Another disappointing month in Afghanistan

What has the month of October brought us so far from the increased US military forces in Afghanistan? President Karzai government is holding talks with some top Taliban leaders, though US military and government leaders don’t like the idea. The US airwar in Afghanistan creeps up. The US offensive against the rural district of Marjah remains a failure, as marines face full-blown insurgency. General Patraeus continues to suggest we need to stay in Afghanistan for some undefined number of years beyond next summer, when Obama promises the beginning of the withdrawal of US troops from the country. Here are some other reports from the month.

A shaky national election - Jason Ditz highlights some of major problems with the September parliamentary elections in the country. For example, he reports on fraud in the elections which increasingly leaves the official elections results in doubt. “Officials say, 4,169 complaints were issued, centered around 175 candidates,” 25 of whom are “current members of parliament.” Ditz also notes that “more than 1,500 of the nation’s 6,800 [election] centers never even opened.”

Little interest in the ninth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Josh Rushing writes an article for Al Jazeera (Oct, 9, 2010) on the lack of interest among Americans on the anniversary. His first sentence encapsulates the main point of the article: “The invasion of Afghanistan’s ninth anniversary passed in DC this week with hardly a notice.” He found a few dozen vets representing Afghanistan Veterans Against the War demonstrating in front of the Walter Reed Medical Center, urging “the US to stop redeploying soldiers who have been identified as suffering trauma – either post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, military sex trauma, or others.”

By the way, Aaron Glantz covers the myriad obstacles veterans fact in trying to get treatment in the VA medical system in his fine book, The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans.”

An BBC News online headline reads “NATO contractors attacking own vehicles in Pakistan” (Oct. 8, 2010). Riaz Sohail reports: “NATO supply convoys travelling through Pakistan to Afghanistan have regularly come under attack in the past, but following, Pakistan’s decision to block their route through the Khyber Pass, they now face an even bigger security threat.” Sohail continues: “Hundreds of tankers and trucks have been stranded on highways and depots across Pakistan, with little or no security.” The individuals or companies who own the vehicles and who have contracts with NATO, have sell the fuel, blow up their truck, and then receive compensation from NATO for the fuel and a new vehicle.

Juan Cole broadens the context and discusses another aspect of the convoy problem in a post on his blog Informed Comment (Oct. 4, 2010). His headline reads: “28 More US Fuel Trucks Set Ablaze in Pakistan, 6 Killed, as Convoy Boycott Continues.” The focus here is on the Taliban rather than the contractors. Here is most of Cole’s article.

The Taliban Movement of Pakistan (Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or TTP) claimed on Monday that it was responsible for yet another attack on NATO fuel trucks, this time near Islamabad. Some twenty trucks were set ablaze and 6 people were killed. The trucks were parked in a poorly guarded area near the capital, awaiting permission to cross into Afghanistan at Torkham, the Pakistani checkpoint at the Khyber Pass. Since Friday, Pakistan has closed the crossing to US and NATO military supply vehicles, as a way of protesting the attack last Thursday by US helicopter gunships flying from Afghanistan on a Pakistani checkpoint inside Pakistan, which killed and wounded Pakistani Frontier Corpsmen. A similar attack took place near Shikarpur in Sindh on Thursday night.

The closing of the Khyber crossing and the exposure of stalled NATO convoys to attacks by Muslim extremists has roiled Islamabad’s relations with Washington. The Pakistani government appears to have felt that it had no choice but to take some visible action against the US, given the public rage throughout the country over the US attack on the Pakistani checkpoint and US violations of Pakistani sovereignty.

Some 75 percent of supplies (food, ammunition, even military vehicles) and 50 percent of the fuel needed by US and NATO troops in Afghanistan flow from the Arabian Sea port of Karachi in Pakistan’s Sindh Province up highways to Peshawar and then across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. The convoys are being impeded not only by the closure to them of the crossing at Torkham but also by all the bridges and highways washed out by Pakistan’s recent massive flooding.

High US officers in Afghanistan are said to be furious about the Pakistani closure of the Khyber pass to their convoys. Some one hundred trucks are waiting at Torkham. After Monday’s attack on more fuel trucks, the officers must be even more angry.

[….]

So the US may be done out with Pakistan, and vice versa, but as long as the US and NATO are fighting in Afghanistan, likely Pakistan is the indispensable country for them.
Even inside Afghanistan, convoys are often attacked or are guarded by a ragtag band of private companies, which President Hamid Karzai plans to get rid of, even though there is nothing to put in their place. They have been accused of demanding big bribes

US Army digs in for long haul in Afghanistan, according to Nick Turse’s article published on TomDispatch. I found it on Salon (Oct. 21, 2010). The concluding paragraphs of the article captures its principal points:

“At the moment, the American people are being offered one story about how the American war in Afghanistan is to proceed, while in Afghanistan their tax dollars are being invested in another trajectory entirely. The question is: How permanent are U.S. bases in Afghanistan? And if they are not meant to be used for a decade or more to come, why is the Pentagon still building as if they were?

“Recently, the Army sought bids from contractors willing to supply power plants and supporting fuel systems at forward operating bases in Afghanistan for up to five years. Power plants, fuel systems, and the bases on which they are being built are facts on the ground. Such facts carry a weight of their own, and offer a window into U.S. designs in Afghanistan that may be at least as relevant as anything Barack Obama or his aides have been saying about draw-downs, deadlines, or future withdrawal plans. If you want to ask hard questions about America's Afghan War, start with those bases.”