Losing war

DESPITE the military surge in Afghanistan ordered by President Barack Obama, the situation is only getting worse for the United States-led occupation forces as well as for ordinary Afghans. The Taliban has shown its military resilience by continuing with its attacks on the U.S./North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces and has on many occasions stood its ground against massive firepower and the troop surge in Helmand and other areas of western Afghanistan, where most of the current battles are raging. The Taliban continues to hold considerable sway over almost a third of Afghanistan.

As for the civilians, a United Nations report released in the last week of July said that 1,013 civilians had been killed so far this year. During the same period in 2008, the civilian toll was around 800. July was a particularly bad month for the foreign troops. Seventy of them were killed in the month 43 of them American and 22 British soldiers. It was the worst month for the foreign forces since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently warned that the Taliban fighters had become more dangerous and that the U.S./NATO forces faced a crucial 18-month period before Afghanistan was stabilised.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said in late July that the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan was alarming. She called for immediate steps to be taken by all the sides involved in the conflict to protect the civilian populace. According to the U.N., most of the civilian casualties were the result of roadside bomb explosions caused by the Taliban and the rampant use of airpower on civilian targets by the occupation forces. Most observers feel that the civilian casualties are only bound to increase as the U.S. military surge continues. The fighting is now getting concentrated in populated areas.

The Taliban, like all guerilla armies, operates among the people, especially in the Pashtun-dominated areas. The U.N. has warned that the Afghan resistance to the U.S. troop surge and the presidential election in the third week of August will in all probability cause more civilian casualties. According to the U.N., at least 200 civilians have been killed since the beginning of the year. And there have been more than 40 air strikes on civilian areas so far this year.

Western critics of the Afghan war are of the view that the U.S. is allowing the Taliban to choose the timing and location of battle. A senior Taliban official told The New York Times in May that despite the military surge, the Americans were in no position to control the countryside. The Americans cannot take control of the villages. In order to expel us they will have to resort to aerial bombing, and then they will have more civilian casualties, the official told the newspaper.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the newly appointed commander of the U.S.- and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, told the media that the number of civilian casualties was deeply concerning and promised to take unspecified measures to prevent civilian deaths. This is going to be a difficult task. The U.S.-led forces will keep on calling for air support whenever they are frontally confronted by the Taliban, as has often been the case in recent months. The dependence on Predator drones to target suspected militants in remote mountainous areas is only bound to increase civilian casualties.

The Taliban leadership also gives the impression of being concerned about the rising toll among civilians. In July, it issued a book called The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Rules for Mujahideen, which lays down a code of conduct for its fighters. The fighters have been instructed to limit the number of suicide attacks. Suicide attacks in crowded areas have caused a large number of civilian deaths. A brave son of Islam should not be used for targeting lower and useless targets. The utmost effort should be made to avoid civilian casualties, the book says. The new rules have forbidden the creation of groups outside the formal Taliban structure to fight the foreign forces. If unofficial groups or irregular battalions refuse to join the formal structure, they should be disbanded, the Taliban leadership has said. Groups appropriating the Taliban banner have been indulging in lawless activities against civilians, hurting the organisations image among the people.

The Taliban has urged all Afghans to boycott the presidential election scheduled for August 20. Two attacks have already taken place on the cavalcade of candidates. In a statement issued in the last week of July, the Taliban threatened to block all major roads as part of its attempts to disrupt the election. The statement said that the election was paid and secured by foreigners and was part of the American strategy to dominate Afghanistan.

President Hamid Karzais writ barely extends beyond Kabul. The last elections had seen the victory of many former warlords and others with tainted records. Many critics of the American policy say that the Obama administration, like the George Bush administration before it, is trying to bring in democracy at gunpoint.

Serious questions are being raised about the legitimacy of the election. Afghan government officials have acknowledged that it will be extremely difficult to hold elections in the Pashtun-dominated areas. A spokesman for the Afghan Electoral Commission conceded that it may not be possible to open around 500 of the 7,000 polling centres on election day. Karzai may find his victory margin seriously dented if the Taliban succeeds in enforcing its boycott call in its zones of influence.

There are a number of candidates running for the presidency, but Karzais most serious challenger is his former Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah. Abdullah was a close associate of the late Tajik leader Ahmad Shah Masood.

Meanwhile, with no light visible at the end of the Afghan tunnel, the Obama administration is preparing for a long haul. A comprehensive military victory against the Taliban has been ruled out by no less a person than Richard Holbrooke, Obamas special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. First of all, the victory as defined in purely military terms is not achievable, he told an American broadcaster earlier in the year. What the U.S. was looking for, he emphasised, was the definition of our vital national security interests. He made it clear that the Obama administrations priority was to put Afghanistan in a larger regional context and engage other countries in efforts to stabilise the incredibly volatile region.

Indias role is viewed as essential by the Obama administration to safeguard American interests in the region. Holbrooke was back again in Delhi in August to hold talks with Indian officials on the Af-Pak agenda.

Recent reports in the American media suggest that Gen. McChrystal is on the verge of requesting the White House for a further substantial increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan. The Pentagon wants the size of the Afghan army raised from the current 134,000 to 240,000. For the ongoing military offensive in Helmand province, 11,000 American soldiers have been deployed. The Afghan army could spare only 500 of its soldiers for pacification activities in areas from which Taliban fighters were dislodged.

Obama himself has questioned the rationale for an even bigger troop presence in Afghanistan. He had sanctioned 21,000 additional troops earlier in the year to facilitate the military surge. His administration has signalled that it will not be paying for the training and upkeep of a huge army and security apparatus that it wants to be in place in Afghanistan. European governments, despite requests from Washington, are reluctant to take on this financial burden.

With the growing realisation that the war is unwinnable, public opinion in the U.S. and Europe seems to be irrevocably turning against it. The spectre of the Vietnam War has already started haunting the Obama administration. The fact that eight years of occupation by U.S.-led forces has not been able to make a dent in the opium trade which fetches the Taliban an estimated $300 million a year is an indication to many that the war in Afghanistan is being lost.

But the U.S. President may not have read the writing on the wall. In his landmark speech in Cairo, Egypt, he lumped the Taliban along with Al Qaeda. At the same time, senior U.S. officials keep on issuing statements about talking to the good Taliban.

In response to Obamas Cairo speech, the Taliban issued a statement critical of the U.S. President. However, this statement also said that if President Obama truly wants peace to be ensured in Afghanistan and the region, he should put an end to the [U.S.] military presence and illegal occupation to pave the way for the restoration of security.

If foreign forces leave (Afghanistan), Afghans will have no intention to harm anyone. No one can use Afghanistans soil against the international community, it added.

Previous U.S. administrations have dealt with the Taliban and even Al Qaeda. Sibel Edmonds, a former translator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. investigative agency, told the American radio programme the Mike Malloy Show that the U.S. had maintained intimate relations with the Taliban and Al Qaeda until the events of September 11, 2001. According to Edmonds, these intimate relations included using Al Qaeda for operations in Central Asia and in the Xinjiang province of China.