Via The Hill:
President Barack Obama "needs to get out of this war before he owns this war," one Democratic lawmaker said of the country's current mission in Afghanistan.The White House's committment to continuing its military operations there is merely "hardening opposition to the U.S.," depleting much needed military and financial resources and lending legitimacy to a government that otherwise lacks it, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) told MSNBC last night.
Consequently, sending the 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal first requested in September would be a grave mistake, the congressman added. Rather, the United States should focus more on withdrawing military personnel from "safe cities" with sound leadership, and the White House should devote its primary attention to Pakistan, he said.
"Our staying there is actually strengthening our opposition, because we're occupying a foreign country," he told host Chris Matthews. "And, in fact, if we followed McChrystal's advice, we would be up to 100,000 troops. That's how many Russia had. Russia killed a million Afghans and they still lost the war and lost their empire."
"[W]e can't win a war that is based upon generating support for a government that is not deserving of the loyalty of its people," Moran added.
What is driving the Afghan conflict now is Pashtun nationalism. By adding more troops we are only adding more fuel to the fire. Back on March 1, 2007, the then Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, said at a seminar at the Pakistani Embassy, "I hope the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism don't merge. If that happens, we've had it, and we're on the verge of that."
That's what is happening. The Taliban are now a vehicle for Pashtun nationalism. Here's how Gary Fuller, the former CIA station chief in Kabul sees the Taliban:
The Taliban represent zealous and largely ignorant mountain Islamists. They are also all ethnic Pashtuns. Most Pashtuns see the Taliban -- like them or not -- as the primary vehicle for restoration of Pashtun power in Afghanistan, lost in 2001. Pashtuns are also among the most fiercely nationalist, tribalized and xenophobic peoples of the world, united only against the foreign invader. In the end, the Taliban are probably more Pashtun than they are Islamist.
We need to see the Afghan conflict for what it is now, not for what it was a year ago or for what it was eight years ago. Jim Moran gets that. Congressman Moran understands that the more troops we send, the more the Pashtuns will rise up against an occupation. It's self-defeating to send more troops.
Below the fold more from Graham Fuller's assessment of the current situation in Afghanistan
From the Saudi Gazette:
• It is a fantasy to think of ever sealing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The “Durand Line” is an arbitrary imperial line drawn through Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border. And there are twice as many Pashtuns in Pakistan as there are in Afghanistan. The struggle of 13 million Afghan Pashtuns has already enflamed Pakistan’s 28 million Pashtuns.
• Occupation everywhere creates hatred, as the US is learning. Yet Pashtuns remarkably have not been part of the jihadi movement at the international level, although many are indeed quick to ally themselves at home with Al-Qaeda against the US military.
• The situation in Pakistan has gone from bad to worse as a direct consequence of the US war raging on the Afghan border. US policy has now carried the Afghan war over the border into Pakistan with its incursions, drone bombings and assassinations - the classic response to a failure to deal with insurgency in one country. Remember the invasion of Cambodia to save Vietnam?
• The deeply entrenched Islamic and tribal character of Pashtun rule in the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan will not be transformed by invasion or war. The task requires probably several generations to start to change the deeply embedded social and psychological character of the area. War induces visceral and atavistic response.
• Pakistan is indeed now beginning to crack under the relentless pressure directly exerted by the US. Anti-American impulses in Pakistan are at high pitch, strengthening Islamic radicalism and forcing reluctant acquiescence to it even by non-Islamists.
Only the withdrawal of American and NATO boots on the ground will begin to allow the process of near-frantic emotions to subside within Pakistan, and for the region to start to cool down. Pakistan is experienced in governance and is well able to deal with its own Islamists and tribalists under normal circumstances; until recently, Pakistani Islamists had one of the lowest rates of electoral success in the Muslim world.
But US policies have now driven local nationalism, xenophobia and Islamism to combined fever pitch. As Washington demands that Pakistan redeem failed American policies in Afghanistan, Islamabad can no longer manage its domestic crisis.
His conclusion:
In the end, only moderate Islamists themselves can prevail over the radicals whose main source of legitimacy comes from inciting popular resistance against the external invader. Sadly, US forces and Islamist radicals are now approaching a state of co-dependency.
It would be heartening to see a solid working democracy established in Afghanistan. Or widespread female rights and education - areas where Soviet occupation ironically did rather well. But these changes are not going to happen even within one generation, given the history of social and economic devastation of the country over 30 years.
Al-Qaeda’s threat no longer emanates from the caves of the borderlands, but from its symbolism that has long since metastasized to other activists of the Muslim world. Meanwhile, the Pashtuns will fight on for a major national voice in Afghanistan. But few Pashtuns on either side of the border will long maintain a radical and international jihadi perspective once the incitement of the US presence is gone. Nobody on either side of the border really wants it.
What can be done must be consonant with the political culture. Let non-military and neutral international organizations, free of geopolitical taint, take over the binding of Afghan wounds and the building of state structures. If the past eight years had shown ongoing success, perhaps an alternative case for US policies could be made. But the evidence on the ground demonstrates only continued deterioration and darkening of the prognosis. Will we have more of the same? Or will there be a US recognition that the American presence has now become more the problem than the solution? We do not hear that debate.
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