SIXTEEN NATO OIL TANKERS BURNED
Afghan Army helps burn them
"... Around 1,000 people Sunday poured onto the streets against the killing of three members of a family in a coalition operation in the central province of Logar, the second demonstration against US troops in two days. The angry residents, chanting slogans against the United States and the provincial administration, blocked the Logar-Gardez highway in the Nasir village near Pul-i-Alam and burnt 16 tankers carrying fuel for NATO-led forces... Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were part of the raiding party..."
http://www.outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/Main%20news3.html#01
Afghan Army helps burn them
"... Around 1,000 people Sunday poured onto the streets against the killing of three members of a family in a coalition operation in the central province of Logar, the second demonstration against US troops in two days. The angry residents, chanting slogans against the United States and the provincial administration, blocked the Logar-Gardez highway in the Nasir village near Pul-i-Alam and burnt 16 tankers carrying fuel for NATO-led forces... Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were part of the raiding party..."
http://www.outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/Main%20news3.html#01
Sunday, April 25, 2010
NATO AGREES ON TRANSFER OF AFGHANISTAN
Corruption will be tolerated
"Nato has agreed on its long-awaited road map for the future of Afghanistan... an area will be deemed ready for transfer if serious violence has been in abeyance for a period of time, if there is access to power by different ethnic and tribal elements and if the conditions are present for development projects taking place in relative safety... a degree of corruption will necessarily have to be tolerated as long as it does not threaten the security of Nato forces..."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/allies-to-turn-blind-eye-to-corruption-as-afghan-exit-strategy-agreed-1952987.html
Corruption will be tolerated
"Nato has agreed on its long-awaited road map for the future of Afghanistan... an area will be deemed ready for transfer if serious violence has been in abeyance for a period of time, if there is access to power by different ethnic and tribal elements and if the conditions are present for development projects taking place in relative safety... a degree of corruption will necessarily have to be tolerated as long as it does not threaten the security of Nato forces..."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/allies-to-turn-blind-eye-to-corruption-as-afghan-exit-strategy-agreed-1952987.html
Friday, April 23, 2010
TALIBAN DEFECTORS REJOIN INSURGENCY
Nato trying to create false perception of winning them over
"... Nato plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next five years tempting Taleban foot soldiers to lay down their arms. But... those efforts could make matters worse by swelling the ranks of the insurgency, exacerbating village level feuds and fuelling government corruption.... Almost a quarter of the low-ranking Taleban commanders lured out of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan have rejoined the fight because of broken government promises and paltry rewards...
"A report by the Afghan NGO Safety Office, which provides independent security advice to charities across Afghanistan... warns charity staff to prepare for Nato’s withdrawal by late 2011. “We note that International military forces have made their withdrawal contingent on being able to demonstrate two key… conditions: a degraded armed opposition and an improved government security force. We assess... that there is an awareness neither of these conditions can be genuinely extant in time and so strategies to create the perception of them are being pursued instead.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7104508.ece
Nato trying to create false perception of winning them over
"... Nato plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next five years tempting Taleban foot soldiers to lay down their arms. But... those efforts could make matters worse by swelling the ranks of the insurgency, exacerbating village level feuds and fuelling government corruption.... Almost a quarter of the low-ranking Taleban commanders lured out of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan have rejoined the fight because of broken government promises and paltry rewards...
"A report by the Afghan NGO Safety Office, which provides independent security advice to charities across Afghanistan... warns charity staff to prepare for Nato’s withdrawal by late 2011. “We note that International military forces have made their withdrawal contingent on being able to demonstrate two key… conditions: a degraded armed opposition and an improved government security force. We assess... that there is an awareness neither of these conditions can be genuinely extant in time and so strategies to create the perception of them are being pursued instead.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7104508.ece
Monday, April 19, 2010
94% OF KANDAHAR WANTS NEGOTIATION WITH TALIBAN BROTHERS
"An opinion survey of Afghanistan's Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers"... The decisive rejection of the use of foreign troops against the Taliban by the population in Kandahar casts further doubt on the fundamental premise of the Kandahar campaign, scheduled to begin in June, that the population and tribal elders in those districts would welcome a U.S.-NATO troop presence to expel the Taliban..."
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=3002
"An opinion survey of Afghanistan's Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers"... The decisive rejection of the use of foreign troops against the Taliban by the population in Kandahar casts further doubt on the fundamental premise of the Kandahar campaign, scheduled to begin in June, that the population and tribal elders in those districts would welcome a U.S.-NATO troop presence to expel the Taliban..."
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=3002
Sunday, April 18, 2010
U.S. CONTRADICTS KARZAI, WILL OCCUPY KANDAHAR WITHOUT CONSENT OF TRIBES
"The U.S. military has now officially backtracked from its earlier suggestion that it would seek the consent of local shuras, or consultative conferences with those elders, to carry out the coming military occupation of Kandahar city and nearby districts – contradicting a pledge by Afghan President Hamid Karzai not to carry out the operation without such consent....
"President Karzai said to a shura of between 1,000 and 2,000 Kandahar province tribal elders Apr. 4... (that) NATO's Kandahar operation would not be carried out until the elders themselves were ready to support it... (and) the elders were not calling for expelling the Taliban from the city and its environs. When Karzai asked the assembled elders whether they were "happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out", they shouted loudly, "We are not happy."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51059
"The U.S. military has now officially backtracked from its earlier suggestion that it would seek the consent of local shuras, or consultative conferences with those elders, to carry out the coming military occupation of Kandahar city and nearby districts – contradicting a pledge by Afghan President Hamid Karzai not to carry out the operation without such consent....
"President Karzai said to a shura of between 1,000 and 2,000 Kandahar province tribal elders Apr. 4... (that) NATO's Kandahar operation would not be carried out until the elders themselves were ready to support it... (and) the elders were not calling for expelling the Taliban from the city and its environs. When Karzai asked the assembled elders whether they were "happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out", they shouted loudly, "We are not happy."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51059
Thursday, April 15, 2010
PARALLELS TO VIETNAM
"... things are going from bad to much worse than anyone could have imagined. The insurgents are spreading fast across the countryside. Corruption is rampant. Local military forces, recipients of countless millions of dollars in U.S. aid, shirk combat and are despised by local villagers. American casualties are rising. Our soldiers seem to move in a fog through a hostile, unfamiliar terrain, with no idea of who is friend and who is foe...
"After years of lavishing American aid on him, the leader of this country, our close ally, has isolated himself inside the presidential palace, becoming an inadequate partner for a failing war effort. His brother is reportedly a genuine prince of darkness, dealing in drugs, covert intrigues, and electoral manipulation...
"It is an eerie summary of relations between the Kennedy administration and South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon nearly half a century earlier, in August 1963. If these parallels are troubling, they reveal the central paradox of American power over the past half-century in its dealings with embattled autocrats like Karzai and Diem across that vast, impoverished swath of the globe once known as the Third World..."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175233/
"... things are going from bad to much worse than anyone could have imagined. The insurgents are spreading fast across the countryside. Corruption is rampant. Local military forces, recipients of countless millions of dollars in U.S. aid, shirk combat and are despised by local villagers. American casualties are rising. Our soldiers seem to move in a fog through a hostile, unfamiliar terrain, with no idea of who is friend and who is foe...
"After years of lavishing American aid on him, the leader of this country, our close ally, has isolated himself inside the presidential palace, becoming an inadequate partner for a failing war effort. His brother is reportedly a genuine prince of darkness, dealing in drugs, covert intrigues, and electoral manipulation...
"It is an eerie summary of relations between the Kennedy administration and South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon nearly half a century earlier, in August 1963. If these parallels are troubling, they reveal the central paradox of American power over the past half-century in its dealings with embattled autocrats like Karzai and Diem across that vast, impoverished swath of the globe once known as the Third World..."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175233/
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