As Taliban Launch Offensive in Afghanistan, More Data Pierce Narrative of Weakened Insurgency
As noted last week, the Afghan Taliban brazenly stated the day and hour at which their 2014 offensive would launch while also characterizing the targets they would attack. It appears that the attacks started pretty much at the appointed hour this morning, with rocket attacks aimed at the airport in Kabul and Bagram Air Base. There also was an attack on a government building in Nangahar. The rocket attacks appear to have done little or no damage, while there were at least four deaths in the attack on the building.
Data continue to accumulate that pierce the narrative that the US military has tried to create around a “weakened” Taliban insurgency. Khaama Press reports that the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan released a report stating that at least 545 children were killed in Afghanistan in 2013. The same article notes that the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan has counted at least 284 children have been killed so far this year, suggesting that 2014 will be even worse for child deaths. A report from the International Crisis Group is also being released today, and in it we see that violence in Afghanistan is indeed continuing to rise. From the Wall Street Journal:
Violence levels across Afghanistan are steadily rising as U.S.-led troops return home, an indication that the Taliban remain determined to fight for power, according to a report by the International Crisis Group set for release on Monday.
An analysis by the ICG, an independent conflict-resolution organization, estimates that the number of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan increased 15-20% in 2013 from a year earlier, the first time such figures will be released publicly. It added that violence continued to escalate in the first months of 2014.
Despite the fact that the International Crisis Group describes itself as an “independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict”, its leaders published an op-ed in today’s Globe and Mail aimed at drumming up support for Afghanistan’s armed forces. Even the title of the piece is aimed at the military’s battle for hearts and minds: “Reduced to eating grass, Afghanistan’s forces are in dire need of our help”, and the text seems just as slanted toward the West maintaining a presence in Afghanistan:
Afghan forces are holding the district by themselves, so far, but Taliban roadblocks are causing food shortages. Ghorak’s defenders recently started to eat boiled grass.
It’s the same story in many other rural areas: Afghan police and soldiers are keeping the insurgency at bay, but they need more support from the international community.
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Current plans for international support of the ANSF are insufficient. Donors must go beyond the annual commitment of $3.6-billion (U.S.) made at the Chicago 2012 summit and provide funding for maintenance of an ANSF personnel roster approximately equal to its current size, until stability improves in Afghanistan.
The Afghan government also needs international assistance with logistics, air support, intelligence and other technical aspects of security operations sometimes known as “enablers.” There is, for example, a pressing need for more helicopters and armoured vehicles. Currently, Afghan police and soldiers, far from urban centres, die of minor injuries while they wait for scarce helicopters or armoured convoys to transfer them to medical facilities.
As for the bullshit claim to need even more armored vehicles, read this from last August. But again, this whole plea by the International Crisis Group is just the same line we have gotten from the military essentially from the start of the Afghan quagmire. The narrative of a weakened Taliban and an increasingly capable Afghan defense force is always there, and yet the entire operation always teeters on the edge of collapse if we don’t ramp up our support. Completely missing is an understanding that the Taliban’s targets are centered around the presence of US troops and those who collaborate with them. When US troops are completely gone, the main reason for fighting is also gone.
“Completely missing is an understanding that the Taliban’s targets are centered around the presence of US troops and those who collaborate with them. When US troops are completely gone, the main reason for fighting is also gone.”
Missing too is any acknowledgement of the fact that anyone designated Taliban is excluded from the electoral process. Something which leaves all manner of factions and groups without any peaceful alternative to armed struggle.
It seems like a pretty weird way to promote Democracy. Or it would do if we were all born yesterday and weren’t watching a multi billion dollar exercise in Democracy Promotion-US style- in the Ukraine.
The International Crisis Group gets half its funding from western governments, including USAID, and the rest from Big Oil and the banks.
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And now the ICG demand for more Afghan financial aid signals that the incoming Afghan president is in the bag for signing the BSA. Let the money flow! A lot of it is skimmed off by — the Taliban.
Of course there is “a pressing need for more helicopters” because the roads are unsafe, even for armored vehicles. The US has used helos extensively for resupply and troop movements, flying largely at night. The mostly illiterate Afghans are incapable of taking over these missions.
“When US troops are completely gone, the main reason for fighting is also gone.”
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The jury is out on that one. The Taliban with support from Pakistan has been used to support Pakistan’s security interests, However the leading candidate to replace Karzai as president is Abdullah Abdullah who has former ties to the Northern Alliance with pro-India, anti-Pakistan/Taliban policies. Abdullah’s opponent, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, is a Pashtun but has strong background in the US and also the World Bank. So either candidate would be expected to promote the US line, which is not in the favor of Pakistan and Taliban.
An analysis by the ICG, an independent conflict-resolution organization, estimates that the number of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan increased 15-20% in 2013 from a year earlier, the first time such figures will be released publicly. It added that violence continued to escalate in the first months of 2014.
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The ICG analyst was Graeme Smith, and he went further to predict further rises in violence. from Stripes—
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“We can expect a continued rise in violence in 2014 and 2015, in part because that has been the trend, and in part because they are election years,” Graeme Smith, a Kabul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, told Stars and Stripes.
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“But more fundamentally there is still a lot of unfinished business in this conflict.” Between unresolved political and personal scores to settle, and lingering ethnic rivalries, there are “just a lot of reasons why people still want to fight,” he said.
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What is Graeme Smith‘s background?
Graeme Smith joined the International Crisis Group in December 2012 as a Senior Analyst, supervising the small team in Afghanistan. He previously worked as a foreign correspondent for Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, with postings in Moscow (2005), Kandahar (2006-2009), Delhi (2010), and Istanbul (2011). He also served as an Adjunct Scholar for the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Smith He won an Emmy in 2009, for a video series that recorded the views of Taliban fighters. His book about southern Afghanistan is [was] scheduled for publication in September 2013.
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Between unresolved political and personal scores to settle, and lingering ethnic rivalries, there are just a lot of reasons why people still want to fight
Do they teach history at the schools for foreign service personnel and for cadets at the military academies? Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires for a reason. I was thinking about this recently when I was listening to an American politician discuss Crimea and the Ukraine on television. The Romans were unsuccessful with their military forays into Bactria (a forerunner of present-day Afghanistan). The British failed to dislodge the Russians from the Crimean Peninsula in the Crimean War during the Nineteenth Century. Finally, America went into Iraq apparently oblivious to the depth of the centuries-old conflict between Shia and Sunni Islam. (Note: you will notice I didn’t even include the lessons we didn’t learn from Vietnam.) Perhaps President Obama should consider hiring a court historian whose job it is to warn the president when he is about to get the country into another military quagmire.
I don’t think the Romans ever got as far as Bactria, as they’d have had to get past the Persians first. The Greeks did, though, under Alexander, and barely got out alive.
Hey, it pays well. There’s so much profit in it, who cares who wins and loses. Also, the sanctity of the government must be periodically affirmed with the blood of young men and women. They keep us free!