La Clinton vuole includere l’Iran nei negoziati sull’Afghanistan
Può Obama evitare l’impaludamento in Afghanistan?
● Uno dei principali obiettivi di politica estera degli Usa sarebbe l’apertura delle relazioni diplomatiche con l’Iran;
● Il ministro Esteri americano, Hillary Clinton: la questione afghana ne è la via; Afghanistan e Pakistan sono “un’unica questione strategica”, che richiede un approccio regionale e maggior integrazione della strategia civile e militare, con il coinvolgimento di tutti i paesi vicini all’Afghanistan, Iran compreso.
● Dibattito in corso nell’ONU su quali paesi debbano essere invitati alla conferenza, alcuni paesi sono per far partecipare solo quelli che hanno soldati in Afghanistan, e il Giappone.
● Kouchner, ministro Esteri Francia, per partecipazione anche di Iran, che non ha partecipato a quella tenuta a Parigi del 2008.
o nella prima fase del conflitto i funzionari iraniani si sono regolarmente consultati con gli USA per cacciare i talebani nel 2001;
o Carota e bastone Usa verso Iran: la Clinton mantiene con l’Iran la linea dura sulla questione atomica.
● Proposta dagli USA per il 31 marzo corrente una conferenza sull’Afghanistan, cui dovrebbe partecipare anche l’Iran, presieduta dall’ONU.
o Su spinta americana i 26 membri Nato hanno accettato di riprendere le relazioni con la Russia, sospese in agosto sull’affare georgiano, ma Usa respingono la rivendicazione di una sfera d’influenza russa – intendendo in Ucraina, ex repubblica russa.
o Russia e Nato possono collaborare su Afghanistan, traffico di droga, armi nucleari di Iran e Nord Corea.
o Segretario Nato, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, la ripresa delle consultazioni con la Russia non significa che la Nato non continui ad opporsi ai progetti russi di basi militari in Abkhazia e Sud Ossezia (le regioni separatiste che hanno portato ad un conflitto armato lo scorso agosto).
● Le scelte di fronte all’Amministrazione Obama sul conflitto afghano: sperare che l’Afghanistan non si disgreghi e che i pakistani agiscano con forza contro al-Qaeda e talebani.
● Scelte … impossibili, ma inevitabili e politicamente pericolose.
● I presidente sono tradizionalmente a favore del ricorso ad un maggior numero di soldati, e così si perdono subito il sostegno dell’opinione.
● Minimi i margini di errore che Obama può permettersi, data la profonda crisi economica: non può rimanere impantanato in Afghanistan, e non può lasciare libertà di manovra ad al-Qaeda e ai telbani.
– La situazione in Afghanistan e Pakistan è peggiorata dalla settimana successiva all’insediamento del nuovo presidente americano, Obama, quando sollevò l’allarme sulla serietà della crisi nell’area.
– In entrambi i paesi è in corso una crisi costituzionale, i due loro presidenti, Karzai e Zardari, hanno portato condotto il loro governo sull’orlo del caos, la guerra va male su entrambi i lati dei loro confini.
o i talebani del Pakistan hanno preso la Swat Valley a 100 miglia da Islamabad, interrotto i rifornimenti attraverso il Khyber Pass; i talebani afghani hanno attaccato Kabul.
o Obama ha deciso l’invio in Afghanistan di altri 17mila soldati, ma non ha ancora ridefinito l’obiettivo americano, anche se durante la sua campagna elettorale ha più volte dichiarato che questa guerra è condotta per l’interesse nazionale americano e deve essere vinta.
– É in corso la quarta ridefinizione politica sulla guerra in Afghanistan, studio condotto da Bruce Riedel, della Brooking Institution, e sarà terminata a fine marzo. Già chiariti obiettivi e priorità ed approccio,
– diplomazia a tutto campo accompagnata da molto denaro: un pacchetto di aiuti economici, $1,5 MD/anno al Pakistan per i prossimi 5 anni, il problema è come distribuire il denaro data la forte corruzione nel paese.
– Gli aiuti militari al Pakistan continueranno, ma con maggiori controlli sui capi militari, perché perseguano gli stessi obiettivi posti dagli USA, cosa che al momento non fanno
– obiettivo diplomatico convincere India e Pakistan a diminuire le loro tensioni, nella speranza che il Pakistan si occuperà di al-Qaeda e i talebani.
– La situazione più grave è in Pakistan, occorre innanzitutto distruggervi le roccaforti talebane per poter affrontare l’insorgenza in Afghanistan.
– Time: ragionevole, ma storicamente si è dimostrato impossibile,
– è ancora più difficile di quando Winston Churchill, vantandosi della spedizione militare britannica (XIX sec.) nelle aree dove ora si trovano Al-Qaeda e i talebani, dichiarò: «L’opinione pubblica parla con superficialità della ovvia necessità di “disarmare totalmente le tribù di frontiera”», riuscirci però non è né semplice né indolore. Gli inglesi riuscirono con metodi brutali a governare, ma non a sottomettere, l’area oggi chiamata Provincia pakistana della Frontiera di Nord Ovest.
– Un esperto della commissione Riedel: Non invaderemo il Pakistan, dobbiamo invece convincere i pakistani a fare il lavoro, ma nel passato non ci siamo riusciti molto.
o In realtà l’esercito pakistano e i servizi di intelligence hanno appoggiato i talebani per contrastare l’influenza indiana in Afghanistan, come pure gruppi jihadisti come Lashkar-e-Taiba, che hanno organizzato il massacro di Mumbai. Speriamo che le forze armate pakistane comprendano il rischio che i talebani rappresentano per il loro paese, cosa che ha ben presente il loro primo obiettivo, il presidente Zardari, la cui moglie, Benazir Bhutto è stata da essi assassinata. Ma è dubbio che Zardari abbia influenza sulle forze armate.
– Uno dei tre studi precedenti sulla questione afghana era stato condotto dal generale Petraeus (la cui strategia aveva ribaltato le sorti della guerra in Irak); per l’Afghanistan Petraeus si è avvalso di troppi esperti da varie agenzie governative ed esterne – “troppi cuochi”, come valutato da uno di questi esperti – ed il risultato è stato il minimo comun denominatore; esso chiedeva tra l’altro l’invio di truppe addizionali, più ei 17mila uomini inviati da Obama.
o Il migliore di questi studi sarebbe – secondo i funzionari di Obama – quello del generale Douglas Lute, lo “zar di guerra” con l’Amministrazione Bush. Lute, che è rimasto nell’Amministrazione Obama, è scettico sulla volontà delle forze armate pachistane di combattere i talebani, e sul governo Karzai.
– Obama deve prendere una decisione sull’Afghanistan, pur essendo una questione in subordine:
o i militari americani sono per un’escalation per proteggere la popolazione contro i talebani, ci vorrebbero almeno altri 15mila soldati; la popolazione ha paura dei talebani, ma non vuole legge ed ordine.
o I consiglieri civili di Obama temono un impaludamento:
o via di mezzo: stabilizzare la situazione militare, rafforzando le forze armate afghane, ed aiutare il governo ad essere più efficiente.
Obama espande l’intervento militare americano in Pakistan
● Decisione dell’Amministrazione Americana di Obama di aumentare l’impegno militare in Pakistan, contro i guerriglieri anti-governativi pakistani, coinvolti solo marginalmente negli attacchi contro le forze Usa in Afghanistan (Prima pag. del New York Times, 21.2.2009).
● Due distinti attacchi missilistici – per opera di aerei teleguidati operanti da una base all’interno del Pakistan (14-16 febbraio 2009) dimostrano la decisione di far intervenire direttamente e ufficialmente nel conflitto interno pakistano le forze americane, espandendo la guerra nascosta già condotta dalla CIA in Pakistan, per appoggiarne il regime filo-americano.
o obiettivo degli attacchi i campi di addestramento del leader islamista Baitullah Mehsud, l’organizzatore dell’assassinio del primo ministro Bhutto.
o L’attacco contro Mehsud, più volte invano richiesto dai militari pakistani, avrebbe tra gli obiettivi quello di convincere il regime pakistano ad intensificare le sue operazioni militari contro talebani, al-Qaeda e gruppi di insorgenti delle regioni tribali di confine con l’Afghanistan.
o Secondo il NYT, le forze speciali Usa starebbero continuando le operazioni sul suolo in Pakistan, iniziate lo scorso settembre.
– Discussa alla conferenza di Washington sull’Afghanistan la notizia dell’accordo di tregua tra il governo pakistano e i ribelli talebani nella Swat Valley;
o (presenti Gates, Holbrooke, Hillary Clinton e l’ammiraglio Mike Mullen, capo di stato maggiore + da Pakistan, il ministro Esteri Shah Mehmood Qureshi, il capo delle forze armate, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani e quello dello spionaggio militare, gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha; dall’Afghanistan il ministro Esteri Rangeen Dadfar Spanta).
Il comandante militare americano in Afghanistan, McKiernan, prevede che la guerra continuerà per almeno 3-4 anni, e chiede altri 10mila uomini.
Clinton Wants to Include Iran in Afghan Talks
– Setting up the prospect of its first face-to-face encounter with Iran, the Obama administration has proposed a major conference on Afghanistan this month that would include Iran among the invited countries, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.
“We presented the idea of what is being called a big-tent meeting, with all the parties who have a stake and an interest in Afghanistan,”she said at a news conference here after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. “If we move forward with such a meeting, it is expected that Iran would be invited, as a neighbor of Afghanistan.”
– Prodded by the United States, NATO’s 26 members also agreed to resume high-level relations with Russia, which were suspended in August after the war between Russia and Georgia.
– The United States has asked the Netherlands to host the Afghanistan conference, which would take place on March 31, with the United Nations acting as chairman. Iran did not say on Thursday whether it would accept an invitation.
– Mrs. Clinton’s proposal underscores the administration’s belief that Afghanistan may provide the most promising avenue for opening a diplomatic channel to Iran — a major goal of President Obama’s foreign policy.
– Mrs. Clinton said this week that Iran could play a useful role in stabilizing Afghanistan, noting that its officials consulted regularly with the United States in the early days of the war to oust the Taliban in 2001.
– At the same time, she kept up an unyielding tone toward the Iranian leadership. The American plan to install a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, Mrs. Clinton said, is driven in part by the threat of Iran, which possesses long-range missiles and is trying to build up its nuclear program.
“There’s an ongoing debate about what the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons production capacity is,” Mrs. Clinton said. “But I don’t think there is a credible debate about their intentions.”
– Her approach reflects the administration’s policy of mixing carrots and sticks with Iran — extending offers as a path to engagement, but also maintaining a hard line on issues like nuclear weapons.
The proposed conference would give the United States a forum to present the results of its Afghanistan policy review to its NATO allies. The review is expected to be completed by the middle of March, State Department officials said.
Next week, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will meet with officials at NATO to offer further details of the emerging American policy, which Mrs. Clinton outlined broadly on Thursday.
– She said the international community must view Afghanistan and Pakistan as a “single strategic concern.” She called the border region between the countries the “nerve center” for the Sept. 11 attacks; the bombings in Madrid and London; the assassination of the former Pakistani leader, Benazir Bhutto; and the assault on Mumbai, India.
Countering that threat will demand a regional approach and a more integrated civilian and military strategy, she said. It will also require the involvement of all of Afghanistan’s neighbors, including Iran, she said.
– The United Nations plans to send its special representative for Afghanistan, Kai Eide, to be chairman of the conference, though United Nations officials said Mrs. Clinton had gotten somewhat ahead of them in the planning process. There is debate about the scope of the guest list, administration officials said, with some countries arguing to include only those with troops in Afghanistan, as well as Japan.
– But the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said, “I do hope that Iran will be present this time,” noting that it did not attend a conference on Afghanistan held in Paris last year.
On another matter involving Iran, Mrs. Clinton said the United States was pressing Tehran on the case of Roxana Saberi, 31, an American freelance journalist who has been detained by Iranian authorities for more than a month on charges that she was reporting without press credentials. Lacking diplomatic ties to Iran, the State Department is working through Swiss intermediaries to secure her release.
The visit to NATO was Mrs. Clinton’s first as secretary of state, and she covered a wide swath of topics. Echoing recent remarks by Mr. Biden, she called for a “fresh start” with Russia, even though she said the United States would reject any Russian assertion that it had “spheres of influence” — meaning former Soviet republics like Georgia.
“It is time to move ahead, not wait in place with the illusion that things will change on their own,” she declared.
– There are several areas where NATO and Russia can work together, she said, including Afghanistan, the drug trade fight, and efforts to stop nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea.
– On Friday, Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to meet in Geneva with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov. He is expected to respond to Mr. Obama’s proposal to the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, of flexibility on the United States’ planned missile defense system, while also seeking Russia’s cooperation in the campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.
The United States had to work hard to achieve a consensus among NATO members on resuming talks with Russia. American diplomats were in the hallways lobbying Lithuania, the last holdout, to go along at a NATO summit meeting in April.
NATO’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said the resumption of high-level consultations did not mean the alliance would drop its objections to Russia’s plan to build military bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the breakaway Georgian regions that prompted the war in August. “It’s not a fair-weather forum, and the weather is certainly not fair,” he said.
Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from the United Nations.
Thursday, Mar. 05, 2009
Can Obama Avoid a Quagmire in Afghanistan?
On the Friday after he was inaugurated, Barack Obama held a full-scale National Security Council meeting about the most serious foreign policy crisis he is facing — the deteriorating war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "It was a pretty alarming meeting," said one senior Administration official. "The President was extremely cool and in control," said another participant. "But some people, especially political aides like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod who hadn’t been briefed on the situation, walked out of that meeting stunned." The general feeling was expressed by one person who said at the very end, "Holy s___."
– The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has only gotten worse since then. Both countries are suddenly boggled by constitutional crises; both Presidents — Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari — lead governments teetering on the edge of chaos. And the war is going badly on both sides of the border.
o The Pakistani Taliban has taken over the Swat Valley, a mere 100 miles (160 km) from Islamabad, and has wreaked havoc with NATO supply lines into Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass; the Afghan Taliban staged a dramatic terrorist attack in downtown Kabul.
o In his first major decision as Commander in Chief, Obama promised an additional 17,000 troops for Afghanistan, but he still hasn’t fully defined the U.S. goal there, even though he repeatedly insisted during the campaign that this war — the war that began as an effort to find Osama bin Laden and dismantle al-Qaeda — was in the national interest and had to be won.
– A policy review is under way — a fourth policy review; Obama was greeted by three when he took office, but none was entirely satisfactory. This was something of a surprise because one of the studies was conducted by General David Petraeus, whose counterinsurgency doctrine and strategic brilliance turned the tide in the Iraq war.
– In this case, Petraeus brought in hundreds of people from a range of government agencies and a raft of outside experts. "You had people from the Department of Agriculture weighing in," one expert, a Petraeus admirer who participated in the study, told me. "There were too many cooks. The end result was lowest-common-denominator stuff. The usual Petraeus acuity wasn’t there."
– Indeed, several senior Obama Administration officials told me that the least heralded of the three studies — the one by General Douglas Lute, the Bush Administration’s "war czar" — was the most valuable. Lute, who is staying on in the Obama Administration, is known to be very skeptical about the Pakistani army’s willingness to fight the Taliban, and equally critical of the Karzai government in Afghanistan. But Lute was operating with the smallest staff, and didn’t provide much detail about what to do next. (Read "Pakistan’s Prospects.")
– Among other things, Petraeus’ review called for additional troops to be sent to Afghanistan, beyond the 17,000 Obama ordered. The Administration wasn’t ready to do that, at least not yet.
– And so, the fourth policy review was ordered up — this one conducted by Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. The Riedel review won’t be done until the end of March, but it has already achieved some clarity about U.S. goals and priorities: "Afghanistan pales in comparison to the problems in Pakistan," said an official familiar with Riedel’s thinking. "Our primary goal has to be to shut down the al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens on the Pakistan side of the border. If that can be accomplished, then the insurgency in Afghanistan becomes manageable."
– That sounds reasonable enough, except that historically it has proved to be impossible. "People talk glibly of ‘the total disarmament of the frontier tribes’ as being the obvious policy," wrote the young Winston Churchill, who gallivanted, a bit too gleefully, with a 19th century British expeditionary force through the areas where al-Qaeda and the Taliban are now ensconced. "But to obtain it would be as painful and as tedious an undertaking as to extract the stings of a swarm of hornets, with naked fingers."
– Through sheer brutality, the British were able to manage the area — now called Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province — but never quite subdue it. The chances of subduing it today are even more remote.
– "Obviously, we’re not going to invade Pakistan," said a senior member of the Riedel review. "We have to convince the Pakistanis to do the job. But we haven’t had much luck with that in the past."
– In fact, the Pakistani army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency have supported the Taliban as a counterforce against India’s influence in Afghanistan, just as they supported jihadi groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the Mumbai massacre. "Our hope is that the Pakistani army is beginning to understand that the Taliban represent an existential threat to their country," said the Riedel team member. "Certainly, President Zardari understands that. The Taliban killed his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and he’s now target No. 1. But does he have any influence over the army? And is the army really concerned about the threat? I’ll believe it when I see it." (See pictures of modern archaeology in Afghanistan.)
– What to do? Actually, there’s a consensus within the Obama Administration about how to approach the Pakistan part of the problem. The policy might be described as comprehensive diplomacy accompanied by lots of money. The diplomatic task is to nudge India and Pakistan, who nearly came to an agreement in their eternal Kashmir dispute in 2007, toward a lessening of tensions in the hope that the Pakistani army will turn to the struggle against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
– The money would come in a massive economic-aid package, the Kerry-Lugar bill, which would send $1.5 billion to Pakistan for each of the next five years — although how that aid would be distributed, a crucial question given Pakistan’s rampant corruption, has yet to be determined.
– Military aid to Pakistan will continue as well, but with more strings and supervision than during the Bush Administration. "We have to re-establish close personal relationships with the army," said a senior member of the National Security Council, who was involved in an intense series of meetings with the Pakistani military leadership during the first week of March. "We have to be sure they’re on the same page as we are. Based on what I saw, they aren’t yet."
And what about Afghanistan? It is, once again, a sideshow, given the focus on Pakistan — but it is also where Obama’s most important decision will be made: To escalate or not?
– The military is in favor of an Afghan surge to protect the entire population in the provinces affected by the Taliban insurgency. That could mean another 15,000 troops, or more, on top of the 17,000 already sent. It might even succeed; the Afghan people are terrified by the Taliban, but they do want law and order — which the corrupt Karzai government has failed to provide and Petraeus-style counterinsurgency tactics emphasize. But why expend that sort of effort on a sideshow?
– Obama’s civilian advisers fear a quagmire. But they know that some middle ground, between a "Central Asian Valhalla," as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it, and the current slide into chaos, has to be found. "We have to stabilize the military situation," said an Obama aide. "Continue to build up the Afghan army, and help the government to become more effective." In other words, hope that the disintegration of Afghanistan can be prevented while waiting — and hoping — for the Pakistanis to take effective action against the al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens.
– Taken together, the emerging Pakistan and Afghanistan policies sound … impossible, but unavoidable. They will also be politically treacherous.
– Already, John McCain has made it clear that his position on Afghanistan will be the same as it was on Iraq — in favor of more troops. Obama could easily find himself in the same sort of hawk-vs.-dove debate that has boggled American Presidents from Vietnam to Iraq. Traditionally, Presidents favor more troops — and precipitously lose public support. In this case, Obama’s margin for error is minuscule, given the enormity of the economic crisis. He simply can’t get bogged down in Afghanistan. And he simply can’t allow al-Qaeda and the Taliban free rein. And every option in between seems either a gamble or a fantasy.
– The Obama administration is significantly expanding the US military role in Pakistan beyond that pursued by the Bush administration, directly employing US military force against anti-government Pakistani guerrillas involved only marginally, if at all, in attacks on US forces in neighboring Afghanistan, according to a front-page article published February 21 by the New York Times.
– The article, entitled “Obama Expands Missile Strikes Inside Pakistan” and authored by Mark Mazzetti and White House correspondent David E. Sanger, cites two separate missile strikes inside Pakistan carried out February 14 and February 16 as evidence that “the Obama administration has expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, attacking a militant network seeking to topple the Pakistani government.”
– The Times reports that the strikes, carried out by drone aircraft, are the first to target alleged training camps run by Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamist insurgent leader identified early last year by both American and Pakistani officials as the orchestrator of the assassination of then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the wife of Pakistan’s current president and Pakistan People’s Party leader Asif Ali Zardari.
“Under President Bush,” the article states, “the United States frequently attacked militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban involved in cross-border attacks in Afghanistan, but had stopped short of raids aimed at Mr. Mehsud and his followers, who have played less of a direct role in attacks on American troops.”
– As the article indicates, the missile strikes on Mehsud’s forces represent a qualitative expansion of the US war in the region, with the American military now directly intervening into internal Pakistani conflicts to bolster Washington’s client regime in Islamabad.
The strikes against Mehsud came in the same week that Obama announced a major military escalation in Afghanistan, ordering an additional 17,000 US troops into the country. They also came within days of talks in Pakistan between top political, military and intelligence officials there and Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke also met with officials in Afghanistan and India.
The Times notes that in a telephone interview last Friday, Holbrooke declined to comment on the strikes against Mehsud, and that the White House and the CIA similarly refused to comment.
– The newspaper reports that Bush had included Mehsud’s name “in a classified list of military leaders whom the CIA and American commandos were authorized to capture or kill.” It says the February 14 strike was aimed “specifically” at Mehsud, but failed to kill him. The February 16 raid, it states, targeted a camp run by a top aide to Mehsud. Earlier reports said each of the strikes killed 30 people.
The article continues: “For months, Pakistani military and intelligence officials have complained about Washington’s refusal to strike at Baitullah Mehsud, even while CIA drones struck at Qaeda figures and leaders of the network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a militant leader believed responsible for a campaign of violence against American troops in Afghanistan.”
– The article suggests that the US has initiated attacks on Mehsud and his followers, in part, to induce the Pakistani regime to intensify its military operations against Taliban, Al Qaeda and other Islamist insurgent groups based in Pakistani tribal regions on the border with Afghanistan. “By striking at the Mehsud network,” it states, “the United States may be seeking to demonstrate to Mr. Zardari that the new administration is willing to go after the insurgents of greatest concern to the Pakistani leader.”
It then alludes to the deteriorating military and security situation of the Pakistani regime, which faces growing insurgencies in tribal regions that border on Afghanistan as well as the Taliban takeover of the Swat Valley in the more settled North West Frontier Province, and suggests that “American officials may also be prompted by growing concern that the militant attacks are increasingly putting the civilian government of Pakistan, a nation with nuclear weapons, at risk.”
– The Times article also states that the US is continuing to carry out Special Forces operations on the ground inside Pakistan, in addition to its stepped-up missile attacks. Last September, US Special Forces troops attacked a Pakistani village in South Waziristan, part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the Pakistani northwest border region with Afghanistan, killing between 15 and 20 people, including women and children.
– That assault, the first clear case of an attack by US ground troops inside Pakistani territory, evoked condemnations from the government in Islamabad. According to the February 21 Times article however, “American Special Operations troops based in Afghanistan have also carried out a number of operations into Pakistan’s tribal areas since early September, when a commando raid that killed a number of militants was publicly condemned by Pakistani officials. According to a senior American military official, the commando missions since September have been primarily to gather intelligence.”
Additional evidence of a major extension of the US war into Pakistan is the revelation that at least some of the US drones used to fire missiles into Pakistani border regions, killing scores of civilians are inflaming local anger, are operating from a base inside Pakistan itself. Earlier this month, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spoke of the existence of the base at a Senate hearing. The Pakistani government has denied the existence of the base, but the London Times and the Pakistani News have both published Google Earth images of three drones parked at the Shamsi air field in southwestern Pakistan.
– Obama has made it clear that his administration’s response to the growth of insurgent Afghan forces and the worsening security situation facing the US and its puppet regime in Afghanistan, as well as the growing strength of anti-US and anti-government insurgents in Pakistan, is an expansion of American military violence both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The White House and the military are treating both countries as part of a single military theater.
– The administration is conducting a review of its strategy in the region, which is to be completed by the beginning of April. This week, the US is hosting a high-level conference in Washington on the Afghan-Pakistan border region, which will be attended by Gates, Holbrooke, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pakistan is sending its foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, its army chief, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the head of its military intelligence service, Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha. Afghanistan is sending foreign minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta.
– However, Obama, Gates and the military chiefs have already outlined a policy shift away from any pretense of democratic reform or “nation-building” in favor of a more concentrated focus on counter-insurgency operations aimed at wiping out popular resistance in both Afghanistan and Pakistan to US neo-colonial aims.
– One issue to be discussed at the Washington conference this week is US concerns over a cease-fire agreement announced last week by the Pakistani government with Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley.
– As indicated by the actions taken in the five weeks since Obama’s inauguration, the US in embarked on a military escalation that will involve an even greater toll in Afghan and Pakistani lives as well as US casualties. So far, 26 American soldiers and 13 from other “coalition” countries have been killed in Afghanistan this year, almost twice as many as in the first two months of 2008, according to the web site iCasualties.org.
– Last Wednesday, the day after Obama announced the dispatch of 17,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan, the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, held a press conference in which he called for 10,000 more troops beyond the 17,000 ordered so far by Obama. McKiernan said the additional troops did not represent a “temporary force uplift” but part of an expanded war that will continue for at least “three to four to five years.” Some foreign policy analysts are predicting that US troop levels in the region will eventually rise to 100,000.
In 2001, Washington used the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to put into action long-developed plans to conquer Afghanistan and use it as a base to establish US hegemony in Central Asia, home to some of the richest deposits of oil and natural gas in the world. The inevitable result was a military disaster and the destabilization of the entire region.
Now, in pursuit of the same imperialist aims, the Obama administration is launching a major escalation that will only further destabilize the region, intensify tensions with rival power such as China and Russia, and cause untold death and destruction. There is a growing danger of a military conflagration throughout Central Asia and beyond.