Afghanistan: Death And The Prices We Pay for Intervention

Stephen Walt ,  writing on Foreign Policy about the recent Wikileaks release on the killing of civilians in Iraq in 2007 by US forces, touches on the idea that massacres like the one in the Wikileaks video are to be expected as part of the price of our interventionist policies:

Notice that I am not suggesting that the personnel involved failed to observe the proper "rules of engagement," or did not genuinely think that the individuals they were attacking were in fact armed. Rather, what bothers me is that they were clearly trying to operate within the rules, and still made a tragic error. It reminds us that this sort of mistake is inevitable in this sort of war, especially when we rely on overwhelming firepower to wage it. When we intervene in other countries, this is what we should expect.

Afghanistan: The Humanity Missing From Our Debate

It's an excellent point, but unfortunately it's too easily dismissed with the old "war is hell" cliche, as in this piece from Bouhammer:

Soldiers cannot get wrapped around every single life they are forced to take by virtue of being in combat. Soldiers (and I use soldiers generally describing all service-members), use dark humor and take it all in stride when they have to take lives. They can’t be effective by getting wrapped around the axle over taking human lives. So what you hear in this video is soldiers being soldiers. Nobody likes killing innocents, especially children and that is evident when the soldiers on the ground immediately start calling for a MEDEVAC to come get the wounded children.

Clearly not everyone sees killing people as an unacceptable price of war, particularly when it's soldiers doing it. Bouhammer simply took Walt's adviceand expected the horrible deaths as a natural result of the policy.

But there is a bit more to the price of war than just the loss of lives. So let's get a little cold-hearted for a moment and just accept that we need to murder these people as part of our strategy. Even if we're OK with that, the price of this strategy is still astronomically expensive.

Let's start just with the cost of transporting supplies to our troops. Not the supplies themselves, just the cost of transporting them. Tom Engelhardt explains:

Believe it or not, according to the Washington Post, the Defense Department has awarded a contract worth up to $360 million to the son of an Afghan cabinet minister to transport U.S. military supplies through some of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan – and his company has no trucks. (He hires subcontractors who evidently pay off the Taliban as part of a large-scale protection racket that allows the supplies through unharmed.) This contract is, in turn, part of a $2.1 billion Host Nation Trucking contract whose recipients may be deeply involved in extortion and smuggling rackets, and over which the Pentagon reportedly exercises little oversight.

That'sthe US taxpayer, paying $2 billion just for trucks run by corrupt warlords and Taliban interlopers who will use them to smuggle  God knows what, possibly drugs or guns used to kill our soldiers. Lovely. But we have to pay that, because in order for our war strategy to work we've got to have soldiers in "some of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan".

That's just for the trucks. How do we get the supplies on to those trucks? Well, they come through an airbase in Kyrgyzstan. The price for that is the usual support for a police state dictator and paying rent with US taxpayers' money. And that price is about to go up:

The news of ongoing unrest in the central Asian republic has been received with concern by Washington. The U.S. embassy in Bishkek said it was "deeply concerned" about "civil disturbances" in the country, in a statement released on Wednesday.

Saying that the situation in Kyrgyzstan was "still very fluid", John Kerry, the chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, expressed "regret for the loss of life" in the country and called on all sides to be "calm and refrain from violence". He called upon Kyrgyz parties to address the "underlying political, economic and social issues" in a "transparent process that brings stability and fundamental rights to all."

The U.S. State Department said that transport operations at the Manas military installation outside Bishkek have been "functioning normally." The U.S. military has used the base over the past several years as a staging post for its operations in Afghanistan. Despite the call for the base’s closure by opposition leaders reportedly in charge now, it remains to be seen whether the new government will take practical steps toward that end.

There are worries in the U.S. that the new opposition-led government may increase the rent for Manas base by renegotiating the terms of its agreement with the U.S., according to Foreign Policy’s Cable blog. Such a renegotiation, Cable said, may offer Russia an opportunity to influence an agreement over the base.

So our pet dictator was ousted in a violent uprising (I won't get into the awful stuff he did to deserve that here), and now the new opposition government is going to be raising the rent, if not evicting us completely. This also apparently gives Russia, who we desperately need in other matters like the Iranian nuclear file, a bargaining chip to play against the US.

But the cost goes beyond rent or trucks or anything you can put a dollar sign on. We're also actively working to subvert European democracies as part of the cost of our war:

A newly leaked CIA report prepared earlier this month analyzes how the U.S. Government can best manipulate public opinion in Germany and France -- in order to ensure that those countries continue to fight in Afghanistan. The Report celebrates the fact that the governments of those two nations continue to fight the war in defiance of overwhelming public opinion which opposes it -- so much for all the recent veneration of "consent of the governed" -- and it notes that this is possible due to lack of interest among their citizenry: "Public Apathy Enables Leaders to Ignore Voters," proclaims the title of one section.

We're paying the CIA to figure out how to screw over the voters of France and Germany, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same chicanery was happening in American politics. We're way past blowing taxpayer funds and into the territory of destroying our own national values. And for what? Who actually stands to benefit from all of these prices that we're paying?

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has slammed Western backers for the second time in a week, accusing the United States of interference, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

In a private meeting with up to 70 Afghan lawmakers Saturday, Karzai also warned that the Taliban insurgency could become a legitimate resistance movement if foreign meddling in Afghan affairs continues, the Journal said, citing participants in the talks.

During the talks, Karzai, whose government is supported by billions of dollars of Western aid and 126,000 foreign troops fighting the Taliban, said he would be compelled to join the insurgency himself if the parliament does not back his bid to take over Afghanistan's electoral watchdog

That's right, we're paying a couple billion to Taliban warlords over here, propping up a police state over there, subverting democracies all over the place, and all for a corrupt mountebank like Karzai who wants to join the Taliban. And remember, I'm just picking examples out of thin air here; the cost of trucks, the Kyrgyz airbase, the CIA memos. These aren't even the total cost of the war which will wind up costing in the trillions.

Let's go back to Walt's piece:

It reminds us that this sort of mistake is inevitable in this sort of war, especially when we rely on overwhelming firepower to wage it. When we intervene in other countries, this is what we should expect.

See, Americans do expect these costs. They understand the cliches that "war is hell" and, indeed, expensive. But Americans do question why they're paying these costs only to prop up criminals like Karzai. Why are we paying billions to Taliban smugglers and police states and anti-democratic intelligence operations just to build a country for a guy who wants to join the Taliban? And he's the best thing we've got over there, we've been there for over 9 years, there is no one else.

Americans aren't opposing the cost of this war because they magically turned into pacifist hippies, they oppose the cost because we're paying for nothing over there. The best case scenario for the current price we're paying is we shell out trillions in deficit money, leave our soldiers to keep dying and killing innocent civilians for the next few years, subvert democracies worldwide, and destroy our own national values. All so Karzai will maybe not join the Taliban. Whatever goals we have in Afghanistan are simply not worth the price we're paying.

Josh Mull also writes for The Seminal and Rethink Afghanistan.

Insecure World: More Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan (6 April)

EA pilots a new feature today. Josh Shahryar's Insecure World will provide a perspective, from the inside and outside, on the situation in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Somalia as well as other conflict-ridden areas like Kashmir, Congo, and Sudan. Insecure World will not only cover the news from international media,but also from newspapers within the countries.

Afghanistan: The Humanity Missing From Our Debate

The Associated Press reports that at least 4 residents have been killed in a NATO airstrike in Southern Afghanistan. A child was among the civilians killed:

According to NATO and provincial government spokesman Dawood Ahmadi, insurgents had fired at NATO troops and Afghan army and police from inside the compound in Helmand province's Nahri Sarraj district on Monday, prompting the airstrike.

Helmand is a hotbed of Taliban insurgency. Nahri Sarraj is another name for Gerishk district, 330 miles southwest of the capital Kabul. The recent casualties come just after NATO confirmed that international forces were responsible for the deaths of at least five civilians on 12 February in Paktia province.

UPDATED Afghanistan: Karzai Back on the Attack

UPDATED 1645 GMT: Different accounts of the Karzai visit to Kandahar, made with US commander Stanley McChrystal. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty focuses on the message ahead of an expected US military offensive, with Karzai assured about 2,000 officials and tribal leaders that there will be no military operation there without their "cooperation and consultation". (Another warning shot to the Americans?)

The BBC chooses another angle with participants telling Karzai of their fear of being killed by militants and accusing the President of failing to deal with bribery and nepotism. Still, in a passage that extends the RFE/RL report, the BBC says "the message from this gathering of some 1,500 tribesmen is that they are not ready for any major military operation by Afghan and Nato led forces any time soon".

Afghanistan Follow-Up: Karzai Pulls Back from Confrontation with US?

Well, that "reconciliation" between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Obama Administration, marked by a phone call with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, lasted less than 24 hours, at least in public. The Wall Street Journal, from Afghan sources, claims another Karzai outburst:

President Hamid Karzai lashed out at his Western backers for the second time in three days on Saturday, accusing the U.S. of interfering in Afghan affairs and saying the Taliban insurgency would become a legitimate resistance movement if the meddling doesn't stop.

Mr. Karzai, whose government is propped up by billions of dollars in Western aid and nearly 100,000 American troops fighting the Taliban, made the comments during a private meeting with about 60 or 70 Afghan lawmakers.

At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the Taliban if the Parliament didn't back his controversial attempt to take control of the country's electoral watchdog from the United Nations, according to two of those who attended the meeting. The people included a close ally of the president.

Five of the lawmakers at the 2 1/2-hour meeting said Karzai criticised the Parliament for rejecting his attempt to take control of the country's Electoral Complaints Commission, saying that legislators were being used by Western officials who want to install a "puppet government" in Afghanistan.

One lawmaker claimed, "[Karzai] said that the only reason that the Taliban and other insurgent groups are fighting the Afghan government is that they see foreigners having the final say in everything." All five added that Karzai asserted the Taliban's "revolt will change" to a legitimate "resistance" if the US and its allies kept dictating how the Afghan Government was run.

Today Karzai has met local leaders in Kandahar, where his brother --- often criticised for corruption and contacts with insurgents --- is a key politician. News is eagerly awaited....

Afghanistan: Karzai's Middle-Finger Reply to the US

UPDATED 1600 GMT: Some political fun this afternoon over the Karzai statement. Abdullah Abdullah, who lost to Karzai in last year's Presidential election, told reporters, "As a former colleague and doctor, I think this is beyond a normal attitude." White House spokesman Robert Gibbs settled for "genuinely troubling" to describe Karzai's remarks.

The Majlis has a far more pragmatic assessment of why Karzai made his statement.

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Let's check in with Hamid Karzai, five days after Barack Obama made a 26-hour round trip to give him a 30-minute telling-off about corruption, drugs, and mismanagement. I bet he's behaving himself now!

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, delivered extraordinarily harsh criticism on Thursday of the Western governments fighting in his country, the United Nations, and the British and American news media, accusing them of perpetrating the fraud that denied him an outright victory in last summer’s presidential elections.

Afghanistan: US Night Raids v. “Hearts and Minds”? (Porter)

What? Are you sure about that?


I mean, after all, the US and NATO followed up their Presidential stick with the carrot of allowing Karzai's brother, a focal point for criticism about financial irregularities, to maintain his authority in Kandahar?

“There is no doubt that the fraud [in last August's Presidential election] was very widespread, but this fraud was not committed by Afghans, it was committed by foreigners,” Mr. Karzai said. “This fraud was committed by Galbraith [Peter Galbraith, the deputy United Nations special representative], this fraud was committed by Morillon [Philippe Morillon, the chief election observer for the European Union], and this fraud was committed by embassies.”

April Fools' Day, right? Any moment now, Karzai was going to turn around, give a smile, and say, "Just funning you, Barack --- thanks to you and America for all your help."

“In this situation there is a thin curtain between invasion and cooperation-assistance,” said Mr. Karzai, adding that if the perception spread that Western forces were invaders and the Afghan government their mercenaries, the insurgency “could become a national resistance.”

Hmm, guess not.

One possible explanation for the speech is that Karzai was trying to give himself public cover as a dedicated nationalist, standing up to Washington, even as he gave way to Obama. That's certainly what The New York Times was hoping: "One motive for the angry speech might be an attempt to protect himself politically, since it is probable that he will have to accede to Western demands that he remove the officials on the election commission who were seen as most complicit in the fraud."

Another explanation, however, is that Karzai has just made it clear that he will not be implementing the US agenda in full. Instead, look for more rounds of political manoeuvre as the Afghan President positions himself amidst not only Washington but also his own supporters, the Afghan insurgency, and other interested outside powers.

A story, in other words, that will run and run. President Obama, you might want to have Air Force One warmed up for another long-distance flight.

Afghanistan: US Night Raids v. "Hearts and Minds"? (Porter)

Gareth Porter writes for Inter Press Service:

General Stanley McChrystal has recently acquired the image of a master strategist of the population- sensitive counterinsurgency, reducing civilian casualties from airstrikes and insisting that troops avoid firing when civilians might be hit during the recent offensive in Helmand Province. One recent press story even referred to a "McChrystal Doctrine" that focuses on "winning over civilians rather than killing insurgents".

UPDATED Afghanistan Eyeball-to-Eyeball: Obama Administration v. Karzai

But there is a glaring contradiction between McChrystal's new counterinsurgency credentials and his actual policy toward the politically explosive issue of night raids on private homes by Special Operations Forces (SOF) units targeting suspected Taliban.


Since he took over as top commander in Afghanistan, McChrystal has not only refused to curb those raids but has increased them dramatically. And even after they triggered a new round of angry protests from villagers, students and Afghan President Hamid Karzai himself, he has given no signal of reducing his support for them.

Two moves by McChrystal last year reveal his strong commitment to night raids as a tactic. After becoming commander of NATO and U.S. forces last May, he approved a more than fourfold increase in those operations, from 20 in May to 90 in November, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times on 16 December. One of McChrystal's spokesmen, Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, acknowledged to IPS that the level of night raids during that period has reflected McChrystal's guidance.

Then McChrystal deliberately protected night raids from political pressures to reduce or even stop them altogether. In his "initial assessment" last August, he devoted an entire annex to the subject of civilian casualties and collateral damage, but made no mention night raids as a problem in that regard.

As a result of McChrystal's decisions, civilian deaths from night raids have spiked, even as those from air strikes were being reduced. According to United Nations and Afghan government estimates, night raids caused more than half of the nearly 600 civilian deaths attributable to coalition forces in 2009.

Those raids, which also violate the sanctity of the Afghan home, have become the primary Afghan grievance against the U.S. military. As long ago as May 2007, Carlotta Gall and David Sanger described in The New York Times how night raids had provoked an entire village in Herat province to become so angry with the U.S. military that men began carrying out military operations against it.

By 2008, the targets of the SOF raids had shifted from higher-level and mid-level al Qaeda and Taliban officials to low-level insurgents, especially those working on manufacturing and planting IEDs, the organization's main form of attack against foreign military personnel. That shift accelerated as the number of raids ballooned under McChrystal.

The inevitable botched raids killing large numbers of civilians brought a new wave of protests. After a December 2009 raid killed at least 12 civilians in Laghman province, according to an investigation by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, students at Nangarhar University blocked the highway between Jalalabad and Kabul for several hours.

Read rest of article....