President Obama's speech is misleading

President Obama read from a five-page summary of US policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan on Thursday, December 16 (2010). The title of the summary document is “Overview of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review. The president does his best to bring an upbeat message to Americans and to defend the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan. But then he says this occupation/war will continue until at least 2014 and perhaps “beyond.” Overall, his rhetoric and evidence are unconvincing.

He shamefully echoes former-president Bush’s rationale for the Afghan invasion and occupation in some instances, when he says that the “core goals” of the US-led Afghanistan occupation is to defeat “al-Qa-ida,” that is, “to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa-ida” and “to prevent its return to either country” (i.e., Afghanistan or Pakistan). The evidence overwhelmingly challenges the idea that al-Qaeda is the principal threat to the creation of a stable Afghanistan. There are few Afghans affiliated with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The President maintains that al-Qaeda poses a direct threat to the US. He says: “Al-Qa-ida continues its terrorist plotting…against the United States and our allies and partners.”

Eliminating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan will not end the threat of random terrorist attacks on the US or any other country. The roots of such terrorism stem from rage over the US-led occupations and wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, support for dictatorial Middle East regimes (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan), and the one-sided support of the long-standing US support of Israeli oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. (Juan Cole has documented this point many times on his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. Also see: David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis' book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan.)

Experts point out that Al-Qaeda is a decentralized international network located in various parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, and some “developing countries” (e.g., Indonesia), but it does not have a consolidated center. The President does acknowledge, “There are a range of other groups, including some affiliated with al-Qa-ida, as well as individuals inspired by al-Qa-ida, who to do harm to our nation and our allies.” (See, for example, Loretta Napaleoni’s new book, The Politics of Fear: How Fighting Terrorism is Bankrupting the World and Making US Less Safe, Seven Stories Press, 2010.)

The major opponents of the foreign US and allied occupiers come from Afghan participants variously associated with the “Taliban,” a category that includes separate, uncoordinated, groups from mainly the Pashtun population of the country. Grievances are local and often responses to the ground and escalating air attacks of the American forces, and to a war that has produced tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, further destruction of infrastructure and communities, widespread corruption, and little reconstruction.

As a consequence, Afghanistan has one of the poorest and most deprived populations in the world. Kathy Kelly provides a glimpse of Afghan impoverishment and the counterproductive use of increasingly destructive weaponry by US forces in an article on Antiwar.com, December 10, 2010:

“In Afghanistan, a nation where 850 children die every day, about a quarter of the population goes hungry. The UN says that 7.4 million Afghans live with hunger and fear of starvation, while millions more rely on food help, and one in five children die before the age of five.

"’Do you think we like to live this way?’ an Afghan man asked me, last October, as he led us toward a primitive tent encampment on the outskirts of Kabul. ‘Do you see how we live? The cold and the rain are coming. How will we protect our children?’ He flicked his forefinger on a weather-beaten blanket covering a tent. The blanket immediately ripped.”
[….]

“Inside one of the tents, a young mother welcomed me to sit down on the only available cushion. It appeared that they slept on the ground. The families share one pot over a fire pit, and a few utensils. They also have access to a water pump. Near their area is a tent where they join for prayers, and also one that is used for classes. One man begged us to tell the authorities that they have no medicines in the camp and that many of the children are ill.
[…]

“Although the U.S. military forbids soldiers to mutilate corpses and go on killing sprees that target civilians, the U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan have bragged, in recent weeks, about increased capacities to kill with ever more invulnerable weapons. A company of 16 Abrams tanks was recently delivered to Afghanistan. ‘We’ve taken the gloves off,’ said an unnamed U.S. military official, ‘and it has had huge impact.’ (Washington Post, November 19, 2010) The 68-ton tanks fire high explosive, white phosphorus and anti-personnel shells that can destroy a house a mile away. Each tank costs 4.3 million dollars and uses 3 gallons of jet fuel per mile.

“The Pentagon is also sending 12,500 XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapons to Afghanistan, one to each infantry squad and Special Forces team in Afghanistan. The XM25 gun can fire a projectile that will travel the length of eight football fields. ‘When fired, the projectile is designed to explode directly above a target,’ says the Army Times, ‘raining shrapnel down on an enemy crouched behind cover.’

“In a report to the November 2010 NATO conference held in Lisbon, 29 aid groups working in Afghanistan warned that the increases in air attacks, the use of night raids, and the destruction of civilian property contributes to ‘rapidly deteriorating" security for most Afghans and a rise in civilian casualties. People who flee from U.S. attacks face food insecurity, loss of income, lack of health care, and homelessness. The aid groups’ report is entitled ‘Nowhere to Turn.’ Increasingly, Afghans living in war zones have nowhere to hide.”

The president claims that US and allied forces are “degrading the Taliban insurgency,” another unsubstantiated claim. Unsurprisingly, as noted above, there is nothing in Obama’s annual review of the conditions in Afghanistan concerning civilian casualties, devastation of those parts of the country invaded by US and allied forces, or the ever-more destructive weaponry employed by these forces in places identified as war zones. And the insurgency is growing. Tom Anderson reports in an article for CommonDreams.org, Dec. 16, 2010, evidence that contradicts President Obama’s claim of degrading the insurgency. Anderson writes:

“A U.S. intelligence estimate presented to President Obama in October 2009 showed that the number of fighters in the insurgency had ballooned to 25,000 from only 7,000 in 2006. Now Matt Waldman, former Head of Policy and Advocacy for Oxfam International in Afghanistan, reports that "today [the NATO force] estimates the Taliban as 35,000 to 40,000. One of the points we have to bear in mind is they have a very large pool of recruits inside Afghanistan and Pakistan."

In the meantime, security is down and violence is up, according to Anderson’s sources.

“Nationwide, security in Afghanistan has not improved. According to the Pentagon's own report to Congress in November 2010, the portion of the population living in districts with a ‘satisfactory' security rating "remains relatively unchanged over the past three quarters." In fact, "the number of Afghans rating their security situation as ‘bad' is the highest since the nationwide survey began in September 2008. This downward trend in security perception is likely due to the steady increase in total violence over the past nine months."

“Violence has dramatically increased in Afghanistan over the last year. Kinetic events -- Pentagon speak for violence -- "are up 300 percent since 2007 and up an additional 70 percent since 2009." The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office reports a 59% increase in insurgent-led attacks in the 3rd quarter of this year over and above the 2009 level. They state: "By any measure 2010 has been the most violent year since ANSO's records began in 2002."

“Any progress toward increased security in the south has been more than offset by increased violence elsewhere in Afghanistan. Insurgent attacks in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan "rose 200% in June compared with June 2009." There are reports that "in northern Afghanistan, security has been deteriorating for the past two years in Kunduz and surrounding provinces" and that "the Taliban also have spread their influence in western Afghanistan and now control several districts."

President Obama’s review of conditions in Afghanistan are similarly dubious on a number of his other claims; for example that US forces are “supporting Afghanistan’s efforts to better improve national and sub-national governance.” Andrews refutes this claim as follows.

“Corruption runs rampant, fueling the insurgency. The Pentagon's own polling from September 2010 ‘shows that 80.6 percent of Afghans polled believe corruption affects their daily lives. This is consistent with the view that corruption is preventing the Afghan Government from connecting with the people and remains a key reason for Afghans supporting the insurgency...’

“As the New York Times reported, after a meeting with President Karzai's brother, Ahmed Walid Karzai, Ambassador Eikenberry wrote that ‘one of our major challenges in Afghanistan [is] how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt.’

“And just this past weekend, Afghanistan's Attorney General asked their Supreme Court to nullify the results of recent parliamentary elections due to allegations of fraud and to ‘issue sentences against 14 top officials who organized the vote and oversaw fraud investigations.’”
And, furthermore, Andrews adds:

“Nationwide, governance has not expanded. The Pentagon reports that only ‘38 percent of the population live in areas rated as having ‘emerging' or ‘full authority' Afghan governance. This reflects no substantial change since March 2010.’ ‘Shadow governments’ run by insurgent forces continue to operate in many parts of the south and east, ‘extracting taxes and carrying out ‘official' functions like trials and determining land and marriage disputes.’”

There are other downbeat rather than upbeat issues that Obama omits from his speech. Wasted US aid: Patrick Cockburn documents the “billions down the drain in useless US Afghan aid” (Counter Punch, Dec. 13, 2010). Mounting US debt: the costs of the wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq (it’s not over) are undermining the American economy and helping to deepen the US national debt.

In another article, this one for The Independent (Dec 18, 2010), Cockburn provides the words for ending this post and implicitly indicating how misleading Obama’s speech is. Cockburn writes:

“Afghans are adept at concealing their real views. A government official was giving me a bland account of his ministry's activities. Bored, I asked if there was anything he would like to say to me unattributably. ‘Well’, he said, without changing his smooth tone of voice, ‘there is no chance of any progress here so long as our country is run by gangsters and warlords.’ But it is to keep these same people in power that the US and Britain are now fighting a war.”