Afghanistan: Obama's Forgotten War

With world attention focused on the purported coming of "democracy" to the Muslim Middle East, American involvement in Afghanistan has largely gone ignored by the media. Nevertheless, this inordinate waste of lives and resources continues unabated, and the news coming from the front lines is not good. As reported on February 24 in a New York Times article entitled "U.S. Pulling Back in Afghan Valley It Called Vital to War" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/world/asia/25afghanistan.html?pagewanted=print), the U.S. game plan has gone awry:

"After years of fighting for control of a prominent valley in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the United States military has begun to pull back most of its forces from ground it once insisted was central to the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The withdrawal from the Pech Valley, a remote region in Kunar Province, formally began on Feb. 15. The military projects that it will last about two months, part of a shift of Western forces to the province’s more populated areas. Afghan units will remain in the valley, a test of their military readiness.

While American officials say the withdrawal matches the latest counterinsurgency doctrine’s emphasis on protecting Afghan civilians, Afghan officials worry that the shift of troops amounts to an abandonment of territory where multiple insurgent groups are well established, an area that Afghans fear they may not be ready to defend on their own.

And it is an emotional issue for American troops, who fear that their service and sacrifices could be squandered. At least 103 American soldiers have died in or near the valley’s maze of steep gullies and soaring peaks, according to a count by The New York Times, and many times more have been wounded, often severely.

. . . .

President Obama’s Afghan troop buildup is now fully in place, and the United States military has its largest-ever contingent in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama’s reinforced campaign has switched focus to operations in Afghanistan’s south, and to building up Afghan security forces.

The previous strategy emphasized denying sanctuaries to insurgents, blocking infiltration routes from Pakistan and trying to fight away from populated areas, where NATO’s superior firepower could be massed, in theory, with less risk to civilians. The Pech Valley effort was once a cornerstone of this thinking."

"Less risk to civilians"? Consider the following Yahoo News article dated February 20 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110220/wl_afp/afghanistanunrestnatocivilians), according to which Afghan President Karzai is accusing NATO forces of massacring more than 50 civilians in Kunar Province:

"President Hamid Karzai on Sunday accused NATO troops of killing more than 50 civilians in a troubled province of eastern Afghanistan, as international troops pledged to probe the allegations.

Karzai's statement followed comments by Fazilullah Wahidi, provincial governor of Kunar province, alleging US-led NATO forces had killed up to 63 people, including women and children in airstrikes on suspected rebels.

. . . .

Wahidi earlier told AFP that most of the dead were civilians including 20 women, three elderly men and a number of children.

They were killed mostly in air raids by the ISAF against suspected rebels in Kunar province's Ghaziabad district, a remote mountainous region at the feet of the Hindu Kush ranges, he added.

. . . .

A human rights watchdog said earlier this month that 2010 was the deadliest year for ordinary Afghans since the US-led invasion of 2001, with more than 2,400 civilians killed.

Taliban and other insurgents were responsible for more than 60 percent of the dead, the report by the Afghanistan Rights Monitor said, blaming the US-led force for 21 percent of the casualties."

Time to put an immediate end to this tragic folly; however, as I have noted in prior blog entries, Obama "likes to watch".