London conference on Afghanistan: Occupation will last for years to come

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London conference on Afghanistan: Occupation will last for years to come
By Chris Marsden
29 January 2010

The London conference on Afghanistan laid down a scenario for the
country’s military occupation stretching over at least 5 years and,
according to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, as long as 15 years.

Gone was President Barack Obama’s claim that withdrawal of US troops
would begin by 2011, replaced by a region-by-region transfer of
responsibility that will take several years and will be dictated by
“conditions on the ground,” as determined by the military.

There is to be a concerted effort to incorporate various Afghan
warlords presently associated with the Taliban insurgency into a
power-sharing government with Karzai and split off upwards of 12,000
Afghan fighters, using a slush fund of over $650 million provided by
the US, Japan, Britain, Germany and others. (Only $147 million of this
has been pledged.) There will be a major military offensive to
“convince” the Taliban that resistance is not an option.

Regarding the international trust fund, Britain’s Prime Minister
Gordon Brown stated that its purpose was “to provide an economic
alternative to those who have none,” other than participation in the
insurgency.

Afghan President Karzai said, “To make our program a success, we hope
that His Majesty King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia will
kindly play a prominent role to guide and assist the peace process.”

He pleaded with “all our neighbours, particularly Pakistan,” to
“support our peace and reconciliation endeavours.”

Karzai has said that the establishment of a national council for
peace, reconciliation and re-integration will be followed by a “peace
jirga,” an assembly of elders, with King Abdullah playing a “prominent
role.”

The main thrust of the policy is directed to various warlords, who
will be offered roles in government. The cynicism involved in this
plan is extraordinary, given that the war against Afghanistan was
launched in 2001 on the pretext that the Taliban regime had to be
overthrown because it sheltered Osama Bin Laden and had ties to Al Qaeda.

Bin Laden is now barely ever mentioned, while the US has been in
direct negotiations with representatives of Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar and others—forces whom US Defence Secretary Robert Gates
now describes as part of the “political fabric” of Afghanistan.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, told the
Financial Times prior to the London conference, “I think any Afghans
can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past.”

Five former senior Taliban officials have already been removed from a
United Nations sanctions list to facilitate these manoeuvres.

The long-term aim is to consolidate the transformation of Afghanistan
into a US-controlled protectorate, ruling through a power-sharing
client regime. In the next period, however, the emphasis is on an
escalation of the US-led military offensive, using the 110,000 troops
that will be stationed there after Obama’s surge. Brown threatened
that “for those insurgents who refuse to accept the conditions for
reintegration, we have no choice but to pursue them militarily.”

Major Gen. Nick Carter, the commander of 45,000 NATO troops in Helmand
province, announced that a major offensive would be launched to
“assert the control” of the Afghan government in areas currently
controlled by the Taliban. The operation will involve elements of the
10,000 British troops in Helmand and 13,000 newly arrived US Marines.

An unnamed London diplomat described this as “a carrot-and-stick
approach.” He elaborated: “On the ground, there will be up to 40,000
more troops this year making things uncomfortable for the Taliban. The
carrot is the money and a place within the power structure of
Afghanistan.”

In truth, the “carrot” is being offered to the warlords, while the
stick will be applied to insurgents and Afghan civilians alike.

This effort to militarily demoralise the Taliban and incorporate
sections into government is conceived of as spanning at least three
years, with Afghan forces only “taking responsibility for physical
security within five years.” Even so, Brown repeatedly refused to give
a timetable for withdrawal, insisting that this depended on meeting
conditions so that “security can be taken over by the Afghans in the
provinces in which we operate.”

McChrystal also told the Financial Times, “I believe that it will be
more conditions-based, there will be an agreement on certain
conditions driving the transitions.”

In a BBC interview broadcast before the conference started, Karzai was
even less optimistic, stating, “With regard to training and equipping
the Afghan security forces, 5 to 10 years would be sufficient. With
regard to sustaining them… the time period extends to 10 to 15 years.”

The London conference was testimony to how anxious the world’s major
powers are to demonstrate their readiness to lend support to the US
intervention in Afghanistan. Despite growing concerns that the
occupation is becoming a quagmire, sucking in troops and costing vast
sums, no one wants to openly antagonise Washington or be excluded from
establishing his own influence within strategic oil- and gas-rich
regions neighbouring Afghanistan.

Sixty-plus nations attended the conference, as well as representatives
from NATO, the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank.

Brown boasted that more than 8,000 extra NATO troops had been
committed to Afghanistan since Obama announced the US surge last year.
Four more countries have joined the International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF)—Armenia, Mongolia, Montenegro and South Korea, which are
all non-NATO members. They have pledged nearly 800 additional troops
between them, with the majority coming from South Korea. This means
that there are now 47 countries involved in Afghanistan. The day
before the London conference, Germany pledged an additional 500 troops.

None of this in the long-term compensates for the mounting problems
facing the US in Afghanistan. Washington remains to a large degree
dependent on Karzai, whose corrupt regime is massively unpopular and
remains in power only thanks to Western-sanctioned electoral fraud.

The Taliban are far from demonstrably losing the military struggle,
and are a long way from accepting a role as a US proxy. A Taliban
statement denounced the London conference as a “waste of time” aimed
at justifying foreign occupation. It declared, “The recent attacks in
Kabul were, in fact, a message for the London conference that the
Taliban are not ready to negotiate and do not desire to set up a
regime in collaboration with those who bear the marks of slavery to
the occupiers.”

As to the regional powers, Iran, which is faced with growing threats
from Washington and London, did not attend the conference, which it
denounced for its focus on increasing military action in Afghanistan.
Pakistan did attend, but its Inter Services Intelligence agency is
tied to the Taliban, and Islamabad is also faced with growing
hostility from the US.

Prior to the conference, the New York Times published two classified
memos from Karl Eikenberry, the United States ambassador in Kabul,
that gave a devastating verdict on the situation confronting America
in Afghanistan. Eikenberry, a retired army lieutenant general, served
three years in Afghanistan over the course of two separate tours of
duty, and was responsible during 2002-2003 for rebuilding Afghan
security forces. He then served 18 months (2005-2007) as commander of
US forces in Afghanistan.

Written last November as an argument against McChrystal’s proposal for
a surge, Eikenberry warned that deploying large American
reinforcements would cost tens of billions of dollars and deepen the
Karzai government’s dependence on the US, making it “difficult, if not
impossible, to bring our people home on a reasonable timetable.”

He described Karzai as “not an adequate strategic partner,” who was
incapable of taking responsibility and exerting sovereignty. “He and
much of his circle do not want the US to leave and are only too happy
to see us invest further,” he wrote. “They assume we covet their
territory for a never-ending ‘war on terror’ and for military bases to
use against surrounding powers.”

Tellingly, he warned, “Pakistan will remain the single greatest source
of Afghan instability so long as the border sanctuaries remain.” He
added, “As we contemplate greatly expanding our presence in
Afghanistan, the better answer to our difficulties could well be to
further ratchet up our engagement in Pakistan,” raising the clear
possibility of an extension of military hostilities.

The most dangerous factors threatening the plans of Obama, Brown, et
al are the broad opposition among the Afghan people to the occupation
and the massive unpopularity of the war amongst the working people of
the US and Europe.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/afgh-j29.shtml

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