Peter Gallagher

I ask myself, what the real motive of our mil­i­tary adven­ture in Afghanistan could be, because noth­ing in the wretched his­tory of U.S. (“West­ern”) mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, nor cen­turies of Afghan his­tory, nor obser­va­tion, much less com­mon sense gives any sup­port to these claims of impend­ing “victory”:

Aus­tralian Defence Force Joint Oper­a­tions Com­mand head Lieu­tenant Gen­eral Ash Power said the mis­sion was degrad­ing the insur­gency to the point where Afghan forces could deal with it.Despite insur­gent attacks and assas­si­na­tions of close allies of the Pres­i­dent, Hamid Karzai, the coali­tion gen­er­als were opti­mistic, he said. “The pop­u­la­tion cen­tres are around the ring road, and the ring road is almost com­plete so you’re link­ing neigh­bours with each other,” Gen­eral Power said.As the “secu­rity bub­bles” around pop­u­la­tion cen­tres grew, the insur­gency was pushed out.

Extract from Tal­iban will be defeated, insist Aus­tralian gen­er­als | The Australian

Does ADFA teach gen­er­als any his­tory? Viet­nam, for exam­ple? Nicaragua? Afghanistan is a clas­sic “war of the flea.” Repeat­edly, his­tory assures us that the Islamist and nation­al­ist power behind the “insur­gency” will not be defeated by any secu­rity cor­don or eco­nomic bub­ble erected by the invad­ing mil­i­tary. Not ever. Do they really not get that? Even as the “insur­gents” loose ter­ri­tory, they win. Have our gen­er­als already for­got­ten the 1968 “Tet offensive”?

When even the U.S. lead­er­ship con­cedes that the only end to this insane and waste­ful adven­ture is a polit­i­cal set­tle­ment, it beg­gars credulity that our mil­i­tary lead­er­ship still thinks of some kind of geo­graphic fortress or “bub­ble” of pros­per­ity (for how long after the U.S. and Nato leave?) rep­re­sents success.

The finan­cial and human costs of this point­less, and un-winnable inva­sion of Afghanistan are stag­ger­ing. The United States is spend­ing at least $2billion per week on fight­ing the “insur­gency”. Esti­mates of the fully-loaded costs of Australia’s com­mit­ment are dif­fi­cult to com­pile but an RMIT project puts them at almost $A400 mil­lion per week (which might explain why our gen­er­als are so keen to hang onto the expe­di­tion)! On top of which we must add, of course, the human cost of thirty young Aus­tralian sol­diers killed for no last­ing ben­e­fit to Afghanistan or to their country.

What have we achieved in return? We have coop­er­ated with the United States and NATO in the inflic­tion of dis­rup­tion, destruc­tion and death on one of the world’s poor­est coun­tries, and in pro­long­ing an anachro­nis­tic and viti­at­ing appear­ance of enmity between Islam and the West.

But we have achieved noth­ing. This year, the vio­lence has been higher than ever; the destruc­tion greater and the polit­i­cal set­tle­ment no fur­ther advanced. Accord­ing to the mid-2011 report of the United Nations Assis­tance Mis­sion in Afghanistan

UNAMA doc­u­mented 1,462 civil­ian deaths in the first six months of 2011, an increase of 15 per­cent over the same period in 2010. The main trends that led to ris­ing civil­ian casu­al­ties in early 2011 were increased and wide­spread use of impro­vised explo­sive devices, more com­plex sui­cide attacks, an inten­si­fied cam­paign of tar­geted killings, increased ground fight­ing, and a rise in civil­ian deaths from air strikes, par­tic­u­larly by Apache helicopters.

The list of Tal­iban attacks so far in 2011(from Wikipedia) shows the inanity of the General’s “optimism”:

1. On Jan­u­ary 29, the deputy gov­er­nor of Kan­da­har was killed in a sui­cide attack. Three months later, on April 15 the Kan­da­har chief police, Gen­eral Khan Mohammed Mujahid was killed.
2. On May 28, Tal­iban assas­si­nated one of their main oppo­nents, Mohammed Daud Daud, in a bomb attack. Six oth­ers were alsokilled. He was the chief of the police for the north­ern of Afghanistan.
3. On July 12, the president’s brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, the leader of the Kan­da­har province, was killed by his own bodyguard.
4. On July 18, Pres­i­dent Karzai’s advi­sor, Jan Moham­mad Khan, was assas­si­nated in Kabul by the Tal­iban in an attack that also killed an Afghan deputy.
5. The United Nations esti­mated that for the first half of 2011, the civil­ian deaths rose by 15% and reached 1462, which is the worst death toll since the begin­ning of the war and despite the surge of for­eign troops.
6. As of July 22, 325 coali­tion fight­ers were killed, more than 55% of the deaths caused by IED’s.
7. As of July 18, coali­tion forces started their plan of tran­si­tion by hand­ing power of sev­eral areas to the Afghan author­ity fol­low­ing their plan of future pull out of the coun­try. A Tal­iban mil­i­tant who had infil­trated the Afghan police force killed seven other police­men in Lashkar Gah. The same day the police chief of Reg­is­taan dis­trict and three other police­men were killed in bomb attacks.
8. On July 27, the mayor of Kan­da­har, Ghu­lam Haidar Hameedi, was killed in a sui­cide attack.
9. On July 28, sui­cide bombers and snipers attacked the police head­quar­ter of Tarin Qowt in a large scale attack which killed more than 21 peo­ple includ­ing a reporter.
10. On July 31, 10 Afghan police­men were killed in a sui­cide attack in Lashkar Gah where Afghan secu­rity forces had taken over from NATO a week before. The same day, 10 Afghan guards who were pro­tect­ing a NATO sup­plies con­voy were killed in the attack. . One day before, 5 Afghans sol­diers and 2 NATO sol­diers were killed in a bomb attack on their patrol.
11. On August 6, 31 Amer­i­can Spe­cial Forces sol­diers were killed in the crash of their heli­copter prob­a­bly shot down dur­ing a fight with the Tal­iban. Seven Afghan sol­diers were also killed. This was the biggest death toll for NATO troops in the whole war.
12. On August 6, 4 NATO sol­diers were killed, includ­ing two French For­eign Legion mem­bers, and 5 oth­ers were wounded.