Britain's senior generals: Afghanistan may become a war between Sunni and Shia across Middle East

Failure in Afghanistan risks rise in terror, say generals

Nicholas Watt and Ned Temko
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer

Britain's most senior generals have issued a blunt warning to Downing Street that the military campaign in Afghanistan is facing a catastrophic failure, a development that could lead to an Islamist government seizing power in neighbouring Pakistan.

Amid fears that London and Washington are taking their eye off Afghanistan as they grapple with Iraq, the generals have told Number 10 that the collapse of the government in Afghanistan, headed by Hamid Karzai, would present a grave threat to the security of Britain...

...'The consequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than in Iraq,' he said. 'If we fail in Afghanistan then Pakistan goes down. The security problems for Britain would be massively multiplied. I think you could not then stop a widening regional war that would start off in warlordism but it would become essentially a war in the end between Sunni and Shia right across the Middle East.'

'Mao Zedong used to refer to the First and Second World Wars as the European civil wars. You can have a regional civil war. That is what you might begin to see. It will be catastrophic for Nato. The damage done to Nato in Afghanistan would be as great as the damage done to the UN in Bosnia. That could have a severe impact on the Atlantic relationship and maybe even damage the American security guarantee for Europe...'

...The warnings from Ashdown and the generals on Afghanistan will be echoed in a report this week by the all-party Commons defence select committee. MPs will say that the combination of civilian casualties, war damage and US-led efforts to eradicate lucrative poppy crops risk turning ordinary people towards the Taliban...

...Adam Holloway, a Tory member of the committee who is a former Grenadier Guards officer, said: 'We are getting to the point where it will be irretrievable. That's where we are now. We are in danger of a second strategic failure (after Iraq), which we cannot afford.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126817,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

As hard as it is for the Pakistani Army to try to assert power in the regions bordering Afghanistan, the prospect of Al Qaeda and its Pushtun tribal allies actually conquering Pakistan and routing the Pakistani Army is laughable to the point of functional insanity. They can deny mountains, yes. Why? Mountains are bad terrain for tanks. (Note to the US: Iran has a lot of mountains, too.) You go fight tanks head-on on terrain suitable for them and they perform a hell of a lot better. Pakistan is not going to "fall" to Al Qaeda. Musharraf might get killed in the process, but you can't assassinate an entire army. And the sum of that army is still a lot more powerful than the Taliban. "A lot" is understating it.

Certainly not the article I just posted.

..."Al Qaeda and its Pushtun tribal allies actually conquering Pakistan and routing the Pakistani Army"...Huh? Where in the world does the article say THAT?

It says, "the military campaign in Afghanistan is facing a catastrophic failure, a development that could lead to an Islamist government seizing power in neighbouring Pakistan." That does not seem very far-fetched to me.

And honestly, Kagemusha, what credentials do you have that make your claims more credible than the expert opinions of the generals who are in the field? What Inge describes about American brutality (such as burning their poppy crops, etc) vs. NATO's attempts to truly win the people's hearts sounds pretty accurate to me.

I think we might need to pay ateention to this article.

What really scares me is that Bush will go to war with Iran and the entire ME will erupt in civil war, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

or, failing that, military defeat.

I don't see the prospect of either as being reality based.

I would not be surprised to see civil war come to Pakistan. That is a far, far, far cry from Islamists winning it.

I base that on being aware of numerous studies of Pakistan, the writings of well informed and level headed people who have studied the subject with great interest, and logic (see: the subject line above).

And I'm not impressed by waving around the credentials of generals because I don't blindly submit unrealistic assessments no matter who the speaker is. And, an Islamic government seizing power in Pakistan is not realistic for the reasons I've explained. Musharraf is not the only thing keeping Pakistan from going "Islamic" - the army is. And the army is not small or, compared to irregulars, weak.

Edit: Hey, having said all that, civil war in Pakistan is not a positive development. It's just a far cry from taking over.

Who knows...

That is what they are talking about I think...

It tends to make a numerical disadvantage less disadvantageous.

My point is simply, the idea that if Karzai falls, not only Musharraf falls, but secular rule, in Pakistan, is assuming that the Pakistani Army will quietly accept being bossed around by Islamist scholars. I see no reason for this to be literally true. So, I see it as a matter of hyperbole to get the attention of the politicians. Yes, it COULD happen, but it probably won't.

The salient point is rather that even if the Islamists don't take over Pakistan, they can make life in Pakistan a lot more like life in Afghanistan, and that is not something that's in NATO's best interests at all.

Good luck stopping it though. From NATO's point of view.

Either a dictator, or a civil war. Those are the only options to create a stable state. On the one hand, you support an unelected leader(money, weapons, etc), that will force diverse groups of people to live together in set boundaries. On the other hand, you have a civil war, and the group that wins militarily becomes the central governing authority, and the losers live by their rules under threat of force.

If people want Iraq(or any nation-state) to exist, you get to pick one of the two.