10 PF2 Afghanistan

10PF2-Afghanistan Page 1 of 129
www.victorybriefs.com
TOPIC
ANALYSIS
BY
SAAD
ASAD
3
TOPIC
ANALYSIS
BY
CAROL
GREEN
10
TOPIC
ANALYSIS
BY
RYAN
HAMILTON
21
TOPIC
ANALYSIS
BY
DAN
MEYERS
27
TOPIC
ANALYSIS
BY
TODD
RAINEY
33
TOPIC
ANALYSIS
BY
SARAH
SPIKER
42
TOPIC
ANALYSIS
BY
CHRISTIAN
TARSNEY
50
PRO
EVIDENCE
60
WITHDRAWAL
IRRESPONSIBLE
60
AFGHANISTAN
IS
IMPROVING
63
WE RE
WINNING
THE
WAR/CURRENT
STRATEGY
IS
EFFECTIVE
69
CIVILIAN
CASUALTIES
LOW/DECREASING
74
AFGHAN
POLITICAL
SYSTEM
VIABLE;
NATO
PRESENCE
STRENGTHENS
76
HUMAN
RIGHTS
HIGH
78
ECONOMY
STRONG
79
NEAR-TERM
WITHDRAWAL
BAD
82
NEGOTIATED
WITHDRAWAL
BAD
86
MISCELLANEOUS
88
CON
EVIDENCE
90
NATO
KILLS
CIVLIANS
90
MILITARY
NOT
THE
SOLUTION
94
NATO
FORCES
ARE
INEFFECTIVE
95
NATO
RADICALIZES
97
HUMANITARIAN
SITUATION
WORSE
98
ELECTIONS
100
WE RE
LOSING
THE
WAR/CURRENT
STRATEGY
IS
INEFFECTIVE
114
CIVILIAN
CASUALITIES
HIGH
120
AFGHAN
POLITICAL
SYSTEM
WEAK/CORRUPT/ILLEGITIMATE
121
HUMAN
RIGHTS
LOW
124
ECONOMY
WEAK
125
NEGOTIATED
WITHDRAWAL
GOOD
129
Topic
Analysis
by
Saad
Asad
Resolved: NATO presence improves the lives of Afghan citizens.
Definitions:
NATO-North Atlantic Treaty Organization
The specific NATO force in Afghanistan is the International Security Assistance
Force (Isaf). The
largest contributing nations include the United States, the United Kingdom, Germ
any, France,
Italy, and Canada1.
Presence should refer to the status quo. However, it could be argued that presen
ce is a different
military strategy that still involves NATO. For example, NATO could employ a cou
nterterrorism
strategy directed at taking out terrorist operatives instead of stabilizing the
government. Such a
definition could be troublesome because the affirmative would have to spend a si
gnificant amount
of time creating what the specific scenario is.
The lives of Afghan citizens are pretty straightforward. This means stopping ter
rorist attacks in the
West impacts are excluded. Also, impacts to regional welfare (i.e. Pakistani sec
urity) are
mitigated. So any impacts outside of Afghan citizens are worthless.
The plurality of the word .citizens' indicates NATO presence is improving the ma
jority of Afghan
citizens' lives. It would be silly for the affirmative to defend it has only imp
roved simply two
citizens' lives or for the negative to prove that at least two citizens' lives h
ave been disrupted.
Moreover, the use of word .citizens' instead of .civilians' is interesting. Pres
umably, the Taliban are
Afghan citizens. There is little doubt that NATO presence is improving their liv
es considering they
are often a target of Isaf forces. This would be an easy way to prove NATO prese
nce is harming
the lives of Afghan citizens. On the other hand, this wouldn't be very persuasiv
e considering one
would be essentially defending the Taliban. Coupled with an argument that NATO p
resence is
1
..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Security_Assistance_Force#Table_of_
ISAF.2FNATO_Contributors.5B
27.5D
radicalizing the native population, though, this could be a much more persuasive
issue. Isaf has
created an endless cycle of violence against Afghan civilians by radicalizing th
em in to Taliban
and then subsequently killing them.
Finally, the word .improves' is vague but should probably be concerned with the
general welfare
of the Afghan citizenry. Should this include infrastructure development or simpl
e body count? Are
less civilian deaths considered an improvement? This also means the negative doe
s not
necessarily have to prove that NATO presence has generally harmed Afghanistan bu
t has simply
not improved it. The comparison then is pre-2001 Afghanistan to 2010 Afghanistan
. So what has
changed since then? And are those changes good for the Afghans?
Background:
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, NATO invoked Article V of its charter th
at basically states
that an attack on one nation is considered an attack on the organization. Conseq
uently, NATO
authorized an invasion of Afghanistan to filter out Al-Qaeda. Soon after U.S. wa
ged war in Iraq
and the media focus changed. Iraq was seemingly in the middle of a civil war unt
il the surge
allegedly saved the day. All the same time, everything was going swimmingly in A
fghanistan or so
we thought. President Obama's election signaled a re-focus from Iraq to Afghanis
tan from
unjustified war to the .good war.' After all, the war in Afghanistan was UN and
NATO authorized.
Now after troop levels dwindled for years while focusing in Iraq, violence retur
ned to Afghanistan
as the Taliban took back the countryside. Although the number of Al-Qaeda operat
ives is
estimated to be very low, the U.S. plans to stay for the long haul. In a change
of direction from
Bush's conventional military strategy, the new administration is focusing on a c
ounterinsurgency.
Thus, in order to stem the tide of terrorist operations in the West, the U.S pla
ns to re-develop the
infrastructure of Afghanistan and bring stability to the government. Ideally, af
ter these plans as
well as some military operations to back them up (i.e. Obama's troop surge in Af
ghanistan),
Afghan civilians will give up on the Taliban and support the U.S. regime led by
Hamid Karzai
currently.
However, all this really leaves out focus on the Afghan civilians. They are mere
ly a tool in the
West's, or at least the U.S., plan of stopping terrorism. In fact, they only bec
ame a part of the
picture under the new administration's counterinsurgency strategy. Fundamentally
, Isaf is not a
humanitarian force; they are not UN peacekeepers or NGO's seeking to improve the
welfare of
the citizens for their own sake. Improving the welfare is a means for NATO to st
op terrorism. So at
the beginning, the affirmative is at a disadvantage since NATO isn't there to im
prove the lives of
Afghan civilians; they are there to secure the lives of their citizens, or to ju
st win America's
approval.
Now, let's flash forward to the summer of 2010. Three significant events happene
d at this time:
1. General McChrystal was replaced with General Petraeus after McChrystal made s
ome
off-color remarks about Obama in Rolling Stone magazine. Admittedly, there is li
ttle strategic
change with the replacing of generals. However, Petraeus has stated that the rul
es of
engagement will remain the same but he will examine their application in the bat
tlefield so troops
can continue their duties.
2. Wikileaks released 90,000 leaked documents that indicate NATO has not reporte
d
hundreds of civilian deaths, the Taliban are more well armed than the general pu
blic knew (heatseeking
missiles!), and Pakistan's ISI are funding the border insurgents known as the Ha
qqani
Network. Soon after, Congress voted on a military funding bill and over a 100 De
mocratic
Congressmen opposed the bill. This was more than double the same time last year.
3. President Hamid Karzai fired two top officials sympathetic to NATO and replac
ed them
with officials more sympathetic towards Pakistan. Ultimately, this is a change i
n strategy for
Karzai as he has nearly given up on NATO to bring trust to the government throug
h military force.
Instead, he will use reconciliation through the insurgents' backers, Pakistan.
A UN report released this year detailed the effects of Obama's surge on Afghanis
tan as well:
According to the U.N. report, 1,271 Afghans died and 1,997 were injured - mostly
from bombings
- in the first six months of the year. There were 1,013 civilian deaths in the f
irst six months of
2009.
The U.N. said insurgents were responsible for 72 percent of the deaths - up from
58 percent last
year.
In much of the south, people say they are too scared to work with NATO forces or
the Afghan
government because they will then be targeted by insurgents. And the risk of att
ack makes travel,
running a business or any sort of community organizing or political campaigning
dangerous
Deaths from U.S., NATO and other pro-government forces dropped in the first six
months of
2010. The report said that 223, or 18 percent, of the Afghan deaths were due to
U.S., NATO and
other pro-government forces. That was down from 310 deaths, or 31 percent, durin
g the first six
months of last year, primarily because of a decrease in airstrikes, the report s
aid.
Even so, air attacks were the largest single cause of civilian deaths caused by
pro-government
forces - accounting for 31 percent.2
Now that we understand the background of this ten year war, we can focus on the
issues of the
debate more clearly.
PRO:
For the pro side, the topic is a bit difficult. Most of the new coming out of Af
ghanistan has been
grim. However, the same was said for the War in Iraq, and the tides may turn in
our favor. The two
most persuasive arguments for the pro side are also very interrelated. One is th
at the NATO
presence has actually improved things in Afghanistan. The second is that a NATO
withdrawal
(which is the logical conclusion of most Con positions) would be disastrous.
The NATO chief believes improvements are happening:
The situation in Afghanistan is improving after a difficult year, but allies mus
t deploy more army
and police instructors to help Afghan government forces assume responsibility fo
r security,
military leaders said Friday. I encouraged the 44 (NATO and partner) countries to
dig deep and
look at what they can do to staff the training mission, NATO chief Anders Fogh Ra
smussen said
at the end of a two-day conference of defense ministers.3
Consider also the .civilian surge' alongside the military surge happening in Afg
hanistan:
The number of civilian workers has more than doubled in the past year or so, and
more than
1,600 non-government organizations - better known as NGOs - have registered with
the Afghan
economic ministry. Larsen said many of them are working in rural areas with trib
al elders on
everything from economic development to establishing local governing bodies.4
More NGO workers are positive sign as they can help develop the infrastructure o
f Afghanistan. If
things have not yet improved, the increase in NGOs will inevitably spur the cons
truction process.
2
.. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/10-4
3
.. http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/149190
/reftab/96/t/Nato-chiefpredicts-
improvements-in-Afghanistan-after-difficult-year/Default.aspx
4
.. http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2010/08/30/1594323/rep-larsen-sees-improvemen
ts-in.html
Without military security, these NGOs would not be able to provide essential aid
to the Afghanis
because of Taliban restrictions.
Additionally, the health sector of Afghanistan has made significant improvements
. This argument
will be very persuasive since improvements to the health sector improve the gene
ral welfare of
Afghan civilians. Other arguments regarding improvements are more ambiguous, but
the cold
hard numbers don't lie:
From 2004 to 2006, the health system has shown improvement for many key measures
in a
majority of provinces. Additionally, household surveys implemented by researcher
s from Johns
Hopkins and the Indian Institute of Health Management Research in late 2006 esti
mated that of
every 1,000 children born in Afghanistan, on average 129 die in the first year o
f life (infant
mortality rate) and 191 die before reaching the age of five years (under 5 morta
lity rate). The
surveys covered more than 8,200 households in rural areas in 29 of Afghanistan's
34 provinces.
Previous estimates from UNICEF for the year 2000 place the infant mortality rate
in Afghanistan
at 165 per one thousand live births and the under 5 mortality rate at 257 per on
e thousand live
births. (via the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health website, July 2
007)5
Another important point to consider is the disaster that would be caused by a NA
TO withdrawal. It
could potentially destabilize the region as Iran and Afghanistan prey on the wea
k, unstable
Afghan government. Warlords would inevitably re-emerge to fight for power becaus
e President
Hamid Karzai would not have the power to sustain his government. And there is a
high possibility
that the Taliban would return to rule and institute their harsh legal system aga
in. Women's rights
will vanish as draconian penalties for simple crimes become the norm:
"The word 'withdrawal' destroys everything, both the well-intentioned and the re
ally useful. While
the word 'withdrawal' has a calming effect in Western countries, it sends a mess
age that those in
Afghanistan should stand by those who are staying: the Taliban and the drug baro
ns. Those, in
other words, who will fill the financial and power vaccuum when the allies leave
."
"It is an illusion to think that the Afghan police and army will develop into re
spected forces in the
near future. There is not enough time and state wages will not rise enough to ma
ke the security
5
.. http://zunia.org/post/substantial-improvements-achieved-in-afghanistans-healt
h-sector/
forces resist corruption and the temptation to ally themselves with those making
money from
drugs."6
CON:
The past summer has been rife with news about the woes facing Afghanistan. The C
on side has
a wealth of evidence that civilians are being killed by NATO forces in Afghanist
an. Moreover,
though, one could argue these civilian deaths are only stimulating more violence
and terrorism.
Civilians seeing their brethren being killed are persuaded easily to join the re
sistance movement
to fight NATO. Thus, a vicious cycle is created where NATO bombings only create
more enemies
to bomb.
Also, one could argue the counterinsurgency strategy NATO is using is ineffectiv
e. It may take
many years to develop the infrastructure enough for the Afghan people to gain tr
ust in the
government. In the meantime, the resistance movement only swells. Consequently,
NATO may
never achieve a stable Afghanistan via this means.
Additionally, a military solution may just be an overall bad option for Afghanis
tan. Troop presence
has hardly changed the nature of Afghanistan. It is largely still violent and th
e countryside still
institutes its draconian legal system. Reconciliation may be a better option; tr
ibal leaders
including the Taliban need to meet with leaders like Hamid Karzai to create a pe
aceful solution to
the problem, a solution with NATO. Fundamentally, NATO is not a humanitarian for
ce; they are
there to kill not learn about different cultures. A military force is there to a
chieve an objective, not
a vague notion of creating a stable nation-state. Analysts are arguing NATO is s
imply further
radicalizing the population:
Anand Gopal, one of the few independent journalists actively trying to find out
what is actually
happening in Afghanistan has written some very useful and insightful work on thi
s, and as he
points out, the ranks of the Taliban have been swelled in recent years by rural
peasants who have
been radicalized as a result of US/NATO brutality, including the indiscriminate
air attacks which
have killed thousands of Afghans.
6
.. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,674806,00.html
The Taliban are increasingly espousing a strong nationalist message and, in some
cases, have
substantially moderated their social conservatism in order to build a more broad
-based and
effective resistance movement.7
The President of Afghanistan has also criticized the counterinsurgency strategy
as ineffective:
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has torn into the US-led occupation forces' counte
rinsurgency
strategy, saying that it has produced nothing but civilian deaths. In a meeting
in Kabul with visiting
German parliament speaker Norbert Lammert, Mr Karzai insisted that there was a "
serious need"
to change course. "There should be a review of the strategy in the fight against
terrorism,
because the experience of the last eight years showed that the fight in the vill
ages of Afghanistan
has been ineffective apart from causing civilian casualties," Mr Karzai declared
.8
It will be imperative to constantly update one's evidence in October as war is a
fast-changing
subject. Especially since the midterm elections are in November, there will be a
lot of focus on the
war in Afghanistan. Be sure to look out for more Wikileaks documents and reports
from think
tanks to buttress your case.
7
.. http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/18/should-the-left-call-for-taliban-victor
y
8
.. http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/94661
Topic
Analysis
by
Carol
Green
The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, b
e punished
for running away from her husband's house. They dragged her to a mountain cleari
ng near her
village in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, ignoring her protests that h
er in-laws had
been abusive, that she had no choice but to escape. Shivering in the cold air an
d blinded by the
flashlights trained on her by her husband's family, she faced her spouse and acc
user. Her in-laws
treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away,
she would have
died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Later, he would tell Ai
sha's uncle that
she had to be made an example of lest other girls in the village try to do the s
ame thing. The
commander gave his verdict, and men moved in to deliver the punishment. Aisha's
brother-in-law
held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears
. Then he started
on her nose. Aisha passed out from the pain but awoke soon after, choking on her
own blood.
The men had left her on the mountainside to die.
This didn't happen 10 years ago, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It happened
last year. 9
Reports of human rights abuses are coming out of Afghanistan every day it seems
when you read
the news, however the question remains as to whether the quality of life is bett
er or worse now
that NATO troops are present in Afghanistan. Let's evaluate this resolution firs
t by looking at
some key terms and burdens in the debate.
Resolved: NATO presence improves the lives of Afghan citizens.
NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In more detail this is a Western
organization
made up of 28 independent member countries including the United States. NATO's p
resence in
Afghanistan is through their mission known as ISAF, the International Security A
ssistance Force
which you can friend on Facebook and follow on Twitter.10 In all seriousness (al
though the
YouTube interviews from ISAF are relatively serious), ISAF has troops from Alban
ia, Australia,
Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia,
Czech
Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary,
Iceland,
Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand,
Norway, Poland,
9 Baker, Aryn. August 8, 2010. Women and the Return of the Taliban. Time, Vol. 1
76, Issue 6, p20-28.
10 ISAF's homepage and links to social-networking can be found at http://www.isa
f.nato.int/
Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The former Yugo
slav Republic
of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and of cour
s the United
States.
According to the ISAF Web site, the mission of the International Security Assist
ance Force is
focused on security, reconstruction and development, and governance. The site sa
y:
ISAF, in support of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, conduc
ts operations
in Afghanistan to reduce the capability and will of the insurgency, support the
growth in capacity
and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), and facilitate imp
rovements in
governance and socio-economic development, in order to provide a secure environm
ent for
sustainable stability that is observable to the population. 11
The Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) that is referenced in the mission stat
ement includes
the more popularly mentioned Afghan National Army (ANA) as well as the air force
. You may also
read about the ANP, which is the Afghan National Police.
The presence that the resolution reference is not ISAF specifically however, it
will be difficult to
find NATO presence in Afghanistan that is not a part of ISAF. You may also find
a fair amount of
literature does not reference NATO or ISAF but rather specific countries. While
there is a general
oversight by NATO, countries still maintain individual responsibilities as well.
When investigating
the topic, don't overlook articles that only reference individual countries from
the list above. If you
can confirm the actors referenced are present in Afghanistan as part of ISAF, th
en the evidence
relates to NATO presence. Be prepared to defend this against teams who don't und
erstand how
NATO and it's member countries operate.
The next major part of the resolution examines the quality of lives of Afghan ci
tizens. I think this is
where both the evaluative portion of the resolution lies, aka the burdens in the
debate. I also think
this is where there will be some debate as to the intent of the resolution and t
he scope through
which the evaluation is done.
The easiest way to evaluate this resolution is are things better now than they we
re pre-NATO
presence? It is clear and concise and requires Pro and Con teams to examine the b
efore and
11 ISAF Mission, http://www.isaf.nato.int/mission.html
after effects of external force on the country's citizens. A no-brainer, right?
I doubt most debaters
will take the time to examine both worlds in order to provide the complete analy
sis. If you can
structure your case and burdens to set this world up, I think you will be one st
ep ahead of the
game. It makes the most sense because you are discussing a world of improvement.
In this
context you need to know what the status quo was before NATO presence in order t
o evaluate
the changes that have occurred and whether they are an improvement.
More than likely, debaters will spout off a list of good things that are happeni
ng now or bad things
that are happening now. This will allow you to debate the current quality of lif
e but will ignore the
key term improves which is one of only eight words in the resolution. I would disc
ourage those
of you reading this to direct your cases this way. It is going to end up being a
murkier debate
because you lack the clarity of what has gotten better or worse and instead will
weigh some
issues of varying importance against each other with no real value framework or
timeline to help
structure your arguments.
Finally, ensure that the improvement of Afghan citizens lives directly relates t
o the values of these
citizens. For example, if you find evidence that discusses the number of compute
rs increasing in
Afghanistan, weigh it out next to the election fraud that was accused on Septemb
er 19, 2010 and
see how it really measures out prior to putting it in your case. Too many times,
resolutions like this
one work out to be laundry lists of good or bad things that are happening withou
t consideration of
what the other side of the debate is going to say. You have the ability to chang
e the course of the
debate with your initial case (it does make up about a tenth of the debate) by p
reemptively
calculating impacts in the construction of the contentions.
One more word of warning, if you debated the Afghanistan topic in January, you s
hould know that
it will be about nine months later when you debate this topic. This word of warn
ing may seem silly,
but I am wiling to bet some teams will do very little updating to their files. I
t happened on the April
2010 topic when teams recycled evidence from the April 2009 topic, which wasn't
especially
applicable to the change in type of unions being debated. In this case, a lot ha
s changed
including leadership changes and approaches in Afghanistan. Citing evidence from
before 2010,
unless it is a comparative reflection used to gauge the improvement or reduction
in the quality of
citizens' lives, is ill advised as things are constantly changing. While finaliz
ing the edits to this
paper, I was reading news reports from only hours before that I felt needed to b
e included on the
recent election. If I am editing this paper hours before submission, you should
be updating your
cases and files right up until the debate round starts.
There are a few areas of the debate I want to look at today with some reflection
on how it might
ultimately help on one side of the debate or the other. Let's first examine the
ANP and how it has
historically been a struggle for the growth and stability of this security force
in Afghanistan. If you
debated the January topic, you are familiar with the debate about whether this f
orce will be able to
function on it's own. Lt. General Caldwell discusses the approaches that ISAF is
taking to help
train the troops and recognizes an important social issue that is facing not onl
y the police force,
but the general public in Afghanistan.
The second element is the literary of soldiers and policemen. It's the essential
enabler. If we
want to develop a professional force, we must take that on.
When you consider the average literacy rate for an entry-level soldier or police
man in Afghanistan
is maybe about 14 to 18 percent across the entire force, literacy becomes a majo
r challenge in
training and education and even performance of the basic skills required by a pr
ofessional
security force.
This skill addresses three more pressing issues to professionalism. First, liter
acy provides the
ability to enforce accountability. If a soldier cannot read, how can he know wha
t equipment he is
supposed to have and to maintain? If a policeman does not know his numbers, how
can he read
and understand the serial number on his own weapon?
Literacy allows personnel to provide oversight for all aspects of the force, fro
m equipment to
personnel, regulations to training.
The second challenge literacy addresses is developing branch competency through
professional
military education. Literacy provides soldiers and policemen the ability to atte
nd these schools
and learn enabling skills such as logistics, maintenance, military intelligence
and communications
-- skills that are required in a professional force to sustain themselves in the
field and throughout
their career.
These are skills that must also be ingrained in junior and mid- grade officers a
nd leaders that are
the backbone of this force and that in fact will one day lead this army and poli
ce force.
And finally, literacy combats corruption within the Afghan National Security For
ce. Literacy
prevents bad actors from preying on the illiterate. When the force is literate,
standards can be
published and everyone can be held accountable to adhere to them, up the chain o
f command as
well as down.
Literacy allows soldiers and policemen to prevent theft of their pay. And only w
hen they read how
much they are owed and how much they have received will they be able to prevent
the theft of
their own pay.
Through the creation of mandatory literacy courses in the past nine months, we h
ave supported
the professionalization of the Afghan National Security Force and educated many
students. But
this will take time and it is a sustained effort if we are to educate an entire
generation of Afghans
to the level necessary to create a professional force with leaders that allow fo
r the specialization
to occur that is essential to their future development. 12
Caldwell shows how this issue is being addressed amongst the military and traini
ng forces.
However, women continue to fair poorly under NATO presence. While I want to expl
ore the
problems that exist for women, I think that a strong Pro team will be able to ar
gue that while
things are bad, there is still an improvement in the quality of life for women.
These teams will
need to establish the pre- and post-NATO analysis in case in order to effectivel
y combat Con
arguments that conditions are poor for women in Afghanistan.
Women not only continue to lack access to healthcare and education, but they also
lack legal
protections. They continue to confront pervasive violence and early marriages. A
fter nine years
and $300 billion, U.S. reconstruction efforts have largely bypassed women and gi
rls.
.Recognize the women in Afghanistan--that we exist,' Sima Samar, the chairwoman
of the
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kabul, told a joint hearing o
f Senate
Foreign Relations subcommittees recently. .The lack of mention and recognition b
y the United
States and the international community of women's rights allow Afghan men in (a)
different state
institution to continue to ignore women's rights.'
Officially, the central Uruzgan province in Afghanistan has 220 schools, but onl
y 21 of them
function. Of that, only one is a girls' school, in the provincial capital. 13
12 Caldwell IV, Lt. General William B. Commanding General of NATO Training Missi
on in Afghanistan. August 23,
2010. News Briefing on Operations in Afghanistan. FDCH Political Transcripts.
13 Sahoo, Sananda. April 6, 2010. Despite Reports of Progress, Afghan Women Stil
l Struggle. McClatcy
Washington DC News Bureau.
One argument that Con teams should evaluate when building their thesis is whethe
r the current
government is leaning towards allowing Taliban rule again in some areas of Afgha
nistan. Recent
legislation suggests anti-female influences in the Afghanistan government are re
versing the
progress that NATO advanced, despite NATO's continued presence in the country.
While the U.S. hopes that Karzai will push a bill in parliament on the eliminatio
n of violence
against women, rights activists said they doubt the president's commitment.
A new law that requires a woman to ask permission to leave the house except on u
rgent
business, to "dress up" for her husband when demanded, and to not refuse sex whe
n her
husband wants it, as well as the government's continued alliance with warlords a
nd Taliban
leader Mullah Omar, create a hostile environment for women in Afghanistan. 14
I would encourage Con teams to continue to investigate the treatment of women as
well as what
is happening with the Taliban influence in the current government. Current repor
ts suggest that
the government is in negotiations with the Taliban but discourages the Taliban f
rom continuing its
support of terrorist organizations. If you debated in January, you may remember
debates about
the sales of drugs in order to finance terrorism. NATO has taken several approac
hes over the
years to the poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, and reports from Russia claim tha
t current
approaches are failing, with Russian citizens facing the brunt of the drug sales
.
.We do not believe the principal aims of the NATO security operation in Afghanist
an have been
achieved,' Ivanov said at a press conference. .Of course the struggle against te
rrorism should
take precedence, but what about liquidating drug production? How does it happen
that almost 10
years after NATO occupied this country, Afghanistan is not only the world's larg
est producer of
opium, but also of hashish, surpassing the traditional global leader, Morocco?'
In recent years, Russia and NATO have run a school for Afghan anti-drug police i
n the Moscowregion
town of Domodedovo, turning out hundreds of graduates. But despite that cooperat
ion,
experts say Moscow is increasingly dubious about NATO's ability to impose order
in Afghanistan,
and may be seeking ways to expand its influence in Central Asia against the day
the United
States decides to leave. Some analysts suggest that the Kremlin's recent backing
of a coup in
14 Ibid.
Kyrgyzstan could be a sign of more assertive behavior to come.
.The former Soviet states of central Asia are our own backyard,' says Tatiana Pa
rkhalina, director
of the independent Center for European Security in Moscow. .Moscow doesn't want
to stand by
while the Taliban and terrorist networks convert the financial resources from dr
ug trafficking into
arms and political influence... There is a practical alliance taking shape betwe
en drug traffickers
and terrorists, and it is a very big threat.' 15
One concern, highlighted in this evidence, isn't just that the drug war isn't un
der control, but also
that neighboring countries are growing unsettled with NATO's mission. There is a
potential for
these countries to act in ways that would incite more violence and instability i
n the region. A good
Con team may be able to build this narrative into a strong contention.
When faced with the issue of the drug war, I think we will see a lot of Con team
s saying that the
drug war is bad. However, remember that the evidence above discusses the negativ
e implications
for Russian citizens and not Afghan citizens. One thing to keep in mind is that
while Western
cultures may see the negative implications of drug use, it is a primary crop in
Afghanistan and
thus the income may improve the quality of lives of those communities. I encoura
ge teams to
keep an open mind when examining the growth and sales of these narcotics keeping
in mind
whose quality of life the resolution asks you to evaluate.
A primary goal of NATO's ISAF was to institute a democratic government and have
free elections
for the citizens to choose their leadership. Unfortunately, while there have bee
n elections, it
seems as though the past couple of elections have been fraught with fraud.
Ever since the aftermath of last year's disastrous presidential election in Afgha
nistan, Western
diplomats have been talking tough about the need for thorough reform of the coun
try's rotten
electoral system. Never again, the envoys said, would foreign governments pour c
ash into a
machine that was controlled by the president, Hamid Karzai, oversaw fraud on an
epic scale and
handed a propaganda coup to the Taliban.
They promised that foreign support for the next parliamentary election, due in S
eptember, would
15 Weir, Fred. May 19, 2010. Moscow Furious, Says US Not Pushing Drug War in Afg
hanistan. Christian Science
Monitor.
depend on a cull of dodgy officials from the Independent Election Commission (IE
C), the body
that organized the voting. Most felt that Mr Karzai should lose the right to app
oint its chairman
and leadership board.
They also said that he would not be allowed to weaken the Electoral Complaints C
ommission
(ECC), a watchdog that has been controlled by a majority of non-Afghan officials
. Citing largescale
fraud, it ordered the disqualification of nearly 1m votes that had gone to Mr Ka
rzai in the
presidential election.
Mr Karzai's response to these foreign entreaties came this week with the publica
tion of a
presidential decree, issued while parliament was in recess. It leaves the IEC en
tirely unreformed.
Moreover, it strips the United Nations of the power to appoint the majority of t
he ECC's
independent members. That prerogative is now to be held exclusively by Mr Karzai
. 16
The corruption has also been coupled with low voter turnout in the most recent e
lection in
September 2010. The question in the debate then should be whether a low-turnout
and possible
corruption in an election is better than no election. It would be hard for a Pro
team to dispute the
corruption and violence that have occurred, but I do see ways in which you can d
o preemptive
work to reduce the negative impact of the elections argument on the Con.
The fact that the 3.6 million votes cast on Saturday was the lowest tally of the
four elections held
since 2001 is a testament to the resurgence of the Taliban insurgency, whose att
acks on poll
workers and candidates forced more than 1 in 6 polling stations to remain closed
. And the
numerous fraud allegations mean that the results of the parliamentary election m
ay not be known
for months. But all the main stakeholders in Afghanistan know that the contest a
mong the
politicians who ran in Saturday's election is of marginal significance; the key
political contest that
will shape Afghanistan's future is being waged between the Taliban insurgency an
d the U.S.-led
NATO alliance. And it's not going very well for the Western coalition. 17
Remember that earlier in the analysis I said it would be important to examine th
e role that the
Taliban has begun to play and will probably continue to play in Afghanistan. The
Taliban was the
previous government in Afghanistan and should not be conflated with terrorist or
ganizations that it
16 February 27, 2010. Played for Fools. Economist, Vol. 394, Issue 8671, p48-50.
17 Karon, Tony. September 20, 2010. Bullets Trump Ballots in Deciding Afghanista
n's Future. Time.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2020245,00.html
is accused of supporting. However, it was an oppressive government and I would e
ncourage
debaters to examine what life was like under Taliban rule, as recent evidence su
ggests that
despite NATO's presence, the Afghan government is in talks with the Taliban to n
egotiate regions
of control for the prior.
Most of the region's main players, including President Karzai himself, are operat
ing on the
assumption that the only plausible endgame for the war in Afghanistan is some fo
rm of political
settlement with the Taliban and reports from the region suggest that the pursuit
of such a
settlement, with Pakistan acting as broker, has already begun via discreet talks
. The bottom line
in such a settlement would be for the Taliban to agree to prevent territory unde
r its control from
being used to export terrorism, and to accept that it will not be able to restor
e its theocratic rule
over the whole country some form of power sharing would be inevitable, with the
Taliban likely
to end up as the dominant political authority in the Pashtun south and east. 18
The final area, which is important to the NATO mission, and in many ways links t
o the earlier
analysis about literacy, is the strength of the ANP. Again, the debate in Januar
y was whether this
force would grow considering the alarming desertion rates and low morale amongst
soldiers.
Caldwell addressed these concerns in a recent press conference where he assured
the media
that the military has grown and become more self-reliant. While I provide the sp
ecific evidence
from Caldwell, Pro teams will need to explain why a strong self-reliant military
force helps to
improve the lives of Afghan citizens.
In the past nine months alone, the growth in the army and police has more than do
ubled the
average of any previous year, with our numbers right now at 58,000 this year.
This growth of the Afghan National Security Force in the first half of 2010 is l
arger than at any
year in its history.
The growth has been so dramatic, both the ANA and the ANP have exceeded their 20
10 growth
goals about three months ahead of schedule.
This turnaround is attributable to a dramatically changed approach to training t
hat we've taken
with the Afghan National Security Force and a new sense of urgency within the Af
ghan Ministries
of Defense and Interior.
18 Ibid.
The Afghan leadership has taken complete ownership to increase recruiting, reduc
e attrition, and
improve retention over the last nine months. This includes the creation of recru
iting commands to
oversee efforts across Afghanistan to measure -- to better tailor recruitment to
the needs of the
Afghan people. 19
The one area that I have overlooked, perhaps intentionally, is the civilian casu
alties caused by
NATO. I expect teams on the Con will make the argument that NATO has killed civi
lians. In fact,
according to recent evidence, there may have been more civilian casualties than
previously
reported:
The logs detail, in sometimes harrowing vignettes, the toll on civilians exacted
by coalition
forces: events termed "blue on white" in military jargon. The logs reveal 144 su
ch incidents.
Some of these casualties come from the controversial air strikes that have led t
o Afghan
government protests, but a large number of previously unknown incidents also app
ear to be the
result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists out of a determinatio
n to protect
themselves.
At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in total
, but this is likely
to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily sna
pshots reported
by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by intelligenc
e analysts.
Bloody errors at civilians' expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day Fr
ench troops strafed
a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gu
nned a bus,
wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a v
illage, killing a
wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack. 20
A few words of caution on the casualties' debate before the debates begin. First
, I think, as per
the evidence I provided, that it will be difficult to pinpoint exactly how many
civilians have died at
the hands of NATO troops. I also think it will be difficult to compare this numb
er to the number of
civilians killed at the hands of the Taliban, which I think is a good argument t
o counter NATO-
19 Caldwell IV, Lt. General William B. Commanding General of NATO Training Missi
on in Afghanistan. August 23,
2010. News Briefing on Operations in Afghanistan. FDCH Political Transcripts.
20 Davies, Nick. July 26, 2010. Massive Leak of Secret Files Exposes True Afghan
War. The Guardian, p1.
caused deaths. Finally, I think that there will always been some loss of life in
a war zone, as
unfortunate as that is, and I think that Con teams will have a hard time winning
that the loss of
some lives during a military conflict outweighs the benefits of the military con
flict. Provided, of
course, that the Pro team can prove those benefits.
This topic should be a fun one. Remember to consider whose eyes the resolution i
s being viewed
through. Does NATO presence improve the lives of Afghan citizens. It doesn't mat
ter if it causes
terrorist attacks or drug use in other parts of the world, so don't let other te
ams derail you from the
intent of the wording. Remind your judges that while those impacts are indeed tr
agic, and maybe
you can debate them another day, the resolution only asks us to evaluate the imp
act on the lives
of the citizens of Afghanistan. If you can maintain control of that debate, incl
ude current evidence,
and structure your case in a pre-NATO and NATO presence evaluation, I think you
will be very
successful on the topic. Good luck!
Topic
Analysis
by
Ryan
Hamilton
I think this is a great topic it will reduce the instances in which debaters jus
t get to fire
competing statistics at each other and force them to thoughtfully consider stand
ards that can't be
measured by mathematicians and that must be debated conceptually it will also en
courage
debaters to weigh between the competing standards that they use to evaluate the
quality of life in
Afghanistan.
Bearing that in mind, I think that when constructing an affirmative case positio
n, it is important to
not go for too much. A team should pick one standard by which we can measure a q
uality of life,
and then develop it through out the round. There are two main themes that I thin
k will bear fruit
for affirmatives. First, NATO action in Afghanistan has yielded economic improve
ments and
opportunities for the local population. Second, NATO action in Afghanistan has p
rovided a
significant boon to political freedoms and the protection of individuals by the
law.
A negative case position will probably be dependent on the negative team framing
the round in a
particular way and evaluating the quality of life for the small subsections of i
ndividuals whose
lives haven't dramatically improved at least potentially by NATO's on going oper
ations there.
The security argument is, in my opinion, a wash. The Taliban couldn't even contr
ol the whole of
Afghanistan, and average citizens were probably just as fearful of Taliban agent
s then as they are
now, their tools have just changed. In the pre-9/11 world, they just operated as
the monopoly on
coercive force and used more traditional, if medieval, tactics of governments. N
ow they resort to
the mainstream Islamic terrorist tactics of civilian bombings and thuggery. The
only argument that
I can think of that might be broad based and still persuasive relates to the cor
ruption of the Karzai
regime but even then, a corrupt parliamentary democracy still seems to me to be
a better
choice than a theocracy governed by intolerant maniacs. More on this later.
When I first read the topic my reaction was something like this: what sort of to
pic is this? Of
course the lives if Afghans are improved by the presence of NATO. And not in any
kind of narrow
way. Across nearly every spectrum of quality by which a reasonable person might
evaluate their
life, NATO has been a more or less unbridled blessing for Afghans Even those who
are
suspicious of applying broad based standards to judge the quality of a person's
life can be
comforted by the fact that Afghans now have more options than probably at any ot
her time in their
history to decide and direct the course of their own lives: this is particularly
true for women and
minorities, who have long suffered under the brutal and wholly unforgiving yoke
of .extremist'
Islam which was the de jure government before NATO operations in the form of the
Taliban. This
same brand of Islam occupied a place of prominence under the Afghan king and nev
er
disappeared under the Soviet's puppet government.
We can be honest, here, too: improvement wasn't hard to come by in the Taliban's
Afghanistan.
Music was banned. Women were whipped in public if they showed the arousing body
part taboo
even to us in the West: the ankle. There is great irony to be found, since being
whipped in public
was one of the few times that a woman could have any kind of life outside of the
home at all. A
person would be put to death for adultery. No soccer, either in fact, if you can t
hink of it,
chances are it was banned, restricted, or you could be put to death for it. This
sort of antisocial
behavior isn't shined on in the international community, either. They had few ma
jor trading
partners with even less to trade. What I mean to say here is that Afghanistan wa
s, and remains a
real fixer-upper. NATO has a very low threshold to meet if they want to be consi
dered to have
improved the lives of Afghans one that has been easily met, and if you ask me, e
xceeded.
The affirmative has all of this from which to construct arguments and the negati
ve has very little
beyond some petty corruption, charges by suspected terrorists of torture and mis
treatment, and
an increase in the drug trade. So let's look at the way case positions can unfol
d.
Affirmatives can argue that the lives of Afghans have been improved economically
. As a whole,
the country has greater recourse to modern banking instruments that allow them t
o finance
private and public ventures that create wealth in a society in desperate need of
it. This
supplements the political claims in two ways: first, the government (the Taliban
was never
recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan except by Saudi Arabia, t
he UAE, and
Pakistan) for the first time in nearly two decades has access to international m
oney that it can use
to finance public works projects roads to facilitate commerce, sewage to reduce
rates of
disease, and schools to education children. This argument has a couple of advant
ages: first, it
easily links to a historical context that validates the relative meaning of the
word .improve' the
Taliban didn't have the ability to fund any kind of infrastructure development,
and even if it had the
ability, it didn't have the desire to build anything but madrassas. Here exists
a clear link back into
improvement. Secondly, the impacts are very simple and require no complex explan
ation.
People's lives are dramatically improved by common applications of technology th
at makes
existence here on Earth easier. No longer do they have to trudge through muddy f
ields to trade
their wares in the next village, nor do they have to empty their own chamber pot
s into a street full
of human excrement.
Secondly, the same sort of banking instruments that secures the public's assets
give the ability for
individuals to borrow capital to finance their own private ventures Afghanistan
is famous for
exporting beautiful textiles, namely blankets and rugs that not only generate ta
xation to support
the sort of infrastructure development mentioned above but create jobs and provi
de an income for
Afghans that doesn't come from poppy fields or terrorism. The quicker Afghans re
ach a particular
level of wealth, the more they have vested in the temporal world, the less likel
y it seems that
they're willing to take up arms in defense of an inheritance only gained after d
eath in the
presence of Allah. A richer Afghanistan has the potential to reduce terrorist vi
olence and provide
sufficient disposable income to allow for leisure time where learning, culture,
and various
pursuits of pleasure take place. The only reason that anyone in Afghanistan has
the potential to
embark down the path of financial success is because of the recognition brought
by the NATOsupported
Karzai administration and the funds secured by that administration from NATO
countries Deutsche Welle reports that in 2009 alone Germany pledged $78 million
on
Afghanistan in foreign aid.
More to the point, the affirmative can argue that the lives of individuals have
been improved
politically which is to say, that people have a greater degree of autonomy than
they had under
the Taliban (or at any other point in time in the history of Afghanistan) and th
ey have better
protections under the rule of law. This includes arguments about political enfra
nchisement and
minority protections, which were previously nonexistent in Afghanistan. These ar
e probably
compelling arguments that will appeal to most public forum judges. The argument
should be
rooted in the historical context, connected to the relative nature of the word i
mprove NATO
operations uprooted the Taliban the relative status of the country now should be
, for a
successful affirmative, compared constantly to the hell on Earth created by that
group of ne'er do
wells.
A lot of the most compelling literature will come about the treatment of women i
n Afghanistan if
for no other reason than women make up approximately half of the population, the
ir treatment
warrants attention. It was particularly brutal under the Taliban. Women were mor
e or less
relegated to the status of chattel, with no public existence of which to speak.
They were denied
medical treatment on the basis of proclamations from some Mullah on high that do
ctors who were
not close relatives of women would not be able to touch them. An edict was made
that windows
should be painted so that men would not have to see women in their own homes wel
l, the list
goes on and on.
Sexual minorities were also huge targets, and to a great extent, still are. An a
rticle from the 2002
Kandahar Journal recounts how many alleged homosexual contact ended in a wall be
ing toppled
on the accused. In one case, it seems that the accused was badly wounded but sur
vived. The
Taliban, decreeing that this was the will of Allah, allowed him to live on. Need
less to say, this did
not allow any kind of meaningful sexual expression in public which is still most
ly the case but
most sources indicate that small gatherings of at least gay men have started to
form, and they
have a lot less to fear from local authorities.
An even more unique story to tell during your round is the improvement in the li
ves of Shia
Muslims. They were persecuted brutally by the Sunni Talibs. The Iranian governme
nt Iran is
the only Shia majority Islamic country got so fed up with the treatment of the S
hia minority in
Afghanistan that they began actively aiding the Northern Alliance. In an act tha
t can be called
nothing if not consistent, the Taliban responded by occupying the Iranian consul
in Mazar-e-Sharif
and executed the Iranian diplomats.
All of these stories combine to create a pretty stark picture: that the Taliban
was a regime that
was focused on repression and death that the joys of life were denied to nearly
all citizens and
those who broke the law were met with physical abuse, amputation, death, and tor
ture. The
NATO led force's occupation of Afghanistan and the subsequent Karzai government,
supported
by NATO, represents none of this. Even if the negative is winning arguments abou
t the corruption
of the Karzai regime, it is at the very least not as expansive or powerful as th
e Taliban in its ability
to punish those who violate the never-ending stream of prohibitions that used to
exist in
Afghanistan.
What's more the people of Afghanistan benefit, whether they agree or not, with f
ull participation
of minorities in their society. Where would the West be without Elizabeth I, Mar
ia Curie, or Lady
GaGa? The more NATO authorities push inclusion in Afghan society, the more their
lives stand to
improve. The links are direct, compelling, rooted within a historical context an
d include a relative
referent to ground the term .improve.' If I were a betting man and I am I would
wager than
nearly 75% of rounds will be won by affirmatives.
But that doesn't mean that negatives are totally left out to dry. The debate jus
t has to be framed
in a way that doesn't rely on such broad-based impact scenarios. Negatives might
want to target
particular groups of people who haven't seen any of the benefits mentioned above
, mostly rural
folk who live in areas still under the control of the Mullah Omar. The only thin
g that NATO has
brought to their country is war, death, and turmoil. The Taliban isn't a friendl
y foe they sent a
squad to torture and kill President Najibillah in their struggle for power in th
e 90s and once he'd
passed, they hung him on a light pole outside of the UN's complex in Kabul as a
warning. One
can only imagine how they treat lower ranks of NATO collaborators.
And in reality, a lot of what made Afghanistan fertile ground for a Wahabi-ist g
overnment hasn't
changed. The Pashtun tribal leaders are still radically devoted to an extremist
sect of Islam and
while the government no longer exercises the sort of theocratic power that it di
d under the
Taliban, the tribal power structure often times does. Crime is out of control a
nascent form of
Afghani institutionalized pederasty, known in the local language as bacha bazi h
as returned. The
poppy crop, nearly eradicated under the Talibs, is seeing a resurgence and the f
unding from the
illicit drugs that poor into the United States and other western countries funds
not just the Taliban
insurgency, but terrorist groups world wide.
This is a good way to counter Elysium claims from affirmatives about the new, im
proved,
progressive Afghan society. Gender roles, sexual expression, religious intoleran
ce all of these
things haven't just disappeared over night. The reality is that the same conditi
ons that plagued
women, gays, the Shia they still exist in large part, except now suicide bombing
s, village raids,
extortion, and corruption are part of the daily life in Afghanistan. The NATO op
eration has done
very little to change the attitudes, which were the source of the problem all al
ong, and hasn't done
a very good job securing the lives and property for the average Afghan citizen.
It doesn't end there. The Karzai government is woefully corrupt. In many cases t
he authorities in
Afghanistan are only the authorities in name, and in a significant minority of c
ases they are ones
the perpetrating criminals. Wide spread rumors of election fraud taint any argum
ents about the
iron clad rule of law in Afghanistan, and repudiate any notion of political expr
ession through the
vote. Many political factions notably the Taliban refuse to participate in the e
lectoral process
altogether. The Bank of Kabul's leadership has just had to step down after they
made risky loans
on real-estate to politically connected individuals. This caused a run on the ba
nk and nearly
collapsed Kabul's financial system, if not the country's. None of this would hav
e happened under
the Taliban, though in part because there were no projects to finance and no fun
ds available to
them.
A close evaluation of what is happening in Afghanistan will be necessary to any
case the
important thing to remember is that arguments must be rooted in the context of t
he NATO
intervention and subsequent reconstruction of Afghanistan and the relative quali
ty of life that
Afghans have as compared to the last known referent. The Taliban. Perhaps the af
firmative side
isn't as heavily favored to win as I thought when I set out writing this brief w
hat makes a society
in reality isn't what government it happens to have inflicted upon it at any giv
en time. As Russell
Kirk said, "[some] tend to forget the influence of national tradition or local p
olitical habits upon
even revolutionary movements; [others] however know that France remains France w
hether it is
ruled by Louis XIV or by Robespierre, and the Russia of Stalin is still, beneath
the surface, the
Russia of Conrad's Under Western Eyes,"21
21 Kirk, Russell. The Conservative Mind. Conservatism in America Since 1930. Ed. G
regory L. Schneider. New
York City: New York UP, 2003. 107-121.
Topic
Analysis
by
Dan
Meyers
This is not a topic about the militarized efforts by the world in Afghanistan. I
t is not a topic about
the implications of coordinating over 140,000 troops deployed in military operat
ions for NATO. It is
not a topic about the general efficacy of NATO. All these arguments, and many mo
re that aren't
coming to mind right now, are intriguing, but they are not what you will be deba
ting throughout
October. Your job is to focus on the effect of NATO efforts on the Afghan people
.
I. The Difficulties
The single greatest challenge you will have, regardless of the side you are deba
ting, is being able
to isolate specific effects that NATO has had in general. With troops from a mul
titude of countries
and organizations with ongoing operations in Afghanistan determining who is to c
redit or blame
for anything will be quite tricky. You will find, for example, articles that tal
k about US-led NATO
operations or NATO praise for New Zealand's assistance. Given the amalgam of countr
ies with
both independent and NATO coordinated roles it may, at times, be impossible to i
dentify what role
NATO has or had in those efforts. That is to say that there's an argument to be
made that any
actions occurring in Afghanistan by a NATO member country should result in NATO
getting credit
or blame for the act. Conversely, one could argue that on NATO ordered operation
s merit
discussion in the round.
Another sticky point of the resolution may be its change while being debated. I
realize this is a
sort of norm for many PF topics, but this could be a new experience for many. Wh
at is happening
in Afghanistan, and therefore the direction of the topic, could change entirely
between the time I
write this topic analysis and when you even debate a round. This means that you
need to keep up
on the news regularly. For example, there was an election in Afghanistan on Sept
ember 18. The
effects of this election, its democratic legitimacy, and the role that NATO may
or may not have
played will all play out over the coming weeks.
II. The Wording
A. Presence
NATO is, in a very real sense, present in several different ways. NATO's own web
site summarizes
why it's there22:
22
NATO's main role in Afghanistan is to assist the Government of the Islamic Repub
lic of
Afghanistan (GIRoA) in exercising and extending its authority and influence acro
ss the
country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance. NATO does t
his
predominantly through its United Nations-mandated International Security Assista
nce
Force (ISAF).
NATO goes on to clarify exactly what the mission of the ISAF is, and it's not sm
all. ISAF is tasked
with improving security and stability in Afghanistan, supporting reconstruction
and development,
improving and supporting governance, and fighting rampant narcotics problems. It
seems
reasonable to use these as sub-topics to examine in terms of improving the lives
of Afghan
citizens. To investigate this you will want to look into the efficacy of ISAF Pr
ovincial
Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).
B. Improves
You may dismiss the central role of this word at first glance and think that the
topic can merely be
read as NATO is good/bad for Afghanistan. I don't think it's that simple. Not only
is the idea of
improvement something that is highly subjective, but it is also something that i
s not stable. That
is, given the contentious political and security situations at play in Afghanist
an it is very hard to
say that action X by organization Y tangibly improved life in Afghanistan on bal
ance. It is quite
likely that a security mission undertaken by NATO forces resulted in several dea
ths, but did
secure an area. How is one to evaluate that within the resolution given the diff
erent interests at
play?
Furthermore, as is the case with any military operation, NATO actions surely hav
e both immediate
and ongoing implications. The present tense nature of improves may end up forcing
a more
short-term focus on the results of NATO efforts a what have you done for me latel
y approach.
This is all to say that you may have to fight to make your arguments matter in w
ays that you are
not accustomed to.
III. The Issues
A. The Government
.. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_8189.htm
A large aspect of the NATO mission in Afghanistan is helping to establish a stab
le liberal
government. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be happening. A bit of history
first will help put
things in perspective. As you probably know, shortly after the 9/11 attacks the
US launched
offensive efforts in Afghanistan that helped to topple the Taliban regime. Late
in 2001 Hamid
Karzai was installed as the leader of the new democratic regime. Last year Karzai
was reelected
under a great deal of suspicion of fraud. In fact over twenty-five percent of al
l the ballots
cast in 2009 were declared fraudulent. This lowered Karzai's vote count by nearl
y thirty-three
percent. Many of the Karzai's opponents and their followers still argue that Kar
zai is an
illegitimate president undeserving of leading Afghanistan. In that election appr
oximately 6 million
ballots were cast.
A parliamentary election for 250 seats just occurred. The claims of voter fraud
are already pouring
in. Stories feature all the common fraud tactics ranging from ballots stuffing t
o bribery and
everything in between. While the initial results of this election will not be ma
de public until early
October, it is unlikely that the results will be declared official by the ambiti
ous due date at the end
of that month. This means that, given the legal battles that are likely to occur
, that it is quite
plausible that the new Parliament will not be in place until the end of 2010 or
maybe later.
The picture should start coming into focus now. The state is a mess at the highe
st levels. To make
matters worse the new Parliament is likely to be so fractured, because of the la
ck of organization
of the political parties in Afghanistan, that Karzai will end up with a greater
ability to push his
agenda with little resistance. In some ways gridlock will only help in that rega
rd, as Karzai prefers
to operate off the record. Unfortunately this means that Taliban influence as we
ll as influence from
regional powers (primarily Iran) are likely to increase in the coming months.
B. Insurgents
You will see that the term insurgent is used interchangeably with terrorist. The Tal
iban once
controlled Afghanistan in a legally supported way. Since 2001, they have operate
d at the margins
seeking to grow support at the grass-roots level in the hopes of making their wa
y back into the
government. In the meantime Taliban insurgent efforts have been the focal point
for NATO
operations. There are frequently offensive exchanges between these two parties.
The problem,
from the perspective of the average Afghan, is the collateral damage that often
results. It is very
difficult to say who is at fault for any of these civilian casualties. What is e
asy to say is that with
the growing number of civilian deaths, public support for NATO efforts wanes.
At the same time, the strength of the Taliban may be growing. There are conflict
ing narratives at
work on this issue. NATO leaders claim to be winning the war on terror in that r
egard, but the
Taliban leadership claims the opposite. The reality seems to that while it is ha
rd to tell whether
Taliban numbers are increasing, it is easier to see that their influence grows.
A prime example of
this is that while acts of violence during the recent election were down, the me
re threat of violence
(there was a rather large campaign of threats leading up to election day promoti
ng the idea that
anyone with the ink from voting on their fingers would lose that finger) seemed
to be quite
effective given the drastic fall in voter turnout. Many liberal commentators in
Afghanistan forecast
that many would not risk harm and would rather avoid voting all together.
The reality seems to be that unless the Taliban are pushed out of Afghanistan al
l together security
cannot be said to be entirely established. That goal, however, is a near impossi
bility regardless of
NATO efforts.
C. Shrinking International Presence
NATO has had some sort of day-to-day presence in Afghanistan for nearly ten year
s now. The
goal, from the very beginning, was to help stabilize the country so that it coul
d successfully stand
on its own. While it is true that Afghanistan security forces have gradually bee
n trained to take
over for NATO forces (and have increasingly been doing just that). The question
seems to be, will
the NATO withdrawal be premature?
Already many NATO countries, feeling the financial crunch of the global market c
risis, have
started minimizing their financial and troop commitments. This all comes in adva
nce of a major
NATO summit regarding the future of the organization's role in Afghanistan set f
or November.
With the US closing up shop in Iraq and shifting General David Petraeus to head
up forces in
Afghanistan, one is left to wonder what role the US plans.
While little of this is may make for a round-winning argument, understanding the
issues at play in
this contentious situation is of central importance.
IV. Approaches to Casing
In terms of how you construct your cases, I want to share some specific thoughts
. For me, the
debate will come down to a question of framing. That is, what is required for th
e Pro to win (or the
Con for that matter) may take center stage.
Here's a prime example: Pro is winning arguments about how NATO has helped minim
ize
terrorist activities (presumably saving lives of Afghan citizens). The Con is wi
nning arguments that
the government is increasingly corrupt and is (likely to) curtailing rights and
promoting violence.
Who wins?
This is when how the resolution is interpreted matters. Here are the questions y
ou may need to
answer (and should at least think about) in your rounds.
- Is the resolution a question of net impact? By that I mean, do we need to weig
h the good NATO
has accomplished with the bad and decide what the net effect is? If not, then th
e result is that
ANY good accomplished by NATO may be sufficient for the Pro to win. While that h
ardly seems
fair to me it seems a likely interpretation. Assuming that a cost-benefit analys
is is at play, how
does one compare unlike impacts?
- Are there any absolute rules that must be followed? Not by you, by NATO. For e
xample, does
the existence of civilian casualties constitute a harm that cannot be compared t
o anything else?
- Which citizens? This may seem silly, but insurgents are citizens too. Do some
citizens count
less than others? It may be very easy to paint a grim picture of your opponent's
ethics in a good
cross-examination.
- What's the time frame? How far back and, maybe more importantly, how far forwa
rd matters?
A. Being a PRO
The Pro, at first blush, seems like the preferable side to defend. There are som
e tangible
arguments that can be leaned on. Violence is down. Terrorists are fewer. Rights
are being
secured. Democratic events are occurring. Each of these could easily make for an
in-depth case
argument or a quick mention.
I think the best cases for the Pro side will play up improvements made under the
purview of
NATO. You have a lot of truth on your side in making those arguments. Very quant
ifiable truth in
many circumstances. So, my advice is to pick one or two of these kinds of argume
nts and
develop them well while starting (the earlier the better) to tell the framework
story. By that I mean,
you should start hedging against the most common Con arguments as early as possi
ble.
For me, that means the best Pro approaches will take a long-view approach to the
topic framing
the question to account for the last ten years. Then make arguments about how de
mocracy,
though it may be a bit corrupt, is taking hold and with it come some more rights
. In addition the
Pro should find some empirical arguments to ground their arguments that day-to-d
ay life in
Afghanistan is safer now than it used to be.
B. CONning a win
I'm going to be honest, I don't think the wording of the resolution does the Con
side many favors.
It's pretty hard to deny that over the course of the last ten years that NATO pr
esence has not
accomplished SOME good for the citizens of Afghanistan. More directly, it would
require some
pretty slick counter-factual stuffy to be able to prove that was not the case. S
o what's the Con
to do?
I think the first key is winning some of the framing questions mentioned above.
Ideally, at least in
my opinion, the Con wants the resolution to take as short a reference frame as p
ossible and set
up some absolute rules that cannot be violated. That is to say, the Con wants th
e debate to focus
on what good NATO may or may not be contributing to at this very moment and then
should focus
on the number of innocent civilian casualties that have come at the hands of NAT
O forces and
their attacks.
It may be helpful to reposition the question this way: Would Afghan citizens (no
t Afghanistan as a
nation) be worse off absent NATO presence? I think it is quite possible to answe
r that question in
a way that benefits the Con. If, let's say, that the democratization (as slight
as it may be) has not
actually had an effect for the average Afghan citizen AND let's say that the Tal
iban did not harm
civilians on a regular basis. If those things are true, there is a good argument
to be made that the
average citizen is more often at risk now than they were in 2000 (prior to NATO
presence).
V. Closing Thoughts
This should serve as some opening thoughts on the topic. Your readings and argum
entative
preferences should guide you through the topic, not me. My advice: keep up on th
e news as this
topic could radically change at any moment. Good luck in October and beyond.
Topic
Analysis
by
Todd
Rainey
The Afghan war will reach its 10th anniversary around this time next year, and a
fter the US-led
invasion, NATO has a lot at stake. President Obama hopes that NATO forces can cr
eate a stable
Afghanistan in order to mitigate the possibility that terrorist cells can take r
oot. At the same time,
NATO hopes to leave the country at least in better shape than when they first ar
rived. However,
the recent declassification of documents surrounding the Afghan war by the group
Wikileaks
changes the game.23 These documents suggest that NATO forces had much less contr
ol of the
country than previously thought. Given that Afghanistan is the new found focus o
f Obama's
military policy and the length of the war, an examination of NATO presence is ap
t. Because the
resolution asks whether NATO presence improves the lives of Afghan citizens rath
er than simply
not ruining it, the burden is on the pro to show a demonstrated uptick in the Af
ghan way of life.
Whether that uptick is relative to a hypothetical current world without NATO or
simply compared to
pre-invasion Afghanistan is a matter of debate.
Comparing Afghanistan circa 2001 to Afghanistan today is difficult, because it r
elies on a
longstanding historical outlook which is subject to tenuous what-if scenarios. H
owever, it has a
number of advantages for the pro. After all, pre-2001, Afghanistan was ruled by
the Taliban and
its people were impoverished and without democratic freedoms. Compared to that s
cenario,
Afghanistan today certainly has a few of its charms. This is not to say that the
con must abandon
such a comparison although life under the Taliban was brutal, it was marked by m
uch less
violence than Afghanistan today. The value question under such an outlook, then,
asks whether
we wish to live freely but without security or more securely but less freely. Th
ere are arguments
in-between the two, but the clash between the two will have elements of that que
stion.
Trying to ascertain whether NATO is currently making matters worse in Afghanista
n relies on a
thorough analysis of cause and effect. For instance, that the Taliban exist is t
rue regardless of
the presence of NATO forces. That air strikes are carried out is very much conti
ngent on NATO's
involvement with Afghanistan. The pro will want to disarm the negative by making
as many of the
tragedies in Afghanistan inevitable as possible. Is the government corrupt? NATO
's absence
may not have any sort of effect on the Afghan government and if anything, may fo
ster some
23 The Wikileaks article is available on the Wikileaks website, wikileaks.org.
degree of accountability by letting the government focus on policy rather than p
olicing. The con
will want to link to specific news articles that demonstrate a spark on NATO's par
t. It is
burdened with tracing government corruption to NATO support of that government,
or Taliban
violence to actions which primarily target NATO. The con wins in a world where v
ery few of
Afghanistan's problems are inevitable.
NATO Presence
In a broad sense, NATO originally invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to flush Al-
Quaeda out of the
country while disrupting the Taliban who had provided them safe haven. Over time
, this role has
evolved into a sort of nation-building setup. On NATO's official webpage titled N
ATO's Role in
Afghanistan, the organization offers the following explanation of its presence:
NATO's main role in Afghanistan is to assist the Government of the Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) in exercising and extending its authority and
influence across the country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective
governance. NATO does this predominantly through its United Nations-mandated
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Since NATO took command of
ISAF in 2003, the Alliance has gradually expanded the reach of its mission,
originally limited to Kabul, to cover all of Afghanistan's territory. Accordingl
y, the
number of ISAF troops has grown from the initial 5000 to around 120 000 troops
from 47 countries, including all 28 NATO member nations.24
Among those 120,000 troops are some 100,000 US troops, so most articles that tal
k about NATO
troops or US troops will be largely interchangeable for the purpose of the debat
e. Generally
speaking, US forces are heavily involved in the more dangerous Southeastern sect
ion of
Afghanistan while its other members police the rest of the nation. This is not t
o say that the
United States is the only country fighting in dangerous territory, but it is the
largest operational
force in the area. When looking for evidence of relatively safe areas, it might
pay to use
keywords that are open to the European bloc. When looking for news articles whic
h imply greater
danger, adding the search term United States would have similarly helpful result
s.
24 This information is periodically updated and the print version is consistent
with the website's September 20
version.
While NATO's military presence attracts the most media attention, there are huma
nitarian efforts
incorporated into the military structure. These are far from perfect, as Doctors
Without Borders
argues on March 11, 2010. It explains in a press release:
According to the U.S. Government Integrated Civilian-Military Campaign Plan for
Support to Afghanistan elaborated by General Stanley McChrystal and U.S.
Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry in August 2009, all of the civilmilit
ary
elements operating in the same province should coordinate and
synchronize the full spectrum of U.S. organizations, including private aid group
s,
as well as the UN and the whole range of Afghan partners operating in the area.9
In such a context, aid becomes threat-based rather than needs-based that
is, it is deployed according to military objectives not impartial assessments of
humanitarian needs. Assistance thus becomes just another weapon at the
service of the military, which can condition, deny or reward relief to those who
fall
in or out of line with its larger security agenda. A particularly egregious exam
ple
of this occurred in 2004, when coalition forces distributed leaflets that threat
ened
to cut off assistance unless the population provided information on al-Qaeda and
Taliban leaders.
This article asserts that in many ways medical relief groups are a third party r
ather than a part of
the NATO coalition. NATO does provide its own humanitarian missions but they are
at times
overshadowed by groups such as Doctors Without Borders, making excellent focal p
oints for
questions of jurisdiction.
Humanitarian concerns are secondary impacts aside from the main question in this
resolution.
The central point ought to be the need to determine NATO's ability to effectivel
y police
Afghanistan. Humanitarian initiatives are a failure if they continue to be a nec
essity, as the
German magazine Der Spiegel points out on July 28, 2010:
Led by the US, NATO and other Western allies have been trying to pacify
Afghanistan for almost 10 years -- with little success. War aims have changed
frequently. None of them, however, has been achieved. The intervals between
the large-scale Afghanistan conferences, from Berlin to Paris, London to Kabul,
have become ever shorter, but the list of problems has only grown. The country
remains a potential breeding ground for terrorism as it was prior to the Sept. 1
1,
2001 attacks in the US. And little that the West has imported to Afghanistan sin
ce
then has put down such deep roots that it would survive a pullout for long. Girl
s'
schools, wells and newly paved roads are pleasant side effects of the NATO
mission in Afghanistan. As a justification, however, they are not enough.
Afghanistan is currently the sort of nation that receives aid from others to con
struct it. These
improvements take place in the context of a war zone, and in that case whichever
interpretation of
NATO's presence ends the war sooner so to speak will control access to questions o
f
nation-building. Rather than spend most of my time emphasizing nation-building,
I would
research answers to potential opposing claims about nation-building and save the
m for the
second speech. This way, if the debate is focused on the conflict, there is litt
le time wasted, and if
one's opponents go for a secondary argument, I could extend my warrant that conf
lict is the
primary concern and only then worry about answering these points.
NATO Action
Nato's actions are a set of disparate steps taken to a central goal. NATO is pri
oritizing the
transition of power from NATO hands to a peaceful and stable Afghan government.
If one views
this transition as desirable and successful, NATO's presence would be beneficial
to civilians by
providing a stable platform for the democratic process. However, if the transiti
on is seen as
propping up a corrupt government as is suggested by Slate magazine on September
13, 2010,
NATO may be doing more harm than good.25 Likewise, an unsuccessful transition, r
egardless of
NATO's responsibility for its condition, would suggest that NATO hasn't improved
the political lives
of the Afghan people.
While NATO is working to reduce the number of civilian deaths by pulling fightin
g away from the
cities and into the countryside, it has still had a few high-profile accidents.
In February, a rocket
strike killed 23 civilians in Marjah.26 These strikes are on the one hand an ine
vitable by-product
of war and on the other hand a threat to the hearts and minds approach desired by
the US-led
coalition. In Marjah, one of the more violent areas, the Afghani people don't se
em to like NATO's
presence. According to a News Junkie article from May 6, 2010:
The legitimate grievance of the people of Marjah are used by the Taliban who wil
l
seek to recruit the region's angry young men. Of those interviewed, 95 percent
25 Slate, September 15, 2010, What can we do about corruption in Afghanistan?
26 Reuters, February 20, 2010; NATO Airstrike Kills 27 Civilians in Afghanistan,
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L1XJ20100222
believed more young Afghans have joined the Taliban in the last year. 78 percent
of the respondents were often or always angry , and 45 percent stated they were
angry at the NATO occupation, civilian casualties and night raids .
The same article suggests that as a result of the conflict in Afghanistan, inter
nally displaced
persons or refugees are increasing in number with little infrastructural assista
nce. Whether
NATO is to blame or the Taliban remains a matter of debate, but the simple fact
that there are
homeless Afghanis is not open to interpretation.
Humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan is made difficult by the conflict. Doctor
s without Borders
explains in a statement on its website on March 11, 2010:
One factor contributing to this deterioration in independent humanitarian
assistance has been the deadly lack of respect for health care workers and
facilities shown by all of the belligerents involved in the conflict. Hospitals,
clinics,
and medical personnel have been targeted by armed opposition groups like the
Taliban, while Afghan government and international forces have repeatedly
raided and occupied health structures. A second, related factor has been the coo
ptation
of the aid system by the international coalition at times with the
complicity of the aid community itself to the point where it is difficult to
distinguish aid efforts from political and military action.
In short, the space to provide neutral, independent, and impartial humanitarian
assistance in Afghanistan has been lost, given away, or taken, and this is havin
g
dire consequences for the population. Whether it is possible to regain and defen
d
this space will not only affect the provision of assistance in Afghanistan, but
in
other conflicts as well.
On the one hand, NATO hasn't made DWB's mission easy to carry out, but its prior
itization of
security may be essential to providing humanitarian assistance at any point. In
this light, the pro
would want to argue that NATO's military missions improve the lives of Afghan ci
tizens by working
to bring DWB to the country. The con will want to use this as an extension of th
e more basic
argument that NATO presence exacerbates conflict in the country.
On another humanitarian note, NATO presence in Afghanistan may undermine humanit
arian work
by discrediting those efforts. Doctors Without Borders is particularly condemnin
g of NATO's
decision to raid hospitals in Afghanistan when searching for insurgents because
doing so
undermines the credible neutrality of medical assistance to civilian populations
. It continues in the
March 11 report:
Such an approach has compromised humanitarian principles and eroded the
working space needed to provide humanitarian assistance. While both relief and
development may be well-intentioned and are not necessarily opposed to one
another, there is a major operational incompatibility between the two in war.
These principles are essential pre-requisites for relief workers. They are pract
ical
tools that help ensure respect for humanitarian action by all parties in a confl
ict.
Neutrality, independence, and impartiality are obviously not as critical for bui
lding
roads and schools or for promoting the rule of law, as they are for an emergency
room where wounded civilians and non-combatants from different factions may
seek lifesaving medical care. In the latter case, compromises can lead to
deliberate attacks on facilities, patients, or medical staff, thus reducing acce
ss to
medical services for an entire population trapped by war.
NATO Methods
NATO's use of military force happens in a variety of ways, and its methods direc
tly impact the
well-being of the people of Afghanistan. The pro wants to paint NATO's wrongdoin
g as a
necessary response to an uncertain enemy, thus pinning blame on the Taliban for
any problems
that the civilians face. The con wants to suggest that NATO actions and press di
sasters are
proof that NATO cannot police Afghanistan. It's a safer bet on the part of the c
on to argue a lack
of improvement, and the media reports make that duty spectacularly easy.
One way NATO works to police Afghanistan is by working with local militias. In 2
009, the
Guardian reported that many of these militias operated outside the law.27 What t
he guardian
does not discuss in detail is the pre-NATO condition of the militias. While the
US-led forces
certainly enable the militias to operate, in all likelihood they would exist whe
ther or not NATO
were present. The con can argue that by supporting militia groups, NATO undermin
es the rule of
law in Afghanistan, while the pro can argue that NATO's work with militia groups
is the beginning
of consolidation of power; if militias are going to exist in Afghanistan, they m
ay as well be directed
toward the military support of a central, democratic government.
Another NATO military action is the ordering of air strikes against military tar
gets. A recent
airstrike against Taliban militants on the 10th of September, for instance, is c
onsistent with NATO
27 Nato forces rely on illegal Afghan militias, report says, The Guardian,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/16/nato-forces-afghan-militias
behavior.28 These airstrikes are not popular among the Afghan citizens for under
standable
reasons; collateral damage occurs on a monthly basis, and while the number of de
aths are low
compared to the millions of citizens of Afghanistan, they bring suffering and fe
ar to a broad
population.
A major reason for NATO's increased troop presence in Afghanistan is the need to
defend critical
areas of the nation. During the most recent election, NATO forces attempted to d
efend ballot
areas. In the Northern provinces, which the alliance has largely managed to secu
re, polling
turnout in the recent Afghan election was high. In the Southern parts of the cou
ntry, where
violence is more of a problem, turnout was extremely low.29 The pro shouldn't be
afraid to admit
that NATO had problems with securing the election. Nor should the con be afraid
to admit that
NATO has made polling easier in Kabul. Taking an overall approach to NATO's capa
city to
secure high-profile targets gives fair ground to both sides and lets the debater
s argue out which
story trumps the others.
The Afghan Life
NATO actions aside, Afghanistan itself has changed quite a bit since the invasio
n. It's important
that you devote time in your rounds to providing some sort of snapshot of Afghan
life. I
recommend your starting point be the CIA world factbook.30 The following is take
n from the
book:
Afghanistan's economy is recovering from decades of conflict. The economy has
improved significantly since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 largely beca
use
of the infusion of international assistance, the recovery of the agricultural se
ctor,
and service sector growth. Despite the progress of the past few years,
Afghanistan is extremely poor, landlocked, and highly dependent on foreign aid,
agriculture, and trade with neighboring countries. Much of the population
continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity, medical
care, and jobs. Criminality, insecurity, weak governance, and the Afghan
28 3 Afghan insurgents killed in NATO air strike, The Washington Times,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/10/3-afghan-insurgents-killed-nato-
air-strike/
29 In Marja, Violence and Intimidation Depress Vote, The New York Times,
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/in-marja-violence-and-intimidation-dep
ress-vote/
30 Although some US-driven sources may have some bias, the CIA world factbook ha
s an excellent track record
of accuracy and impartiality.
Government's inability to extend rule of law to all parts of the country pose
challenges to future economic growth. Afghanistan's living standards are among
the lowest in the world. While the international community remains committed to
Afghanistan's development, pledging over $57 billion at three donors'
conferences since 2002, the Government of Afghanistan will need to overcome a
number of challenges, including low revenue collection, anemic job creation, hig
h
levels of corruption, weak government capacity, and poor public infrastructure.
Prior to the invasion by NATO forces, many of Afghanistan's farmers made their l
iving on the
production of poppy flowers, most often for use as opium and heroin. Since the i
nvasion, there
have been fewer such farms, costing the country a traditional cash crop.31 NATO
presence
subjects Afghan farmers to Western authority, which includes the War on Drugs. A
t the same
time that farmers seem to be deprived, they may not feel the effects as strongly
as one may
expect, the reason being that when the Taliban were in rule in Afghanistan, they
used poppy
production for their own ends and not for those of the farmers.32
Not all is hopeless. Education in Afghanistan has seen remarkable improvements u
nder NATO
guidance, especially among women and girls.33 NATO presence in the country may o
r may not
be a causal effect, but this is another offshoot to the security debate. In a cu
lture which is
perhaps slightly more hostile to women's rights than the West, there is easy pot
ential for the pro
to connect NATO presence to the social gains made by women in the last decade.
Conclusion
One of the most basic mantras of statistical research is that correlation does n
ot make causation.
Separating NATO presence from the change in the livelihood of the Afghan citizen
s is no easy
task, which is where your rhetorical powers of persuasion are most needed. Keepi
ng in mind that
conflict is the root of the resolution, keep your research focused on NATO's mil
itary effects and
31 The CIA world factbook does argue that opium production is still high but has
fallen by enough of an amount to
make an economic impact.
32 Taliban Raise Poppy Production to a Record Again, The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26heroin.html
33 Education in Afghanistan: Then and Now, United States Institute of Peace,
http://www.usip.org/events/education-afghanistan-then-and-now. The institute exp
lains that while women and girls were
able to get an education in Afghanistan pre-invasion, it was much more difficult
and usually an underground operation.
The site does not explicitly credit NATO for the security to attend school, but
it does hint at a much more friendly
environment to such a liberal proposal.
from there determine how security (or the lack thereof) makes the country better
-off (or worse-off).
There should be no shortage of news articles this month, so be sure to check as
often as possible
for developments in the war and to be ready to make new found connections when t
he
unexpected becomes reality.
Topic
Analysis
by
Sarah
Spiker
BACKGROUND34
Afghanistan, a battle since 2001, led by the Americans and followed by additiona
l NATO troops.
Nearly one decade later, the fight to restore Afghanistan is still going strong.
In the past year,
NATO troops in Afghanistan have tripled,35 but countries are setting their sight
s on withdrawal.
The Netherlands withdrew 2,000 troops last month, Canada expects to withdraw nex
t summer,
and Britain plans to start their complete 2015 withdrawal next year.36 The vast
majority of NATO
troops are from the United States of the 123,000 total troops, just 23,000 are fro
m countries
other than America.37 As global support for the war declines, Afghanistan faces
a turbulent
future. Admiral Mike Mullen explains that 2010 developments have lead Afghanista
n to a critical
point, a make or break year for NATO.38 A simple answer to the resolution, Resolv
ed: NATO
presence improves the lives of Afghan citizens, is unfortunately not available. T
he answer is
bogged down in varying qualitative interpretations of what is best for the Afgha
n people. The
following attempts to guide debaters through both sides of the debate, offering
arguments and
sources to develop cases.
THE POSITIVE RESULTS
Security. Building a strong, sustainable country often relies on the country's a
bility to secure its
own borders and manage its own military. According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Need
s, security
needs fall right after physiological needs and before love/belonging, esteem, an
d selfactualization
needs. World Poverty and Human Rights Online explains that development efforts
aim to put social, legal, and economic structures in place to ensure people can
begin to fulfill their
own needs in the future. 39 Thus, developing and reconstructing a nation can be sa
id to be in the
34 There are multiple articles from the same source but different dates in this
analysis; please take a keen note of
dates when reviewing sources.
35 The International Herald Tribune, by Rod Nordland, August 30, 2010, Section:
NEWS, pg. 5, Afghan violence
reverses gains; 7 soldiers are killed after weeks of decline in NATO casualty ra
te, accessed via LexisNexis
36 The Washington Post, by Washington Post Staff Writer, September 8, 2010, Sect
ion: pg. A08, Karzai must
crack down on graft, NATO chief says, accessed via LexisNexis
37 The International Herald Tribune, previously cited.
38 BBC Monitoring South Asia-Political, supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Au
gust 12, 2010, Author says
breaking Afghan Taleban-Al-Qa'idah nexus .uphill task' for Pakistan, accessed via
LexisNexis
39 World Poverty and Human Rights Online, by Charity Magnuson, March 21, 2010, De
velopment to Fulfill
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, http://wphr.org/2010/charity-magnuson/development-to
-fulfill-maslow%E2%80%99shierarchy-
of-needs/
people's best interest. At the present time, NATO forces are focusing on trainin
g a functional
Afghan security force. While there have been setbacks, the intent is noble and n
ecessary.
Absent NATO involvement, Afghan troops would likely not improve over their curre
nt state. The
Washington Post notes that Afghan troops are mostly illiterate and lacking in ba
sic training and
education.40 Although training has been slow and trainers are in short supply, i
magine a world
without a program to educate and train these native security forces. Little woul
d likely be done to
resolve the lack of training and education. Recognizing that a new strategy was
necessary for this
training mission, the United States scrapped its old training program in favor o
f redeveloping their
strategies.
Aside from attempting to create a stable Afghan force, NATO forces are assisting
in securing the
country on their own. Sayed Farokh Shah Jenab Fariabi, member of the Senate comm
ittee for
International Affairs, argues that NATO forces are tackling issues of terrorism;
in his opinion,
premature withdrawal threatens that goal.41 Fariabi indicates that the internatio
nal
community should stay shoulder to shoulder with the Afghan people and they should
continue
their cooperation until our national army and national police forces stand on th
eir own feet. 42 By
providing for security now and training a new security force for tomorrow, NATO
troops are
looking out for the best interest of Afghan citizens.
Supplies. What good is a trained fighting force if they do not have the proper e
quipment to carry
out their job? NATO is stepping in with a plan to remedy this technological shor
tfall by supplying
20 helicopters and more than 50 cargo planes to the Afghan air force.43 Lieutena
nt General
William Caldwell, the commander of the NATO Training Mission and Combined Securi
ty
Transition Command, indicates that approximately 30,000 trained Afghans have bee
n instructed
in the use of this equipment.44 This gift of equipment directly benefits the Afg
han people and the
Afghan government by ensuring that they have the tools to be self-sufficient in
the future.
40 The Washington Post, by Washington Post Staff Writer, September 8, 2010, Sect
ion: pg. A08, Karzai must
crack down on graft, NATO chief says, accessed via LexisNexis
41 BBC Monitoring South Asia-Political, Supplied by BBC World Monitoring, August
4, 2010, Afghan MPs urge
foreign forces to stay in Afghanistan, accessed via LexisNexis
42 BBC Monitoring South Asia-Political, August 4, 2010, previously cited
43 BBC Monitoring South Asia-Political, Supplied by BBC World Monitoring, June 1
3, 2010, NATO to donate
helicopters, cargo planes to Afghan air force-TV, accessed via LexisNexis
44 BBC Monitoring South Asia-Political, June 13, 2010, previously cited
In addition to military supplies, NATO provides humanitarian efforts as well. Ea
ch month, 5,000
NATO trucks filled with supplies pass through Pakistan on their way to Afghanist
an; the United
States alone has promised $7.5 billion in aid packages to Afghanistan.45 These m
onies help fund
ISAF Post Operation Relief Fund, a fund established in 2006 to provide humanitar
ian assistance
in the aftermath of NATO operations, and Provincial Reconstruction Teams which p
rovide food,
shelter, and medicine.46 Trucks and the supplies they bring are essential to the
Afghan people's
well-being. Due to the great need of these trucks, they tend to be prominent att
ack targets. A
recent attack on 24 supply ships47 highlights the importance these supplies prov
ide the Afghan
people. If they were of no benefit, the Taliban would not seek them out as targe
ts so often.
Groundwork for Infrastructure. NATO supports the groundwork for hard and soft in
frastructure.
Julio Miranda Calha is legislator from Portugal and NATO reporter on Afghanistan
. He argues that
We cannot sustain our mission in Afghanistan without public support It will do litt
le good to build
schools without first eliminating those who would burn the schools and kill the
teachers. 48
Building quality of life for the Afghan people requires a holistic approach. Sec
urity alone is not
enough. Humanitarian efforts alone are not enough either. Calha's statement touc
hes on how
both elements are needed to be successful in Afghanistan and truly improve the l
ives of the
people. Since we have already discussed NATO security efforts, we can now focus
on
humanitarian infrastructure efforts.
Providing food supplies is a short-term solution for humanitarian support. In re
ality, Afghanistan
needs an infrastructure system is can depend on in the long-term. Brigades have
been aside to
assist in this very matter. Soldiers have been assigned to dig ditches, build sc
hools, and refurbish
mosques.49 Brigadier MacKay explains that urban areas are in a much better state
than they
were just two years ago. He notes that people are returning to towns, displaying
signs of real
45 The Telegraph, by Rob Crilly, August 25, 2010, Nato supplies to Afghanistan hi
t by Pakistan floods,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7963961/Nato-supplies
-to-Afghanistan-hit-by-Pakistanfloods.
html
46 NATO's website, no date given, NATO's role in Afghanistan,
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_8189.htm
47 Aljazeera, August 24, 2010, Taliban attacks NATO supply convoy
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/08/201082485421604121.html
48 The Gazette (Montreal), by Kevin Dougherty, November 15, 2006, Section: pg. A
15, NATO reps question
Afghan progress: Hearts, minds called key, accessed via LexisNexis
49 The Birmingham Post, April 14, 2008, Section: 1st Edition, pg. 7, We've made p
rogress-Army chief;
AFGHANISTAN, accessed via LexisNexis
progress as a result of NATO's work. Roads and bridges are completed via contrac
ting, which
can spur economic growth and development.50
Provincial Reconstruction Teams work with Afghan Armed Forces to strengthen the
influence of
local Afghan authorities,51 which in turn helps assist in long-term functioning
and policies (soft
infrastructure). By guiding operational policies, NATO directly assists in the l
ong-term functioning
of Afghanistan. The people benefit a) from the provided hard infrastructure and
b) from the
supportive soft infrastructure which allows for continued operation of the hard
infrastructure,
thereby ensuring that basic services are available to the people.
Strategy. The overall strategy of the pro team should be to focus on the world o
f NATO
assistance to the world without NATO assistance. You can admit from the beginnin
g that while the
strategies employed may be far from perfect, they are still better than the alte
rnative of a Talibanrun
country of fear. Opportunities for the people although still major targets for the
Taliban are
actually available, sometimes for the first time in many, many years. Schools ar
e opening, roads
are being improved, and a well-trained Afghan force is in the works. Absent NATO
, where would
the people be today? Resource-less and living in fear.
THE NEGATIVE RESULTS
Intensification of the War. While some good has been accomplished, NATO forces p
rimarily
serve to intensify war unnecessarily.52 Prolonged presence in Afghanistan is det
rimental, rather
than beneficial for the Afghan people. A BBC article explains:
Those who see the NATO forces' withdrawal as a repeat of the American pullout
from Vietnam in 1975 or the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 are
grossly mistaken. In the months that lie ahead, the situation in Afghanistan is
likely to move simultaneously in two directions: one, the Afghan government
would redouble its efforts to push forward the process of national reconciliatio
n
by engaging various Taliban groups in talks so that President Karzai's deadline
of
2014 is met. Two, there will be intensification of the war as NATO forces, on th
e
completion of the troop surge under Obama's strategy, would try to regain the
50 The International Herald Tribune, by Alissa Rubin, September 14, 2010, Sectio
n: News, pg. 8, NATO sets new
rules to stop rot in Afghan contracts, accessed via LexisNexis
51 Baltic News Service, March 25, 2005, Afghanistan's president thanking Lithuani
a for support in reconstructing
country, accessed via LexisNexis
52 BBC Monitoring South Asia Political, Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Au
gust 12, 2010 Author says
breaking Afghan Taleban-Al-Qa'idah nexus .uphill task' for Pakistan
initiative and the Taliban would try to prevent this. With the intensification o
f the
war, more civilians and soldiers would die in the battlefield.53
Even if originally well-intended, the second result of NATO's current strategy w
ould be disastrous
for the people. Even as Afghanistan attempts to reconcile with the Taliban, NATO
and specifically
United States presence would cause instability and violence. Current programs to
convert the
Taliban to work for the government are lacking. Some converts only earn $12 a mo
nth,54 hardly
enough to justify leaving the Taliban. Quelling Taliban recruitment would be dif
ficult. When
civilians are accidentally killed in the line of fire or through botched raids, 2
0 other family
members will pick up weapons and stand against them. 55 It appears NATO forces hav
e become
the barrier to a working society instead of the solution. By intensifying the wa
r, NATO directly
harms civilians and indirectly fuels Taliban growth.
Civilian Deaths. As previously alluded to, civilians deaths alone can negate the
resolution.
Although no officials numbers have been released. Unknown News estimates the tot
al number of
casualties in Afghanistan to be 19,629 based upon reported figures.56 More than
8,800 were
Afghan civilians, the largest loss of any single category. Approximately 8,500 m
ore were from the
Afghan military. Just 1,140 U.S. troops and 772 coalition troops were lost, mini
scule in
comparison the loss suffered by Afghanistan. While some civilian deaths are inev
itable, NATO
troops have been unable to account for the civilian lives they have taken:
Since NATO and America attacked Afghanistan, civilian casualties caused by
foreign forces have been an issue that the international community and the
Afghan government have been unable to solve so far. When NATO and ISAF kill
civilians in an area, they say they were killed because they were present in the
battlefield. However, on 5 August, a NATO plane targeted a car carrying a coffin
and the relatives of the dead and dropped bombs on it...Eleven people died in
this incident, including women and children. Earlier the same day NATO forces
bombarded the area and 13 people were killed. NATO said all of the killed were
Taliban, but there were civilians among them at least two of whom were 12- and
13-year-old children. Local residents have complete information regarding the
53 BBC Monitoring South Asia Political, August 12, 2010, previously cited.
54 The New York Times, by Dexter Filkins, August 24, 2010, New Case of Civilian D
eaths Investigated in
Afghanistan, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/world/asia/25afghan.html
55 The New York Times, August 24, 2010, previously cited
56 Unknown News, August 10, 2010, http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html
civilians killed. NATO and NATO commanders always talk about avoiding civilian
casualties in Afghanistan in their remarks and speeches, but how can
bombarding civilians car 5 km away from the battlefield be justified?57
Civilians bear the brunt of NATO brutality. Even if NATO's presence can be justi
fied because it
assists in setting up the Afghan government, their presence cannot be justified
based upon
civilian lives saved. Casualties are destabilizing Afghanistan,58 not just the T
aliban, creating a
reinforcing cycle of destruction and justified NATO presence. This cycle feeds o
ff each other.
Civilians die in combat, which in turn sparks new calls for increased troop pres
ence and
operations.
Interference in Internal Affairs. As part of the War in Afghanistan, NATO is ass
isting in the
setting up and strengthening of the Afghan government. However, the extent to wh
ich NATO
participating countries become involved may lead to negative ramifications, such
as prolonged
dependency.59 More specifically, NATO forces-the United States in particular-are
meddling in the
internal affairs of the Afghan government, to the extent that the country is ess
ential run by the
United States:60
Karzai's trip to Iran and Khalili's trip to Pakistan can be viewed within the
framework of regional cooperation and improved relations between Afghanistan
and these countries, but what is important is that interference of these countri
es
in the internal affairs of Afghanistan which NATO officials and leaked documents
show was not discussed..Is it also a dream or a possibility for Iran and Tajikis
tan
to replace NATO and the West especially at a time when both these countries are
accused of supporting the Taliban?
The final question is unanswered in the article, but the answer is bleak. In the
coming years,
Afghanistan will be dependent on NATO for security purposes.61 If NATO forces ca
n ensure that
Afghanistan is dependent for security purposes, they can then use that influence
to manipulate
57 BBC Monitoring South Asia Political, August 12, 2010, previously cited
58 BBC Monitoring South Asia Political, August 12, 2010, previously cited
59 The New York Times, by Eric Schmitt, January 25, 2010, U.S. Envoy's Cables Sho
w Worries on Afghan
Plans, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/world/asia/26strategy.html
60 BBC Monitoring South Asia Political, Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Au
gust 10, 2010, Iran,
Pakistan rivalling over NATO's Afghanistan, article, accessed via LexisNexis
61 MSNBC, by Desmond Butler, September 6, 2010, Afghan training to cost U.S. $6 b
illion a year,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39025766/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
the internal politics of the country, shackling Afghan officials from truly maki
ng their own
calculations. NATO's influence may not be direct, but even indirect assertion of
power can be
dangerous. Even though the parliamentarian system was established in Afghanistan
post-troops,
the people cannot truly be free politically until the NATO overlords leave them
to decide freely.
Increased Drug Trade. An interesting area to consider, but perhaps not the stron
gest argument,
revolves around the drug trade. Poppy production in Afghanistan is huge. Speaker
of the Russian
Parliament's Lower House argued that unless poppy production was eradicated in A
fghanistan,
stability could not be found.62 Yet the same article rebukes NATO for failing to
fight the drug
trade, citing a 40% increase in trafficking. In 2006, opium harvest in Afghanist
an increased 60%,
accounting for 92% of opium worldwide.63 NATO carefully admits blame for the inc
rease:
The instability that has followed the overthrow of the Taliban regime, as well a
s
delays in adopting an effective counter-narcotics strategy, have allowed the dru
gs
business to flourish since 2001. In turn, the drug trade is widely believed to f
eed
the insurgency and thereby perpetuate instability, particularly in the southern
part
of the country.64
As NATO eradicates poppy farms, poor farmers are left with little to profit from
. With no other
options, they turn to the Taliban for support.65 NATO's specific strategies face
a double bindeither
they a) eradicate farms and force farmers to seek refuge with the Taliban or b)
they ignore
the poppy farms and allow the drug trade fueling the Taliban to continue. Absent
a cohesive
strategy to eradicate and support farmers through alternative means, NATO is cau
sing the people
more harm than they otherwise would have inflicted.
Removed Experienced People. In stabilizing the government, NATO is often applaud
ed for
setting up a system that could one day be accountable and efficient. However, in
a time where
highly educated and trained personnel are needed, NATO is starting from scratch.
BBC explains:
62 BBC Monitoring South Asia Political, Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Ju
ly 25, 2010 Sunday, Afghan
observers says NATO failed to fight drugs, accessed via LexisNexis
63 The International Herald Tribune, by Karl Inderfurth and Bruce Riedel, Februa
ry 6, 2007, Section: Opinion, pg.
6, More, NATO, more; Afghanistan, accessed via LexisNexis
64 NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Mark Angel, Reporter, no date given, 170 CDSDG 09
E rev 1 - An Overview of
Security Challenges and Mechanisms of Co-Operation in the Central Asian Regio htt
p://www.natopa.
int/default.asp?SHORTCUT=1785
65 The Christian Science Monitor, by Tom Peter, August 18, 2010, Russia's Medvede
v talks terrorism, drug trade
with Afghanistan, Pakistan leaders http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-secur
ity/2010/0818/Russia-s-Medvedevtalks-
terrorism-drug-trade-with-Afghanistan-Pakistan-leaders
NATO soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan at a time when the country has many
highly experienced military officials. The pressure from these countries and a
programme called DDR [Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration] forced
the Afghan security officials to resign from their positions and look for other
jobs.
In addition, the mujahedin were also forced to keep out of the government. In
view of these remarks, if the Western countries had paid attention to the Afghan
officials who are well experienced in the fight against terrorists instead of th
eir
delicate soldiers and if these countries had provided the Afghan forces with
modern weapons instead of old and useless arms, the situation would not have
become critical and the expenses would not have increased this much.66
Essentially, despite the good NATO seeks to achieve, many of the current problem
s with security
forces and the government may be attributed to NATO's own policies, leaving the
people in a
worse off condition than they otherwise would have been in.
Strategy. The best strategy to take will be either straight up denying the benef
its of NATO
presence ever or conceding that NATO troops may have originally done some good b
ut are now
causing the very problems they seek to remedy. Every democracy will flounder and
strengthen,
but the continued presence of NATO troops threatens the survival of the strong s
ociety they had
envisioned. You can admit that the Taliban were disastrous for the Afghan people
. But now, the
situation has changed. NATO troops are inciting more Taliban recruitment and pre
venting
reconciliation at the cost of civilian lives rather than eliminating the threat
in the first place.
CONCLUSION
Results are mixed as to whether NATO presence is actually beneficial in Afghanis
tan. On one
hand, NATO is providing Afghanistan with the necessary training and supplies tha
t it needs to be
a functioning society. On the other hand, the demons of recruitment grow in the
face of NATO
presence and unintentional lives are lost. The real question is, then, did NATO
cause the
problems that Afghanistan faces today? Or is NATO solving preexisting conditions
to a better
extent than the alternative of no presence?
66 BBC Monitoring South Asia Political, Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Ju
ne 23, 2010, Afghan paper
criticizes NATO's weak performance in fighting insurgency, Accessed via LexisNexi
s
Topic
Analysis
by
Christian
Tarsney
This should be a great resolution to debate: It's straightforward, accessible, a
nd easy to research,
with tons of literature out there on both sides. It deals with a major, high-sta
kes issue that will give
rise to clear, measurable and weighable impacts. And it's also very timely US and
NATO policy
in Afghanistan is in significant flux at the moment, with Afghan elections occur
ring as I'm writing,
US midterms just around the corner, and Obama's Afghan strategy approaching some
crucial
moments of truth with the Kandahar offensive just getting underway and efforts t
o negotiate with
and reintegrate insurgent fighters potentially on the verge of bearing fruit.
Enjoy this topic while it lasts, and make the most of it: Learn your history, un
derstand the
current situation on the ground, and keep up to date with the changes that are l
ikely to occur over
the next several weeks. In that respect, update tools like Google Alerts and oth
er media
monitoring functions are you friends if, like me, you're a relative neophyte when
it comes to
using those tools (or if you've never even heard of them until just now), this w
ould be an excellent
time to familiarize yourself.
The goal of this topic analysis is mainly to give you a sense of the issues you
should be
researching before your first tournament, and as the topic goes on. Rather than
dividing things up
by sides, the approach to arguments will (sans a brief section at the end) be or
ganized topically
and take you through some of the general areas that you should be prepared to de
bate both
ways. First, though, we'll cover some interpretational issues stemming from the
wording of the
resolution, and then try to briefly synopsize the current position it Afghanista
n and how it got
there.
I. Understanding the resolution
One mildly unfortunate feature of the resolutional wording is the identification
of the
international presence in Afghanistan with NATO . As you'll quickly find when you s
tart your
research, while NATO the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed in the earlies
t stages of the
Cold War to balance against Soviet power in Europe has been the main organizing ae
gis for
operations in Afghanistan, a good number of non-NATO countries have also contrib
uted troops to
the international force currently deployed in the country. These include, most p
rominently,
Australia and Georgia, but also Asian states like South Korea, Malaysia and Sing
apore, as well
as several non-NATO states in Central and Eastern Europe like Sweden and Macedon
ia. The
combined military presence in Afghanistan is termed the International Security A
ssistance Force
(ISAF), and you'll probably see it referenced in the literature at least as much
if not more than
NATO. While NATO heads the ISAF, it is still technically the case that even if N
ATO were to
withdraw entirely from Afghanistan tomorrow, there would still be several thousa
nd ISAF troops
left in the country from non-NATO militaries. That said, under most circumstance
s, you can treat
the two as interchangeable in your research. It's important, though, to be consc
ious of the
distinction and of the precise meanings of both terms.
On the flip side, of course, an enormous amount of what you read will talk about
the
United States rather than any international body. Just as NATO is the driving fo
rce behind ISAF
policy, the US is the driving force behind NATO policy, so you're unlikely to er
r too much by cutting
or reading evidence that's nominally specific to US presence rather than NATO pr
esence. That
said, one important question that will arise in debate rounds is the commitment
level of other
NATO countries to Afghan operations while the US supplies about two thirds of the
troops in the
country, other NATO countries supply most of the remaining third, and if NATO's
commitment falls
apart, the US would have a very hard time going it alone. On certain issues, the
refore, political
will being the most obvious case in point, US-specific evidence may not cut it.
The next word in the resolution, presence, gives rise to a couple of questions as
well. In
particular, does presence mean exclusively military presence for instance, do the la
rge
amounts of aid being pumped into the country by NATO countries count as NATO pres
ence ? I
think, intuitively, that the answer to this question ought to be yes, but more ext
ensive research
than I've done about the ways in which aid is managed and distributed might yiel
d a more
decisive answer.
The final, and by far the most critical, set of interpretational issues, comes f
rom the
remainder of the resolution: improves the lives of Afghan citizens. Improves, of cou
rse, is a
relational term, so the first major question you should ask yourself in developi
ng an approach to
the resolution on either side is:
(1) Improves relative to what?
A little consideration of this question suggests a second, related question, nam
ely:
(2) Improves over what timeframe?
Both of these questions will have a substantial impact on how the topic gets deb
ated. Let's
consider them in order.
The negative world
This is, of course, what the first question above implicates: What alternative t
o NATO
presence must the negative debater defend as preferable from the standpoint of A
fghans? A few
possible ways of resolving this issue are:
(1a) Improves relative to an immediate NATO withdrawal.
(1b) Improves relative to a near-term, phased withdrawal, for instance on the 2011
timeframe suggested by President Obama.
(1c) Improves relative to an earlier withdrawal, sometime between 2002 and the
present.
(1d) Improves relative to NATO never having entered the country in the first place
(meaning either (i) having left the Taliban in place, or (ii) having toppled it
via aerial
support of the Northern Alliance and other rebel groups, without ever sending in
ground
troops)
It should be obvious that the question of the resolution, when framed in these d
ifferent ways,
might have very different answers. Perhaps the Taliban regime was oppressive eno
ugh that the
present state of affairs is at least a substantial improvement over our never ha
ving invaded at all,
but we should still have withdrawn sooner, and should be withdrawing now. Or, co
nversely,
perhaps the war was a bad idea in the first place, but now that we're in the cou
ntry, withdrawing
prematurely would only compound our mistake. There are authors out there saying
both of those
things, and whether those authors are affirming or negating crucially depends on
which of the
above possibilities frames the debate round.
My personal preference, from the standpoint of debatability, would be (1b). This
approach
most closely tracks with the debate that actual policymakers and analysts are cu
rrently engaged
in, widening the scope of the topic literature, and simultaneously avoid the tho
rny counterfactuals
that arise from figuring out, in effect, what everyone involved would have done
if they hadn't done
what they actually did. Since I doubt that very many judges will accept the nega
tive team simply
fiating an alternative to the present NATO stance, or to the whole history of NA
TO operations in
the country, debating under (1c) or (1d) would require a lot of tough-to-substan
tiate predictive
analysis about, for instance, how a 2005 withdrawal would have played out if it
had happened.
That said, if you think that another interpretation would be more advantageous f
or you and think
you can justify it, by all means go whichever route seems best.
Timeframe
The resolution frames its question in the present tense, but unfortunately, most
of the
literature you're likely to find is going to be answering a slightly different q
uestion: Either (2a)
whether NATO presence has improved the lives of Afghan citizens, or (2b) in the
case of literature
about the withdrawal timeframe, whether continued NATO presence will improve the
lives of
Afghan citizens. Since our only real evidence about the present comes from the p
ast, and our
only real concern from a policy standpoint is with the future, it will be pretty
difficult to find anyone
arguing about the precise question posed by the resolution, literally understood
. Instead, you're
likely to find yourself debating either (2a) or (2b) above.
The debates stemming from (2a), of course, correspond to (1c) and (1d) above, wh
ile
those stemming from (2b) correspond to (1a) and (1b), but things are a little mo
re complicated
than this might suggest. For one thing, facts about the past are not irrelevant
to questions about
the future when deciding whether we should withdraw our forces in the near-term fu
ture, a
relevant consideration is their track record of efficacy to date. For another th
ing, there are actually
two separate questions of timeframe apart of the timeframe of the presence we're c
onsidering,
there's also the question of the timeframe of improvement. Can the affirmative t
eam, for instance,
argue that, while Afghan citizens have been worse off since the 2001 invasion th
an they were
before it and the situation is perhaps still getting worse, Afghanistan will ult
imately stabilize and,
all things taken into account, improve the lives of Afghans in the long term? Or
must they show
that improvement is already occurring?
The most intuitive answer here, I think, is that the timeframe for improvement i
s set by the
lifespans of current Afghan citizens the ones actually being discussed in the reso
lution, one
might plausibly think. Thus, improvements ten or fifteen years down the line mig
ht be reasons to
affirm the resolution on balance, but improvements a hundred years down the line
are probably
not. But again, this is open to debate just be aware of it and think carefully abo
ut what
interpretation you want to adopt and what arguments will and won't be available
to you under that
interpretation.
One final, hopefully unnecessary note about framework: A great deal of what you'
ll find on
the topic of Afghanistan will have nothing to do, at least in any immediate or o
bvious way, with the
lives of Afghan citizens. While plenty of authors write about the impact the war
has had on
Afghans, probably a majority of the analyses put out by think tanks and similar
sources concern
US interests in the region, the effects of the war on US and NATO soldiers, and
the impact the
war has had on the US economy, more than it concerns the interests of the Afghan
population.
This literature, unless you can somehow tie impacts to the US or other NATO coun
tries back to
Afghanistan, does not provide a reason to affirm or negate, even though it may p
rovide reasons
extrinsic to the resolution for withdrawing NATO forces or keeping them engaged.
II. The context: Where we are and how we got there
I won't try to describe the entire history of Afghanistan, or even the last ten
years
thereof even if I knew enough to do so accurately, there are a plethora of much be
tter sources
on that subject easily available online. What I will try to do, in the limited s
pace available, is draw
your attention to a few major points of interest that you should research, read
up on, and
understand:
Pre-20th century Afghanistan: The dominant historical trope concerning Afghanist
an is
that the country has been a graveyard of empires. You will find this claim both
propounded and criticized by many authors in the course of your research. It der
ives
plausibility, I think, from the fact that Afghanistan has been on the geographic
al fringes of
many of the greatest empires in history, starting at least with the Persian empi
re of Cyrus
and Darius, and the Macedonian empire of Alexander (who led his army on a brief
campaign through the region, founding the city of Kandahar along the way Kandahar
being most likely a corruption of its original name, Alexandria). More recently,
and better
remembered, the British Empire in India and the Soviet Union in central Asia bot
h abutted
against and tried unsuccessfully to subdue the country. The dominant explanation
for
these failures is the difficulty of Afghanistan's rough, mountainous terrain, wh
ich makes it
hard for even the largest and best-equipped armies to uproot determined resistan
ce. A
great many critics predicted American defeat in Afghanistan for that reason befo
re the
war even began. Others, however, point out that Afghanistan has been successfull
y
subdued several times before, most notably by the Mongol and Timurid empires, an
d
argue that the position of the United States is in important ways disanalogous t
o those of
the British and Soviets.
The Soviet experience and its aftermath: This bit of history is pretty well know
n and well
remembered since the rise of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 90's, and even m
ore so
after the September 11th attacks and subsequent invasion. The short story is thi
s: The
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, was successful at first, but was ultim
ately
repelled over the course of a decade by the Afghan mujahedeen, with enormous
assistance from the United States, its anti-Soviet allies, and Islamic states li
ke Pakistan
that saw the fight as a holy war. Unfortunately, once the war was over (and the
Soviet
Union on the brink of collapse largely as a result), the craziest wing of the re
sistance we
had helped to support, develop and arm ended up taking over the country and turn
ing it
into an Islamic theocracy that permitted anti-Western terrorist organizations to
operate
freely within its borders until ultimately we had to go and clean up our own mes
s. If you
haven't already seen it, go watch Charlie Wilson's War, which gives a pretty goo
d
account of this whole chain of events, and is just an overall awesome movie.
After 9/11: Much as this scares me, some of you reading this were only five or s
ix years
old in 2001, so what still seems like current events to the rest of us may feel
like history to
you. In any case, if you weren't following the news too carefully at the time, t
he war in
Afghanistan began less than a month after 9/11, initially in the form of massive
air
campaign in support of rebel groups like the Northern Alliance which had already
been
fighting the Taliban, with limited US support, since the end of the Soviet war a
nd
controlled substantial parts of the country to begin with (hence, in large part,
why the
north of the country has been so much more peaceful than the south for the last
nine
years). As would later be the case in Iraq, toppling the existing government was
not at all
difficult, and the only major mishap in the first days of the war was the failur
e to capture
Osama bin Laden at the Battle of Tora Bora.
The rise of the insurgency: Unfortunately, the general consensus is that we didn
't do
nearly enough in the next few years to consolidate or protect our gains, and gav
e the
Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other insurgent groups too much time to catch their breat
h and
regroup, partly in Afghanistan and partly in remote, northwest regions of Pakist
an, where
they remain strong to this day and now present a real and growing threat to the
Pakistani
government as well. In large part, this lack of attention was a result of our al
most
exclusive focus on Iraq, which became the dominant theater of combat from the ti
me of
our invasion in 2003 until very recently, with the end in 2008 of the Iraq troop
surge. By
the time our attention shifted back to Afghanistan, the insurgency there was alr
eady
consolidating de facto control over large areas of the country.
Obama's Afghan strategy: A major component of Obama's campaign platform in 2008
was a promise of renewed focus on Afghanistan, and with the nominal end of comba
t
operations in Iraq earlier this year, the surge in Afghan forces which began bac
k in 2008
before Obama took office has continued apace.
Which brings us back to the present. The current situation in Afghanistan is ver
y much in flux, and
no one seems to agree on whether the trend lines on any number of vital fronts a
re positive or
negative. That said, there are a number of clear features of the current situati
on which you'll need
to understand to debate this topic successfully. Again, nothing comprehensive, b
ut a few
highlights:
The military situation: Since the current troop surge began in 2008, and acceler
ated in
2009, ISAF forces have undertaken a number of important offensive operations des
igned
to uproot major Taliban centers of power moving into Taliban-controlled areas, see
king
out camps and supply caches, and fighting street by street to clear out insurgen
ts from
urban areas. The most notable recent operations have been first in Helmand Provi
nce,
and more recently in the city of Marjah. The third such operation, in Kandahar (
both the
city and the province, long considered major centers of Taliban power and popula
r
support), began on September 15th, and by the time you debate your first tournam
ent,
there will doubtless be plenty to say about it. You should be familiar with all
three
operations.
Military command: General Stanley McChrystal was recently removed as the command
er
of ISAF forces in Afghanistan after publically criticizing President Obama; he w
as
replaced with General David Petraeus, who had previously commanded US forces in
Iraq, and overseen both wars as the head of CENTCOM. Petraeus seems to be pretty
universally well thought of, but his credentials and ability to command counter-
insurgency
operations are certainly pertinent questions in the context of the resolution.
The political situation: As I mentioned earlier, I'm writing this on the day of
the Afghan
elections, so anything I say here will be out of date by the time you read this.
The short
story is, Hamid Karzai's government isn't very popular and is seen as largely il
legitimate,
and the Taliban is doing the best it can to discourage people from voting so tha
t whatever
government results from this election won't seem any more legitimate.
The economic situation: A hugely important geological survey released over the s
ummer
suggests that Afghanistan is sitting on enormous quantities of previously unknow
n
mineral deposits (most importantly lithium, used for a number of high-technology
applications), worth something in the neighborhood of $1 trillion all told. Whet
her this is
good news or bad news is up for debate, however enormous natural resource reserves
have not proven to be a recipe for universal prosperity in other poor countries
over the
past century, and they may simply throw more fuel on the fire of ongoing civil c
onflict, or
end up enriching an elite at the expense of the general population.
Civilian casualties: A major source of tension between the US and Afghan governm
ents
has been the number of civilian deaths resulting from ISAF military operations,
particularly air strikes. As a result, Generals McChrystal and Petraeus have bot
h worked
to implement new guidelines limiting the use of airstrikes and other dangerous t
actics with
an eye towards minimizing civilian casualties and winning over more of the Afgha
n public.
So far, these guidelines seem to have been somewhat successful, but civilian dea
ths
have by no means ceased, and remain an important issue.
Negotiation and reintegration: A large part of current ISAF strategy in Afghanis
tan is to
convince more low-level insurgent fighters to give up the fight and reintegrate
into Afghan
society and the political process. The Afghan government is also attempting to b
ring more
big players warlords, tribal leaders, etc in the fold in order to coopt the resistan
ce.
There is some talk, as well, of finding a negotiated solution with the Taliban som
e have
even suggested offering the Taliban a power-sharing arrangement that gives them
control
over much of the south, although this proposal is almost certain to go nowhere a
nd
seems like a Very Bad Idea for all sorts of reasons. The viability of all these
approaches
will likely depend quite a bit on the success of ISAF/Afghan military operations
over the
next month or so, so again, keep yourself posted.
The timeframe for withdrawal: Obama has talked quite a bit about 2011 as a deadl
ine for
wrapping up combat operations and beginning to withdraw, but he has maintained a
great
deal of strategic ambiguity over the exact nature and firmness of that deadline.
Almost
everyone seems to agree that a complete withdrawal by 2011 will be next to impos
sible,
and would be disastrous from the standpoint of the Afghan populace (so the best
negative ground is probably to advocate a phased withdrawal beginning in 2011, w
hich is
about the most that anyone in the literature advocates). Some authors further ar
gue that
the perceived lack of US commitment which has resulted from the frequent touting
of the
deadline has made the insurgency more resilient and less willing to negotiate.
So, with all that in mind, let's talk about arguments.
III. Affirming and negating
What the preceding summary ought to suggest to you, more than anything else, is
that
there are very few certainties about the present situation in Afghanistan. Almos
t any issue can be
argued offensively either way (as an area in which NATO presence is proactive he
lping or
proactively hurting the citizens of Afghanistan), under almost any of the interp
retations outlined in
Section I. The three biggest issue clusters are likely to be the following:
Security: Of course, the first critical question on this front is whether the IS
AF is winning
or losing the war with the Taliban, and on that question, opinion is still sharp
ly divided.
That said, even if we are losing the war, it's hard to see how that's an argumen
t for
immediate withdrawal unless (as only a few would argue) we're losing it so badly
that
victory is no longer a realistic possibility and our continued presence just pro
longs the
inevitable. Affirmatives, however, will still want to argue that we've made subs
tantial
strides towards keeping the Afghan people safe, and that continued commitment is
needed to consolidate those gains. Also on the security front is the question of
civilian
casualties, which negatives will no doubt want to play up; affirmatives, though,
can argue
that while civilian casualties remain high, they are mostly (and increasingly) t
he fault of
the Taliban rather than NATO forces, and leaving the Afghan government to its ow
n
devices against the Taliban would no Afghan civilians no favors at all in that r
egard.
Governance, justice and human/civil rights: On the one hand, the Taliban was pre
tty
terrible, and despite their misgivings about NATO and the US, most Afghans are s
till glad
to be rid of them and have no wish to see them return. Afghans can now vote in e
lections,
women can go to school and run for political office, and courts no longer operat
e under
the harshest interpretations of Sharia law. On the other hand, no one much likes
the
current government either most of its members seem far more motivated by personal
or
factional interests than by the public good, corruption is nearly universal, and
in many
places law and order are purely nominal. Finally, the entire constitutional fram
ework for
the current government was imposed on Afghans from the outside, and may or may n
ot
reflect their genuine underlying preferences or respect whatever rights of polit
ical selfdetermination
they might have. It's still hard to argue that, purely as regards these issues,
things are not much better than they were under the Taliban, but it's quite a bi
t easier to
argue that NATO's continued presence isn't making things any better Western leader
s,
whether army officers or bureaucrats, simply don't understand Afghan culture or
political
tradition well enough to enact real, meaningful reforms without alienating all t
he key
stakeholders who must be on board for such reforms to stick.
The economy: Afghanistan remains desperately poor, as it has been for most of re
cent
history. Again, things are probably better than they were under the Taliban, but
that's not
to say that NATO's presence is a source of continued improvement. Aid and
reconstruction efforts have not been outstandingly successful, and the money bei
ng
poured into them might perhaps (although this is a big perhaps ) be better managed
by
the Afghan government, NGO's, or international bodies like the UN, World Bank or
IMF.
The recently announced mineral deposits, whose discovery was largely a result of
Pentagon (and hence NATO) funding, might turn out to be either a blessing or a c
urse,
with plenty of good reasons to expect either outcome.
Those, I think, are the major topic areas on which debate is likely to focus. Fo
r purposes of
simplicity, then, let's conclude this section by condensing the preceding discus
sion down to a
simple list of the most likely stock arguments on the topic:
Ways in which NATO presence might be improving the lives of Afghans:
Overthrowing the Taliban, which was pretty clearly a less than fantastic regime
Successfully fighting the Taliban and other insurgent groups, preventing an all-
out civil
war or return to theocracy
Training the Afghan army and police to fight the insurgency
Ensuring rights like freedom of speech, religion, and so on, especially for wome
n
Creating and strengthening a democratic (albeit imperfectly democratic) governme
nt
Fighting corruption and abuses of power in said government
Strengthening the economy through improved security for foreign investment,
encouraging trade, and doing business directly with Afghan firms.
Providing aid and reconstruction assistance to rebuild infrastructure
Ways in which NATO presence might be harming the lives of Afghans:
Fighting the Taliban poorly allowing them to more harm than they should be able to
Doing a similarly poor job of training Afghan forces
Supporting a corrupt, ineffective, and not especially democratic regime
Violating Afghan sovereignty and self-determination
Feeding corruption through inept management of aid and contracting
Needlessly killing Afghan civilians in the process of fighting the war
Setting the stage for an economy based on either strife over, or foreign exploit
ation of
natural resources at the expense of an impoverished population
IV. Conclusion
To reiterate, none of this is more than an extremely cursory introduction to the
depth of
literature and argumentation available to you on this topic. Hopefully, though,
it has helped to
clarify some background issues of interpretation, and suggested some avenues for
developing
case positions and strategies. If you have questions about anything I've said, f
eel free to email
me at christian.tarsney@gmail.com. Otherwise, go get to your research, and good
luck in the
month of October!
PRO
EVIDENCE
WITHDRAWAL
IRRESPONSIBLE
NATO DEFEAT WOULD MEAN DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES FOR CIVILIANS AS
MILITANTS ARE STRENGTHENED.
Rayment, Sean. "Army Chief Warns of 'terrifying Prospect' of Failure in Afghanis
tan." Telegraph. 3
Oct. 2009. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/6258028/Army-chief-wa
rns-ofterrifying-
prospect-of-failure-in-Afghanistan.html>.
In an unprecedented intervention, the chief of the general staff described the c
onflict as "this
generation's war" and added that failure by Nato would have an "intoxicating eff
ect" on militant
Islam.
In his first interview as the head of the Army, Sir David told The Sunday Telegr
aph that if Britain
and Nato failed in Afghanistan the risks to the western world would be "enormous
" and
"unimaginable".
He said: "If al-Qaeda and the Taliban believe they have defeated us what next? W
ould they stop
at Afghanistan? Pakistan is clearly a tempting target not least because of the f
act that it is a
nuclear-weaponed state and that is a terrifying prospect. Even if only a few of
those (nuclear)
weapons fell into their hands, believe me they would use them. The recent airlin
es plot has
reminded us that there are people out there who would happily blow all of us up.
" (sa)
NATO FAILURE WILL HAVE AN INTOXICATING EFFECT ON MILITANTS STRENGTHENING
THEM.
Rayment, Sean. "Army Chief Warns of 'terrifying Prospect' of Failure in Afghanis
tan." Telegraph. 3
Oct. 2009. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/6258028/Army-chief-wa
rns-ofterrifying-
prospect-of-failure-in-Afghanistan.html>.
Sir David has issued his unprecedented warning because he believed the public an
d even
members of the government had not "woken up" to the "enormous risks" which would
result if the
war was lost.
He said: "Failure would have a catalytic effect on militant Islam around the wor
ld and in the region
because the message would be that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have defeated the US
and the
British and Nato, the most powerful alliance in the world. So why wouldn't that
have an
intoxicating effect on militants everywhere? The geo-strategic implications woul
d be immense."
(sa)
THE TALEBAN ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS
VIOLATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IT WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE TO WITHDRAW.
"Afghanistan Leak Exposes NATO's Incoherent Civilian Casualty Policy | Amnesty I
nternational."
Amnesty International. 26 July 2010. Web. 08 Sept. 2010. <http://www.amnesty.org
/en/news-andupdates/
afghanistan-leak-exposes-natos-incoherent-civilian-casualty-policy-2010-07-26>.
"These documents do not provide a comprehensive look at the situation in Afghani
stan.
International forces operating in the country still have to give a full account
of what their forces
have done in the past, and act immediately to ensure that there is a much better
system of
monitoring, accountability, and compensation in place for Afghan civilians," Sam
Zarifi said.
"These leaks also show that the Taleban are responsible for the majority of the
systematic human
rights violations and violations of the laws of war in this conflict, but this d
oes not excuse NATO
forces from their responsibility to protect civilians." (sa)
A RETURN TO TALEBAN RULE WOULD DEVASTATE THE AFGHANISTAN ECONOMY AND
POLITICAL SOCIETY.
Friedman, Ann. "Listening to Afghanistan | The American Prospect." The American
Prospect. 22
Dec. 2009. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=listening_to_afghanistan>.
I was reminded of that column after Obama's speech announcing his Afghanistan st
rategy, In it,
he declared, "For the Afghan people, a return to Taliban rule would condemn thei
r country to
brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy, and the denial
of basic human
rights to the Afghan people -- especially women and girls." But he made very cle
ar that he does
not see our involvement in Afghanistan as a humanitarian mission. As the America
n left debates,
I'm struck by a desire to know what Afghan women, who have been living under the
U.S.
occupation for roughly eight years now, think would be best for their country. (
sa)
LACK OF PAKISTANI PRESSURE, NOT NATO, IS REPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTINUED
VIOLENCE AGAINST AFGHAN CIVILIANS.
Tyson, Ann S. "A Sober Assessment of Afghanistan - Washingtonpost.com."
Washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post Company, 15 June 2008. Web. 08 Sept. 201
0.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2008/06/14/AR2008061401639.html?nav=rss_nation/special>.
McNeill criticized Pakistani efforts to crack down on that threat, and -- offeri
ng his unofficial view --
described the political situation in Islamabad as "dysfunctional.
He also criticized efforts by the Pakistan government to negotiate peace deals w
ith insurgents on
the frontier, saying past agreements have led to increased attacks across the bo
rder in
Afghanistan. McNeill said the 50 percent increase in attacks in eastern Afghanis
tan in April
compared with the same month last year is "directly attributable to the lack of
pressure on the
other side of the border."
"What's missing is action to keep pressure on the insurgents," he said. For exam
ple, Pakistan's
army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, has for four months failed to agree to attend a
meeting that
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States have held in recent years on border
problems. (sa)
NATO PRESENCE IS KEY TO STOP CHILD ABUSE.
Vlahos, Kelley B. "The Rape of the Afghan Boys." Antiwar.com. 13 Apr. 2010. Web.
19 Sept.
2010. <http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/04/12/a-deal-with-the-devil/>.
But observers say the age-old ritual of man-boy predatory sex, which is obliquel
y condoned
throughout Afghanistan because of a pervasive fear or indifference about prosecu
ting it on any
serious level, according to numerous reports, has proliferated after decades of
poverty,
corruption, and a lack of enduring social institutions. All reports indicate tha
t while bacha bazi and
the abuse is illegal, perpetrators rarely pay for their crimes. Meanwhile, poor
families sell their
children, and orphans are snatched off the street. They are the meekest, preyed
upon by the
strongest the kind of wealthy, powerful men who have benefited most from the Wes
tern
occupation and generous foreign aid. (sa)
THE UK DEFENCE SECRETARY LIAM FOX CLAIMS PREMATURE WITHDRAWAL WOULD
DESTABILIZE THE REGION.
"Taliban Attack on Nato Base in Afghanistan Is 'repelled'" BBC. 30 June 2010. We
b. 19 Sept.
2010. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10457745>.
"We must hold our nerve, maintain our resolve, and have the resilience to see th
e job through,"
he added.
Mr Fox argued that were coalition forces to leave now, the world would see "the
return of the
destructive forces of trans-national terror".
He identified the risk of civil war in Afghanistan creating a security vacuum an
d the
"destabilisation of Pakistan with potentially unthinkable regional, and possibly
nuclear,
consequences".
To withdraw prematurely would mean giving "a shot in the arm to jihadists everyw
here, reenergising
violent radical and extreme Islamism", Mr Fox said. (sa)
THE TALIBAN ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THREE QUARTERS OF CIVILIAN DEATHS THIS
YEAR.
"Afghan Civilian Toll up by a Third - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English.
" Al Jazeera
English. 10 Aug. 2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
<http://english.aljazeera.net//news/asia/2010/08/201081075049886818.html>.
The number of civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan has reportedly soared b
y 31 per cent in
the first six months of this year.
More than 1,200 Afghans were killed and almost 2,000 injured in the first six mo
nths of the year,
the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said on Tuesday in its mid-
year report.
The Taliban and other anti-government elements were responsible for more than th
ree quarters of
all civilian casualties, an increase from 53 per cent last year, the report said
.
Meanwhile, 12 per cent of the casualties were attributed to US, Nato and other p
ro-government
forces. (sa)
AFGHANISTAN
IS
IMPROVING
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES FROM NATO HAVE BEEN REDUCED THIS YEAR.
Faiez, Rahim. "UN: Afghan Civilian Deaths Rise Sharply | CommonDreams.org." Comm
on
Dreams. 10 Aug. 2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/10-4>.
The U.N. report showed a reduction in civilian casualties from NATO action, but
the overall rise in
deaths indicated that the war is getting ever-more violent - undermining the coa
lition's aim of
improving security in the face of a virulent Taliban insurgency.
"The human cost of this conflict is unfortunately rising," said Staffan De Mistu
ra, the top U.N.
envoy in Afghanistan. "We are very concerned about the future because the human
cost is being
paid too heavily by civilians. This report is a wake-up call." (sa)
THE SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN HAS IMPROVED THANKS TO NATO.
Gearan, Ann. "Gates Says Situation in Afghanistan Improving - Navy News | News f
rom
Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times." Navy TImes. 20 June 2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/06/ap_afghanistan_gates_062010/>.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday that the spike in U.S. casualties in
Afghanistan was
expected and that people are too quick to say the war is going badly.
Gates told Fox News Sunday the war is a tough pull, and said momentum is shifting to
ward
the United States and its partners.
He said that the war effort in the Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan is
going more slowly
than planned. He also acknowledged problems with corruption among the Afghan arm
y forces,
who are supposed to take over when the U.S. and other countries leave Afghanista
n. (sa)
CHILD MORTALITY HAS DECREASED BECAUSE OF NATO.
"Report Shows Improvements in Afghanistan but Many Children Still Suffer." UNICE
F. 28 Sept.
2004. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. <http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_23471
.html>.
The first comprehensive study of the situation of children and women in Afghanis
tan in nearly a
decade has been released today. It shows that fewer infants are dying and more c
hildren are
going to school. But it also shows that the majority of the country still has no
access to clean
water, and mortality rates remain high.
More than 20,800 households were involved in the nationwide statistical survey,
which was
carried out by the Afghanistan Central Statistical Office with support from UNIC
EF. All 32
provinces were covered, although a small number of areas were still too dangerou
s and
inaccessible to reach. (sa)
FOUR MILLION CHILDREN ARE NOT ATTENDING SCHOOL.
"Report Shows Improvements in Afghanistan but Many Children Still Suffer." UNICE
F. 28 Sept.
2004. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. <http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_23471
.html>.
The survey shows that four million children are now attending school and there h
ave been great
improvements in health-related indicators. The number of cases of polio and meas
les has
declined.
But there are still millions of girls who don't go to school and a large portion
of the population has
no access to clean water. Diarrhoea causes the death of many children and health
care for
women in rural areas is limited. (sa)
AFGHANISTAN'S HEALTH SYSTEM HAS IMPROVED.
"Substantial Improvements Achieved in Afghanistan's Health Sector." School of Pu
blic Health at
Johns Hopkins. 5 July 2007. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2007/Burnham_afghanistan.h
tml>.
Results from assessments conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloombe
rg School
of Public Health and the Indian Institute of Health Management Research show sub
stantial
improvements in the health status of the people of Afghanistan after decades of
conflict. From
2004 to 2006, the health system has shown improvement for many key measures in a
majority of
provinces. These results demonstrate that improvements in health service deliver
y have been
achieved across the country in a short period of time, according to the research
ers. The results
from the assessments were presented to the Ministry of Public Health in June. (s
a)
AFGHANISTAN'S HEALTH SYSTEM IS MAKING PROGRESS.
blic Health at
tml>.
The delivery of public health service is improving steadily in Afghanistan as the
Ministry of Public
Health makes progress towards meeting its goals, said principal investigator Gilb
ert Burnham,
MD, professor of international health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health a
nd director of the
Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. Despite these gains, health facilities
in Afghanistan
have room for improvement in several areas. (sa)
HEALTH SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS ARE ACROSS THE BOARD.
blic Health at
tml>.
For 2006, the Afghanistan Health Sector Balanced Scorecard showed continued perf
ormance
improvements in health facilities across the country. Driving these advances wer
e increased
availability of essential drugs and family planning supplies, improved quality o
f patient care,
increased provision of antenatal care to pregnant women, upgraded skills among h
ealth workers,
increases in the number of female health workers providing care throughout the c
ountry and
relatively high levels of patient satisfaction. (sa)
THE PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN RECEIVING ANTENATAL CARE HAS INCREASED.
blic Health at
tml>.
The percentage of women in rural Afghanistan receiving antenatal care during pre
gnancy from a
skilled provider increased from an estimated 4.6 in 2003 to 32.2 in 2006. Over t
he same time
period, the percentage of women in rural Afghanistan who had a doctor, nurse or
midwife assist
with their last delivery increased from 6.0 to 18.9. (sa)
MORE CHILDREN ARE RECEIVING LIFE-SAVING IMMUNIZATIONS.
blic Health at
tml>.
More children are receiving vital childhood immunizations, according to the asse
ssments. The
percentage of children 12-23 months of age in rural Afghanistan who received the
BCG vaccine to
protect against tuberculosis increased from an estimated 56.5 in 2003 to 70.2 in
2006. The
percentage of children 12-23 months of age in rural Afghanistan who received the
full dosage of
oral polio vaccine increased to 69.7 in 2006, from 29.9 in 2003. (sa)
INFANT MORTALITY RATES HAVE DROPPED SIGNIFICANTLY.
"New Study Finds Marked Improvements in Afghanistan's Health Sector." ReliefWeb.
26 Apr.
2007. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. <http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/EGUA-
72MQQX?OpenDocument>.
Infant mortality rates in Afghanistan declined from an estimated 165 per 1,000 l
ive births in 2001
to about 135 per 1,000 in 2006, according to preliminary findings of Johns Hopki
ns University
(JHU) household survey. This means that 40,000 fewer infants are dying each year
compared to
during Taliban rule.
A health facility assessment, also commissioned by the Ministry of Public Health
, indicates a 25
percent improvement in overall quality of health services since 2004. The JHU as
sessment -
which surveyed more than 600 health facilities each year since 2004 and used a B
alance Score
Card (BSC) to measure different aspects of quality of services - found improveme
nts in virtually
all aspects of care in almost every province. (sa)
AFGHANISTAN'S HEALTH MINISTER SEES IMPROVEMENTS FROM PRE-2001 RULE.
26 Apr.
Despite many challenges, there are clear signs of health sector recovery and prog
ress
throughout the country, said HE Dr. Mohammad Amin Fatimi, Public Health Minister
of Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan. The JHU evaluations give us some encouragement that the
Government has achieved real successes, but there is a long way to go to provide
access to
basic health services for Afghans in far remote, underserved and marginalized ar
eas across the
country. Continuing progress will be difficult without a firm commitment by the
international
community to increased and secure financing for the sector. (sa)
FAMILY PLANNING SERVICES ARE USED MORE OFTEN NOW.
26 Apr.
JHU conducted the community survey of more than 8,000 households nationwide to m
easure
access and utilization of health services. It found that the proportion of women
receiving antenatal
care increased from 5 percent in 2003 to 30 percent in 2006. The proportion of c
ouples who were
using a modern form of family planning increased from 5 percent to 15 percent in
3 years..
Similarly, the proportion of pregnant women who received attendance by a skilled
health worker
increased 5 percent to nearly 19 percent. (sa)
FORMER TOP MILITARY COMMANDER OF AFGHANISTAN SAW IMPROVEMENTS.
Barnes, Julian E. "McChrystal Sees Improvement in Afghanistan - News - Stripes."
Stripes. 5 Feb.
2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. <http://www.stripes.com/news/mcchrystal-sees-improveme
nt-inafghanistan-
1.98659>.
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said Thursday that security there
is no longer
deteriorating, a view that represents his most optimistic assessment yet.
Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, meeting with reporters in advance of a NATO mee
ting here,
pointed to signs of stability that, while difficult to measure, indicate that Af
ghans also see
improvements in many areas in commerce and daily life.
"I still will tell you the situation in Afghanistan is serious," McChrystal said
. "I do not say now it is
deteriorating." (sa)
SOME PROVINCES ARE EXPERIENCING VERY LITTLE INSURGENT ATTACKS.
Gilmore, Gerry. "Poppy-Free Nangarhar Province Shows Afghanistan Improvements."
SupportOurTroops.org. 26 Sept. 2008. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.supportourtroops.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=306:poppy-
freenangarhar-
province-shows-afghanistan-improvements>.
Things are looking up in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, a region that has bee
n declared
poppy-free and experiences little insurgent-generated violence, senior U.S. offi
cials posted in
Afghanistan told Pentagon reporters today.
The report was in contrast to a Pentagon briefing earlier in the day in which Na
vy Adm. Mike
Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed increased tensions alon
g Afghanistan's
border with Pakistan. Nangahar borders Pakistan, just east of Afghanistan's capi
tal city, Kabul.
Shawn Waddoups and Army Lt. Col. Gregory Allison, the U.S. State Department and
military
leaders, respectively, of Provincial Reconstruction Team Jalalabad that operates
in Nangarhar,
briefed President Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai via video teleconferenc
e earlier
today. Karzai is in Washington for meetings with Bush and other senior U.S. offi
cials. (sa)
POPPY FARMING HAS BEEN ERADICATED IN PARTS OF AFGHANISTAN.
freenangarhar-
Karzai said life was better in his country, and he thanked Bush and the United Sta
tes for all that
you have done for Afghanistan.
During the news conference, Waddoups recalled Nangarhar's Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai
telling him
about a year ago, I'll be able to wipe out the poppy crop.
The governor did so by issuing an ultimatum to growers: plow up the poppy fields
, or go to jail.
Today, Nangarhar province has been declared by a United Nations body as being po
ppy free,
Waddoups said.
Poppy eradication is a major goal of the United Nations because the plants are p
rocessed into
heroin, sold on the black market and used to fund terrorist groups. (sa)
THE PROVINCE OF NANGARHAR IS POPPY FREE NOW.
freenangarhar-
Afghan farmers in Nangarhar province now grow onions, wheat and other food crops
, Waddoups
said. There is more interaction between Afghans and their government than in the
past, he said,
noting the myriad government-provided improvements consisting of new buildings,
roads,
schools, bridges and other infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the reconstruction team hopes to see the development of hydro-electri
c dams to
generate power that can be used to establish food-processing factories and creat
e much-needed
jobs, said Allison, who's also commander of the 935th Agribusiness Development T
eam that
serves Nangarhar province.
The agriculture piece, of course, is a viable alternative (to poppy growing), Alli
son said. But, it's
not a .quick fix.' It takes time for crops to grow, and in some of the rural and
remote areas,
irrigation is a problem. (sa)
ROADS ARE BEING BUILT ACROSS AFGHANISTAN, A SIGNAL OF IMPROVEMENT.
"Senator Says He Sees Improvements in Afghanistan - CTV News." CTV.ca. 9 Apr. 20
08. Web.
20 Sept. 2010. <http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/CanadaAM/20080409/afghan_senator_08040
9/>.
A Liberal senator who just returned from Afghanistan says he's definitely seen i
mprovements
there since his last visit, citing a new road project and better co-operation.
Sen. Colin Kenny, chair of the Senate Standing Committee on National Security an
d Defence, told
Canada AM on Wednesday that an Afghan elder in the volatile Panjwaii district pr
aised a roadbuilding
project there that employs about 400 Afghans.
"He was very positive about the employment, the use of the road. It was a projec
t that Afghans
wanted for themselves," he said, but added that the workers came under harassmen
t from the
Taliban. (sa)
ROAD PROJECTS ARE PIVOTAL TO THE AFGHAN ECONOMY.
"Senator Says He Sees Improvements in Afghanistan - CTV News." CTV.ca. 9 Apr. 20
08. Web.
20 Sept. 2010. <http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/CanadaAM/20080409/afghan_senator_08040
9/>.
Top Canadian and Afghan provincial officials held a ceremony Monday to celebrate
the $4.5-
million project, which will create a 6.5-kilometre stretch of paved road when co
mpleted in October.
The project is being carried out using manual labour, rather than the heavy equi
pment that would
be used in Canada.
There are plans to eventually pave about 22 kilometres of road in the district,
which is considered
the Taliban's heartland.
Paved roads will help Afghan farmers move their produce to market more easily --
and it will make
it tougher for the Taliban to plant roadside bombs, which are responsible for th
e vast majority of
injuries and fatalities suffered by Canadian soldiers these days. (sa)
THE SURGE IS WORKING.
Ferguson, Barbara. "Gates Sees Surge Success in Afghanistan - Arab News." Arab N
ews. 17
Sept. 2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. <http://arabnews.com/world/article141095.ece>.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters late Thursday the surge strategy i
n Afghanistan is
beginning to work. Citing reports from General David Petreaus, the US Commander
in
Afghanistan, Gates said his personal impressions during a recent trip confirmed
these
assessments.
Gates' upbeat assessment comes as the Obama administration faces growing skeptic
ism with
the progress and direction of the war.
Gates was quick to point out there would not be any premature discussion of succ
ess. As I say,
it's early. There may be a greater move in the right direction' in four to six m
onths, he said. I
think there is a general feeling that there has been some progress in that area,
but it will have to
be sustained. (sa)
THE SURGE HAS IMPROVED BOTH NATO AND AFGHAN MILITARY.
Ferguson, Barbara. "Gates Sees Surge Success in Afghanistan - Arab News." Arab N
ews. 17
Sept. 2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. <http://arabnews.com/world/article141095.ece>.
The evidence that General Petraeus is seeing so far suggests to him that it is -
and both on the
civilian and the military side, not just the military side, Gates told the joint
press conference at the
Pentagon with his French counterpart, Herve Morin.
He cited the dramatic growth in the numbers and quality of Afghan security forces
as one cause
for optimism, but said that both he and Petraeus remained cautious. Gates cautione
d that the
US won't make the mistake in Afghanistan of predicting success too soon. The les
sons of
Vietnam and the disastrous Soviet occupation of Afghanistan loom nearly as large
as the
prolonged US military involvement in Iraq. (sa)
PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI SEES VAST IMPROVEMENTS IN HIS NATION SINCE TALIBAN
RULE.
Locke, Megan. "Afghan President Touts Improvements, Thanks Soldiers at Fort Camp
bell." The
United States Army. 17 May 2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2010. <http://www.army.mil/-
news/2010/05/17/39282-afghan-president-touts-improvements-thanks-soldiers-at-for
t-campbell/>.
In a hangar filled with more than 1,200 Soldiers and spouses, Karzai concluded h
is trip to the
United States by focusing on the improvements in Afghanistan since the fall of t
he Taliban almost
10 years ago. He is the first leader of the post-Taliban government.
"Since then, the story of Afghanistan, on many accounts, has been one of extreme
achievements," Karzai said.
Advances in education, healthcare, and the economy are all indicators that Afgha
nistan is
progressing, Karzai said. Women's roles in the predominantly Muslim country also
indicate the
changing mindset. About 27 percent of the country's leaders are women, more than
the U.S. and
other Western nations.
"We have more women in our Parliament than many [other] countries have," Karzai
said.
The leader also lauded the free press that the liberation of Afghanistan from Ta
liban rule provides.
Instead of one government-owned radio and television station, Karzai said, the c
ountry now
boasts dozens of radio and television stations, as well as newspapers.
"The bad thing is they all are against me, no matter what I do," Karzai joked of
Afghanistan's
media outlets. "It looks like the free press doesn't like presidents anywhere in
the world."
With the help of U.S. Soldiers to bring peace, Karzai said Afghanistan can be a
great tourist
destination in the future. However, the leader recognized that much must be done
to ensure the
prosperity of his nation.
"Yes, we still have problems," he said. "Yes, we are still a very poor country.
We have miles to go,
and miles to go before we can call ourselves sufficient." (sa)
THE VIOLENCE IS BECAUSE NATO CAME IN TOO LATE, NOT BECAUSE NATO IS BAD IN
ITSELF.
Chayes, Sarah. "NATO Didn't Lose Afghanistan." The New York Times. 10 July 2007.
Web. 08
Sept. 2010.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/opinion/10chayes.html?ex=1341720000&en=0cfae1
e4ece4
1eaf&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>.
In 2003, NATO moved peacekeeping forces into Kabul and parts of northern Afghani
stan. But not
until 2005, when it was clear that the United States was bogged down in Iraq and
lacked sufficient
resources to fight on two fronts, did Washington belatedly turn to NATO to take
the Afghan south
off its hands. And then it misrepresented the situation our allies would find th
ere. NATO was
basically sold a beefed-up peacekeeping mission. It was told, in effect, that it
would simply need
to maintain the order the United States had established and to help with reconst
ruction and
security.
In fact, as was clear from the ground, the situation had been deteriorating sinc
e late 2002. By
2004, resurgent Taliban were making a concerted push to enter the country from P
akistan, and
intensive combat between American forces and Taliban fighters was taking place n
orth of
Kandahar. By 2005, top Afghan officials could be blown up in downtown Kandahar w
ithout
drawing much of a reaction from either the Afghan government or ours. Notorious
drug lords
governed the three main southern provinces to which we were dispatching our alli
es. It was the
bloodiest and most belligerent situation since the fall of the Taliban.
NATO should have been brought in from the start and given the kind of muscular p
eacekeeping
mission it learned to conduct in the Balkans. Afghanistan's president, Hamid Kar
zai, begged for
peacekeepers, spread throughout the country, in those early years when they coul
d still have
made a difference. (sa)
WE RE
WINNING
THE
WAR/CURRENT
STRATEGY
IS
EFFECTIVE
NATO'S FUNDAMENTAL POSITION IS MUCH STRONGER THAN THAT OF THE SOVIETS OR
THE BRITISH ALMOST EVERYONE STILL HATES THE TALIBAN.
Tellis, Ashley J. Senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International P
eace, specializing
in international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues. Reconciling With
the Taliban?:
Toward an Alternative Grand Strategy in Afghanistan . Carnegie Report. April 2009.
Neither the British nor Soviet experience mimics the current situation. Military
superiority aside,
the U.S. presence in Kabul is seen less as occupation than support for the Afgha
n people, much
to its advantage. The Afghan public, by a margin of 82 percent to 4 percent, opp
ose the Taliban
and desperately seek success from Western military forces. CT
THE IDEA THAT AFGHANISTAN IS UNCONQUERABLE ARISES FROM A SINGLE HISTORICAL
INCIDENT, IS DENIED BY OTHER HISTORY.
eace, specializing
the Taliban?:
In this context, no single idea has done more damage to the alliance's ability t
o muster renewed
purpose than the notion that Afghanistan has always been the .graveyard of empir
es.' President
Obama alluded to this fear when he noted that .we do have to be mindful of the h
istory of
Afghanistan. It is tough territory. And there's a fierce independence in Afghani
stan, and if the
perception is that we are there simply to impose ourselves in a long-term occupa
tion, that's not
going to work in Afghanistan.' General Petraeus, too, repeated this notion in hi
s otherwise
impressive presentation at the Munich Security Conference in February 2009. This
is especially
ironic because the thesis is false. That Afghanistan is the place where empires
go to die derives
from some streams of populist British Indian historiography in the aftermath of
the First Anglo
Afghan War; it grew largely from images associated with the sacking of the Briti
sh residency in
Kabul in 1842 and the systematic slaughter that accompanied the retreating colum
n of 12,000
civilians and 4,000 British-Indian troops. This tragic incident, which colored m
any subsequent
beliefs about the Pashtuns as hardy and invincible warriors who cannot be subjug
ated, obscures
the critical fact that the Raj not only defeated the Afghans subsequently during
the Second and
Third Anglo Afghan Wars (successfully occupying Kabul at various points during tha
t process)
but also that it did so despite vast and enervating distractions within its Indi
an empire. CT
HISTORY DOES NOT PREDICT DEFEAT.
eace, specializing
the Taliban?:
Neither the British nor the Soviet experience in Afghanistan mimics the situatio
n that the United
States and its allies find themselves in currently. Unlike the Raj, which was mi
litarily stressed and
internally enervated, or the Soviets, who were tactically capable but were actua
lly confronting a
peer competitor that was far more powerful and fighting securely from beyond the
theater, the
United States today has global military superiority; can bring it to bear with r
elative ease in
Afghanistan; confronts no adversary comparable to itself; and, most important, i
s present in Kabul
not as an occupier but as a supporter of the Afghan people and, to its advantage,
is largely
recognized as such. Consequently, the circumstances that made Afghanistan the gr
aveyard in
these earlier instances and it was certainly not so in the case of the Raj and whe
ther it was in
respect to the Soviet Union is at least arguable plainly do not carry over to the
current American
involvement within the country. Even apart from these specifics, however, the la
rger historical
record simply does not bear out the claim that Afghanistan has always been an im
perial
necropolis. From the beginning of recorded history, the country has been conquer
ed by at least
sixteen distinct empires. Although local revolts made life difficult during some
interregnums, most
conspicuously during the early Muslim dynasties, the Hotaki period, and in the f
ormative years of
modern Afghanistan, extensive periods of successful foreign dominance including
by the
Achaemenids, Mauryas, Kushans, Ghaznavids, Timurids, and even the Sikhs decisive
ly
undermine the notion that Afghanistan is some destined burial ground because its
inhabitants
have never subjected themselves to outside rule. CT
PETRAEUS GOOD HE WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE TO REPLACE MCCHRYSTAL, WILL
ENHANCE THE FFICACY OF THE RECONSTRUCTION EFFORT.
O'Hanlon, Michael E. Director of Research and Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy at t
he Brookings
Institution. Petraeus a Reassuring Choice in Afghanistan . The Brookings Institutio
n. 24 June
2010.
The announcement that General David Petraeus will now be nominated to succeed Mc
Chrystal is
enormously reassuring. It alleviates or eliminates virtually all of my earlier w
orries about what
would happen if a change of command were made at this crucial moment in the war.
Petraeus is
of course remarkably accomplished in this kind of complex operation; he is very
familiar with
Afghanistan, and the key players there of various nationalities; he has good rap
port with
President Karzai by all accounts; he understands much of the detail of Kandahar,
the crux of this
summer's coming focus of effort. What Petraeus lacks in immediate intimacy with
the Afghanistan
mission, relative to his predecessor, he compensates for with brilliance in unde
rstanding how to
carry out such campaigns (not to mention good rapport with the White House!) Non
e of this
improves battlefield trends in Afghanistan, which remain difficult; none of this
changes the
underlying policy debate about our prospects in Afghanistan, which remain uncert
ain. We have a
long ways to go in this war, and Petraeus will be no panacea. But he will do an
excellent job. CT
MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE WAR IS OVERLY PESSMISTIC; OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS ARE
PROGRESSING WELL AND ON TIME.
he Brookings
Institute. Reasons For Hope On Afghanistan . Washington Post. 26 June 2010.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned on Sunday about a national rush to judgmen
t that the
Afghanistan war is somehow failing and that the overall narrative about the war
has become too
negative. That was practically an era ago regarding Afghanistan, but Gates is st
ill right. With the
drama over Wednesday's change of command receding, it is time to refocus on poli
cy. Several
recent critiques paint only part of the picture, and they are often more wrong t
han right unless
they are presented with greater nuance. Consider: 1. The .Kandahar offensive' is
delayed. This
complaint is strange: The U.S. troop buildup remains slightly ahead of schedule
(95,000 soldiers
are in Afghanistan, an increase of nearly 30,000 this year), and a major offensi
ve in the classic
sense was never promised in Kandahar. Some tactical operations there may be resc
heduled this
summer as U.S. reinforcements arrive but there is no fundamental deviation from th
e plan,
which is to create a .rising tide of security' in Gen. Stanley McChrystal's stil
l-relevant words. CT
HELMAND AND MARJA ARE BOTH PROGRESSING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, DESPITE
INFLATED INTIAL EXPECTATIONS.
he Brookings
The U.S. military erred in raising expectations about its big February operation
in Marja, a midsize
town in Helmand province where violence remains too high and Afghan governance t
oo weak.
But the trend in Helmand, where we have added a number of forces since 2009, is
encouraging.
Even Marja is slowly progressing. The military needs to do a better job document
ing this
progress. The province is in better shape than a year ago in terms of the return
of commerce and
agriculture and the reduction in violence against citizens. CT
EVEN THOUGH ALLIES HAVE FALLEN SHORT OF PROMISES TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL
TRAINERS, THE TRAINING OF THE AFGHAN ARMY IS STILL ON TRACK AND
PROGRESSING WELL.
he Brookings
Our allies have not quite met their promises, or our expectations, for additiona
l trainers. But allies
have deployed more than 5,000 additional combat troops this year, exceeding the
pace expected.
The number of U.S. trainers has risen, and the number of Afghan officers graduat
ing from training
has more than doubled since last year. Growth trajectories for the Afghan army a
nd police remain
on schedule. Perhaps most important, nearly 85 percent of Afghan army units are
.partnered' with
coalition units meaning that they plan, patrol, train and fight together. This is
one of Gen.
McChrystal's many positive legacies. In southern and eastern Afghanistan last mo
nth I saw many
signs of the Afghan army's willingness to fight. The number of key districts whe
re security
conditions are at least tolerable, if not yet good, is up modestly. CT
AT KARZAI LACKS COMMITMENT TO FIGHTING THE TALIBAN: HE'S COMMITTED, HAS NO
INTEREST IN CUTTING A DEAL BEHIND NATO'S BACK.
he Brookings
Some wonder if Karzai's May peace conference, or jirga, reflected a weakening of
will to win the
war. But at that jirga which included no representatives of the Taliban or the Haq
qani network,
the two most lethal parts of the insurgency Karzai made no offer to suspend the co
nstitution,
resign or expel NATO troops. He followed the jirga with a trip to Kandahar, wher
e he asked local
leaders for patience and sacrifice in the coming difficult times. Karzai's perfo
rmance is mixed, and
his half brother still plays a big role in the corruption in Kandahar, but the p
resident is not about to
cut a deal with the enemy that amounts to a negotiated surrender. CT
AT PERCEIVED LACK OF US COMMITMENT: PROVIDES OBAMA WITH POLITICAL
FLEXIBILITY; IF THINGS ARE GOING WELL IN A YEAR, WE'LL STAY THE COURSE.
he Brookings
Some worry that President Obama's ambiguity about the timetable hurts the war ef
fort. I opposed
that deadline and the president's lack of clarity about its meaning. But there i
s still a logic to the
vagueness: It keeps pressure on Afghan officials to deliver, it reminds American
s that this war will
not last forever and it sustains the president's flexibility to adjust the war p
lan to conditions. Even
relative optimists can understand why such flexibility is valuable. If the strat
egy is bearing fruit by
next summer, the U.S. drawdown is likely to be gradual, and the president should
keep saying so.
CT
MARJAH OPERATION WAS SUCCESSFUL, HAS SUBSTANTIALLY IMPROVED SECURITY.
Boot, Max. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at t
he Council on
Foreign Relations. Afghanistan: The Case for Optimism . The Council on Foreign Rela
tions. 2
September 2010
Prior to the Marine-led assault that began in February, Marjah had been complete
ly outside the
control of the Afghan government and the international military force. The Talib
an had been in
charge, and they had used it as a staging ground for attacks elsewhere in southe
rn Afghanistan.
Marjah was also a center of the global opium trade, which helps fund the insurge
ncy. Coalition
aircraft had even been told not to fly over it because it was too dangerous. Tod
ay, six months into
Operation Moshtarak, the Marines and their Afghan partners are solidly establish
ed in the heart of
Marjah and are gradually expanding their control outward. Marines continue to be
attacked, but
they have already managed to deny the Taliban the use of Marjah as a base. Attac
ks in
neighboring districts, as a result, are down sharply. The operation appears to b
e a bust only
because of the exaggerated expectations of immediate success raised by commander
s early on.
CT
PAST MILITARY OPERATIONS HAVE REVITALIZED GUTTED, TALIBAN-CONTROLLED
REGIONS OF THE COUNTRY.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
These highly publicized setbacks created a lasting impression of failure that ig
nores the strides
made since February including the recent replacement of the first district governo
r, Haji Zahir,
with a candidate who appears, at least on paper, to be better qualified. The Mar
ines with whom I
spoke believe that Marjah is on a positive trajectory but that it will require 1
8 months to become
truly stable. That is hardly out of the norm for counterinsurgency operations, w
hich always take
time. To see where Marjah may be heading, one needs to look at other districts i
n central
Helmand that the Marines had entered earlier. I visited one such area, Nawa. It
had been a virtual
ghost town before the Marines arrived last summer. Now the district center is bu
stling and secure
enough that it's possible to walk around without body armor. Other towns in cent
ral Helmand such
as Garmsir and the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, are also fairly peaceful. Th
at's quite an
achievement in a province that has long been the country's most dangerous. CT
OBAMA'S SUPPORT FOR THE WAR IS HIGH THE POLITICAL WILL EXISTS TO GET THE
JOB DONE IN AFGHANISTAN.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
This concern ignores the fact that three times since taking office during his init
ial policy review in
early 2009, then in the more prolonged review in the fall, and finally this June
, when he appointed
Petraeus to replace McChrystal President Obama has affirmed his support for an amb
itious war
effort. Barring some catastrophic failure, it seems unlikely that he will pull t
he rug out from under
his newly appointed four-star commander. Even Vice President Biden, the most voc
iferous
advocate within the administration of a .small footprint' approach, now says tha
t in July 2011,
there will be a .transition' but not necessarily a massive withdrawal of forces .I
t could be as few
as a couple thousand troops,' he told one interviewer. In all likelihood, then,
Petraeus will have
the time and political backing necessary to tackle the Taliban and the sources o
f their appeal in a
serious, concerted way. That doesn't mean he will necessarily succeed, but his s
trategy offers a
much greater likelihood of progress than any conceivable alternative. CT
IT'S BOTH POSSIBLE AND NECESSARY TO DEFEAT THE TALIBAN THE ALTERNATIVE IS
HANDING OVER AFGHANISTAN TO AL-QUEDA.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
There is nothing inevitable about such a dire outcome. Victory is still eminentl
y achievable with a
strategy that focuses not only on defeating the Taliban but also on reducing the
abuses that fuel
their movement. Such a strategy may appear to be overly ambitious, but it is the
only way to keep
the Taliban from returning to power an eventuality that would make a mockery of Ob
ama's
commitment .to disrupt, dismantle, and to defeat al-Qaeda.' The Taliban and al-Q
aeda are bound
together tighter than ever. Only by defeating the former can Petraeus ensure tha
t Afghanistan
does not again become a safe haven for the latter. CT
CIVILIAN
CASUALTIES
LOW/DECREASING
WHILE CIVILIAN DEATHS ARE UP, IT'S THE FAULT OF THE TALIBAN, NOT NATO NATO
FORCES HAVE BEEN STEADILY REDUCING CIVILIAN DEATHS UNDER NEW DIRECTIVES,
AND LEAVING AFGHANISTAN ON ITS OWN AGAINST THE TALIBAN WOULD ONLY MAKE
THINGS WORSE FOR CIVILIANS.
Filkins, Dexter. Foreign Correspondent, New York Times '09 Deadliest Year for Afg
hans, U.N.
Says . The New York Times. 13 January 2010.
Last year was the most lethal for Afghan civilians since the American-led war be
gan here in late
2001, with the Taliban and other insurgent groups causing the vast majority of n
oncombatant
deaths, according to a United Nations survey released Wednesday. The report said
2,412
civilians were killed in 2009, a jump of 14 percent over the previous year. Anot
her 3,566 were
wounded. The growing number of civilian deaths reflects the intensification of t
he Afghan war over
the same period: American and NATO combat deaths jumped to 520 last year, from 2
95, and the
Taliban are more active than at any point in the past eight years. But the most
striking aspect of
the report was the shift in responsibility for the deaths of Afghan civilians. T
he survey found that
the Taliban and other insurgents killed more than twice the number as the Americ
an-led coalition
and Afghan government forces did last year, mostly by suicide bombings, homemade
bombs and
executions. The 1,630 civilians killed by insurgents two-thirds of the total rep
resented a 40
percent increase over the previous year. By contrast, the number of civilians ki
lled by the NATOand
American-led coalition and Afghan government forces in 2009 fell 28 percent, to
596, about a
quarter of the total number. The cause of the 186 other deaths could not be dete
rmined. The
report attributed the drop to measures taken by the American-led coalition to re
duce the danger to
civilians. Since taking over in June as commander of American and NATO forces in
Afghanistan,
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has issued several directives aimed at winning over t
he Afghan
population, sometimes at the cost of forgoing attacks on Taliban fighters. Princ
ipal among these
directives was the tightening of the rules governing airstrikes, the main cause
of civilian fatalities
caused by the American and other NATO forces. Under the new rules, coalition for
ces caught in a
firefight with insurgents may not order an airstrike on a house in a residential
area unless they are
in danger of being overrun. In the past, airstrikes carried out in the heat of b
attle in residential
areas accounted for several widely publicized episodes of civilian deaths. CT
THE TALIBAN IS TRYING TO MINIMIZE CIVILIAN CASUALITIES.
hans, U.N.
For their own part, even the Taliban's leaders have implored their fighters to m
inimize the harm to
Afghan civilians. Last summer, the Afghan Taliban's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar
, put out a
directive to his troops, imploring them to try to win over Afghan civilians. Cal
led .A Book of Rules,'
its character was slightly different from the American directives. Using the jih
adist term for suicide
bombings, the Taliban manual said, .The utmost steps must be taken to avoid civi
lian human loss
in martyrdom operations.' CT
NATO FORCES ARE WORKING TO LIMIT THE USE OF NIGHT RAIDS, WHICH HAVE BEEN
AMONG THE GREATEST SOURCES OF TENSION AND CIVILIAN DEATHS.
hans, U.N.
On the same issue, American commanders said this week that they would tighten th
e rules on
night raids, one of the touchiest subjects among Afghans. American and NATO troo
ps often move
into villages at night because of advantages like surprise and because they typi
cally have
equipment, like night-vision goggles, that allows them to see with very little l
ight when the
insurgents cannot. But some night operations have gone awry, resulting in the de
aths of civilians.
On some occasions, civilians alarmed by the presence of gun-toting men in their
villages have
grabbed their own guns, only to be shot by American or NATO forces, who took the
villagers for
insurgents. And even raids that went relatively smoothly have caused ill will am
ong Afghans, who
are often offended by foreign soldiers moving through their villages or into the
ir homes after
dark. Even absent gunfire, the raids can cause serious problems. Eight Afghans w
ere killed and
about a dozen were wounded in a town in the southern province of Helmand on Tues
day, after
Afghan intelligence officers fired on rioters incensed by rumors that Americans
conducting a night
raid had desecrated a Koran and defiled local women. According to the new direct
ive, American
and other NATO forces should explore alternatives to night raids, like cordoning
villages at night
and then moving in at sunrise. CT
AT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: NEW POLICY IS SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCING THEM WITHOUT
INCREASING DANGER TO US TROOPS.
he Brookings
Directives to restrict the use of firepower when civilians may be present increa
se risk to our
troops. George F. Will has raised this concern [.Futility in Afghanistan,' June
20]; the infamous
Rolling Stone article did as well, quoting troops in the field. But evidence sug
gests it's not true.
Roadside bombs, against which firepower is tactically irrelevant, overwhelmingly
remain the most
frequent cause of casualties to coalition troops. The percent of casualties from
firefights is up, but
modestly and in any event McChrystal favored allowing troops in danger to call in
supporting
firepower. Meanwhile, the policies have reduced civilian casualties from coaliti
on forces, an
important step toward winning greater support from Afghans. CT
AFGHAN
POLITICAL
SYSTEM
VIABLE;
NATO
PRESENCE
STRENGTHENS
FIGHTING CORRUPTION IS KEY TO AFGHAN STABILITY.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
If they are to succeed in stabilizing Afghanistan, international forces will hav
e to do more than
simply spread out across the countryside. They will also have to be more careful
about how they
employ their resources to prevent their own largess from inadvertently fueling t
he insurgency. As
General Petraeus said in his recently released Counterinsurgency Guidance: .Mone
y is
ammunition; don't put it in the wrong hands.' Foreign aid is Afghanistan's chief
source of revenue,
amounting to an estimated $14 billion a year (out of a total GDP of $23 billion)
. But so much is
currently being stolen and misspent that according to the Washington Post, more
than $1 billion a
year in cash is leaving Afghanistan via flights to Dubai. It may be impossible t
o stop the graft
altogether, but it can certainly be reduced to less catastrophic proportions thr
ough simple steps
such as building more accountability into Western contracts for logistics, const
ruction, and other
tasks. These lucrative jobs are handed out to prime contractors who are able to
navigate a
Byzantine legal process and then hire shady subcontractor firms that give kickba
cks to Afghan
power brokers. This process has led to the proliferation of private security fir
ms, which deploy
veritable armies of gunmen to safeguard trucks carrying Western supplies. As not
ed in a June
report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, .A typical c
onvoy of 300
supply trucks going from Kabul to Kandahar, for example, will travel with 400 to
500 guards in
dozens of trucks armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades (RP
Gs).' Often
the contractors will attack people traveling on the highways or living around th
em to ensure safe
passage of their goods. When the contractors can't fight their way through, they
simply pay off the
Taliban en route. The U.S. is happy not to deploy scarce soldiers for such assig
nments, but the
cost is steep. This process, the House report noted, fuels warlordism, extortion,
and corruption,
and it may be a significant source of funding for insurgents ... undercut[ting]
efforts to establish
popular confidence in a credible and sustainable Afghan government. CT
THE TROOP SURGE IS KEY TO FIGHTING CORRUPTION IN THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT
EXPERIENCE IN IRAQ PROVES.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
If coalition forces, working with honest Afghans (yes, they do exist), can reduc
e the overall level of
corruption, they can do much to reduce the insurgency's appeal. As things stand,
the Taliban
posture, rather hypocritically, as the incorruptible guardians of Islamic virtue
fighting against the
crooks who dominate the current government and against the foreign soldiers who
are seen as
their enablers. Reduce the level of corruption and popular anger will be directe
d where it
belongs against the Taliban, with their unpopular, antediluvian ideology and histo
ry of brutal,
horrifying violence. That is a difficult task, but it is no longer as unthinkabl
e as it was when NATO
had only 50,000 troops in the country. With 140,000 foreign troops and 130,000 sol
diers in the
Afghan National Army, which is widely viewed as relatively clean ISAF has newfound
leverage
to take on not only the Taliban but also the abusive practices that enhance thei
r appeal. And in
David Petraeus, ISAF has a commander uniquely skilled in the delicate art of fig
hting alongside a
local government while working to reform it. That is precisely what he did in Ir
aq, where the
enemies were not only al-Qaeda and other Sunni insurgent groups but also Shiite
death squads
that operated from inside the Iraqi Security Forces. Senior officials in Prime M
inister Nouri al-
Maliki's government, such as former Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, were implicate
d in the worst
Shiite excesses. In 2007, Petraeus worked closely with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Croc
ker to
pressure Maliki to act against Shiite extremists, notwithstanding their connecti
ons to the highest
levels of his own government. These efforts were so successful that in 2008 Mali
ki, on his own
initiative, launched a successful military operation against the Shiite extremis
t stranglehold on
Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. Many of the erstwhile Shiite extremists remai
n on the scene
today (indeed, Bayan Jabr himself is finance minister), but they are no longer e
ngaged in
murderous attacks, because the overall situation has become much more stable and
peaceful.
There is no reason, in principle, why it shouldn't be possible to produce a simi
lar transformation in
Hamid Karzai's Afghanistan. Admittedly, Afghanistan is less developed than Iraq;
literacy levels,
for instance, are much lower. But there are plenty of Afghan technocrats, many o
f whom have
lived abroad for long stretches and who would eagerly join the government if the
y could do so
without becoming part of a culture of corruption. In some ways, the odds of succ
ess are actually
better than they were in Iraq because the level of violence is so much lower. (A
fghanistan
experienced a record level of civilian casualties in 2010, but it was still 15 t
imes less violent than
Iraq in the pre-surge year of 2006.) In fact, the greatest obstacle to victory i
n Afghanistan may not
be the conduct of Afghanis but rather the perception that the Obama administrati
on is headed out
the door and that it won't take the time to carry out difficult, lengthy tasks s
uch as governance
reform. CT
HUMAN
RIGHTS
HIGH
WOMEN ARE MAKING POSITIVE PROGRESS IN AFGHAN SOCIETY.
Lemmon, Gayle Tzemach. Fellow and Deputy Director of the Women and Foreign Polic
y
Program. While the World Scales Back its Afghanistan Ambitions, Afghan Women Push
Forward . Huffington Post. 15 September 2010.
At the same time the United States is scaling back its goals for Afghanistan, wo
men in the country
are scaling up their own ambitions. In arenas ranging from medicine to the milit
ary, from small
business to civil society, women are speaking up for themselves and tackling eve
r-larger
aspirations. While problems loom large in a country in which female literacy rat
es struggle to top
15 percent and rampant insecurity leads many families to keep their daughters an
d wives
indoors, women are making progress. Though their efforts are often overlooked as
the world
trains its focus on the exits in Afghanistan, they are, quietly and slowly, crea
ting change in their
families and their country. CT
THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN AFGHAN POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC LIFE IS INCREASING.
Lemmon, Gayle Tzemach. Fellow and Deputy Director of the Women and Foreign Polic
y
Program. While the World Scales Back its Afghanistan Ambitions, Afghan Women Push
Forward . Huffington Post. 15 September 2010.
On Wednesday a group of women will gather at the Women's Garden in Kabul to .pro
mote
women's participation in the upcoming election.' Despite security risks and thre
ats to their
campaigns, more than 400 women are running in Saturday's parliamentary vote, a f
igure that is
up twenty percent from five years ago. Women leaders won a hard-fought battle to
be heard at
July's Kabul Conference. Now their goal is to keep the pressure on their own gov
ernment and the
international community, which has promised that peace with the Taliban will not
come at the
price of their rights. .We are not going to be silent,' said Suraya Pakzad, a wo
men's rights activist
and founder of Voice of Afghan Women. .We don't want to lose things to gain thin
gs to lose the
rights of women, the right to education, the rights of media.' Meanwhile, as the
discussions about
Taliban negotiations and graceful exit strategies wind on, plans for the future
push forward. The
Ministry of Public Health is now launching a study to judge just how much matern
al health
progress Afghanistan has made these past eight years. The hope is that the study
will show a
significant drop in maternal mortality thanks in large part to the nation's 2500
midwives whose
training program has now become a regional role model. On the business front, Af
ghan women
entrepreneurs are fighting to find access to lucrative foreign markets. One Kabu
l clothing exporter
is now regularly shipping her shawls to the United States, while two soccer ball
makers are
preparing to send their wares to New York in time for the holiday season. And th
e fashion firm
Kate Spade and the non-governmental organization Women for Women International a
re coming
together to create jobs for more than 1,000 women by the end of 2013. CT
ECONOMY
STRONG
AFGHAN ECONOMY HAS SUBSTANTIALLY IMPROVED SINCE NATO INTERVENTION.
Bharoocha, Asim. Lecturer, ISRA University. Implications of NATO Presence in Afgh
anistan: The
Internal Dimensions. April 21, 2009.
.After the NATO's attack there have been some great starts. Overall, various kin
ds of projects are
underway, facilitated by the NATO-ISAF PRTs: schools are being rebuilt with the
mentoring or
assistance of ISAF engineers, allowing children to resume their education; irrig
ation ditches,
pipelines, reservoirs and wells are being constructed to bring water to the loca
l population and
farmers; infrastructure is being repaired and/or built to facilitate mobility an
d communication; and
local people are provided with greater access to medical assistance.' Businessme
n from Lahore
and Karachi were clamouring to sell their consumer goods in Kabul. There was com
petition
between Pakistan and Iran to attract Central Asia's trade with the Arabian Gulf
countries to their
respective ports. Iran began to electrify Herat and Western Afghanistan, while T
urkmenistan
pledged to supply natural gas to Herat city. In the north, General Daud, the mil
itary commander of
Kunduz, opened up trade with Tajikistan, which agreed to provide electricity to
the province.
Additional bridges were built across the Amu Darya river, which runs along the b
order between
Afghanistan and Central Asia. General Dostum tied up similar deals with Uzbekist
an, increasing
trade, reducing tariffs, and importing Uzbek electricity to Mazar-e-Sharif along
a power line that
would be extended to Kabul by the World Bank. CT
AFGHANISTAN HAS ENORMOUS MINERAL RESOURCES WHICH HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO
JUMP-START THE AFGHAN ECONOMY.
Pathak, Sriparna. Junior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. Yet ano
ther Great
Game in Afghanistan: The US and China . 1 September 2010.
Afghanistan possesses large reserves of minerals such as iron ore, thorium, gas,
coal and copper
which are largely untapped. The Hajji Gak mine, which is known as the best known
iron oxide
deposit in Afghanistan, will be introduced to the world market in 2010. Speaking
to reporters in
London the Afghan Mines Minster, Wahedullah Shahrani said that the natural resou
rces of
Afghanistan are the biggest asset to the future of Afghanistan. Hajji Gak mine i
s estimated to
have two billion tons of iron, whilst the iron percentage is estimated up to 63
to 65 per cent which
is the highest percentage in the world. According to Afghan President Hamid Karz
ai, Afghanistan
needs mining jobs to improve the country's living standards. CT
CHINA IS NOT A GOOD LONG-TERM ECONOMIC PARTNER FOR AFGHANISTAN.
Somerville, Heather. Medill News Service. Growing fears China will bring more hea
rtbreak, less
wealth, to Afghanistan . Politics Daily. 27 August 2010.
Three years after securing a multi-billion dollar contract to develop Afghanista
n's mineral
reserves, China has failed to deliver on promises of new roads and electricity f
or the Afghan
people. China's $3.4 billion investment in the Aynak copper mine is the largest
in Afghan history
and, when the contract was signed in 2007, offered hope of development and stabi
lity in
Afghanistan. With little indication since then, though, that China has made prog
ress on the two
coal-fired power plants and roads it promised to build, raising concerns that Ch
ina may not be the
engine the U.S. had hoped would kickstart a legitimate Afghan economy. .The Chin
ese have done
nothing to contribute to the local economy,' said Tom Lynch, research fellow for
Near East and
South Asia at the National Defense University Institute for National Strategic S
tudies. Afghanistan
is consistent with its ventures in other parts of the world. China has proved an
unreliable investor
in natural resources, rarely contributing to local communities like it promises
and often leaving the
land scarred with ecological devastation, Lynch said. .The Chinese have a checke
red record at
best,' Lynch said. .They don't deliver, and when they do, they've left a trail o
f heartbreak.' CT
CONTINUED NATO PRESENENCE IS NEEDED TO SECURE CHINESE INVESTMENT,
COMPENSATE FOR THE INADEQUACIES OF CHANA'S COMMITMENT TO THE AFGHAN
ECONOMY.
Somerville, Heather. Medill News Service. Growing fears China will bring more hea
rtbreak, less
wealth, to Afghanistan . Politics Daily. 27 August 2010.
The U.S. supports the Aynak investment project, and in fact has insisted on such
investments
from China, Lynch said. But concerns over China's business ethics and its refusa
l to provide
military support in Afghanistan have some experts worried Chinese investments wi
ll create more
instability. With an estimated $1 trillion in untapped minerals, Afghanistan sho
uld be the new
frontier for Chinese investment. China's deep pockets and voracious pursuit of e
nergy resources
make it an ideal candidate to spur mineral development and generate a legitimate
source of
revenue for the Afghan government. The Aynak mine, in Logar province in eastern
Afghanistan,
could add more than $200 million to the Afghan national budget each year and cre
ate an
estimated 30,000 new jobs, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace. The Chinese
have relied on
U.S. and international troops to keep their investors and mining projects safe.
While the Chinese
are responsible for their own security at Aynak, because they have not sent thei
r own troops
Afghanistan, they hire Afghan National Police. U.S. and NATO troops are responsi
ble for building
and training the Afghan police. .Directly or indirectly, ISAF (International Sec
urity Assistance
Force, the coalition of troops in Afghanistan) is in some way trying to secure A
fghanistan for these
projects,' said Kenneth Katzman, leading Afghanistan expert at Congressional Res
earch Service,
the nonpartisan research arm of government. China traditionally only sends milit
ary outside its
borders for United Nations peacekeeping missions. Although U.S. diplomats have a
sked for
Chinese forces in Afghanistan, China has made no commitment to provide military
even in a
noncombat role, according to a Congressional Research Service report on Afghanis
tan released
Monday. CT
RECENTLY DISCOVERED MINERAL DEPOSITS, EVEN TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE COSTS
AND TIMEFRAME OF EXTRACTION, WILL HAVE AN ENORMOUSLY POSITIVE IMPACT ON
THE AFGHAN ECONOMY AND PEOPLE.
Center for Economic and Policy Research. How Much Is $1 Trillion in Afghanistan? 1
5 June
2010. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-much-is-1-trillion-
in-afghanistan/
The media have been highlighting projections produced by the military that show
that Afghanistan
may have $1 trillion of mineral wealth. It would be helpful to put this figure i
n some context. The
NYT helpfully described this sum as being equal to $38,482.76 for every person i
n Afghanistan. It
would be useful to note that this is a gross number, it does not subtract the co
st of extracting the
minerals nor does it consider that these resources would likely be extracted ove
r many decades.
If we assume that the cost of extracting the minerals (e.g. foreign produced equ
ipment, foreign
trained technicians, profits of foreignh companies and environmental damage not c
ounting
domestic Afghan labor) is between 25 and 50 percent of the value of the minerals
, then the
money going to Afghanis would be between $500 billion and $750 billion. If this
money is earned
over a 40-year period (Saudi Arabia has been producing oil for 80 years), then i
t comes to
between $12.5 billion and $18.8 billion a year. Afghanistan's population is curr
ently 29.1 million,
but it is growing at the rate of 2.5 percent annually. Assuming the growth rate
slows, Afghanistan's
population will average about 40 million over this period. This means that the r
evenue from the
minerals will average between $312.50 and $470 per person per year. This is stil
l likely to have a
substantial impact on Afghanistan's economy, since its current GDP per capita is
just $800 on a
purchasing power parity basis. CT
NEAR--TERM
WITHDRAWAL
BAD
US INDECISION AND PERCEIVED LACK OF COMMITMENT IS PUSHING KARZAI TOWARDS
CUTTING A DEAL WITH THE TALIBAN.
eace, specializing
the Taliban?:
For President Hamid Karzai, the idea of a formal rapprochement with his Pashtun
adversaries
appears appealing because of the benefits it promises for his reelection. Moreov
er, the indecision
in the United States and among the Western alliance partners about prosecuting t
he war
resolutely a problem now being addressed by President Obama only induces Karzai to
accentuate reconciliation because of his calculation that if Western retrenchmen
t is inevitable, he
is probably better off making a separate peace with the Taliban while he still c
an. This calculus
was only reinforced by what appeared to be vacillation in Washington about U.S.
war aims in
Afghanistan: loose talk by senior American officials about the .ultimate' need f
or reconciliation, the
.insufficiency' of the military instrument for defeating the Taliban, the need t
o pursue .achievable'
rather than comprehensive goals, and the need for an .exit strategy' in order to
avoid .perpetual
drift.' All embodied a sliver of truth but gave rise regrettably to a pervasive
defeatism that sways
Karzai further in the direction of trumpeting reconciliation with his challenger
s. CT
LONG-TERM COMMITMENT TO AFGHANISTAN IS NEEDED, AND WILL YEILD SUCCESS.
eace, specializing
the Taliban?:
The analysis in this report emphasizes the need to get the focus right: even if
American goals in
Afghanistan are defined in the most minimalist fashion imaginable, namely, the n
eed to disrupt,
dismantle, and eventually destroy extremists and their safe havens alone, this ob
jective cannot
be achieved without a durable commitment to that country, a substantial dedicati
on of resources,
and the effective implementation of a classic counterinsurgency strategy. Taken
together, these
three components will be necessary to rebuild Afghan state capacity and increase
its legitimacy.
The Obama administration, refreshingly, acknowledges this when it notes that imme
diate action,
sustained commitment, and substantial resources will be required to reach these g
oals. If these
tasks can be completed successfully, the transfer of popular allegiance from the
insurgency to the
government will then become possible and with it the eventual defeat of al-Qaeda
and the
Taliban. Any attempt to artificially separate these two groups as targets of Ame
rican attention will
simply not succeed: after eight years of war in Afghanistan, neither can al-Qaed
a be defeated
without success against the Taliban nor can the Taliban be treated as if they ha
ve only local
interests completely divorced from the global jihad. Defeating both to include the
ir worst
constituent groups accordingly becomes necessary, and this task cannot be achieved
without
an integrated counterinsurgency effort centered on state building in partnership
with the Afghan
people. CT
CONTINUED COMMITMENT IS KEY NEGOTIATION OR QUICK WITHDRAWAL BOTH MEAN
HANDING AFGHANISTAN OVER TO THE CRAZIES.
eace, specializing
the Taliban?:
What will make the greatest difference on this issue, and to the eventual outcom
e in Afghanistan
more generally, is the durability of the U.S. commitment to that country. Simply
put, an ironclad
determination is required to stay involved in assuring Afghanistan's security ov
er the long term.
Entertaining the notion of an exit strategy, as President Obama unfortunately di
d earlier, is
particularly dangerous because, by signaling American impatience in regard to th
e mission in
Afghanistan, it will have exactly the effect of spurring the insurgents to outla
st the international
coalition; encouraging important Afghan bystanders, whose cooperation is necessa
ry to defeat
the Taliban, to persist in their prevailing ambivalence because the current disp
ensation in Kabul
will be quickly assessed as perishable and hence unworthy of their enduring supp
ort; and
inducing Islamabad to eschew relinquishing its support for the Taliban because o
f its expectation
that the insurgents may once again be required to protect Pakistan's interests i
n the regional
security competition that will ensue after the United States departs. Attempting
to mitigate these
problems by transiently accelerating American support to Afghanistan, merely in
order to permit
.us and our partners to wind down our combat operations,' as the administration'
s White Paper
phrased it, will not work either. Whether through reconciliation with the Taliba
n, or through a
predominant concentration on counterterrorism, or through a passing increase in
American
investments in Kabul, such an approach would betray all the indicators that moti
vate the
insurgents, the bystanders, and the regional states, such as Iran and Pakistan,
to simply wait
Washington out as they protect their own interests in the interim through means
that will ultimately
undermine the professed American intention .to defeat Al Qaeda and combat extrem
ism.'
Success in Afghanistan, therefore, cannot be achieved through any cheap solution
s focused on
delivering temporary amelioration an .improve and exit' strategy but only by a serio
us
commitment to building an effective Afghan state, which, in turn, will require a
decision to .invest
and endure' over the long haul. CT
IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL GUARANTEES THAT WE LOSE THE WAR TO THE TALIBAN.
Cordesman, Anthony H. Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic a
nd International
Studies. Realism in Afghanistan: Rethinking an Uncertain Case for the War . Center
for Strategic
and International Studies. 16 July 2010.
One thing is clear: The war will be lost if 2011 is treated as a deadline, and/o
r if the GIRoA and
the Afghan people, the Pakistani government and people, and our allies perceive
it as a deadline.
The same will be true if the timing of the campaign, and the impact of US and al
lied actions, are
defined in terms of unrealistic expectations. No amount of planning, discussion,
and analysis can
set clear deadlines for this war. CT
PROSPECT OF IMMINENT NATO WITHDRAWAL MAKES THE TALIBAN LESS WILLING TO
COMPROMISE OR INTEGRATE INTO THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
Since being chased out of power in the fall of 2001 by a combination of Northern
Alliance foot
soldiers and American bombs, the Taliban (along with associated groups such as t
he Haqqani
network and the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin) have staged an impressive resurgence wi
th Pakistan's
help. Although the tripling of NATO forces in the past year represents a serious
impediment to
their ultimate prospects for victory, they can take heart from evidence that the
will of the foreign
forces is weakening. The Dutch have already pulled out; the Canadians say they w
ill follow suit
next year; the Poles in 2012; the British by 2015. Under such circumstances, wha
t incentive is
there for the Taliban to compromise? As they like to say, you have the watches,
but we have the
time. CT
MAJORITY OF THE AFGHAN POPULATION HATES THE TALIBAN LEAVING WITHOUT
DEFEATING THEM WOULD SPARK ANOTHER MASSIVE CIVIL WAR.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
Some rural Pashtuns might see a return of the Taliban as an acceptable alternati
ve to the kind of
predatory misrule they suffer from today. But such a deal would be significantly
less appealing for
the vast majority of Afghans who take for granted freedoms that the Taliban woul
d quickly
quash freedoms like flying kites, listening to music, and educating their daughter
s. The Taliban
have no appreciable support among the 58 percent of Afghans who are not Pashtuns
. Major
ethnic groups such as the Tajiks, Hazara, and Uzbeks regard a return to Taliban
rule much as
Jews would regard a return to Nazism. They will not stand for it, and they will
fight to stop it. Thus,
making a deal with a still-undefeated Taliban is a recipe not for peace in our t
ime but for a
resurgence of the terrible civil war that tore the country apart in the 1990s. C
T
SPECIAL FORCES INSUFFICIENT WE NEED AN ARMY ON THE GROUND.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
Some imagine that the consequences of allowing the Taliban back into power could
be mitigated
by a small number of American Special Operations troops backed up by precision a
irpower. But
air strikes did not prevent Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist sanctuary prio
r to 9/11. Nor have
they prevented the frontier regions of Pakistan or large swaths of Somalia from
becoming a
terrorist sanctuaries today. Special Operations raids are an integral part of a
comprehensive
counterinsurgency strategy (they are occurring every night in Afghanistan), but
they are not a
substitute for one. In a chaotic environment that will likely resemble 1980s Leb
anon on opium,
how could American Special Forces gather the intelligence they need to strike ef
fectively? And
what targets would they hit anyway? The Taliban lack fixed assets such as tanks
or factories and
have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of leaders to replace those who are killed
or captured. No
one has offered a compelling explanation of how long a long-range, precision-str
ike option could
credibly deter the Taliban from actions detrimental to American interests. CT
WE CAN'T TURN OVER THE FIGHT AGAINST THE TALIBAN TO LOCAL AFGHAN
LEADERSHIP THEY HAVE THE WRONG MOTIVATIONS.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
What about, alternatively, the idea of striking deals with local leaders meaning,
effectively,
power brokers, drug dealers, and warlords to fight the Taliban on our behalf? This
strategy is
superficially more attractive. It is, after all, a course of action we have foll
owed before, starting
with the decision by the Bush administration after 9/11 to make common cause wit
h the Northern
Alliance. This was seen as the height of pragmatism, allowing us to deploy relat
ively few troops to
Afghanistan. But this approach failed before and it will fail again. Local stron
gmen do not have the
same interest we have in creating a safe, secure Afghanistan that will be resist
ant to Taliban
advances. They seek to loot as much money and accumulate as much power in their
local
fiefdoms as quickly as possible, the interests of the rest of the country (and o
f the West) be
damned. Supporting these men would be like paying off a mafia protection racket:
it may deliver
short-term results but only at the cost of making the situation worse in the lon
g run. Nothing is
more likely to cause another Taliban takeover than an American strategy that ced
es even more
power and authority to these widely despised power brokers. CT
NEGOTIATED
WITHDRAWAL
BAD
NEGOTIATING WITH THE TALIBAN IS A NON-STARTER THEY THINK THEY'RE WINNING.
Shaaker, Wali and John V. Parachini. Policy analysts at the RAND Corporation. A B
ottom-Up
Peace in Afghanistan . Providence Journal. 15 July 2010.
Both President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban denied an al-Jazeera news report tha
t Karzai had
recently met with the insurgent leader Sirajuddin Haqqani together with senior P
akistani officials.
Regardless of the truth of the matter, statements by a spokesman purporting to r
epresent the
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan were particularly telling. .Why [would Haqqani] g
o to Kabul to meet
the U.S. puppet at a time when we have an upper hand in the battlefield?' Whatev
er comes of
reconciliation efforts, the situation on the ground will remain daunting. Deadly
recent insurgent
attacks on Kandahar, Kabul and the U.S. airbase in Bagram demonstrate that the T
aliban remain
strong. Whether or not the Taliban and other insurgent networks enjoy the .upper
hand' they
claim, U.S. policymakers should not assume that insurgent leaders will be eager
for peace talks.
CT
WE HAVE TO WIN THE WAR MILITARILY BEFORE SUBSTANTIAL NUMBERS OF TALIBAN
SUPPORTERS WILL BE WILLING TO COME TO THE TABLE.
eace, specializing
the Taliban?:
Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership have decisively rejected any reconciliati
on with the
government of Afghanistan. And the tribal chiefs, village elders, and street fig
hters, who either
support the insurgency or are sitting on the sidelines currently but are suscept
ible to being
reconciled in principle, certainly will not take any steps in that direction so
long as the Karzai
regime, and its Western supporters, are not seen to be winning in their long-run
ning battle against
the Taliban. The coalition, therefore, is confronted by an inescapable paradox:
any meaningful
accommodation with those reconcilable segments of the rebellion will only come a
t the tail end of
political-military success in Afghanistan and not as a precursor to it; yet, if
such success is
attained, reconciliation will become possible but, ironically, when it is least
necessary. CT
NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE TALIBAN ARE A TERRIBLE IDEA
eace, specializing
the Taliban?:
Negotiating with the Taliban who are convinced military victory is within sight is t
he worst
possible approach to stabilizing Afghanistan, and one that would fail. Ashley J.
Tellis warns that
U.S. signals of impatience and a desire for an early exit could motivate insurge
nts to maintain a
hard line and outlast the international coalition. Though costly, a long-term co
mmitment to building
an effective Afghan state is the only way to achieve victory and defend U.S. nat
ional security
objectives. CT
TALIBAN WON'T ACCEPT POLITICAL COMPROMISE UNLESS THEY'RE FORCED TO THEY
HAVE TO BE MILITARILY DEFEATED.
he Council on
tions. 2
September 2010
Getting a significant portion of the Taliban to give up their arms will require
inflicting more military
defeats on them. As one ISAF officer said to me, .First you have to knock them o
n their backs,
then you can give them a hand up.' If the Taliban can be convinced that they hav
e no prospect of
winning, they might actually crumble with surprising speed, as they did in the f
all of 2001. The
only kind of deal the Taliban might accept while they are still standing strong
would cede them
dictatorial power across much of southern and eastern Afghanistan. They would th
en use this
power base, as they did in the 1990s, to pursue what they view as Allah's will b
y mounting an
assault on other parts of the country, starting with Kabul. CT
MISCELLANEOUS
REINTEGRATING LOW-LEVEL INSURGENT FIGHTERS IS THE BEST WAY TO WEAKEN THE
TALIBAN.
ottom-Up
But even if the top insurgent leaders have no incentive to negotiate with the Af
ghan government,
it may still be possible to persuade their foot soldiers to lay down their arms.
Most evidence
suggests that the rank-and-file fighters are more motivated by the need to suppo
rt their families
than by Taliban ideology. Thus, even if the leadership won't come in from the co
ld, a well-planned
program to reintegrate insurgents and mid-level commanders could still succeed i
n boosting
morale within Afghan society while weakening it among the insurgent elite. CT
MILITARY POWER ALONE IS INSUFFICIENT TO DEFEAT THE INSURGENCY WE NEED TO
PROVIDE INSURGENT FIGHTERS INCENTIVES TO REINTEGRATE.
ottom-Up
The Afghan government, the U.S. and other international forces will never be abl
e to deploy
enough security forces to provide sufficient forces to reassure the population,
or kill or capture
enough insurgents to turn the tide. Enticing low- and mid-level insurgents to le
ave the battlefield is
critical to achieving security. That effort must be accompanied by attention to
fundamental issues
like unemployment, political grievances and security guarantees. Even if insurge
nt leaders pound
their chests and vow to fight on, a strong and thoughtful effort to reach out to
and reintegrate the
men at the bottom of the insurgent heap would help establish peace and security
in Afghanistan.
CT
THE PRESENT STRENGTH OF THE TALIBAN IS UNCLEAR THEIR GAINS SEEM TO HAVE
BEEN HALTED, BUT FURTHER COMMITMENT IS NEEDED TO ACTUALLY DEFEAT THEM.
nd International
for Strategic
The metrics on the Taliban and other insurgents remain ambiguous. General McChry
stal seems
to be correct in saying that their momentum has been halted, but he has been car
eful not to say
that it has been reversed. ISAF reporting shows the ambiguities in these pattern
s in considerable
detail. It is far from clear that ISAF and the US have as yet won any tactical v
ictories they can
exploit in ways that bring lasting stability and transition to capable Afghan go
vernance and
security forces. It is equally unclear, however, that the insurgents can hold ou
t against any
concentrated offensive, or either take or hold ground in areas where they have l
imited or no
ethnic and religious support. CT
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMING AFGHAN POLITICS IS IMPOSSIBLE THE BEST WE
CAN DO IS CREATE SOMETHING THAT AFGHANS REGARD AS PREFERABLE TO THE
TALIBAN.
nd International
for Strategic
The war is not going to be won by treating the power structure of Afghanistan as
if it did not exist
or as if it could be radically changed in the course of the next few years. The
central government
is not going to be empowered at the expense of key regional, geographic, ethnic,
and sectarian
divisions; or suddenly eliminate the role of tribalism and key families. Efforts
to reshape
governance to create a modern Western structure of .effective governance' that s
omehow
transform all of Afghanistan are simply not going to work. The challenge is to c
o-opt the power
structure, and control its worst elements and behavior, in ways that the Afghan
people can accept
as a better option than the Taliban. As one experienced aid worker put it, .it i
s to find their worst
grievances, deal with them, and create conditions where they can move forward if
they choose to
do so.' This means setting far less ambitious goals for reform and government ca
pacity. It means
accepting a major role for existing power brokers, if for no other reason than t
hat there is no
credible alternative. The issue is not Western concepts of governance, but what
will make GIRoA
.good enough' by Afghan popular standards. CT
CON
EVIDENCE
NATO
KILLS
CIVLIANS
NATO ROCKETS KILL CIVILIANS.
Walsh, Declan. "Nato Rockets Kill 12 Afghan Civilians." The Guardian. 14 Feb. 20
10. Web. 08
Sept. 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/14/nato-rockets-kill-afgha
n-civilians>.
Two Nato rockets aimed at Taliban insurgents in Helmand missed their target toda
y, killing 12
civilians sheltering in their home and dealing a sharp blow to hopes that civili
an casualties would
be avoided in the largest western-led operation of the nine-year Afghan war.
The incident occurred in Nad Ali, an insurgent-infested area where British troop
s are operating. A
Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said the rockets, which were fired by a sophisti
cated missile
system, were a "US responsibility". (sa)
THOUSANDS OF LEAKED MILITARY REPORTS INDICATE HUNDREDS OF CIVILIANS WERE
KILLED IN UNREPORTED INCIDENTS.
Davies, Nick. "Afghanistan War Logs: Massive Leak of Secret Files Exposes Truth
of
Occupation." The Guardian. 25 July 2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-military-leaks
>.
A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait o
f the failing war in
Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in
unreported
incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pak
istan and
Iran are fuelling the insurgency.
The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence
reports about
the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the big
gest leaks in US
military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New
York Times and
the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over
the last six
years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,
000 US troops.
(sa)
CIVILIAN DEATH TOLLS HAVE RISEN SHARPLY THIS YEAR.
Faiez, Rahim. "UN: Afghan Civilian Deaths Rise Sharply | CommonDreams.org." Comm
on
Dreams. 10 Aug. 2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/10-4>.
The number of civilians killed in the Afghan war jumped 25 percent in the first
half of 2010
compared with the same period last year, with insurgents responsible for the spi
ke, the United
Nations said in a report Tuesday.
Shortly after the U.N. released its report in Kabul, two gunmen with explosives
strapped to them
tried to storm the office of an international security company in the capital. W
hen guards fought
back, the men detonated their explosives, killing two Afghan drivers. (sa)
AFGHAN CIVILIAN DEATH TOLL IS UP BY A THIRD.
"Afghan Civilian Toll up by a Third - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English.
" Al Jazeera
English. 10 Aug. 2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
<http://english.aljazeera.net//news/asia/2010/08/201081075049886818.html>.
The number of civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan has reportedly soared b
y 31 per cent in
the first six months of this year.
More than 1,200 Afghans were killed and almost 2,000 injured in the first six mo
nths of the year,
the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said on Tuesday in its mid-
year report.
The Taliban and other anti-government elements were responsible for more than th
ree quarters of
all civilian casualties, an increase from 53 per cent last year, the report said
.
Meanwhile, 12 per cent of the casualties were attributed to US, Nato and other p
ro-government
forces. (sa)
NATO FORCES ARE NOT TAKING PREPARATIONS TO AVOID CIVILIAN HARM.
"Afghanistan Leak Exposes NATO's Incoherent Civilian Casualty Policy | Amnesty I
nternational."
Amnesty International. 26 July 2010. Web. 08 Sept. 2010. <http://www.amnesty.org
/en/news-andupdates/
afghanistan-leak-exposes-natos-incoherent-civilian-casualty-policy-2010-07-26>.
The documents bear out Amnesty International's investigation into the Kunduz air
strike, which
concluded that a disproportionate number of civilians were killed as a result of
what seems to
have been faulty intelligence by German forces.
The documents do not appear to address the January 2008 Kandahar night raid, but
do highlight
a central problem identified by Amnesty International's investigation into that
incident, namely, the
unaccountable operation of Special Operations Forces outside the regular chain o
f command
acting without proper rules of engagement. (sa)
CIVILIANS ARE ROUTINELY KILLED IN NATO BOMBINGS.
"Afghans Demand 'new Troops Deal'" Bbc.co.uk. British Broadcasting Corporation,
25 Aug. 2008.
Web. 08 Sept. 2010. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7581270.stm>.
The Afghan government says it wants to renegotiate the terms of foreign forces i
n their country
after more than 90 civilians were killed in a US bombing.
International troops are in Afghanistan to help provide security, particularly i
n a fierce counter
insurgency campaign against the Taleban.
But in recent months there has been increased anger over the issue of civilian c
asualties. (sa)
NATO AND MILITARY FORCE PRESENCE IS ONLY SLOWING PROGRESS AND
CONTRIBUTING TO THE INSTABILITY.
Common, David. "British Diplomat Feels Afghan War Being Lost: Report." CBC.ca. C
anadian
Broadcasting Corporation, 01 Oct. 2008. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/10/01/french-cable-afghanistan.html>.
The cable, written in French, paraphrases the 53-year-old British ambassador as
saying:
* The security situation is bad and getting worse.
* The Afghan people have lost all trust in their current government, partly beca
use of
corruption.
* The presence of foreign troops in the country is part of the problem, propping
up the current
regime and thus slowing progress toward Afghans putting a more effective governm
ent in place.
* Sending more military reinforcements to Afghanistan would have a "perverse eff
ect" on the
country's stability and future, sending the message that an occupying force is i
n control of the
country and widening the number of targets for insurgents to attack. (sa)
NATO FORCES CAUSE UNACCEPTABLE AMOUNTS OF CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.
Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. "Decision on Airstrike in Afghanistan Was Based Largely o
n Sole
Informant's Assessment - Washingtonpost.com." Washingtonpost.com. 06 Sept. 2009.
Web. 08
Sept. 2010. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2009/09/05/AR2009090502832.html>.
Based largely on that informant's assessment, the commander ordered a 500-pound,
satelliteguided
bomb to be dropped on each truck early Friday. The vehicles exploded in a fireba
ll that lit
up the night sky for miles, incinerating many of those standing nearby.
A NATO fact-finding team estimated Saturday that about 125 people were killed in
the bombing,
at least two dozen of whom -- but perhaps many more -- were not insurgents. To t
he team, which
is trying to sort out this complicated incident, mindful that the fallout could
further sap public
support in Afghanistan for NATO's security mission here, the target appeared to
be far less clearcut
than it had to the Germans. (sa)
NATO FORCES DO NOT FOLLOW THE DIRECTIVE TO REDUCE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.
Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. "Decision on Airstrike in Afghanistan Was Based Largely o
n Sole
Informant's Assessment - Washingtonpost.com." Washingtonpost.com. 06 Sept. 2009.
Web. 08
Sept. 2010. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2009/09/05/AR2009090502832.html>.
The decision to bomb the tankers based largely on a single human intelligence so
urce appears to
violate the spirit of a tactical directive aimed at reducing civilian casualties
that was recently
issued by U.S. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the new commander of the NATO mission
in
Afghanistan. The directive states that NATO forces cannot bomb residential build
ings based on a
sole source of information and that troops must establish a "pattern of life" to
ensure that no
civilians are in the target area. Although the directive does not apply to airst
rikes in the open,
NATO officials said it is McChrystal's intent for those standards to apply to al
l uses of air power,
except when troops are in imminent danger. (sa)
NATO ROUTINELY KILLS CIVILIANS DESPITE NEW RULES OF ENGAGEMENT.
Starkey, Jerome. "Nato .covered Up' Botched Night Raid in Afghanistan That Kille
d Five - Times
Online." The Sunday Times. 13 Mar. 2010. Web. 18 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7060395.ece>.
A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregna
nt women, a
teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cov
er up, survivors have
told The Times.
The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched pre-dawn assault on a police
man's home a
few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan. I
n a statement after
the raid titled Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery , Nato cla
imed that the
force had found the women's bodies tied up, gagged and killed in a room.
A Times investigation suggests that Nato's claims are either wilfully false or,
at best, misleading.
More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader int
erviewed at and
around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were US and Afghan
gunmen. The
identity and status of the soldiers is unknown. (sa)
NATO FORCES HAVE KILLED SCHOOLBOYS.
Starkey, Jerome. "Nato Admits That Deaths of 8 Boys Were a Mistake - Times Onlin
e." The
Sunday Times. 25 Feb. 2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7040166.ece>.
A night-time raid in eastern Afghanistan in which eight schoolboys from one fami
ly were killed was
carried out on the basis of faulty intelligence and should never have been autho
rised, a Times
investigation has found.
Ten children and teenagers died when troops stormed a remote mountain compound n
ear the
border with Pakistan in December.
At the time, Nato claimed that the assault force was targeting a known insurgent
group
responsible for a series of violent attacks . Officials said that the victims were
involved in making
and smuggling improvised explosive devices. But Western sources close to the cas
e now agree
that the victims were all aged 12 to 18 and were not involved in insurgent activ
ity. (sa)
NATO FORCES HAVE COMMITTED MASSACRES SIMILAR TO MY LAI IN VIETNAM.
Lindorff, Dave. "Afghanistan's My Lai Massacre." Truthout. 05 Mar. 2010. Web. 19
Sept. 2010.
<http://www.truth-out.org/where-are-this-wars-heroes-military-and-journalistic57
406>.
Today's war in Afghanistan also has its My Lai massacres. It has them almost wee
kly, as US
warplanes bomb wedding parties or homes "suspected" of housing terrorists that t
urn out to
house nothing but civilians. But these My Lais are all conveniently labeled acci
dents. They get
filed away and forgotten as the inevitable "collateral damage" of war. There was
, however, a
massacre recently that was not a mistake - a massacre, which, while it only invo
lved fewer than a
dozen innocent people, bears the same stench as My Lai. It was the execution-sty
le slaying of
eight handcuffed students, aged 11-18, and a 12-year-old neighboring shepherd bo
y who had
been visiting the others in Kunar Province on December 26. (sa)
NATO COMMITS WAR CRIMES IN AFGHANISTAN.
Lindorff, Dave. "Afghanistan's My Lai Massacre." Truthout. 05 Mar. 2010. Web. 19
Sept. 2010.
<http://www.truth-out.org/where-are-this-wars-heroes-military-and-journalistic57
406>.
Under the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to execute a captive. Yet, in Ku
nar on December
26, US-led forces, or perhaps US soldiers or contract mercenaries, cold-bloodedl
y executed eight
hand-cuffed prisoners. It is a war crime to kill children under the age of 15, y
et in this incident a
boy of 11 and a boy of 12 were handcuffed as captured combatants and executed. T
wo others of
the dead were 12 and a third was 15. (sa)
MILITARY
NOT
THE
SOLUTION
THE BRITISH SUPREME COMMANDER SAID THE TALIBAN WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED.
Koelbl, Susanne. "NATO Pessimism: The West Is at a Loss in Afghanistan ONLINE. 1
7 Oct.
2008. Web. 08 Sept. 2010. <http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,5846
16,00.html>.
As such, it seemed almost treasonous when the outgoing supreme commander of the
British
contingent, General Mark Carleton-Smith, recently said unequivocally that the Ta
liban will never
be defeated. A military victory over the Taliban was "neither feasible nor suppo
rtable," he told the
Sunday Times. Carleton-Smith has lost 32 of his men in six months. (sa)
RECONCILIATION IS NEEDED NOT NATO FORCES.
Koelbl, Susanne. "NATO Pessimism: The West Is at a Loss in Afghanistan" SPIEGEL
ONLINE.
17 Oct. 2008. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,584616,00.html>.
The British, on the other hand, fear that additional US soldiers could be more l
ikely to heat up the
conflict. "We don't need more GIs, but more reconciliation, more reconstruction
and more offers
for those who want to get out of the conflict," says an English advisor who has
been working in
Afghanistan for almost two decades. The West, he says, seems to be repeating the
same
mistakes the Soviets made. Despite an Afghan army of 100,000 men and 120,000 of
their own
soldiers, Moscow's military campaign in Afghanistan was ultimately a failure --
not least because
support for the war back home dried up. (sa)
THE CONFLICT CANNOT BE WON MILITARILY.
"BBC News - US Chief Petraeus Vows to Protect Afghan Civilians." BBC. 1 July 201
0. Web. 18
Sept. 2010. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10472555>.
The top United Nations envoy in Afghanistan, Steffan de Mistura, said the Taliba
n statement was
"in the opposite direction" to many other recent signals, and could be part of a
pre-negotiation
strategy of creating perceptions, building up pressure and increasing military a
ttacks.
"I think they know very well that this conflict will not be won militarily - not
by them and not by
anyone else, and that the only solution is a political one. So they are pre-posi
tioning themselves
and one can understand that this is a typical strategy," he told the BBC. (sa)
NATO
FORCES
ARE
INEFFECTIVE
TEN YEARS ON, AFGHANISTAN IS STILL A BREEDING GROUND FOR TERRORISTS,
DESPITE NATO PRESENCE.
Schwennicke, Cristoph. "A Plea for Common Sense: Why NATO Should Withdraw from
Afghanistan." SPIEGEL ONLINE. 28 July 2010. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
Led by the US, NATO and other Western allies have been trying to pacify Afghanis
tan for almost
10 years -- with little success. War aims have changed frequently. None of them,
however, has
been achieved. The intervals between the large-scale Afghanistan conferences, fr
om Berlin to
Paris, London to Kabul, have become ever shorter, but the list of problems has o
nly grown. The
country remains a potential breeding ground for terrorism as it was prior to the
Sept. 11, 2001
attacks in the US. And little that the West has imported to Afghanistan since th
en has put down
such deep roots that it would survive a pullout for long. Girls' schools, wells
and newly paved
roads are pleasant side effects of the NATO mission in Afghanistan. As a justifi
cation, however,
they are not enough. (sa)
NATO PRESENCE LIKE SOVIET PRESENCE IN THE 80s HAS DONE NOTHING TO IMPROVE
AFGHANISTAN.
Schwennicke, Cristoph. "A Plea for Common Sense: Why NATO Should Withdraw from
Afghanistan." SPIEGEL ONLINE. 28 July 2010. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
Afghanistan is a nightmare, a graveyard of empires. The British came first, foll
owed by the
Soviets; now NATO and the UN are losing their innocence on the battlefields of A
fghanistan. In
total, the US, its allies and private security firms have almost 200,000 soldier
s stationed in the
country, roughly equal to the number the Soviets stationed there in the 1980s. I
t wasn't enough
then, and it won't be enough now. And increasing that number would be militarily
difficult and
politically impossible. The West has bitten off more than it can chew. (sa)
THE TALIBAN WON'T NEGOTIATE. NATO PRESENCE IS WORTHLESS.
"BBC News - US Chief Petraeus Vows to Protect Afghan Civilians." BBC. 1 July 201
0. Web. 18
Sept. 2010. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10472555>.
Shortly before the briefing, Gen Petraeus's new challenge was brought into focus
when a key
spokesman for the Afghan Taliban leadership said there was no question of enteri
ng into any kind
of negotiations with Nato forces.
"We are certain that we are winning," Zabiullah Mujahedd said in a statement to
the BBC's John
Simpson, through an intermediary.
"Why should we talk if we have the upper hand, and the foreign troops are consid
ering
withdrawal, and there are differences in the ranks of our enemies?" (sa)
NATO PRESENCE CANNOT STOP WHAT IS ESSENTIALLY A CIVIL WAR.
The problem remains that we continue to view the situation in Afghanistan throug
h western eyes,
as a battle between the US and Nato against al-Qaida and the Taliban an impressi
on William
Hague's speech yesterday underlined. But this has long ceased to be the main iss
ue, and British
troops are now caught up in a complex local and regional conflict that has compl
etely changed
the nature of the war.
Internally, the war is viewed primarily as a Pashtun rebellion against a Tajik,
Uzbek and Hazaradominated
regime, which has only a fig leaf of Pashtun window-dressing in the person of Ka
rzai.
For although Karzai is a Pashtun, under his watch Nato installed the Northern Al
liance in Kabul
and drove out of power Afghanistan's Pashtun majority. (sa)
NATO PRESENCE IS WORTHLESS AND ONLY FOR EUROPE TO SUCK UP TO AMERICA.
Steyn, Mark. "Where .nice' Obama Has Got Us." Macleans.ca. 1 July 2010. Web. 19
Sept. 2010.
<http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/07/01/where-nice-obama-has-got-us/>.
Instead of being an operation to kill one of the planet's most concentrated popu
lations of jihadist
terrorists, it decayed into half-hearted nation-building in which a handful of r
eal allies took the
casualties while the rest showed up for the group photo. The 2004 NATO summit wa
s hailed as a
landmark success after the alliance's 26 members agreed to put up an extra 600 t
roops and three
helicopters for Afghanistan. That averages out at 23.08 troops per country, plus
almost a ninth of
a helicopter apiece. As it transpired, the three Black Hawks all came from one c
ountry Turkey
and within a year they'd all gone back. Those 600 troops and three helicopters m
ade no practical
difference, but the effort expended on that transnational fig leaf certainly con
tributed to America's
disastrous reframing of its interests in Afghanistan. (sa)
NATO TROOPS HAVE NOT STOPPED TALIBAN ATTACKS.
Siddiqui, Haroon. "Afghanistan: Its Even Worse Than You Thought." Common Dreams.
1 Aug.
2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. <http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/01>.
Obama's military surge of 30,000 additional troops has not stopped the Taliban f
rom controlling
more territory. They are using more roadside bombs and hitting more NATO convoys
and bases,
even in Kabul. They are organizing more suicide bombing missions and assassinati
ons.
The NATO offensive in Marjah also failed to root the Taliban out of that key dis
trict in opiumproducing
Helmand province. The area remains ungovernable, a bleeding ulcer, as the dear
departed Gen. Stanley McChrystal called it.
The much-touted offensive in Kandahar, designed to bring the entire Taliban-domi
nated south
under NATO/Afghan control, was set for spring, then June, then July. It won't be
gin this month,
either, as the fasting month of Ramadan starts mid-August. (sa)
NATO
RADICALIZES
NATO SUPPORTS WARLORD MILITIAS TERRORIZING KANDAHAR.
"The Gangs of Kandahar - the City's Real Power? - Channel 4 News." Channel 4. 16
May 2010.
Web. 19 Sept. 2010. <http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/asia_pacific/th
e gangs of
kandahar the cityaposs real power/3650287>.
Most disturbing was the frequent suggestion that the reason for the power exerte
d by these
groups was their close relationship with both the US military and other parts of
the coalition,
including intelligence agencies.
Although the US and coalition officially condemn any form of "militias", insisti
ng they work only
with groups that are approved and licensed by the Afghan government, in reality
many of the
gunmen who "belong" to the powerful warlord clans of the city have been enlisted
for help by
Nato.
Armed militias may be found as guards at coalition gates or as guards that prote
ct Nato supply
convoys, in the guise of interpreters and other staff at coalition bases, and as
special units
attached to coalition special forces and intelligence teams. (sa)
NATO PRESENCE ONLY FURTHER RADICALIZES THE POPULATION.
K, Nick. "Should the Left Call for Taliban Victory? | SocialistWorker.org." Soci
alistWorker.org. 18
Aug. 2009. Web. 19 Sept. 2010. <http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/18/should-the
-left-call-fortaliban-
victory>.
Anand Gopal, one of the few independent journalists actively trying to find out
what is actually
happening in Afghanistan has written some very useful and insightful work on thi
s, and as he
points out, the ranks of the Taliban have been swelled in recent years by rural
peasants who have
been radicalized as a result of US/NATO brutality, including the indiscriminate
air attacks which
have killed thousands of Afghans.
The Taliban are increasingly espousing a strong nationalist message and, in some
cases, have
substantially moderated their social conservatism in order to build a more broad
-based and
effective resistance movement. (sa)
HUMANITARIAN
SITUATION
WORSE
AFGHAN CITIZENS AGREE NATO FORCES ARE NOT IMPROVING THE LIVES OF CIVILIANS.
Prospect. 22
Dec. 2009. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
The Afghan politician and activist Malalai Joya has warned that "Obama's militar
y buildup will only
bring more suffering and death to innocent civilians." Another woman, who goes b
y the
pseudonym Zoya, has appeared in various U.S. media calling for "withdrawal of th
e troops
immediately." She is a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of A
fghanistan, a
Kabul-based political group that has fought for human rights and social justice
since 1977. And
Sakena Yacoobi, who founded a network of underground schools for Afghan women an
d girls,
says "most foreign troops are not primarily focused on protecting women and chil
dren. Their focus
is on beating the enemy, which is very different, and ordinary citizens become c
ollateral damage
in the process." (sa)
EIGHT YEARS ON AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS HAVE NOT IMPROVED ANY BIT FROM MILITARY
INTERVENTION.
Prospect. 22
Dec. 2009. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
Eight years later, the consensus is that the current regime has not been markedl
y better for
women than the former Taliban rulers were -- especially outside of Kabul. Presid
ent Hamid Karzai
signed a law this summer that legalized marital rape and required women to get p
ermission from
their husbands to work. In November UNICEF declared Afghanistan the worst countr
y in the world
in which to be born. Women and girls still face daily oppression and epidemic le
vels of violence.
(sa)
NATO FORCES ARE NOT HUMANITARIAN FORCES, AND HAVE NOT IMPROVED THE LIVES
OF CITIZENS.
Prospect. 22
Dec. 2009. Web. 08 Sept. 2010.
The difference between the pro-intervention feminists like Viswanath and Smeal a
nd the prowithdrawal
Afghan women like Joya, Zoya, and Yacoobi is not their level of commitment to
women's rights. It's their faith in military intervention as a means of securing
them. As Prospect
senior correspondent Michelle Goldberg put it recently, one's view of whether a
continued U.S.
presence in Afghanistan will improve the situation for women "depends on whether
one believes
that the American military can be a force for humanitarianism."
To me, the answer is tragically apparent: It doesn't matter whether U.S. militar
y intervention can
be a force for humanitarianism because, in Afghanistan, it never has been and wo
n't become one.
(sa)
VIOLENCE HAS INCREASED AS NATO PRESENCE INCREASED.
Tyson, Ann S. "A Sober Assessment of Afghanistan - Washingtonpost.com."
Washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post Company, 15 June 2008. Web. 08 Sept. 201
0.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2008/06/14/AR2008061401639.html?nav=rss_nation/special>.
Indeed, comprehensive data released by the NATO-led command show a steady escala
tion in
violence since NATO took charge of the Afghanistan mission in 2006, spurred in p
art by more
aggressive operations by the alliance and most recently by U.S. Marine battalion
s in the heavily
contested southern province of Helmand. ISAF troops in Afghanistan increased fro
m 36,000 in
early 2007 to 52,000 now, while the Afghan army grew from 20,000 to 58,000 soldi
ers.
Overall violence has increased and attacks have grown more complex, according to
the data and
U.S. military officials. The number of roadside bombs increased from 1,931 in 20
06 to 2,615 last
year. Attacks peaked during the months of the warm weather fighting season, with
more than 400
in the peak month of 2005, more than 800 in 2006, and about 1,000 in 2007. (sa)
NATO PRESENCE HAS NOT STOPPED CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE.
Vlahos, Kelley B. "The Rape of the Afghan Boys." Antiwar.com. 13 Apr. 2010. Web.
19 Sept.
2010. <http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/04/12/a-deal-with-the-devil/>.
If winning the war against the "evildoers" means ignoring evil among our allies,
then we have truly
lost our soul. Cockburn argued that our governments should not put another Weste
rn soldier into
Afghanistan while there is such obvious corruption snaking through the Afghan se
curity services,
not to mention the Karzai government. Too late. The U.S. military is set to expa
nd its footprint of
100,000 by the end of the summer. Complaints within the ranks about Afghan milit
ary's
worthiness in the field will continue to simmer, while most of this stuff about
debauchery, man-love
Thursdays, sexual abuse, and the like will be left to percolate on the milblogs
and in the tales
soldiers bring home. Forget the State Department reports and the undercover inve
stigative
journalism; until the military (which is, like it or not, the face of America in
Afghanistan) starts
publicly condemning bacha bazi and the abuse of Afghan children with all the for
ce and authority
it can muster, then we might as well be putting our red scrawl on a pact with th
e devil. (sa)
ELECTIONS
NATO PRESENCE IS SILENCING THE DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY OF AFGHANISTAN.
Dalrymple, William. "This Is No Nato Game but Pakistan's Proxy War with Its Brot
her in the
South." The Guardian. 1 July 2010. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/01/afghanistan-pakistan-proxy-
war-withindia>.
In this way we unwittingly took sides in the Afghan civil war that began in the
1970s siding with
the north against the south, the town against the country, secularism against Is
lam, and the Tajiks
against the Pashtuns. We installed a government and trained up an army that in m
any ways
discriminated against the Pashtun majority, and whose top-down constitution allo
wed for little
federalism or regional representation. No matter how much western liberals may d
islike the
Taliban, they are in many ways the authentic voice of rural Pashtun conservatism
, whose wishes
are ignored by the government in Kabul and who are largely excluded from power.
(sa)
NATO CANNOT WIN THE WAR BUT WILL HELP WITH HELP WIN BACK CERTAIN AREAS
New York Post. NATO troops to begin 'nuanced' operations in Kandahar: Petraeus.
September
15, 2010.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/nato_troops_commander_begin_nuanced_T
swB3L5
DUHHG86tHSJVaPI
The commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan said Wednesday that U.S. and NATO fo
rces
would soon begin "more nuanced" operations to take control of areas around Kanda
har.
Speaking on National Public Radio (NPR) early Wednesday, General David Petraeus
said forces
would undertake the major operations to win back areas that were "never cleared,
" despite the
presence of international forces in the region for many years.
However, Petraeus said the operations would be a long-term process and "Afghan-l
ed."
In a candid interview, Petraeus said he agreed with a statement from Afghan Pres
ident Hamid
Karzai that NATO troops could not win the war in Afghanistan.
But, he said recognizing that fact was not damaging to the war effort.
"This is the reality. As I said in Iraq when I was the commander there: you don'
t end an industrialstrength
insurgency by killing or capturing all the bad guys. You have to kill, capture -
- or turn --
the bad guys. And that means reintegration and reconciliation," he said. (dm)
WITHDRAWAL WILL BE GRADUAL - PART OF THE PROCESS
AFP. NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan will be gradual: Petraeus. September 15, 2
010.
WASHINGTON NATO's withdrawal from Afghanistan will be gradual and not a brusque
"lights
out" next August, the commander of international forces there, US General David
Petraeus, said
Wednesday.
Asked about an exit date, Petraeus told NPR radio "the idea of some date out the
re is not
unprecedented," mentioning past practice in Iraq.
But the idea of an August date for a pullout is not a "lights out" moment, he ad
ded.
For those who had another impression, Petraeus stressed: "we just have to keep o
n explaining."
On the Taliban's inroads in Afghanistan's north, Petraeus said: "It's a process
that has been
ongoing for years." (dm)
NATO DID NOT HAVE THE MEANS TO EFFECTIVELY COMBAT TERRORISTS
AFP. NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan will be gradual: Petraeus. September 15, 2
010.
Yet when asked if NATO had dropped the ball on that account, Petraus said that i
n the past they
did not have means to carry out the kind of "comprehensive counterinsurgency" th
at was needed.
Now, we can "broadly say that we have the inputs right," he said.
"It's not a conventional battle. It is slow progress. You take steps forward but
you also take steps
backward," Petraeus told NPR. (dm)
THE SEPTEMBER ELECTIONS ARE A LITMUS TEST FOR STABILITY
Candace Rondeaux [Interviewee; South Asia Senior Analyst, Afghanistan, Internati
onal Crisis
Group] & Greg Bruno [Interviewer]. Interview: The Folly of Holding Afghan Electi
ons. Council on
Foreign Relations. August 31, 2010.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/22860/folly_of_holding_afghan_elections.html
Afghanistan's parliamentary elections, set for September 18, will be seen as a t
est of that
country's stability nine years after the U.S.-led invasion, and three months bef
ore U.S. President
Barack Obama reviews progress in the war effort. But if balloting is meant to se
rve as a litmus
test for a military campaign that continues to sputter along, Afghanistan analys
t Candace
Rondeaux says the West should prepare for disappointment. For one, a surge in pr
e-election
violence, coupled with a growing list of corrupt candidates, will discourage man
y Afghans from
voting, Rondeaux says. Changes to the Afghan-run commission that investigates el
ectoral fraud
will also make a free and fair tally unlikely, she says. And while parliament ha
s in recent months
exhibited a willingness to challenge President Hamid Karzai on numerous issues,
the corrupt
lineup of candidates running this time makes it unlikely such independence will
continue, she
says. (dm)
THERE IS A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE SURROUNDING PAST ELECTIONS
onal Crisis
ons. Council on
As we get closer to election day, we're going to see very much a repeat of last
year, where
candidates, campaign managers, [and] members are at risk. We've had three candid
ates [killed]
so far and that's just the start. It's safe to say that the competition is very
high with so many
candidates [over 2,550] in the field for such a small number of seats [249 seats
are being
competed for in the Afghan parliament]. It's a very complex chess game. On the o
ne hand,
security is not very good because there's an insurgency. But also, this sort of
internecine
competition between what are essentially members of a sort of political mafia ha
ve encouraged
[candidates] to be a little bit more bold in their bullying and their intimidati
ons against rivals. So
this is really a very volatile situation. At the end of the day, it's difficult
to say what the impact will
be. It's very clear that we will not have a sitting parliament for many, many mo
nths to come even
after the elections, in part because there'd be a lot of challenges. And it's no
t entirely clear
whether the ECC, the Electoral Complaints Commission, is fully equipped or prepa
red to deal
with some hundreds of challenges in such a complex political field. (dm)
VOTING IRREGULARITY CANNOT BE AVOIDED
onal Crisis
ons. Council on
There are very few opportunities now to reverse course. Unfortunately, the train
was out of the
station the minute there was a decision to go forward with these elections. Ther
e's a lot of work
that needed to be done before holding these elections. In a more calm environmen
t, maybe a less
politically pressurized environment, both in Kabul and Washington and Brussels,
if everybody had
taken a step back, they'd have seen the cliff that we're about to now go over. B
ut this is a very
difficult political picture for everybody involved. Most importantly, Afghans th
emselves are really
struggling to understand what is going to happen next. It's not clear what the o
utcome's going to
be. (dm)
ELECTIONS WILL NOT HAVE AN IMMEDIATE EFFECT - CONTESTATION WILL LAST
MONTHS
onal Crisis
ons. Council on
I think it's very clear that we will not have a sitting parliament for many, man
y months to come
even after the elections.
The controversy was essentially that in the prior election [the presidential ele
ction in August
2009], there had to be sort of a supermajority, if you will, and the internation
als [non-Afghan
commissioners] sort of provided by divisional composition--there were three inte
rnationals [on the
five-member board]--a possibility of a dissenting vote along the majority line.
There was always
that possibility. Now, there's only two [non-Afghan commissioners], so the impac
t of whatever
challenges they might raise to belay a specific complaint that they handled or t
he way that the
process is going to be rolled out in terms of evaluating fraud, they just won't
have the same
impact at all. (dm)
THE ELECTION WILL NOT BE DEMOCRATIC - FEAR PREVENTS TURNOUT
onal Crisis
ons. Council on
I can't see any other alternative for voters today. It's a risky proposition to
go and vote for
somebody who could end up stealing their paycheck. At the end of the day, what's
the motivation
for anybody right now? Most voters really do feel like they deserve a choice, so
some will show
up, [but] the intent is just not there. The security isn't going to be there at
the polls. In some
places, the polls might not even exist. If we have another repeat of last year,
where you have
polling sites being closed because of security situations so bad and then you ha
ve voters left out
there who are on their way to the polling station, this is a very precarious sit
uation. One has to
wonder: What does the voter get out of this? (dm)
NATO IS ABANDONING THE ELECTION - MAY DOOM AFGHANISTAN TO PROLONGED
INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE
onal Crisis
ons. Council on
This is a choice that has to be made with the utmost care and careful considerat
ion, and I don't
think it would be a decision that either the UN or NATO or the United States has
shown any signs
of supporting postponement. They're extremely nervous, they recognize the risk i
nvolved with this
whole exercise, but they have a few things going for them. People are extremely
distracted by this
corruption issue. There will not be as many international observers this time, s
imply because it's
not going to be safe enough for them to be effective. And it's not really clear
that the press,
international or national, has fully done its job in raising some of the dangero
us issues that are
going to come up as we get closer to the polling day. This lack of scrutiny coul
d potentially create
some insulation in some ways.
But at the end of the day, [if parliament is not seated soon after the elections
], we're going to have
a situation where we've got maybe several hundred candidates in contention come
December,
when it comes time [for President Obama] to do another strategic assessment of t
he way forward.
If that's the case, what's the expectation? We still don't have a full cabinet.
We have an [Afghan]
president who is reluctant to enforce the law. And we won't have a sitting parli
ament for months. I
mean, is this what we are all working for? Is this stabilization? (dm)
REGARDLESS OF THE RESULT, CORRUPTION IS LIKELY
onal Crisis
ons. Council on
Let's look at the candidates. They're an amalgam of construction barons, drug wa
rlords, excommandos,
logisticians for international organizations. Some are not even Afghan citizens,
some carry U.S. passports, Canadian passports. The choices are not good for Afgh
an voters
when they go to the polls on September 18. They're not good because they're taki
ng a major risk
by going out there and exposing themselves in the security situation. They're no
t good because
the candidates that are running, many of them are really quite corrupt to the co
re. And the other
reason that the choices aren't good is because there's no guarantee that if they
do throw their
vote down, it'll actually be counted correctly. So Afghans in September are look
ing at kind of a nowin
situation.
If all of your predictions hold true, and the elections go off but are riddled w
ith fraud and low
turnout, what happens on the nineteenth of September?
The question is, "What happens on the nineteenth of September 2011?" It will tak
e a while before
we really understand the impact of more instability generated by flawed election
s, but I can say
that the trends that are emerging now point toward deeper conflicts between the
main ethnicities
here, which can also then exacerbate the divide between the north and the south.
We'll see that
come full circle once parliament is actually sitting. We're going to see a lot o
f very tough
conversations about the constitution. We'll see some very tough conversations ab
out Karzai's
term when we get closer to the end of it because there is a lot of fear among Af
ghan politicians
that he may seek to extend his term. That, of course, would be disastrous on a n
umber of levels.
The more we force politics the way that they have been forced, the more we ram t
hrough
strategic goals and benchmarks without ever checking to see whether there are re
sults, the more
difficult it's going to become to make this a stable member of the international
community. (dm)
THE ELECTION IS IMPORTANT FOR THE PRO-WOMAN MOVEMENT
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon [Fellow and Deputy Director of the Women and Foreign Policy
Program]. While the World Scales Back its Afghanistan Ambitions, Afghan Women Pu
sh Forward.
September 15, 2010.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/22949/while_the_world_scales_back_its_afghanistan
_ambitions_af
ghan_women_push_forward.html
On Wednesday a group of women will gather at the Women's Garden in Kabul to "pro
mote
women's participation in the upcoming election." Despite security risks and thre
ats to their
campaigns, more than 400 women are running in Saturday's parliamentary vote, a f
igure that is
up twenty percent from five years ago.
Women leaders won a hard-fought battle to be heard at July's Kabul Conference. N
ow their goal
is to keep the pressure on their own government and the international community,
which has
promised that peace with the Taliban will not come at the price of their rights.
"We are not going to be silent," said Suraya Pakzad, a women's rights activist a
nd founder of
Voice of Afghan Women. "We don't want to lose things to gain things -- to lose t
he rights of
women, the right to education, the rights of media." (dm)
VOTER FRAUD WAS WIDESPREAD BEFORE THE ELECTION BEGAN
Spencer Ackerman. Track Afghan Election Fraud Without Going To Afghanistan. Sept
ember 17,
2010. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/09/track-afghan-election-fraud-withou
t-going-toafghanistan/#
ixzz0zoGhoS5U
It doesn't take a crystal ball to anticipate that Saturday's parliamentary elect
ion in Afghanistan will
be marred by fraud. The Free and Fair Election Foundation, an independent Afghan
poll-watching
group, recently documented 583 instances of pre-voting electoral violations in a
scant 40 days.
And if you'd like to do a little DIY election analysis, far from the reach of th
e Taliban, a different
non-governmental organization has built an online tool just for you. (dm)
NATO IS KILLING INSURGENTS TO SECURE THE ELECTION
Dusan Stojanovic [AP Staff writer]. 30 insurgents killed in Afghanistan ahead of
vote. Associated
Press. September 15, 2010.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvWEqwq3CrRvaQCmt21MfoYhjZJQD9
I8
1ES80
Up to 30 insurgents have been killed in fighting in Afghanistan ahead of this we
ek's parliamentary
elections, which the Taliban want to undermine, NATO and Afghan officials said.
The military alliance said that up to 23 militants were killed in action in sout
hern Helmand
province Monday and three in eastern Wardak province Tuesday. An Afghan official
said four
Taliban were killed Tuesday in southeastern Zabul province.
There were no reports of casualties among joint NATO-Afghan forces.
Attacks and clashes are rising amid an allied offensive aimed at suppressing the
continuing
Taliban insurgency.
Meanwhile, tensions were rising ahead of Saturday's parliamentary elections. The
Taliban has
vowed to target polling stations and warned Afghans not to participate in what i
t calls a sham
vote.
NATO said the coalition forces killed three "known manufacturers" of improvised
explosive
devices in Wardak, just west of capital Kabul.
"The removal of these criminals effectively removed a potential threat to the pe
ople of
Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Dan Morgan, Regional Command-East chief of operations, sa
id in a
statement. "We will continue to work with our Afghan partners to provide a secur
e environment for
the upcoming elections."
The insurgents want to oust the pro-West Afghan government and drive foreign tro
ops out of the
country, and have sought to sabotage all aspects of the political process, inclu
ding elections.
The government and its Western allies hope the ballot for the lower house of par
liament will help
consolidate the country's shaky democracy, eventually leading to the withdrawal
of the roughly
140,000 NATO-led foreign troops in the country. (dm)
NATO DOES WHAT IT CAN TO MINIMIZE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES
Dusan Stojanovic [AP Staff writer]. 30 insurgents killed in Afghanistan ahead of
vote. Associated
Press. September 15, 2010.
I8
1ES80
NATO said the coalition forces were attacked on three separate occasions during
a patrol in the
Sangin district of Helmand province on Monday. The forces responded with airstri
kes, mortars,
rocket and machine gun fire, killing up to 23 insurgents.
The allied forces stopped firing when women and children moved into the compound
from where
the insurgent fire had originated, NATO said.
Civilian deaths in NATO military operations are a major source of contention bet
ween the alliance
and Afghanistan's government, even though the United Nations says the insurgents
are
responsible for most civilian deaths and injuries.
SECURITY CONCERNS HAVE PREVENTED CAMPAIGNING
Abdul Haleem. Security concerns shrink Afghan electioneering. Xinhua News. Septe
mber 14,
2010. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-09/14/c_13494925.htm
While Afghans are just four days away from the parliamentary elections, election
eering activities
seem lesser than the previous one as few candidates have dared to hold public me
etings and
encourage supporters to use their franchise.
Afghanistan's second parliamentary elections since the collapse of Taliban regim
e in late 2001 is
set for Sept. 18 amid tight security.
However, the security concerns have shrunk the electioneering in the militancy-p
lagued
Afghanistan as many contesters prefer to announce their manifests and programs t
hrough
televised advertisements and installing billboards and portraits along the stree
ts.
The streets in Kabul and other big cities are adorned with portraits of candidat
es inscribed with
slogans promising better serving the people.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops based in Afghanistan, have
termed the
elections as a ploy of U.S. and vowed to derail the electoral process.
The hard-liner militants who boycotted last year's presidential elections have k
illed at least three
candidates for parliamentary elections and five campaigners of a lady contester
over the past two
months.
In the latest attack to sabotage the electoral process, the Taliban insurgents a
ttacked and injured
three electoral campaigners of a parliamentary candidate in the northern Balkh p
rovince on
Monday.
A candidate in talks with this scribe admitted that fear of suicide attacks used
by Taliban
insurgents has barred him from holding public meetings in Kabul.
"It is easy to invite 1000 people on a ground but it is difficult to check every
one. Carrying out
suicide an attack in public meetings would prove catastrophe," the candidate mai
ntained but
declined to be identified.
In the previous elections, the contesters, besides holding public meetings as pa
rt of election
campaigns invited people to hotels, provide food and then offered his or her man
ifests and
programs asking the voters to facilitate him or her win the elections.
This year, more than 2,500 candidates with over 400 of them women are in the run
to secure a
seat in the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of Afghan parliament.
The electioneering should have reached its peak as the day for voting is drawing
closer. However,
observers are of the view that Taliban-linked security threats have negatively a
ffected the
electoral campaign elsewhere in the country. (dm)
SECURITY IS WORSE - ANY ELECTION IMPROVEMENTS WOULD BE AN IMPROVEMENT
Dene Moore. Fear mounts as Afghans return to the polls. The Canadian Press. Sept
ember 16,
2010.
"If it is like it was last year, it will be a very violent day," said Maj.-Gen.
Nick Carter, who heads up
Regional Command South for the International Security Assistance Force, the form
al name of
NATO's military coalition in Afghanistan.
Taliban threats were posted on mosque walls throughout the district last year an
d insurgents
undertook a campaign of assassinations. The sound of bombs intermittently echoed
through the
city the night before the vote.
Carter said he couldn't predict what would happen Saturday, but suggested that a
day that's
"slightly less violent than the one we had last year" is about the best anyone c
an hope for.
Afghans will be voting Saturday for the Wolesi Jirga, their lower house of parli
ament, in the midst
of the worst security situation since the Taliban was overthrown almost a decade
ago.
"This time the security situation is much worse than before," Abdul Wasi Alkozai
, Kandahar
regional director of the Afghan Independent Election Commission, which will pres
ide over the
balloting without international oversight for only the second time since its inc
eption. (dm)
LOW VOTER TURNOUT EXPECTED. DISENFRANCHISEMENT EXPECTED.
Siddhartha Mahanta. Afghans Brace Themselves for Saturday's Elections. Mother Jo
nes.
September 17, 2010. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/09/afghans-brace-themselves
-saturdayelections
There's little reason to be optimistic about Afghanistan's parliamentary electio
ns on Saturday.
Experts project [1] a turnout of under five million voters, or about 30% of the
registered electorate.
Almost all of the 249 incumbents are running for reelection, and most are expect
ed to win.
Unsurprisingly, the Taliban have called for a boycott [2], and thousands of Afgh
an and US-led
NATO troops have been forced to beef up security at polling stations [3] around
the country.
Afghan authorities have made it easier on the troops and harder on voters by closing
over
1,000 polling stations [4], mostly in the south and east of the country. The hop
e is that fewer
polling stations will reduce the odds of fraud in the country's more unstable re
gions. It may have
the opposite effect on 1.5 million Afghans living in these areas:
Residents and candidates in these places, mostly remote villages in dangerous so
uthern and
eastern provinces, said they worry that the move will deepen ethnic rivalries by
creating electoral
imbalances and accelerate a growing disengagement from the Afghan central govern
ment that
has fed the Taliban's resurgence.
Disenfranchisement could be a bad thing in the long run. But for now, NATO and U
N authorities
are doing whatever they think will result in a smoother election. At his monthly
briefing, NATO
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said [5] he expects the elections to be
"more
transparent and more reliable." UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura agreed [6],
saying that they
would be "far from" perfect" but "much better than the previous ones." (dm)
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IS ABANDONING THE ELECTION
nes.
-saturdayelections
This all comes just as the UN decided to force a third of its Afghanistan staffe
rs (the "nonessential"
ones) to take an early vacation [7]. "It would be naive not to take these precau
tions as
we are a target," said de Mistura. Many staffers, he says, were due for a vacati
on. Others "were
told to take their holidays now." Peeling back just as the situation worsens see
ms to be a popular
trend this election season, as a number of election watchdog groups are opting f
or "assessments"
[7] over full-on "observation" missions:
Nearly all groups are cutting the number of foreign electoral experts and housin
g those that do
come in Kabul or other relatively safe areas of the country. The International R
epublican Institute,
a US democracy group with a long-term presence in the country, has cut its forei
gn observers by
around half to just five while increasing the number of Afghan observers from 40
to 160. In the
last week Singapore-based Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) has already
repatriated
more than half of its observers because of difficulties finding a security compa
ny prepared to
provide armed guard to election monitors who need to be able to roam around poll
ing stations.
Even the EU who sent 120 observors last year is only sending only seven this time ar
ound. So
in the face of guaranteed bloodshed and likely fraud, is everyone throwing in th
e towel? (dm)
VOTER FRAUD IS INEVITABLE - FAKE ID CARDS ARE READILY AVAILABLE
nes.
-saturdayelections
The words of opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah offer little comfort. A recent
Al Jazeera report
shows that fraud networks around the country have been circulating fake voter ID
cards, with
sales agents estimating that they've sold over a million during the past three m
onths. So far, no
real effort has been made to identify and destroy fraudulent voter ID cards. Abd
ullah, who finished
second to Karzai [8] in last year's presidential race, says the elections should
go forward [9] as
planned. "I think at this stage, the only thing that we can do is call on our pe
ople to participate in
the elections and be observers and monitors [themselves by not buying] fake card
s from
sources."
Abdullah's hopes for the electorate's integrity may sound naive. But what else c
an he possibly
hope for? For Afghans holding out the hope for change from the bottom up, there'
s no viable
alternative. The system they've got (with Karzai at the top) is the system they
have. The UN and
other international organizations' decisions to remove personnel from dangerous
areas makes
sense. But it also smacks of resignation. After the countless shenanigans of the
Karzais, the
Salehi arrest-and-not-arrest [10], and still-unfolding Kabul Bank crisis [11], m
erely managing a
broken electoral system and praying for a low body count may be the best anyone
can hope for.
(dm)
NATO ADMITS VIOLENCE DURING ELECTIONS
Sally Sara. 22 killed during Afghan polls: NATO. ABC News. September 19, 2010.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/19/3015918.htm
NATO officials say there were 485 violent incidents during the voting in yesterd
ay's parliamentary
election. (AFP: Manan Vatsyayana)
NATO says 22 people were killed during violence in Afghanistan's parliamentary e
lection.
NATO officials say there were 485 violent incidents during the voting in yesterd
ay's parliamentary
election, slightly more than last year's presidential poll, but there were fewer
deaths.
NATO records show 22 people were killed, compared to 50 during last year's vote.
Ballots are now being counted amid allegations of vote rigging and intimidation.
Electoral officials concede some voters were unable to take part in the poll bec
ause of security
problems in some districts. A final result is not expected until next month.
Meanwhile, the bodies of three election workers abducted as the country voted ha
ve been found
in north Afghanistan, the head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) said
. (dm)
KANDAHAR PUSH WON'T STABALIZE AFGHANISTAN
Karin Brulliard and Greg Jaffe. U.S.-led troops make a push into rural Kandahar.
Washington
Post. September 19, 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2010/09/18/AR2010091803744.html
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - U.S. and Afghan troops flowed into rural areas west of t
his city in
the past week in a new push that NATO commanders said would clear out Taliban fi
ghters and
allow Afghan security forces to take control of the spaces left behind.
The major thrust into the farming districts of Zhari and Panjwayi represented an
escalation in the
military's slow-moving operation to secure the surrounding province, Kandahar, a
nd other parts of
the Afghan south.
Top U.S. officers in Afghanistan expressed confidence in the potential of the Ka
ndahar offensive
and the gains already made. But even as more soldiers head to the front lines, w
orry persists
inside the White House and the Pentagon about whether the effort to expel the Ta
liban will be
enough to bring stability to a nation where poor governance and rampant corrupti
on are seen as
the primary drivers of chaos. (dm)
TALIBAN CLAIMING VICTORY IN THE SOUTH
Karin Brulliard and Greg Jaffe. U.S.-led troops make a push into rural Kandahar.
Washington
Post. September 19, 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2010/09/18/AR2010091803744.html
But it is unclear whether military achievements in the south and elsewhere are b
eing outpaced by
the gains of the Taliban, whose leader recently declared that his movement was w
inning. The
number of assassinations in the city of Kandahar rose in August, Hodges said, al
though he could
not cite a figure. Insurgents have begun to spread throughout northern areas whe
re their
presence was previously marginal. Nationwide, militant attacks have doubled sinc
e last summer.
(dm)
VOTER TURNOUT DOWN, FRAUD MAY BE UP
Gregg Carlstrom and Evan Hill. Uncertainty ahead in Afghanistan. September 19, 2
010.
Turnout had dimmed compared to Afghanistan's previous elections: 3.68 million ba
llots were cast,
according to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), compared with 4.6 milli
on valid votes
in last year's presidential election, and 6.4 million in the 2005 parliamentary
vote. The number of
cast ballots is an imprecise measure, however, assuming that a significant numbe
r of fraudulent
ones will be invalidated, as they were last year.
The frenetic pace of election day now gives way to a period of weeks and months
of uncertainty
as the IEC counts ballots and candidates and observers file fraud complaints. Pr
eliminary
numbers are expected on October 1, with final results are not expected until Oct
ober 30.
More than 100 complaints have already been filed, according to the Electoral Com
plaints
Commission (ECC), the joint Afghan-international body that investigates them. An
other 1,300
complaints have been submitted verbally, but the ECC says they will not be revie
wed unless
they're put into writing.
"Last year, everything was adjudicated at the head office," said an ECC official
. "But now we've
got 35 adjudicating bodies. It's quite difficult getting detailed information; w
e don't even have email
links with some of the provinces." (dm)
WATCHDOG GROUP AGREES THAT VOTER FRAUD IS WIDESPREAD
010.
The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), the country's large
st domestic
monitoring group, said in a statement shortly after polls closed that it had "se
rious concerns about
the quality of the elections."
By the Numbers
FEFA, which had more than 7,000 observers deployed across the country, reported
a "worrying
number" of government officials interfering in the election process. The group a
lso documented
incidents of ballot-stuffing, under-age voting, and proxy voting - when one pers
on votes on behalf
of others. (dm)
AFGHANISTAN'S VOTING SYSTEM INCENTIVIZES FRAUD - STORIES OF BALLOT
STUFFING
010.
Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, sa
id that there were
"widespread irregularities" during the vote, but no evidence of what he called "
massive fraud."
That distinction may be academic, though, because under Afghanistan's "single no
n-transferable
vote" system, candidates do not need a majority to win a seat in parliament. Sma
ll-scale acts of
fraud - in some provinces, just a few thousand votes - are enough to change the
slate of winning
candidates.
Press accounts suggested that individual candidates could benefit strongly from
acts of fraud. In
Uruzgan province, for example, hundreds of ethnic Hazaras reportedly seized a po
lling centre in
the Khas Uruzgan district, and proceeded "to cast 4,200 ballots for their candid
ate." That number
of votes would equal around 2 per cent of Uruzgan's registered voter population.
And in Wardak province, the Christian Science Monitor reported that election wor
kers closed
down a polling centre in the morning and spent the afternoon hours stuffing ball
ots. A candidate,
Haji Waheedullah Kalimzai, reportedly paid them $200 each to commit the fraud.
Reports of fraud also came from a variety of monitoring organisations, including
FEFA and
Democracy International, and from the Pajhwok news agency, the country's largest
news service.
(dm)
REAL VIOLENCE WASN'T NECESSARY TO DISRUPT THE VOTE - THREATS CRUSHED
TURNOUT
010.
Despite the drop in election-day violence, months of prior threats seem to have
had an effect.
Between May 4 and July 15, FEFA documented more than 60 instances of intimidatio
n, the
majority of which were Taliban threats to the general population or candidates,
warning them not
to participate in the election.
Nato also reported that five service members were killed on Saturday - two from
an improvised
explosive device explosion in the south, two from insurgent attacks in the north
and east, and one
from a "non-battle injury". (dm)
FINAL RESULTS WON'T BE KNOWN FOR MONTHS
Heidi Vogt. 'Serious concern' over fraud at Afghan elections. Associated Press.
September 19,
2010.
IB
42VG0
While the first vote counts are due to be made public in a few days time, full p
reliminary results
are not expected until early October, and then there will be weeks of fraud inve
stigations before
winners are officially announced for the 249 parliamentary seats, which were con
tested by about
2,500 candidates.
The election commission has said it hopes to release final results by the end of
October. But
there are likely to be a host of fraud complaints in each province which could d
rag the process
on even beyond that target date. The resolution of last year's vote took months.
(dm)
ELECTION LEGITIMACY IS KEY TO STABALIZATION
Heidi Vogt. 'Serious concern' over fraud at Afghan elections. Associated Press.
September 19,
2010.
IB
42VG0
If Afghans don't accept the results of the vote, it could have a profound effect
both inside the
country and with Afghanistan's international backers, who have 140,000 troops in
the country and
have spent billions trying to shore up Karzai's administration.
Abdullah Abdullah, the runner-up to Karzai in the 2009 poll, has suggested there
could be unrest
if voters feel disenfranchised, and that candidates installed despite accusation
s of fraudulent
voting could lead to a rubber-stamp parliament in the hands of the government.
However, an election perceived as legitimate could go some way to building publi
c faith in a
democratic system which has struggled to take root since the hardline Taliban re
gime was ousted
in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001. The election drew a wide array of candidates, an
d at least in key
urban centers, campaigning was vigorous and citizens on Saturday voiced resolve
in voting
despite the threat of militant attack. (dm)
FAILURE TO SECURE AN ENVIRONMENT FOR TRULY DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS WILL
DEEPEN KARZAI'S ABILITY TO CORRUPT THE GOVERNMENT
Ben Arnoldy [Staff writer]. Afghanistan election: Why the next parliament won't
check Karzai's
power. September 19, 2010. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-
Central/2010/0919/Afghanistan-election-Why-the-next-parliament-won-t-check-Karza
i-s-power
Afghanistan's election on Saturday was tarnished by attacks that killed at least
12 people, reports
of fraud, and a light turnout. Still, whichever parliamentary candidates end up
victorious once
results finally trickle in will play a role in the coming scrum for power as int
ernational forces draw
down over the five-year term ahead.
Specifically, President Hamid Karzai could try to dodge his term limit or step u
p negotiations with
the Taliban in an effort to retain power. Also in the mix will be a decision ove
r long-term basing
rights for American troops.
These issues are of intense interest to fractious opposition forces and outside
governments alike,
many of whom have serious doubts about fully trusting Mr. Karzai's judgment. The
y are hoping
that the next parliament which won't be sorted out and seated for months will be
come a more
effective check on Afghanistan's executive branch.
But the new parliament is unlikely to be a strong check on Karzai, because the c
andidates mostly
ran as individuals rather than under the banner of parties or the disorganized o
pposition
movement.
"I believe that the next parliament, unfortunately, will be even weaker than the
current one," says
Sabrina Saqib, a member of Parliament from Kabul. "Because we are all running as
individuals,
it's very easy to buy MPs, to deal with them, when we are individuals."
She decided not to stand for the new parliament because it would once again be 2
49 members
each working alone, thereby getting little done.
Afghan political parties are mostly irrelevant, having been largely discredited
during the initial
decades of the Afghan conflict.
Karzai, meanwhile, has no party but has the apparatus of government, with which
he could
influence votes legally and illegally. His family also controls major businesses
like the troubled
Kabul Bank, allowing him indirect avenues through which to financially support p
liant MPs.
To be sure, other players put money into the election for disparate reasons. (dm
)
NATO SUPPORT TROOPS KILLED CIVILIANS FOR SPORT
Craig Whitlock. Members of U.S. platoon in Afghanistan accused of killing civili
ans for sport.
Washington Post. September 18, 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2010/09/18/AR2010091803935_pf.html
AT JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WASH. The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as
it
was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with
it.
For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from
the 5th
Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day l
ast winter, a
solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The "ki
ll team"
activated the plan.
One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary gr
enade on the
ground. Then others opened fire.
According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the
start of a
months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the
grisliest
allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members o
f the platoon
have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoardi
ng a skull
and other human bones.
The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military i
gnored warnings
that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The father of one s
oldier said he
repeatedly tried to alert the Army after his son told him about the first killin
g, only to be rebuffed.
Two more slayings would follow. Military documents allege that five members of t
he unit staged a
total of three murders in Kandahar province between January and May. Seven other
soldiers
have been charged with crimes related to the case, including hashish use, attemp
ts to impede the
investigation and a retaliatory gang assault on a private who blew the whistle.
Army officials have not disclosed a motive for the killings and macabre behavior
. Nor have they
explained how the attacks could have persisted without attracting scrutiny. They
declined to
comment on the case beyond the charges that have been filed, citing the ongoing
investigation.
But a review of military court documents and interviews with people familiar wit
h the investigation
suggest the killings were committed essentially for sport by soldiers who had a
fondness for
hashish and alcohol. (dm)
AFGHANI ELECTIONS SHOULD PROMPT DOUBT ABOUT ISAF
Joshua Foust. Speculation about Afghanistan's election. Foreign Policy. Septembe
r 20, 2010.
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/20/speculation_about_afghanistans_e
lection
While the Afghan election is a process, not an event, there are still some lesso
ns we can draw
from the event. For one, Marjah, the tiny, isolated farming community in central
Helmand where
the U.S. launched a high profile campaign to defeat the Taliban earlier this yea
r, was nearly
empty. If nothing else, this should prompt skepticism of the International Secur
ity Assistance
Force (ISAF)'s entire government-in-a-box idea, which says you can immediately rep
lace
destroyed institutions with functioning ones and declare victory. That clearly d
idn't happen. (dm)
AFGHANI CANDIDATES MAY BE WORKING WITH TERRORISTS
Joshua Foust. Speculation about Afghanistan's election. Foreign Policy. Septembe
r 20, 2010.
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/20/speculation_about_afghanistans_e
lection
But there might be a bright side to the election, as well, though it requires a
fair amount of
speculation. ISAF recently attacked a convoy of cars in Takhar, a small province
in northeast
Afghanistan. While ISAF claims they killed a senior member of the Islamic Moveme
nt of
Uzbekistan, one of the occupants of those cars was a candidate running for parli
ament, raising
the troubling question of collaboration between elected members of parliament an
d the
insurgency. Candidates could either be working with insurgent leaders for some r
eason, or
insurgent groups could be fielding their own candidates for office. It would exp
lain the lowered
levels of insecurity on Saturday: there is no reason to engage in violence if yo
ur own people are
running. (dm)
WE RE
LOSING
THE
WAR/CURRENT
STRATEGY
IS
INEFFECTIVE
TALIBAN RECRUITMENT IS UP, AND TOTAL NUMBERS ARE HIGH.
ottom-Up
There is little question that insurgent recruitment is up, particularly among th
e Taliban. In early
2002 only a handful of Taliban militants remained active in Afghanistan. Today,
estimates of active
fighters range from 15,000 to 20,000. CT
THE TALBIAN HAS STRONG FINANCING NETWORKS AND FERTILE GROUND FOR
RECRUITING.
ottom-Up
There are many reasons why the Taliban elite are uninterested in negotiating for
peace. Some
elements of the Pakistani army are widely believed to continue their support for
the Taliban and
other insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan. International jihadi groups, as
well as some rich
individuals from the Gulf states, continue to finance the insurgency. Production
, taxation and trade
of illegal drugs serve as another major source of funding. Additionally, virtual
ly all the insurgent
networks are able to extort .taxes' from companies moving goods around the count
ry and into
Afghanistan from abroad. This ongoing access to cash explains in part the lack o
f interest in
peace talks by the Taliban. Finally, Afghanistan's unemployment rate, estimated
at 35-40 percent,
helps the insurgents recruit. For many poor, uneducated and unskilled youth, joi
ning insurgent
factions, working for regional warlords, or toiling in the drug industry is more
about making money
than about religion or ideology. But civilian casualties caused by U.S. attacks
are also a motivator.
CT
THE AFGHAN SECURITY SITUATION IS DETERIORATING WE'RE LOSING THE WAR IN
EVERY PART OF THE COUNTRY.
Dorronsoro, Gilles. cisiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, expert on Afghan
istan, Turkey,
and South Asia. Worsening Outlook in Afghanistan . Carnegie Endowment for Internati
onal
Peace. 9 September 2010.
Security in Afghanistan is clearly deteriorating. When I arrived in Afghanistan
this summer, I didn't
anticipate a major change in the safety conditions since my last trip in April.
Even with the surge
of U.S. troops, I expected things to have stayed mainly the same within the shor
t window of time
between trips. I was wrong. There was a palpable regression. The conditions have
only gotten
worse since the new U.S. counterinsurgency strategy was rolled out. While the co
alition is talking
about progress in a few districts, the general picture is quite different. In He
lmand, where the
coalition has used its best troops, progress will take at least five years to ma
terialize, according to
the Commandant of the Marine Corps, James T. Conway. With an aggressive counteri
nsurgency
campaign in Marja, coalition troops have been working to suppress the local insu
rgency. But
months after the offensive started, Marja remains unstable and insecure. The lac
k of progress in
Helmand delayed plans to move onto Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanis
tan, and
forced the United States to rethink its ambitious agenda. Operations in Kandahar
will be even
more difficult because the insurgents enjoy strong popular support west of the c
ity and this is
where the most severe fights will take place in the next few months. The fightin
g is currently
strongest in a small district north of Kandahar city where there are a series of
military bases.
While this is a strategically important location for controlling the city, U.S.
forces have been
unable to extend control beyond their bases it takes hours to go just hundreds of
meters outside
on patrol. And they have failed to build a local militia or strong ties with inf
luential people. The
Taliban are too powerful in the south to defeat. Things are also going badly in
the north. The
Taliban are in charge in many places and, even where they are not, the Afghan go
vernment has
no real support. Of course it's not a situation where areas wholly support the g
overnment or the
Taliban, it's more complicated than that as there are locations with local comma
nders who are not
dependent on Kabul. In the east, the United States is trying to implement a poli
tical strategy, but
these efforts are unlikely to change the course of the entire struggle. Special
forces have been
able to build a tribal shura, or leadership council, in the Chamkani district in
the east and
according to early indications this has been received positively. While it's too
early to tell how
these efforts will progress, minor progress in the east won't have any concrete
impact on the
overall direction of the war itself. CT
THE TALIBAN IS IRREVESIBLY ASCENDENT VICTORY OVER THEM IS NO LONGER
REALISTIC.
istan, Turkey,
onal
The Taliban are trying to take the fight to every part of Afghanistan and are su
ccessfully gaining
control as the group becomes more of a national movement. The strategy is workin
g as the
conflict spreads across the country. Without many more troops than would ever be
feasible for the
United States or NATO to supply, the coalition will be unable to face all the th
reats at once, and
it's becoming increasingly difficult to gain a tactical success in a single loca
tion that could have
wider tangible implications for the war. The progress of the insurgency is now i
rreversible as the
Afghan government is too weak to roll back the insurgents. The presence of the T
aliban can even
be felt in Kabul. They are progressively surrounding the capital and tightening
their control in
adjacent areas. With the center of the city remaining safe, even to foreigners,
there are fewer and
fewer places outside the city that are reachable by car. The Taliban have placed
checkpoints on
the roads out of Kabul in the north and south. It's dangerous to drive as govern
ment employees
risk being killed and foreigners are in danger of being captured. The isolation
of Kabul is putting
further strain on the government and coalition as they cannot easily travel outs
ide the capital. In
the south, the Taliban are successfully holding their ground with low levels of
casualties in
Kandahar and Helmand, despite concerted American campaigns. And the Taliban have
successfully discouraged local partners from working with the coalition. In esse
nce, the Taliban
are building a shadow state. Right now, the Taliban are the only effective force
in many areas.
The services provided are limited, but efficient. A clear indication is that int
ernational
nongovernmental organizations are beginning to deal directly with the Taliban as
they need their
support to operate effectively. The process has become so formalized, for exampl
e, that
international groups can now expect to receive a paper that is stamped and seale
d by the Taliban
to work in some Taliban-controlled areas. CT
US STRATEGY IS FAILING THE SURGE HASN'T PRODUCED ANY MEANINGFUL RESULTS.
istan, Turkey,
onal
The United States has a failing strategy in Afghanistan. Since last year there h
as not been one
serious element of progress and the situation will not improve without a strateg
ic recalculation.
Washington wants to weaken the Taliban by beefing up the counterinsurgency campa
ign to the
point where the Taliban will be forced to ask for amnesty and join the governmen
t. But the Taliban
are growing stronger and there are no indications that U.S. efforts can defeat t
he insurgents. So
far, additional troops have not translated into a tactical victory. Despite argu
ments to the contrary,
the higher levels of casualties in the coalition do not equal progress on the gr
ound. The coalition
has not been successful in Marjah and is fighting without clear political object
ives in Kandahar
because it's not able to reform the local administration. The idea that the coal
ition can win the
hearts and minds of the people is too optimistic without concrete results. And e
ven if the
situations in Kandahar and Marjah improve two big ifs the Taliban will remain a stro
ng
movement across Afghanistan, while the United States would have to use a large p
ortion of its
forces just to hold them. CT
FIGHTING THE TALIBAN IN PAKISTAN IS A LOST CAUSE.
istan, Turkey,
onal
U.S. policy on Pakistan, however, is disconnected from reality. Washington conti
nues to funnel
money to the Pakistani government to move against the Afghan Taliban but this is y
esterday's
policy. It's far too late for the Pakistani army to reverse course. And even if
Washington got what it
wanted and high-level Taliban leaders were arrested, it would not kill the insur
gency. The Taliban
are too strong and the remaining players in Afghanistan will refuse to negotiate
. In fact, if
Islamabad loses influence over the Afghan Taliban, it will be a loss for Washing
ton. Instead of
trying to disconnect the Pakistani government from the Taliban, the United State
s should use the
links to start talking. The United States must start using the situation to its
own advantage. CT
OBAMA'S PLAN HAS BEEN SUBJECT TO SERIOUS DELAYS THAT HAVE COMPROMISED
ITS CHANCES OF EFFICACY.
nd International
for Strategic
President Obama's review consumed 4 months of critical time in a 12-18 month cam
paign plan.
The plans for the civilian surge were never credible and led to inevitable delay
s. Military
movements had their own delays, and key elements of operational plans were too c
onceptual
from the start and assumed far more rapid and easy progress in the hold and buil
d phases than
proved possible in test areas like Marja. CT
THE PERCEPTION OF A WITHDRAWAL DEADLINE HAS LED TO RUSHED AND INEFFECTIVE
POLICY ON THE GROUND.
nd International
for Strategic
President Obama attempted to qualify the deadline he set in his speech for the b
eginning of US
withdrawal in August 2011, but this message has failed to get across in spite of
repeated efforts
by senior US commanders and officials. Many Afghan officials and officers, and a
llied officers and
diplomats, are at best confused and at worst privately believe that we will leav
e. Any visitor to
Afghanistan also sees efforts at every level to rush operations in time to meet
November 2010
and July 2011 reporting deadlines. The end result is that a vague de facto deadl
ine exists. This
deadline inevitably affects goals and expectations that have long been set at un
realistically high
levels for both civil and military operations. The end result is often that oper
ations and actions that
have a far better chance of succeeding over six months to a year longer are bein
g rushed in ways
that sharply increase the risk of failure. Moreover, far too little tangible pla
nning is being carried
out for the period beyond August 2011, with a sharp decoupling of civil and mili
tary plans that
separate the military campaign and transition to increasing ANSF responsibility
from aid plans
that often are far too conceptual and stovepiped and that effectively mark a pre
mature return to
post-conflict reconstruction. CT
NATO COMMITMENT IS WAVERING THE COALITION WON'T HOLD TOGETHER LONG
ENOUGH TO SUCCEED IN AFGHANISTAN.
nd International
for Strategic
Allied war fatigue compounds the problem. Canadian and Netherlands' withdrawal i
n 2011, and
recent Polish calls for withdrawal, are symbols of the fact that the legislature
s and population of
many ISAF countries no longer believe in this war. Some of this is unavoidable,
given the length
and cost of the conflict and the fact that the US obtained much of its present a
llied support by
describing the mission as peacekeeping and post conflict reconstruction, and fai
led to show
effective leadership between 2002 and 2008. CT
THE AFGHAN ARMY IS NOT BEING EFFECTIVELY READIED TO TAKE OVER SECURITY.
nd International
for Strategic
Goals have been set for the development of the Afghan National Security Forces t
hat emphasis
force quantity over force quality. These goals may well rush a force into the fi
eld that is used up in
the process, therefore denying a basis for transition from US and allied forces.
The end result
may well also delay operations and transition by using up key elements of the ar
my and
paramilitary ANCOP police force, or risk serious reversals if ISAF tries to rely
on the force. The
Army is effectively being pushed towards its present short-term force goal two y
ears early, and
the ANCOP force is still under so much stress that it has 80% attrition. Moreove
r, ISAF had only
deployed 23% of the required trainers as of early May 2010. Giving NTM-A and the
partnering
effort even an additional year, and time to put more emphasis on quality and tra
nsition over
quantity and immediate employment, could make the difference between strategic s
uccess and
strategic failure. CT
MAJOR DIFFICULTIES CONFRONT THE CURRENT NATO STRATEGY.
nd International
Studies. Afghanistan: A Progress Report . Center for Strategic and International St
udies. 15
September 2010.
Major problems still exist in key areas where progress is essential to the succe
ss of the US and
NATO/ISAF strategy. These include the adaptiveness and resilience of the insurge
ncy, a
continuing rise in the IED threat (which has become the Stinger of this Afghan W
ar), the problems
raised by Afghan casualties, the continuing failure of the counternarcotics effo
rt, and the lack of
effective unity of effort on both the civil and military sides of the ISAF allia
nce. CT
THERE IS NOT YET ANY EVIDENCE THAT CURRENT STRATEGY IN AFGHANISTAN IS
WORKING.
nd International
Studies. Afghanistan: A Progress Report . Center for Strategic and International St
udies. 15
September 2010.
Once again progress is being made, but that progress is slow, still tentative, a
nd has not yet
demonstrated it can be scaled up to achieve broad success or achieve success at
the rate that
the US and its allies are willing to accept. This is partly a result of the fact
that it is taking much
longer to put the military and civilian elements of the new strategy in place th
an was initially
anticipated when it was formed. Much of the so-called .surge' is just completing
deployment, and
will take months to become fully effective. At the same time, the data in this p
art of the analysis
shows that many challenges are proving to be more serious than many had hoped in
forming the
new strategy. These include problems in building up the US and allied civil and
military
capabilities in the field needed to implement the new strategy, massive shortfal
ls in the capability
of Afghan governance, problems in winning the .war of perceptions,' serious prob
lems in the
effectiveness of the civilian aid effort, and major problems in developing a mix
of Afghan security
forces that can both fight the war and provide a lasting basis for .transition.'
None of these issues
mean the war cannot be won, if winning means creating an Afghanistan with a mode
rate level of
stability and security, and which is not a base for major international terroris
t activity. The reports
do show progress in many critical areas. It is clear, however, that the US and I
SAF have not yet
shown that the new strategy is working, or that either the Afghan or outside res
ources are
available to implement the necessary progress on a national scale. It is also li
kely that it will be at
least the end of 2011 before it is clear whether the new strategy has a high pro
bability of success,
and actual success will take another half decade if such a form of victory can be
achieved. CT
US TRAINING OF AFGHAN POLICE HAS BEEN TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE, HAS HURT RATHER
THAN HELPED STABILITY.
anistan: The
The US decided to takeover police training in 2003 the State Department subcontr
acted police
training in Afghanistan to DynCorp International, a private corporation that hir
ed retired American
police officers with no knowledge of Afghanistan to train Afghan police. Between
2003 to 2005,
the United States was to spend $860 million in training 40,000 policemen, but th
e results were
almost totally useless. DynCorp was training the police to fight an insurgency r
ather than win
hearts and minds in their localities. The trained Afghan policemen returned home
and continued
acting in the same rapacious ways as before. .Lightly armed and poorly trained,
ANP deaths are
three times higher than those of the Afghan National Army (ANA). In 2007 around
1,200 police
were killed, mainly in the south and east, and numbers are on track to be the sa
me in 2008. This
impacts police morale and will ultimately undermine recruitment. Already there a
re reports of
police defections to the Taliban, often, it would appear, the result of demorali
sation and the threat
of death rather than the deliberate infiltration of the ranks by anti-government
elements.' CT
ANP DEVELOPMENT HAS BEEN A FAILURE.
anistan: The
The Afghan National Police is one of the most invested and planned sector of the
rebuilding
process. But due to poor planning and corruption ANP has backfired. Apart from t
his fact, it is also
a question of delegating the responsibilities. Afghan National Police has been f
ighting insurgency
and providing security to the level strictly conferring to armed forces; this ha
s in turn widen the
gap between the population and police officials. CT
NATO FORCES AND OPERATIONS INCREASINGLY UNPOPULAR IN AFGHANISTAN.
anistan: The
The high levels of insecurity, instability, and many broken dreams of the Afghan
people seem to
have developed an initial positive response into a negative one. The stories of
excesses by
occupation forces, and support for the terrorizing warlords by the US have left
a bad taste in the
minds of Afghan population in general. CT
US-AFGHAN TENSIONS HIGH.
Sommerville, Quentin. Reporter, BBC News. Afghanistan's Karzai 'doubts Nato anti-
Taliban
policy' . 30 August 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11133146
Relations are increasingly fractious between President Karzai's government and t
he United
States. The Afghan government has been angered by America's growing focus on off
icial
corruption in Kabul. Afghanistan's national security adviser, Rangin Dadfar Span
ta, has rejected
US media reports that one of the government's top officials was on the payroll o
f the Central
Intelligence Agency. Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Se
curity Council, was
detained by Afghan police in July after he was allegedly heard soliciting a brib
e in a wiretapped
telephone conversation. Anti-corruption investigators, who have trained by US an
d British
mentors, say the bribe was intended to discourage Afghan officials from investig
ating a company
which is accused of transferring billions of dollars out of the country. A subse
quent New York
Times newspaper report alleged Mr. Salehi was being paid by the CIA. CT
CIVILIAN
CASUALITIES
HIGH
AFGHAN CIVILIAN DEATHS REACHED THEIR HIGHEST LEVEL YET IN 2009.
hans, U.N.
Last year was the most lethal for Afghan civilians since the American-led war be
gan here in late
2001, with the Taliban and other insurgent groups causing the vast majority of n
oncombatant
deaths, according to a United Nations survey released Wednesday. The report said
2,412
civilians were killed in 2009, a jump of 14 percent over the previous year. Anot
her 3,566 were
wounded. CT
EVEN WITH NEW GUIDELINES INTENDED TO PROTECT CIVILIANS, 359 AFGHANS WERE
KILLED BY AIRSTRIKES ALONE LAST YEAR.
hans, U.N.
Indeed, airstrikes are the main cause of civilian deaths by the coalition. Even
with the new
guidelines, which took effect in the middle of last year, 359 Afghans were kille
d in airstrikes in
2009, the United Nations survey found. One of the worst of these came on Sept. 4
, when German
troops called in an airstrike after militants hijacked a fuel convoy near the no
rthern city of Kunduz.
But the trucks had stalled in a riverbed, and local residents had gathered aroun
d them. The
bombing killed at least 72 civilians, the United Nations report said. CT
AFGHAN
POLITICAL
SYSTEM
WEAK/CORRUPT/ILLEGITIMATE
NATION-BUILDING IN AFGHANISTAN HAS FAILED: THE AFGHAN POLITICAL PROCESS IS
CORRUPT AND THE AFGHAN LEGISLATURE IS IRRELEVANT.
istan, Turkey,
onal
The parliamentary elections scheduled for September will in many ways be a rerun
of last year's
presidential campaign. The political process will be extremely corrupt and the i
nternational
community won't be able to monitor the election on the ground. President Karzai
will marginalize
progressives and use the elections for his own political gain. Still, the electi
ons will not be a major
development in determining Afghanistan's fate. Karzai is increasingly going arou
nd parliament
and through a jirga a tribal gathering of leaders to establish new policies. If Karz
ai wants to do
something, he simply marginalizes the parliament. CT
NATO ENTERED AFGHANISTAN WITH UNREALISTIC GOALS AND CREATED AN
UNWORKABLE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.
nd International
for Strategic
One thing seems clear: The impossible goals and dreams of rapid political and ec
onomic
development, creation of a Western-style rule of law, and quick progress in huma
n rights was
never going to take place even if the challenge had really been post-conflict re
construction and
the insurgency had not been allowed to fester without serious opposition for hal
f a decade. The
Afghan Compact, a badly drafted Western constitution, and the Afghan National De
velopment
Plan were little more than idealistic dreams decoupled from Afghan realities and
Afghan desires.
More than eight years into the war, the last Presidential election is still a po
litical nightmare, the
legislative election is in limbo, and Afghan power brokers have become far stron
ger while Afghan
capacity in governance has made limited progress. CT
KARZAI'S ELECTORAL MANIPULATION HAS UNDERMINED THE PERCEIVED LEGITIMACY
OF THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT.
nd International
for Strategic
Karzai, who appeared to have already rigged the election in the summer of 2009,
did not rely on
power brokering to give him a majority. The controversy following the election c
onsumed 4-6
months, divided Karzai from the US, has led to the resignation of key officials,
and left GIRoA with
far more uncertain legitimacy while sharply undermining US influence. This has a
ffected every
aspect of GIRoA and ANSF support for the war. CT
THE AFGHAN POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATIONS ARE ALL
TERRIBLE.
nd International
for Strategic
More than eight years into the war, the last Presidential election is still a po
litical nightmare, the
legislative election is in limbo, and Afghan power brokers have become far stron
ger while Afghan
capacity in governance has made limited progress. Nearly 40% of the population i
s partially
dependent on UN food aid for basic subsistence, and most Afghans have to do anyt
hing they can
to survive whether this involves opium or what the West calls corruption. It is th
e Taliban that
established the real rule of law in many areas, and the civil authorities and po
lice remain largely
corrupt and ineffective in much of the country. As for human rights, traditional
Afghans remain
traditional Afghans, and issues like the rights of women make token progress at
best outside the
areas where such rights already existed before the Taliban took over. CT
NATO COUNTRIES HAVE CREATED AND EXACERBATED THE CORRUPTION PROBLEM IN
AFGHANISTAN.
nd International
for Strategic
The US, its allies, and all aid donors need to take responsibility for much of w
hat is called
.corruption.' They failed to understand that Afghans accept informal payments as
part of the cost
of normal life. They did not consider the real world motivations of people invol
ved in some 30
years of war and turmoil and who had no way to know if any given job or position
would last more
than a few months. They failed to see the importance of preserving the Afghan ci
vil service and
instead hired many Afghans away from the government. They created a virtually un
controlled
flood of money that could be grabbed by Afghans who had not had any similar oppo
rtunities in 30
years, who had limited loyalty or no abstract concept of governance, and who had
the resulting
ability to take that money to become wealthy and buy power in the process. Organ
izations like
UNAMA and AID have been massively corrupting forces in Afghanistan. So have the
US and
ISAF military who have given massive amounts of money to poorly supervised contr
actors and
others, who in turn not only buy power with that money, but often pay a tax to i
nsurgents in the
process. These problems have been compounded by an emphasis on anticorruption dr
ives that
have had a predictable lack of effect. Rather than threaten the power structure,
they lead to
hollow investigations, finding scapegoats, shuffling officials from one post to
another, and
predictable resistance from any Afghan with the clout and wealth to avoid becomi
ng a successful
target. CT
THE AFGHAN JUSTICE SYSTEM CREATED BY THE COALITION IS NON-FUCTIONAL.
nd International
for Strategic
Moreover, all these problems interacted with a past emphasis on building a forma
l justice system
whose resources and timescales were impossibly long and limited in near-term cov
erage,
decoupled from credible policing and detention, and ignored the hopelessly low p
ay and poor
security for judges and prosecutors. The end result bypassed the kind of less fo
rmal justice
Afghans wanted and needed, left much of the country without effective justice, a
nd empowered
the Taliban to the point where it had enough presence to create its own prompt jus
tice system.
Anticorruption efforts cannot function at the local and regional levels under su
ch circumstances,
and creating local police becomes impossible when there is no real justice syste
m for them to
support and virtually any power broker or successful criminal can buy their way
to the result they
want. CT
THE CURRENT AFGHAN GOVERNMENT IS WEAK AND UNSTABLE.
anistan: The
Although the Afghan political structure stands and works, it cannot be called st
able. It is mired
with corruption, ineptness, influence of warlords and weak political will. It ca
n be safely assumed
that once the backing of the US and NATO-led ISAF weakens or phases out, the who
le structure
will be engulfed in entropy featuring mainly a civil war situation. It may be sa
fe to say that more
than the external factors, the warlordism and tribalism with all their accompany
ing tendencies,
insinuate into the larger body of politics of Afghanistan to make it more primit
ive and unstable. CT
HUMAN
RIGHTS
LOW
CONFLICT HAS DESTROYED THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF AFGHANISTAN.
anistan: The
However, data collection shows that a lot of damage has also been done. All part
ies in the conflict
are to be blamed for destroying social fabric of Afghanistan. The fallout of the
U.S. led invasion,
including a resurgence in Taliban forces, record-high drug production, and re-ar
med warlords, has
led to a threat to the well-being and rights of hundreds of thousands of innocen
t Afghan citizens,
according to Human Rights Watch. Moreover, in many areas, USAID humanitarian foo
d deliveries
and development were being taken over by the joint CIA-SOF teams. Credible Afgha
n tribal
leaders who had been identified by the Afghan government or the UN as .positive
agents of
change, capable of fostering stability at the community level, were bypassed in
favor of the
commanders and warlords preferred by the CIA. Afghan civil society was being str
angled even as
it emerged and the Afghan government was made to look incompetent and powerless.
' An
editorial in a prominent independent newspaper in Kabul presented a view of Tali
ban era:
.Criminal activities, such as group sexual assaults on children, kidnappings and
extortion by
gangs of abductors have now become a more serious threat than that of the Taliba
n senior
government officials in Kabul should beware of this danger. If people have to ch
oose between a
life under the extremely violent and horrible rule of the Taliban and a life und
er a democratic
government but exposed to threats against their family members, sexual assaults
on children,
kidnappings, murders, extortions and being forced into giving ransoms to rescue
family members,
they may prefer the deadly rule of the Taliban .This is because under Taliban rule
it is only their
life that is in danger, but when the law is not implemented in a democratic gove
rnment, their
dignity, reputation, property and female members of their families are threatene
d. CT
TALIBAN IS TERRORIZING AND MURDERING AFGHAN CIVILIANS.
anistan: The
According to Amnesty International, the Taliban are allegedly targeting civilian
s, including
teachers, abducting aid workers, school buildings and other facilities. Amnesty
International said
that .up to 756 civilians were killed in 2006 by bombs, mostly on roads or carri
ed by suicide
attackers belonging to the Taliban.' Human Rights Watch holds former Afghan warl
ords and
political strongmen responsible for numerous human rights violations including k
idnapping, rape,
robbery, and extortion. CT
ECONOMY
WEAK
THE AFGHAN ECONOMY IS STILL ABYSMAL, DESPITE MASSIVE AID.
Pathak, Sriparna. Junior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. Yet ano
ther Great
Game in Afghanistan: The US and China . 1 September 2010.
The United Nations (UN) Human Development Report of 2009 rated Afghanistan as th
e world's
second most impoverished country. One of the severest problems in Afghanistan is
that of
poverty, coupled with those of unemployment, lack of development, and the poor i
nfrastructure.
Afghanistan relies on aid for around 90 per cent of its budget. In late 2009, Ch
ina allocated US$
75 billion in economic aid to Afghanistan, bringing its total close to US$1 bill
ion since 2008. In
economic terms, the US has pledged US$10.4 billion to Afghanistan for developmen
t between
2002- 08. CT
AT FOREIGN AID/RECONSTRUCTION: AID AND RECONSTRUCTION MONEY HAVE ONLY
DESTABILIZED LOCAL ECONOMIES.
istan, Turkey,
onal
Complementing the additional forces was a civilian surge. The idea behind provid
ing more money
for development was that it would improve the lives of the local population and
marginalize the
Taliban. The concept, however, is not proven as there is no empirical data to su
pport the theory.
It's quite the opposite in fact. When billions of dollars are dumped into the lo
cal economy, it
destabilizes the population and society. The provincial reconstruction team pour
ed $80-90 million
into Kunar province in east Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009, but the local economy
wasn't able to
absorb the cash. It fed corruption and reinforced a war economy where beneficiar
ies are
interested in perpetuating a low level of conflict. CT
AT FOREIGN AID: AID HAS BEEN INEFFECTIVE SINCE IT IGNORES THE REALITIES OF THE
MILITARY SITUATION.
nd International
for Strategic
Much perhaps a majority of the foreign aid effort is still directed towards prog
rams and goals
that were set before the insurgency cast Afghanistan into a state of war. This e
ffort remains
decoupled from the real world security situation and the needs and perceptions o
f ordinary
Afghans. Far too much aid planning and spending exists in a .bubble' that effect
ively tries to
ignore the fact that the nation is at war. It is time that the entire civil effo
rt, and all foreign aid, dealt
with the reality that Afghanistan is at war and that aid in governance, economic
s, and the rule of
law must be tailored to this fact, and be transparently accountable in the proce
ss. CT
AT FOREIGN AID: MOST AID MONEY GOES TO WESTERN ADMINISTRATORS AND
CONSULTANTS, DOESN'T HELP AFGHANS, CREATES TENSION AND RESENTMENT.
Press TV. Ugly truth about foreign aid in Afghanistan . May 10, 2009. http://www.af
ghanweb.
com/economy/foreign_aid.html
Exorbitant sums of international aid to Afghanistan are being lavished by Wester
n aid agencies
on their own officials in the conflict-stricken country. .In the United States,
Britain, and other
countries, people work and taxpayers pay money that goes to help Afghanistan to
build roads,
dams, and electricity lines,' Ramazan Bashardost, an Afghan parliament member an
d former
planning minister, said. Bashardost added, .But when the money comes to Afghanis
tan, it's spent
on those people who have cars costing USD 60,000 and who live in houses with a U
SD 15,000
monthly rent. This money goes to these expenses 90 percent logistics and administr
ation.' The
high expenditure on paying, protecting and accommodating Western aid officials i
n palatial style
helps to explain why Afghanistan ranks 174th out of 178th on a UN ranking of cou
ntries' wealth.
Districts across Afghan capital city, Kabul, have been taken over or rebuilt to
accommodate
Westerners working for aid agencies or embassies. .I have just rented out this b
uilding for USD
30,000 a month to an aid organization. It was so expensive because it has 24 roo
ms with en-suite
bathrooms as well as armored doors and bullet-proof windows,' Torialai Bahadery,
the director of
Property Consulting Afghanistan said. The cupidity of aid agencies and the forei
gn contractors
that every bedroom should have an en-suite bathroom comes despite the fact that
77 percent of
Afghans lack access to clean water. At a time when extreme poverty is turning yo
ung Afghans to
fight for the Taliban, foreign consultants in Kabul can command salaries of USD
250,000 to USD
500,000 a year. The high degree of wastage of aid money in Afghanistan has even
troubled the
Afghan government. .I was in Badakhshan province in northern Afghanistan, which
has a
population of 830,000, most of whom depend on farming,' said Matt Waldman, the h
ead of policy
and advocacy for Oxfam in Kabul. .The entire budget of the local department of a
griculture,
irrigation and livestock, which is extremely important for farmers in Badakhshan
, is just USD
40,000. This would be the pay of an expatriate consultant in Kabul for a few mon
ths.' The ugly
truth about foreign aid in Afghanistan surfaces at the time when the country has
seen rising levels
of violence in recent months. Taliban insurgents have carried out a string of de
adly attacks and
now control large parts of the countryside where Afghan and international forces
do not have
enough manpower to maintain a permanent presence. CT
US RECONSTRUCTION STRATEGY IN AFGHANISTAN IS FUNDAMENTALLY INEFFECTIVE.
anistan: The
But everything is not very rosy. In a report after 9/11, the council on foreign
relations was blunt
about the situation: .The stark reality is that the United States does not have
the right structural
capability to stabilize and rebuild nations. Responsibility is diffuse and autho
rity is uncertain. The
proper roles of the military and civilian agencies have not been articulated. An
d civilian players
desperately need a 'unified command' structure to align policies, programs and r
esources.'
Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID told his senior staff that .our first task is
to rebuild the
agricultural system ... reconstruction has to be done in such a way to get the ec
onomy moving.'
Natsios was quickly overruled by Rumsfeld at the pentagon and tenet at CIA, who
were
determined to ignore if not undermine USAID if such programs contradicted their
own strategy.
The CIA wanted every U.S. Aid program to be used to help capture bin Laden and s
trengthen the
warlords rather than to rebuild the country. In keeping with prevailing views in
the republican
party, USAID became a source of funds for Christian fundamentalist NGOs active i
n the Muslim
world- giving them $57 million between 2001 and 2005 out of a total of $390 mill
ion distributed to
all NGOs. Quick impact projects became a Washington favorite. These were swift a
nd cheap,
such as digging a well, rebuilding a small bridge, or repairing a broken-down sc
hool building, and
were supposed to convince the population that reconstruction was moving ahead. I
nstead, such
projects invariably helped only the local warlord or commander the CIA was suppo
rting. CT
SINCE NATO INTERVENTION, RETURNING REFUGEES HAVE OVERWHELMED
AFGHANISTAN'S SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE.
anistan: The
There is also a refugee problem. 50,000 refugees were returning every week after
US landed and
overwhelmed Taliban, this in turn overwhelmed the UN and the government. The tra
gedy was that
due to the absence of investment in agriculture, most refugees returned to the c
ities rather than to
their villages. Such a large influx into the cities blew the unemployment and cr
ime rates out of
proportion. CT
PRT'S HAVE BEEN INEFFECTIVE.
anistan: The
By early 2005 there were PRTs (Provincial Reconstruction Teams) in Afghanistan 1
4 of them
manned by US forces and the rest by ISAF and NATO countries NATO assumed command
of the
ISAF force in Kabul in August 2003 and then took over from UPS forces in the Nor
th, followed by
the West, South and East. In 2006 NATO promised to place a PRT in all of Afghani
stan's 34
provinces. However, the establishment by every European government of .National
Caveats
stipulating what its PRT force could and could not do was to paralyze NATO's eff
ectiveness in
combating the Taliban.' CT
ANY POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE AFGHAN ECONOMY IS SHORT-TERM AND WON'T BE
HEALTHY OR SUSTAINED.
anistan: The
Question 2: Is the NATO presence having a stabilizing and positive effect on Afg
han economy?
Inference: The answer to this question is the most difficult to be stated. There
are some projects
and targets which have had quite a lot of success; however, these are mainly sho
rt term and
without a lasting impact. On the other hand, the infrastructure building and con
trol over the
localized economic powerhouses of warlords are doing a huge damage to the overal
l Afghan
national economy. Another negative feature is the magnanimous drug cultivation a
nd smuggling.
Overall, the problem is the funding and development without a proper vision, dir
ection and
coordination. The priorities are highly misplaced. There has never in history be
en a case where
only externally induced impetus for development and growth has had a positive ef
fect. It has
always been the indeginous will and effort, that has put the country on prospero
us tracks. CT
NEGOTIATED
WITHDRAWAL
GOOD
CONTINUED MILITARY OPERATIONS WILL BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE IN ACHIEVING
LASTING PEACE THE WINDOW TO NEGOTIATE A REASONABLE SETTLEMENT WITH THE
TALIBAN IS CLOSING FAST.
istan, Turkey,
onal
Advocates of a continued push will argue that only now are the resources in plac
e for the
counterinsurgency strategy to be effectively carried out and more time is needed
to assess
results. But this line of reasoning ignores reality that the strategy has alread
y failed on the ground
and there is no evidence that the situation can be reversed in strategically dec
isive ways. This is
dangerous because the Taliban are less likely to talk in a year. CT
NEGOTIATING NOW IS THE BEST OPTION.
istan, Turkey,
onal
While the interest in a calm, secure, and stable Afghanistan is widespread, the
longer the United
States waits to begin negotiations the smaller chance they will have to succeed.
The United
States needs to Afghanize the war. Instead of a global war pitting the United St
ates against
jihadis, the future needs to be in the hands of Afghans and only then will they
find local solutions
to the war. The way forward is apparent. In the coming months, the American-led
coalition needs
to declare a ceasefire and begin talking to the Taliban. While negotiations coul
d be an extremely
long and fraught process, the sooner they begin the more likely they are to achi
eve results.
Negotiations must include the United States, Taliban, Pakistani military, and me
mbers of the
Afghan government and Northern Alliance. It needs to be relatively small at firs
t as bringing in too
many regional powers would only complicate negotiations. CT

10 PF2 Afghanistan

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Descrizione originale:

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

10 PF2 Afghanistan

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

10PF2-Afghanistan Page 1 of 129

Potrebbero piacerti anche