Governments in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom have each placed elite military battalions under U.S. command in Afghanistan.

"The goal here is to apply unrelenting pressure, so wherever they turn, they never can find any breathing space," said one unnamed Pentagon official speaking of continuing attempts to find Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

Commenting on these operations, one British military official told the Financial Times that "the Americans seem to be operating like SWAT squads, with one thought in their heads: ‘Let’s go in and kill those ragheads,’ as they call the enemy." Like the epithet "gooks," used during the Vietnam War, the term "ragheads"--referring to the turbans worn by men--is a racist dehumanization of the opposition that goes hand-in-hand with an imperialist military occupation.

The latest U.S. raid involved a "firefight" lasting a few minutes in Dehrawd, May 12. U.S. special forces killed five people on the grounds that they suspected them of being Taliban or al Qaeda members. Thirty-two others were captured in this assault, in which only U.S. troops participated. Pentagon officials acknowledged that interrogations of the captured men indicated that they probably were not Taliban or al Qaeda.

The imperialist military operation has become "more like what the United States Army tried to do in the middle of the Vietnam War" than the Afghan operation of the last seven months, reported the May 6 New York Times. The paper noted the "considerable risks" involved in the military actions such as "American casualties" and "inflaming local hostility to foreigners on Afghan soil."

Currently 7,000 U.S. troops are deployed throughout Afghanistan, with 3,000 U.S. GIs, 1,700 British royal marines, and several hundred Canadian soldiers stationed at the Bagram Air Base near Kabul. Some 1,000 soldiers, including 150 U.S. Special Forces troops, as well as 700 Canadian, Australian, and British troops, have been sent to the eastern province of Khost and across the border into Pakistan. Another 4,000 troops comprised of three battalions of the U.S. 101st Airborne infantry and the Third Battalion of the Canadian Princess Patricia light infantry, are based at the Kandahar Airport.  
 
‘A protracted guerrilla war’
The 1,000-strong British commando force, incorporating about 100 U.S. troops, which has been conducting raids and sweeps in the mountainous southeastern region of Afghanistan, has so far encountered no Afghan fighters. In a simultaneous operation in another mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan some 300 Canadian infantry troops, along with 90 GIs from the 101st Airborne Division and some Afghan soldiers, have also come up short. As a result, some British soldiers and officers have begun to express doubts and criticisms about these imperialist military operations, despite the official claims of success.

"The mission in the end is to kill or capture al Qaeda and Taliban, and if we don’t, then we have not accomplished our mission," said a British captain, frustrated with the lack of military engagement with Afghan fighters.

During the operation British forces handed out flyers in the local Dari and Pashto languages. "The soldiers in your area are British," they read. "They are here at the invitation of the Afghan Interim Authority. They are here to capture al Qaeda and their supporters. If you cooperate they will do you no harm." The Financial Times portrayed the message as an attempt to "win over Afghan people," but its threatening implications could hardly be missed by workers and peasants in the area.

Attacks on U.S. and allied forces over the past week include five separate incidents of rocket firings at military facilities. On May 12 two rockets were shot at the airfield in Khost and for the second time in two weeks a rocket missed U.S. Special Forces deployed in Pakistan. The target was a vocational school in Miran Shah that had been taken over by the troops.

According to the Financial Times, British general Roger Lane "privately accepts that the current military offensive is no longer suitable for what in effect has turned into a protracted guerrilla war." The article suggested that Taliban fighters "have temporarily melted into the local civilian population."

Meanwhile, the imperialist occupation force has spread out into eight other locations covering a 350-mile zone that includes military bases in the towns of Khost, Gardez, and Ghazni, as well as the base at Bagram and the airport at Kandahar.

Pentagon officials announced that U.S. military operations in Pakistan could last at least until the fall. Special Forces troops have been accompanied by Pakistani soldiers during raids there.

"The border is not controlled properly.... Pakistan is an easy place for criminals to hide," said Pakistani Col. Shah Wali, rationalizing the imperialist trampling on his nation’s sovereignty.

Seven months after launching a brutal war against Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban government, Washington is still seeking to construct a pro-imperialist government that can maintain a semblance of stability in the country. The interim regime of Hamid Karzai installed by the U.S rulers last January is preparing to use Afghan soldiers in Kabul for the first time, backed by U.S. firepower, against rival militias.

"Will Afghanistan be a centrally run state with the seat of power in Kabul?" said a May 11 article in the New York Times. "Or will it remain largely a tenuous federation of warlords whose main allegiance is to themselves?"

"Teams of American Special Forces, who built relationships with anti-Taliban commanders during the first phase of the war," one newspaper reported, "have been assigned to remain with those leaders as they have become provincial governors wielding control sometimes greater" than the central government.

"They are the centers of power," a senior U.S. Defense Department official told the press. "We have influence we can exert in subtle ways with regional leaders, and we are using that influence to reinforce stability."

The "subtle" influence this military force has used was highlighted by a May 8 CIA-organized assault outside Kabul by an unmanned surveillance aircraft carrying Hellfire antitank missiles. The aircraft, a Predator drone, fired on Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of a rival faction who had returned to Afghanistan in recent weeks after a long exile in Iran. The attack was the "first confirmed mission to kill" a militia leader who was not an official in the Taliban government or a member of al Qaeda.

Hekmatyar, who reportedly survived the assault, called Karzai a puppet leader who followed the dictates of the U.S. and other imperialist powers. "While foreign troops are present the interim government does not have any value or meaning," Hekmatyar said in a February interview with Reuters. "We prefer involvement in internal war rather than occupation by foreigners and foreign troops."

Another military confrontation is also under way to housebreak a regional leader in Khost province. According to media reports, the interim regime began mobilizing 3,000 Afghan troops in Kabul to force militia commander Padsha Khan Zadran to accede control of the province to an appointee of acting president Karzai. The troop deployment to confront Zadran is the first time Karzai’s government has sent troops on a possible combat mission against a militia leader.

Zadran, a participant in the U.S.-crafted meeting in Bonn, Germany, that installed Afghanistan’s interim government, was named governor of Paktia province. His faction controls 600 mercenaries who have been recruited, armed, and paid $200 a month by U.S. forces to serve as foot soldiers.  
 
 
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