Vol. 73/No. 6      February 16, 2009

In confronting the scope of the challenges they face, the imperialists have also scaled back their political objectives in Afghanistan. Presidential elections there have been postponed by about four months until August 20, given the failure of U.S., NATO, and Afghan military forces to establish control over much of the country.

The total number of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan combined is at least 62,000. There are between 32,000 and 34,000 U.S. troops. U.S. officials are considering plans to increase that force by about 30,000, including four additional combat brigades.

At the same time, top U.S. officials are discussing plans to continue reducing the 143,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq, where Washington has made progress in establishing a relatively stable allied government. But by how much and how fast remains unclear.

President Barack Obama has publicly said he plans to fulfill his campaign promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq over the next 16 months—except those needed to train Iraqi forces, provide “security,” and fight “terrorists.”

However, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said January 14 that he sees the combined number of troops deployed in the two wars “going up slightly and staying up until about the middle of 2010,” meaning that more would be sent to Afghanistan than would be withdrawn from Iraq. U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates and other top military officials have expressed disagreement with any 16-month timetable and have made clear they have a long-term perspective for U.S. troops in Iraq.

“As our military presence decreases over time, we should still expect to be involved in Iraq on some level for many years to come,” Gates told the House Armed Services Committee January 27.  
 
Gates: focus on ‘realistic’ goals
Gates has said the U.S. military should focus on goals that “can be achieved realistically within three to five years” in Afghanistan to establish a measure of “stability,” meaning a regime not hostile to U.S. interests in the region.

“My own personal view is that our primary goal is to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists to attack the United States and our allies. And whatever else we need to do flows from that objective,” Gates said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing January 27.

“Afghanistan is the fourth- or fifth-poorest country in the world, and if we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose,” Gates said, “because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience, and money, to be honest.”

Afghanistan has been subjected to decades of imperialist plunder and a 10-year war between Soviet forces and U.S.-backed rightist Mujahideen fighters that decimated the country’s agriculture and economic infrastructure, followed by a further destructive civil war among competing Mujahideen factions.

Most Afghans lack access to the most basic necessities, including clean water. As a result, Afghanistan has the third highest infant mortality rate in the world and a life expectancy of 44 years.

Opium accounts for the vast majority of Afghanistan’s export trade, which is a $3-billion-a-year business. It remains a major source of cash for the Taliban, who took in up to $100 million last year, according to the United Nations. U.S. and NATO forces in December announced their decision to directly target those capitalists in the drug trade who finance the Taliban.

Top U.S. officials are asking European NATO allies to contribute more to the imperialist force in Afghanistan. The requests include more troops, removal of caveats by many allied powers that restrict their troops to the safest areas of the country, and more money and other resources to train and equip Afghan military and police forces.

French foreign minister Hervé Morin ruled out sending more French troops January 21, before the question was even posed by the new U.S. administration.

The response by other European powers remains to be seen. Vice President Joseph Biden will lead a U.S. delegation—which will include National Security Advisor James Jones and Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command—to the February 6-8 international “security conference” in Munich, Germany, to present Washington’s position.

Conference participants will also include German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Nicholas Sarkozy, Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani.

The election postponement means Karzai will remain in office for at least another four months. There are signs that Washington is not satisfied with the Karzai government, but has no better alternative.

Karzai has criticized Washington for, among other things, undermining the central government’s authority in the country—which remains weak—by soliciting support from various local landlord-based rulers, who control areas of the country with their own militias.

Karzai, an honorary English knight, is from a family that had supported the monarchy of King Zahir Shah until his overthrow in 1973. He was briefly deputy foreign minister under the unstable Mujahideen government in 1992.

Like the U.S. administration of William Clinton, Karzai was initially favorable to the rise of the Taliban movement in the mid-1990s. Both saw the Taliban’s military victories then sweeping the country as a potential force that could bring “stability” to the violent chaos of competing Mujahideen factions that ensued following their victory over the Soviet occupation.

But Karzai pulled back from taking a post as the Taliban ambassador to the United Nations, he has said, after realizing that the Taliban had become a proxy of the Pakistani military. He later became an outspoken opponent of the Taliban as it came increasingly allied with al-Qaeda.  
 
 
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