rssWhat’s Missing From Miliband’s Afghanistan Speech
Monday, July 27, 2009 at 2:54 pm
- 3 Comments
U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband gave a speech to NATO headquarters in Brussels about the Afghanistan war, and it might be the most thorough and explicit explanation of coalition military and political strategy offered by a senior official of either the U.S. or U.K. government. There are just two big holes. First:
The Afghan government needs effective grass-roots initiatives to offer an alternative to fight or flight for the foot soldiers of the insurgency. Essentially this means a clear route for former insurgents to return to their villages and go back to farming the land, or a role for some of them within the legitimate Afghan security forces. Military pressure has an important role to play, it is complementary, not an alternative – these people must see the danger of remaining insurgents, but also believe that they will be protected from their former allies if they lay down their arms.
For higher-level commanders and their networks, we need to work with the Afghan government to separate the hard-line ideologues, who are essentially irreconcilable and violent and who must be pursued relentlessly, from those who can be drawn into domestic political processes.
So where are these Afghan officials to direct and coordinate distinctions between insurgent elements? What are the formal structures in place for identifying and exploiting divisions, or for inducing them? I can see an argument in place for why this has to wait until after the August presidential election sorts itself out, but the war has been going on for almost eight years.
Second issue:
In the face of this enemy, our ultimate objective in 2001 holds true for 2009: to protect our citizens from terrorist attacks by preventing Al Qaida having a safe haven in the tribal belt –in either Afghanistan or Pakistan.
That’s one of only a handful of times Miliband mentions al-Qaeda. He donates a lot of effort to the question of the Taliban-led insurgent coalition and in drawing his distinctions he makes it clear that a great deal of the insurgency has peripheral connections to the terrorist entity we’re in Afghanistan to confront and defeat. Without a focus on how each step of the strategy contributes to that goal, the Afghanistan war described by the foreign secretary has something of a we’re-here-because-we’re-here-because-we’re-here-because-we’re-here quality.
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3 Comments
Comment posted July 27, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
Does ANYONE actually believe that if we could somehow effectively and entirely deny al Quaeda “a safe haven in the tribal belt –in either Afghanistan or Pakistan” that the threat from al Quaeda would somehow be diminished?
You'd have to be severely history- AND logic-challenged to accept that premise…
mikey
http://stoopid_stuff.blogspot.com
Comment posted July 28, 2009 @ 9:04 pm
Spencer – Your first point is spot on. You ask all the right questions and we're working with the Afghan government to answer them. You will understand that we cannot go into great detail about those discussions at this stage.
Your second point is wrong. The UK has been very clear since 2001 (and reaffirmed in 2007 and 2009) that our ultimate objective in Afghanistan is to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven from which they could mount international terrorist attacks such as 9/11 or 7/7. I made this point in a blog post earlier today:
“After stating clearly that our objective in 2001 – the need to deny Al Qaeda a base from which to launch attacks on the world – still holds true in 2009, the basic thrust of [Miliband's] speech was that we can support the Afghan government in dismantling the insurgency which still threatens to provide that base by using the dual approach of military power and political engagement.”
In addition, on Friday I blogged about how Operation Panther's Claw – a UK-led mission in Helmand – was a critical element of this approach:
“Put simply, these classic military shaping and clearing operations are happening to allow around 80,000 Afghans to exist free from the shadow of the Taliban as the country prepares to vote in the Presidential elections on 20 August. Why is this so important? Because the more Afghans who can participate in deciding the future of their country, and who genuinely buy-in to the process, the more chance Afghanistan has to gather strength as a country and to resist encroachment by AQ and other militant groups.”
In other words, everything we are doing in Afghanistan is linked back to the one clear aim of denying Al Qaeda space to operate.
Comment posted August 6, 2009 @ 11:15 pm
What Afghanistan needs is natural resource theft transparency. The World Bank wrote the Afghan Hydrocarbon and Minerals Law on Cheney's direct orders, without any environmental monitoring, cleanup, remediation or compensation clauses, despite their claims there are, and claims they will abid by EITI transparency. Then they hired Karzai to sign them into law, right now, Gustavson Associates in Denver is conducting private short-listing towards negotiated transfer, for a mere 1c on the $1, when the EU average royalties range from 33% to 45%!
Right in plain view! And the Afghan people know this!
They know Karzai is an expat crime family supporting the US:UK:IMF Mafiosa, and once these $100Bs in natural resources are signed away, the largest in Central Asia, Afghanistan will be left a bankrupt smoking moonscape narcostate. Wasn't that what we were fighting to prevent?!
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