Shifting American Policies are Fragmenting Afghanistan

unhappycamper

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Thu May-27-10 08:05 AM
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Shifting American Policies are Fragmenting Afghanistan

In a galaxy of insurgents, Obama has scattered the players, and now there are at least a dozen fighting formations against the foreigners, well beyond just the Taliban.

Shifting American Policies are Fragmenting Afghanistan
By Lucio Caracciolo
L'Espresso, Italy
Translated By Simone Urru
20 May 2010
Edited by Piotr Bielinski

Nine months ago, General Stanley McChrystal warned his minister, Robert Gates, that without a radical change on the ground, the war in Afghanistan threatened to spiral out of control within a year.

~snip~

In contrast to last summer, the U.S. and Allied campaign not only shows no signs of success, but it seems trapped in a logic of defeat.

~snip~

All of this is resulting in an increasingly fragmented battlefield. Among the Allies, the Dutch are about to leave and the Canadians will follow shortly. Many countries who got involved in the ISAF mission to please the Americans are seriously questioning whether to stay any longer in a theater even the U.S. deems unsuitable. In a galaxy of insurgents, Obama has scattered the players, and now there are at least a dozen fighting formations against the foreigners, well beyond just the Taliban.

Among the regional powers, India and Pakistan are sharpening their weapons to resolve the dispute over who has the right to exercise an indirect hegemony in Afghanistan, while Iran ponders the potential use of an Afghan territory in case of an Israeli/American aggression. As for the Russians, they would gladly pay the West to make them stay indefinitely in Afghanistan, hindering a possible expansion of Islamic radicalism in the weak underbelly of southern Russia. Beijing shares this fear with the Russians but appears shocked by the oscillations in Washington.

And what about us? Whenever an Italian soldier dies, light is once again shed on a mission that looks unpopular, or even worse, incomprehensible to the public. And after a while that light is turned off and we rely again on inertia until the next fatality. It's never too late to realize that this passive attitude is unreasonable and dangerous. The government and the opposition should at least tell part of the truth about what exactly our soldiers are doing in Afghanistan. And above all, they must explain why they want to keep them there, preferably without hiding behind slogans.

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