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April 12, 2010

Security in Afghanistan, NATO-style
Posted by Michael Cohen

The article today from the Times on London on the attitude of Kandaharis toward NATO and the possibility of an upcoming offensive in their city is an absolute must read:

The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has cast doubt over Nato’s planned summer offensive against the Taliban in the southern province of Kandahar, as more than 10,000 American troops pour in for the fight.

Karzai threatened to delay or even cancel the operation — one of the biggest of the nine-year war — after being confronted in Kandahar by elders who said it would bring strife, not security, to his home province.

Visiting last week to rally support for the offensive, the president was instead overwhelmed by a barrage of complaints about corruption and misrule. As he was heckled at a shura of 1,500 tribal leaders and elders, he appeared to offer them a veto over military action. “Are you happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out?” he asked. The elders shouted back, "We are not happy."

I wonder if these are the same civilians that US military officials keep solemnly declaring they are in Afghanistan to "protect" and "help." But what is perhaps most interesting is why Kandaharis view the possibility of military action with such suspicion.

On the streets of the city this weekend there appeared to be little or no support for a Nato push in the province. “Look what happened in Marjah,” said one local government official in Kandahar, referring to the last US offensive launched in February in central Helmand province.

“The US controls the place by day but the Taliban control it by night. What is the point? If you help the government, you will be murdered.”

At a popular coffee shop in the city centre, Khaled, a medical student from Kabul, said the influence of the Taliban was creeping back into the area. “A Nato offensive here will not help,” he added. “We know what they do. They arrive in great numbers and provide security for two weeks and then they go and the insecurity returns.”

You sort have to love the fact that it takes a medical student in a coffee shop to lay bare the incoherence of NATO's strategy in Southern Afghanistan. General McChrystal has stated that our goal there

is to protect the Afghan people; " Success will be defined by the Afghan people's freedom to choose their own future . . . a future they can be proud of" he said last summer.

But of course, this simply isn't true. It's not why the US and NATO is in Afghanistan - and even if we were there, we lack the capability to provide such a choice for the Afghan people. We are there to protect US interests and ultimately American lives. That we are able to help the Afghan people is a nice side benefit, but that's about it. For all his many faults, it's a fact not lost on Karzai who said as much last November:

"[T]he West is not here primarily for the sake of Afghanistan. It is here to fight the war on terror.... We were being killed by al Qaeda and the terrorists before Sept. 11 for years, tortured and killed; our villages were destroyed, and we were living a miserable life. The West didn't care nor did they ever come."

And as this article makes clear - Karzai is not alone in harboring this belief. The fact is, the United States and NATO may be in Marjah today or Kandahar tomorrow; we may go out of our way to show deference to the local population and drink tea with village elders - but eventually we are going to leave and the Taliban will still be there. Any security that the US and NATO is able to provide is ephemeral at best and if today's incident in which 5 Afghans were killed when ISAF forces strafed a bus is any indication - it isn't much security at all.

And we wonder why locals in Kandahar are not interested in our protection. The idea that we are able to provide security in places like Helmand and Kandahar is nothing less than sheer folly; that we believe it will turn the tide of the war is far worse.

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I am totally in support of this offensive as well, this is the Al Qaeda and Taliban stronghold.. Its been planned for months.. This is real war they want, this is the real war they will get.. American and other coalition forces will gladly oblige now.. Thats what they have arrived for Karzai will play a very dangerous game for my fellow Englishmen in this fight, as well as all other nations who will stand together in the fight against Islamic militancy and extremism...

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Very well explained but it is not an exaggeration to say that Afghanistan is a litmus test for NATO’s relevance and that perhaps a more difficult test could not have been devised for the alliance in the post-Cold War world.

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