BBC opinion piece on US future role in Afghanistan (***opinion***)

Viewpoint: Why the US should withdraw from Afghanistan

• 22 August 2017
 
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Image copyrightAFP

Image captionAll US troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan, says Professor Andrew Bacevich

US President Donald Trump has committed his country to an open-ended war in Afghanistan that is likely to see more troops deployed. Before becoming president, he had on several occasions advocated the withdrawal of US forces.

Many analysts believe Mr Trump made the right decision in changing his mind. But some do not. They argue the costly war is at a stalemate and American troops should come home. Andrew Bacevich, Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University, told the BBC why he thinks withdrawal is the best option.

If keeping US troops in Afghanistan could guarantee that our country would not be targeted by further terrorist attacks, I would favour making our longest war longer still.

But the terrorist threat has evolved since 9/11 and keeping US forces in Afghanistan does not "make America safe".

The opposite is true. Occupying countries in the Islamic world exacerbates the threat rather than reduces it.

Donald Trump as a candidate appeared to get that but now as president has reversed course.

He has returned to establishment views held by the generals that advise him. They insist that there is no alternative than to keep doing what we have been doing since 2001. It is an odd argument: that the most powerful country on the planet has no alternative but to persist in failure.

The argument for continuing the war in Afghanistan assumes that Afghans are incapable of managing their own affairs. It also assumes that our presence and our assistance can make Afghanistan governable.

For almost 16 years, we have tested that proposition. No evidence exists to support it, nor is there reason to think that more of the same - that is what Trump is proposing - will produce better results. Certainly half-measures will not work.

One might speculate that a major escalation - a couple of hundred thousand troops, a few trillion dollars, a decade or so of further exertions - might turn things around. But neither the American public nor Congress nor President Trump himself will support any such effort. As the president said on Monday, Americans are weary of this war.

I am not naïve. I have zero expectation that if the US and its allies withdrew that somehow the various factions in Afghanistan would get together and create a stable, liberal democratic order.

However, it is not implausible to consider the possibility of Afghanistan and its neighbours cobbling together arrangements enabling the various factions to more or less co-exist.

Can I guarantee that this would happen? No.

But if you have been pursuing one course of action for a decade and a half and it hasn't worked, maybe it's time to seriously consider alternatives.

Frankly, if Afghans could cease to fight among themselves and refuse to provide sanctuary to terrorist organisations, that would more than satisfy US interests.

Even if the Taliban regained power, would they embrace IS, al-Qaeda or other such entities? The answer is not necessarily. The last time they did they paid a heavy penalty.

The key would be to create incentives encouraging good behaviour on their part. Economic assistance could be offered as a positive incentive. Promising severe punishment - punitive air strikes, for example - in the event of misconduct might also figure.

Professor Barry Posen of MIT has suggested that a US departure from Afghanistan would energise other countries in the region, like Pakistan, Iran, India and Russia, to exert themselves to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a failed state.

I think this is an important perspective. We should not accept President Trump's absolute certainty that if we leave then Afghanistan will become a terrorist haven.

Finally, I would emphasise that the more preoccupied we are with Afghanistan, the less attention we give to far more pressing issues such as climate change and potential instability in East Asia.

The strategically prudent course of action for the US is to acknowledge our failure and leave.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41016347  

Afghanistan's president praises Trump's Afghan strategy at UN

(CNN)The President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, used a substantial part of his speech before Tuesday's session of the United Nations General Assembly to praise President Donald Trump's recently announced strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia.

"With President Trump's recent announcement of his strategy to counter terror and stabilize South Asia, Afghanistan's enduring partnership with the United States and the international community has been renewed and redirected," Ghani told the audience at the UN headquarters in New York.

He said the strategy, which states that US military engagement in the country will be based on conditions rather than timelines, provided a certainty over US support for Afghanistan which he said the Afghan people had been seeking "for years."

"We welcome this strategy, which has now set us on a pathway to certainty," Ghani said.

Afghanistan: 16 years, thousands dead and no clear end in sight

American military commanders have similarly long sought an enduring US troop presence in Afghanistan that is based on battlefield conditions rather than an arbitrary withdrawal timeline -- seeing it as a critical component of any strategy that aims to drive the Taliban to the negotiating table and compel meaningful cooperation from Pakistan.

Ghani for his part called on "all ranks of the Taliban" to engage in dialogue with the Afghan government.

He also echoed Trump's strategy in asking Pakistan to do more to foster security and stability in the region, calling on Pakistan to join a "comprehensive dialogue" and saying that the Afghans had "proven that we are committed to peace."

Afghan and US officials have long accused Pakistan of taking insufficient military action against Taliban leadership in that country.

UN wonders if Trump's threat to 'totally destroy' North Korea is just bluster

"President Trumps' new strategy includes the disruption and denial of sanctuary to terrorists whose motives know no boundaries," Ghani said.

Ghani said Afghanistan is doing a lot more to combat corruption and promote merit over patronage, issues long prioritized by the US.

There are about 11,000 US troops currently deployed to Afghanistan. The majority of them are in supporting roles, assigned to the NATO mission to train and advise Afghan security forces alongside approximately 6,000 troops from other NATO countries. The remainder of US forces in Afghanistan carry out counterterrorism missions in the country.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that just over 3,000 additional US troops were in the process of deploying to Afghanistan in order to be part of a "stronger train, advise and assist effort."

Who are the key players in Afghanistan?

And Ghani sought to link the fight in Afghanistan to the global fight against terrorism.

"The future of Afghanistan matters because we are on the front lines of the global effort to eradicate the threat of terrorism," Ghani said.

Ghani, a former World Bank official, praised international institutions like the UN for helping to foster stability in the wake of the second world war, but he said new efforts were needed to confront the "threats we are facing to our economies, our security and our values."

"We must confront the threat of terrorism as a united force and meet it with a long-term solution that matches the long-term agenda of the terrorists themselves."

In addition to saluting Trump's new strategic direction, Ghani took time to criticize Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi, saying her "lengthy silence" on the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya "was tragic."

Ghani made the comments during the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

Taliban kill 17 Afghans in police station attack

Wednesday’s police station killings, along with a suicide bombing in Kabul, underscore concerns about security in Afghanistan less than two years before American troop withdrawals are scheduled to take place.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents poisoned, then shot and killed 17 people as they slept at a local police post in eastern Afghanistan, one of two attacks in as many days targeting Afghan security forces, an official said Wednesday.
It's unclear how the militants were able to drug people inside the post before firing bullets into their incapacitated bodies Tuesday night, said Abdul Jamhe Jamhe, a government official in Ghazni province.
Ten members of the Afghan Local Police, a village-level defense force backed by the U.S. military and Afghan government, and seven of their civilian friends died in the attack, said Provincial Gov. Musa Khan Akbarzada. He said there was a conspiracy of some sort but declined to confirm that poison was involved.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in Andar district. He told The Associated Press by telephone that the attackers fatally shot the men in their sleep, but denied they had been poisoned.
Residents of Andar took up arms last spring and chased out insurgents. The villagers don't readily embrace any outside authority, be it the Taliban, the Afghan government or the U.S.-led NATO military coalition.
The lightly trained village defense force, which is overseen by the Interior Ministry, is tasked with helping bring security to remote areas. But President Hamid Karzai has expressed concern that without careful vetting, the program could end up arming local troublemakers, strongmen or criminals.


MORE VIOLENCE
In other violence, a suicide bomber slid under a bus full of Afghan soldiers and blew himself up in Kabul, wounding 10 in an attack that underscored the insurgency's ability to attack in the heavily guarded capital. Kabul police said at least six soldiers and four civilians were wounded. The suicide attacker died.



The bomber, wearing a black overcoat, approached the bus purposefully in heavy morning snow as soldiers were boarding, set down his umbrella and went under the chassis as if to fix something, according to a witness. Watching from across the street, office worker Ahmad Shakib said he thought for a moment the man might have been a mechanic.
"I thought to myself, what is this crazy man doing? And then there was a blast and flames," that engulfed the undercarriage, he said. "It was a very loud explosion. I still cannot really hear."
Bakery owner Mirza Khan said the blast shattered the windows of his nearby shop where people were waiting to buy bread, leaving six wounded.
The Afghan government uses buses to ferry soldiers, police and office workers into the city center on regular routes for work, and the vehicles have been a common target for insurgents.
Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, also claimed responsibility for the Kabul bombing.
The attack occurred three days after a would-be car bomber was shot dead by police in downtown Kabul. That assailant was driving a vehicle packed with explosives and officials said he appeared to be targeting an intelligence agency office.
It also comes as the U.S.-led military coalition in the country is backing off from its claim that Taliban attacks dropped in 2012, tacitly acknowledging a hole in its widely repeated argument that violence is easing and that the insurgency is in steep decline.
Some 100,000 international troops are helping secure Afghanistan at the moment, but most, including many of the 66,000 Americans, are expected to finish their withdrawal by the end of 2014.
Also on Wednesday, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan met with  President Karzai to discuss abuse allegations against American special forces and Afghan troops linked to them in the strategic eastern Wardak province.
The allegations led Karzai to issue an order on Sunday calling for U.S. special forces to be expelled from the province within two weeks despite fears that the move would leave the restive area and the neighboring Afghan capital more vulnerable to al-Qaida and other insurgents.
Karzai and Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of all U.S. and allied forces, discussed the issue and agreed to work together to address the security concerns of the people of Wardak, a coalition statement said.
Wednesday's meeting came a day after hundreds of Wardak residents converged on the provincial capital of Maidan Shahr to call on Karzai to implement his decision as soon as possible.
"The people are really angry about the actions of both the U.S. special forces and the Afghans working with them," provincial government spokesman Attaullah Khogyani said, adding the protesters threatened to stage larger demonstrations if the elite troops aren't gone by the deadline.

Khatool Mohammadzai. Afghan Female Paratrooper!

This is the first i've ever heard of this woman!  She was a paratrooper in the Afghan military for 28 years and made more than 600 jumps.

Then the Taliban came to power and suddenly she was stuck at home, or under a burqa with severence pay of $13 a month. 

So, the next time you think all women wearing burqas are alike - keep her in mind. 

And yes, she did earn all of those medals.  She was a Colonel when the Taliban stopped her military career.  She has since been promoted to General, but I heard that she has been assigned to a desk job.  ..... hm.