'Obama’s Afghan “Surge” Sows Seeds Of New WarsBy Keith Jones
February 26, 2009 "WSWS" --
US imperialism is set on a course to expand and intensify the Afghan War—vastly increasing the number of troops deployed to Afghanistan and extending the war into neighboring Pakistan.
The Obama administration's Afghan troop "surge" and the ensuing ratcheting up of violence will have catastrophic consequences for the Afghani and Pakistani peoples. It adds a new, explosive dynamic to the decades-old geopolitical rivalry between India and Pakistan and will intensify the great power competition for control of oil-rich Central Asia, sowing the seeds for even larger and more destructive wars.
President Barack Obama announced last week the deployment of a further 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan, increasing US troop strength in the impoverished Central Asian state by almost 40 percent. At Washington's urging, the Afghan government has begun arming tribal groups, copying a tactic the Pentagon employed in Iraq.
Since last August, the US has carried out 38 missile strikes inside Pakistan, the two most recent coming within days of a visit to Pakistan by Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to an article in last Saturday's New York Times the two latest air strikes represented a change in US policy, bringing it even more directly into Pakistan's internal politics. For the first time the US targeted Islamist militia who have not been involved in the Afghan insurgency.
The Times has also revealed that US Special Forces are carrying out covert land operations inside Pakistan and that since last summer 70 US military personnel have been deployed to Pakistan to train Pakistani soldiers and paratroopers in counter-insurgency warfare.
It has become a veritable mantra of the Obama administration and US geo-political think tanks that suppressing Taliban "safe-havens" in Pakistan is pivotal to stamping out the anti-US insurgency in Afghanistan and that this requires that Islamabad "do more."
Under pressure from Washington, the Pakistani military and government have for years been conducting offensive operations in the traditionally autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), strafing villages, "disappearing" alleged opponents of the US occupation of Afghanistan, and imposing colonial-style collective punishments on "uncooperative" tribes. Over the past six months these military operations have been expanded. Earlier this month, the United Nations refugee agency said the fighting has displaced 450,000 people in northwest Pakistan and it fears the total will reach 600,000 in a matter of weeks. Holbrooke himself told PBS television that he had seen "flattened villages" when touring FATA by air. But Washington is adamant that its Pakistani allies must be even more ruthless, even if such action further stokes popular anger against the government and threatens to divide the military, many of whose recruits are drawn from Pakistan's Pashtun community. The Pashtuns have borne the brunt of the US occupation of Afghanistan and the Pakistani government's drive to assert its authority in FATA.
The New York Times and other liberal supporters of the Obama administration have promoted the Afghan war as the so-called "good war,' in contrast with the Iraq war (which the Times nonetheless also enthusiastically supported.) In fact, the two wars are of a piece. Both have been waged with the aim of imposing US hegemony in regions where there are vast reserves of oil and thereby securing US global predominance, under conditions where the US's economic power has been vastly eroded.'
The Obama administration's Afghan troop "surge" and the ensuing ratcheting up of violence will have catastrophic consequences for the Afghani and Pakistani peoples. It adds a new, explosive dynamic to the decades-old geopolitical rivalry between India and Pakistan and will intensify the great power competition for control of oil-rich Central Asia, sowing the seeds for even larger and more destructive wars.
President Barack Obama announced last week the deployment of a further 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan, increasing US troop strength in the impoverished Central Asian state by almost 40 percent. At Washington's urging, the Afghan government has begun arming tribal groups, copying a tactic the Pentagon employed in Iraq.
Since last August, the US has carried out 38 missile strikes inside Pakistan, the two most recent coming within days of a visit to Pakistan by Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to an article in last Saturday's New York Times the two latest air strikes represented a change in US policy, bringing it even more directly into Pakistan's internal politics. For the first time the US targeted Islamist militia who have not been involved in the Afghan insurgency.
The Times has also revealed that US Special Forces are carrying out covert land operations inside Pakistan and that since last summer 70 US military personnel have been deployed to Pakistan to train Pakistani soldiers and paratroopers in counter-insurgency warfare.
It has become a veritable mantra of the Obama administration and US geo-political think tanks that suppressing Taliban "safe-havens" in Pakistan is pivotal to stamping out the anti-US insurgency in Afghanistan and that this requires that Islamabad "do more."
Under pressure from Washington, the Pakistani military and government have for years been conducting offensive operations in the traditionally autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), strafing villages, "disappearing" alleged opponents of the US occupation of Afghanistan, and imposing colonial-style collective punishments on "uncooperative" tribes. Over the past six months these military operations have been expanded. Earlier this month, the United Nations refugee agency said the fighting has displaced 450,000 people in northwest Pakistan and it fears the total will reach 600,000 in a matter of weeks. Holbrooke himself told PBS television that he had seen "flattened villages" when touring FATA by air. But Washington is adamant that its Pakistani allies must be even more ruthless, even if such action further stokes popular anger against the government and threatens to divide the military, many of whose recruits are drawn from Pakistan's Pashtun community. The Pashtuns have borne the brunt of the US occupation of Afghanistan and the Pakistani government's drive to assert its authority in FATA.
The New York Times and other liberal supporters of the Obama administration have promoted the Afghan war as the so-called "good war,' in contrast with the Iraq war (which the Times nonetheless also enthusiastically supported.) In fact, the two wars are of a piece. Both have been waged with the aim of imposing US hegemony in regions where there are vast reserves of oil and thereby securing US global predominance, under conditions where the US's economic power has been vastly eroded.'
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