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A New York Times story published Thursday documents US plans to withdraw from the Pech Valley in Kunar Province of eastern Afghanistan. As the Times notes, this is a significant withdrawal from an area previously touted as one of the most important in the war in Afghanistan and is an area where over a hundred US troops have died. Remarkably, there is a rare bit of self-awareness in this move, as the US is admitting that it is our presence there that destabilizes the area. Like the unwelcome guest who keeps breaking things but just won’t leave, US behavior in Afghanistan to this point has had a huge component of destabilizing areas while producing no real benefit.
The key bit of US self-awareness comes almost halfway into the Times article:
“What we figured out is that people in the Pech really aren’t anti-U.S. or anti-anything; they just want to be left alone,” said one American military official familiar with the decision. “Our presence is what’s destabilizing this area.”
Yes, at least in Pech Valley, the US realizes that we are uninvited guests who have been trashing the place for no reason. Will this concept ever be expanded to include all of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan?
The US military commander for eastern Afghanistan tries to put the best face on this move, in light of the abandonment of an area some troops consider almost sacred due to the number of lost comrades:
Military officials say they are sensitive to those perceptions. “People say, ‘You are coming out of the Pech’; I prefer to look at it as realigning to provide better security for the Afghan people,” said Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander for eastern Afghanistan. “I don’t want the impression we’re abandoning the Pech.”
The Afghan “troops” being left behind to provide security for the area know full well that the vaunted “training” that General David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell have been bragging about is a sham and that those being left behind are on a suicide mission:
Some Afghan military officials have also expressed pointed misgivings about the prospects for Afghan units left behind.
“According to my experience in the military and knowledge of the area, it’s absolutely impractical for the Afghan National Army to protect the area without the Americans,” said Major Turab, the former second-in-command of an Afghan battalion in the valley, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “It will be a suicidal mission.”
Note also that the Pech valley is very close to the Ghaziabad area where a recent US raid led to multiple civilian casualties. In the article discussing the civilian deaths and injuries, this Washington Post article actually places a name with the realization that the US is not welcome in Kunar Province:
“They’re in extreme isolation,” Brig. Gen. Stephen Townsend, a senior Army official in eastern Afghanistan, said of parts of Konar. “They just don’t want us there.”
It was during the investigation of this attack that Petraeus offended many Afghans by accusing Afghan parents of intentionally burning their children in order to make the US attack look worse. The Ghaziabad region is in the Bar Kunar district of Kunar Province, with only one district between it and the Pech district. The map below shows the districts of Kunar Province, while the inset shows the location of the province on Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan.
Districts in Kunar Province, Afghanistan (Wikipedia map)
The Times article also points out that this withdrawal seems to be a case of history repeating itself:
The Taliban and other Afghan insurgent groups are all but certain to label the withdrawal a victory in the Pech Valley, where they could point to the Soviet Army’s withdrawal from the same area in 1988. Many Afghans remember that withdrawal as a symbolic moment when the Kremlin’s military campaign began to visibly fall apart.
It sure does look like the US campaign is falling apart, as well. We are withdrawing from a region previously touted as vital. We are leaving behind a sadly suicidal testament to the fraud that is the US “training” of Afghan forces. What further evidence is needed to demonstrate that the entire effort is an abject failure?
22 Comments
Ground war in Asia becoming an unwinnable quagmire, who could’ve predicted that?
There never was an actual “plan” for Afghanistan. Take it and hold it about covers the forward thinking. The whole thing is a miserable failure and it enrages me that we have lost so many of our troops and killed so many innocents in the pursuit of the impossible.
I pity the left behind soldiers. talk about sitting ducks. are there some Vietnam parallel?
you know, I have heard interviews on cbc radio, for what it’s worth, there are woman, who do not want to be left to the taliban.
They want to be able to attend school, work, etc.
I am not saying that usa military staying will help these woman very much.
man it’s just all flying apart, imploding, right in front of us. the whole imperial adventure of the last little while.
I think the only tip-of-the-iceberg plan was pallets full of cash drop shipped to offshore havens or laundered through the remaining Big Five US banks.
The US creates its enemies by invading, bombing, and occupying other nations, deposing their leaders, and installing puppets who serve the interests of wealthy Western investors. A very lucrative business, and not a failure at all; win or lose, hundreds of billions of public tax dollars are laundered through the Pentagon and deposited in the foreign bank accounts of the corporate criminal class.
As for the plight of the women of Afghanistan, I would urge people to read “A Woman Among the Warlords” by Malalai Joya, former elected member to the Afghan parliament and leading member of the largest anti-Taliban women’s rights organizations in the country. From her book:
“Most people in the west have been led to believe that intolerance, brutality, and severe oppression of women in Afghanistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie, more dust in the eyes of the world from the warlords who dominate the American-backed, so-called democratic government of Hamid Karzai. In truth, some of the worst atrocities in our recent past were committed during the civil war by the men who are now in power.”
She continues, describing the actions of Norther Alliance warlords and other groups (whose leaders are today favored by the US) during the 1992 devastation of Kabul:
“The militias of Dostum, Sayyaf, Massoud, Mazari, and Hekmatyar pillaged the city, robbing families and slaughtering and raping women. Eventually, anywhere from 65,000 to 80,000 innocent people were killed in Kabul alone, though there are no official figures for the staggering death toll. According to the United Nations, more than 90 percent of the city was destroyed. Eventually the country was split up into fiefdoms, ruled by the whims of rival thugs and warlords.”
(pg. 26)
“We are caught between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other. Obama’s military build up will only bring more suffering and death to innocent civilians. I hope that the lessons in this book will reach President Obama and his policymakers in Washington, and warn them that the people of Afghanistan reject their brutal occupation and their support of the warlords and druglords.” (pg. 5)
Her book was published in Oct. 2009. By now Ms. Joya, the people of Afghanistan, and millions of us all over the world who oppose this pointless slaughter know that Obama hasn’t the least intention of listening to her or anyone else.
“Some people say that when the troops withdraw, a civil war will break out. Often this prospect is raised by people who ignore the vicious conflict and humanitarian disaster that is already occurring in Afghanistan. The longer foreign troops stay in Afghanistan, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people. The terrible civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal certainly could never justify the destruction and death caused by that decade-long occupation.” (pg.217)
“Today we live under the shadow of the gun with the most corrupt and unpopular government in the world”. (pg.211)
Charlie Rose had this guy on last night for the hour: Abdul Rahim Wardak, Defense Minister of Afghanistan. It was definitely an alternative universe. ISOP military is gaining ground rapidly in Helmand & around Khandahar. Training & retention of Afghan police & military is 3-4 months ahead of schedule.
I listened for about 20 minutes just shaking my head in wonder. Rose, as usual, let him get away unchallenged on every ridiculous statement he made.
WRT role of women in Afghanistan, one thing I’ve not been able to track down to my satisfaction, is what happened during the Soviet occupation. I know that in some areas, there was total warfare, i.e. destruction of every building, field, man, woman and child.
But I have also read reports that it was a time of female liberation. Allegedly, Soviets had lots of women go to U.S.S.R. to be trained as teachers & doctors.
Blowback against them in subsequently more ‘conservative’ regimes, of course.
Pretty soon, we’re going to have completely exhausted the districts in Afghanistan that are available to be deemed `mission critical’ and will have to look elsewhere for more. Like directly to the east and west.
AJ doing a long segment on AQ in Yemen. Barbara Bodine, U.S. amb to Yemen during Cole bombing, just said, in speaking about alAwaki, points out that U.S. demonization of him has made him into a leader beyond anything he could have done on his own. Quite an admission & no doubt true.
tom engelhardt in his incisive blog post, “Washington’s Echo Chamber” had this to say about petraeus:
“……..on February 19th, just as all hell was breaking loose in Bahrain and Libya, the general visited the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul and, in dismissing Afghan claims that recent American air raids in the country’s northeast had killed scores of civilians, including children, he made a comment that shocked President Hamid Karzai’s aides. We don’t have it verbatim, but the Washington Post reports that, according to ‘participants,’ Petraeus suggested ‘Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in northeastern Afghanistan might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties.’
“One Afghan at the meeting responded: ‘I was dizzy. My head was spinning. This was shocking. Would any father do this to his children? This is really absurd.’”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175359/
afghans are too polite to term the callous arrogance of such an at your face comment as only “absurd”
Korea became the forgotten war. Afganistan is already the ignored war. Seems the whole thing is more a tool to garner advancement, and for that alone the military higher-ups seem more than eager to continue.
Regarding Afgan women, ultimately and unfortunatly their fate is in the hands of their own society, not ours. The same can be said of women in hundreds of areas around the world. Sometimes we can help through economic intervention or training, but not in the context of war, and probably never in remote areas like Afganistan.
Maybe the new war front has been in Pakistan since at least 2009 (volumes of documentation by EmptyWheel) but the folks in the States have no idea although they’re still paying for a war front in Afghanistan plus the propaganda about it. So many lies; so many unanswered questions.
I recently heard a special on female genital cutting in Africa. Don’t remember where I saw it or which countries. But apparently with the help of some foreigners who lived there for years & got to know the locals, they gradually developed networks within tribes, and the tribes the girls married into, so that fathers & their sons would not engage in it, nor would the sons marry girls who had been mutilated. It sounded a bit like the Three Cups of Tea story, where there was some outside ‘help,’ but only after the outsider spent a lot of time integrating into the local population & gaining their trust.
So it’s not as though nothing can be done by outsiders, but it is very labor intensive & takes a long time.
Barbara Lee introduced the Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act has 33 co-sponsors, including some Republicans.
This is how wars end – people push Congress, which claims it is really up to the President, the pressure builds, until Congress makes the decision, as it is constitutionally required to do.
exactly.
some of us have been saying that for decades.
But, the war machine needs its fodder, and situations to use their devices, and then to sell more of them….
weaponry is our largest export now…
terribly sad…
No one spared in today’s biting episode of FKN NEWZ (Deek Jackson – Scotland)
Apparently the strategic changes begun two years ago by General McChrystal were reversed by General Petraeus, and in another change are now being implemented. Too many contrary decisions indicate indecision.
The strategic decision to withdraw from remote valleys and outposts, and concentrate on urban areas, is a defeat for NATO and means that infiltration routes can’t be blocked. This is particularly risky now that US/Pakistan relations are degrading.
The Pech Valley was the site of the Battle of Wanat which occurred on July 13, 2008, when about 200 Taliban guerrillas attacked a US outpost near the village of Wanat. American casualties included nine killed and 27 wounded, the most in a single battle since the start of U.S. operations in 2001. Three days after the engagement the United States and Afghan armies withdrew from Wanat.
Subsequently the Army overruled a military investigator who found that command failures on the part of three Army officers contributed to the deadly attack. One report of the 2008 attack presaged current remarks regarding the detrimental US occupation of Afghanistan.
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/category/topic/wanat
These actions in Afghanistan represent a US strategy that is totally FUBAR. After over ten years of combat:
U.S. Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, the commander of NATO’s training mission in Afghanistan, said the Afghan army loses about 32 percent of its personnel each year. In the police, that number is nearly 23 percent.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hVHvRCD5Eb73ggDtxHiAQ_5owqiQ?docId=7b9ca6ed6f8b4521ae0ac8175e3ae77b
That last statistic is alarming because the plan is to replace the departing US troops with ineffective Afghan troops.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/not-one-afghan-army-unit-was-able-operat
As General Smedley Butler told the jingoistic American population, to no avail, “war is a racket.” As long as the American population remains proud that their relatives serve as cannon fodder for the military/security complex, war will remain a racket.This the primary reason why we are going broke!!!
Maybe if they substitute the word Afghanistan for Pech Valley our Washington masters might have a Homer Simpson “D’oh!” moment.
While all indicators are heading south, the US can’t withdraw from an obvious failure because:
* Pride won’t allow it
* Political futures might be in jeopardy
* The huge profits being made via corrupted contracts
* A good war for the military professionals
* Insulation against Pentagon budget cuts (support the troops)
* Sustained domestic controls benefit from ongoing GWOT
* Opportunities for continued meddling in Pakistan, including Balochistan, and Central Asia
* Continued encirclement of Iran from west (Iraq) and east (Afghanistan and Pakistan)
* The bogus Safe 9/11–Safe Havens argument
There’s very little down-side for the imperialists in continuing, and so little incentive to end it.
I thought Petraeus was deliberately trying to get himself relieved of his command for such a statement (the words “blood libel” are for once apt).
Or maybe, since he knows Obama will never fire him, he is trying to spark a Libyan-type revolt in Afghanistan against Americans, that will finally end the war in his (and our) lifetime.
In other words, it’s an astonishing success on its own terms, and it is far more strategic to have bases in Central Asia than almost anywhere else. As the Empire swells metatastically, the Homeland dies, but that’s no matter. (That they call it the “Homeland” shows us what they really think of us, btw.)