Outrage over occupation roiling in region
Pentagon beefs up troop deployment in Afghanistan
By Leslie Feinberg
Without fanfare, the Pentagon has deployed at
least 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan in preparation for a
major spring offensive.
Up until now, some 11,000 to 12,000 Special Forces and other
units had made up the U.S. military boot heel of occupation
there.
But on March 18, 5,000 soldiers from the Army's 25th
Infantry Division (Light) shipped out in the largest single
troop movement in that division's history.
And as of March 26, some 2,200 Marines and sailors aboard
ships in the Persian/ Arabian Gulf had set sail for
Afghanistan. Pentagon brass say they have not yet deter mined
how many Marines from the 22nd Marine Expedi tionary Unit from
Camp Lejeune will be sent to the Central Asian country. A
senior Pentagon official concluded, "It will be most of them."
Another defense official said "some of the Marines" will be
sent, and field conditions will determine the ultimate number.
(New York Times, March 26)
Afghanistan lies on a strategic pathway to transport the
vast oil and natural gas wealth of the Caspian Sea to the
capitalist markets. The U.S. ambassador to Afghan istan and
Washington's hand-picked "president" of the country have both
been consultants for Unocal Corp., the U.S.-based energy giant
trying to pipe the resources out of Central Asia.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of the military's Central
Command, has said that the proposed spring military assault
will target the south, east and southeast of Afghanistan, where
resistance to the imperialist occupation has been dogged.
At a Pentagon media briefing on March 25, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers--chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff--told reporters that the additional Marines
would be used to provide security for Afghan elections this
summer. "They're going to have elections sometimes this summer,
perhaps late summer," Myers told journalists.
The day before, the U.S.-appointed titular head of
Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, announced that the presidential
elections slated for June had been pushed back to
September.
Anger at Washington's attempts to stabilize its military
occupation of Afghan istan, and to send surrogate troops to
fight and die, is roiling throughout Central and South
Asia.
Washington is also strong-arming other countries to send
forces. After talks with the Bush administration, New Zealand's
government announced in early March that it would send 50 elite
front-line Special Air Services troops for a springtime
assault. Canadian officials have said they may send 500 troops
to Afghanistan after August.
Spain's prime minister-elect has also indicated that he may
beef up the number of his country's troops, sure to draw the
ire of a domestic population rocked by bomb blasts believed to
be in retaliation for the deployment of Spanish troops to
Iraq.
The generals began commanding Operation "Mountain Storm" on
March 7, which they described as a "hammer-and-anvil"
operation. Pentagon and CIA commandos, using high-tech spy
equipment, directed the assault by some 7,500 Pakistani
paramilitary forces against the isolated, semi-autonomous
tribal villages along the northeast border between Afghanistan
and Pakistan. Gen. Abizaid and Secretary of State Colin Powell
met with President Pervez Musharraf and other high-level
Pakistani officials before and during the military
campaign.
"As a military operation it did not go well at all," said
Talat Masood, a Pakistani military and political analyst.
(HeraldNet, March 28) The Pakistani government admitted
suffering its worst casualties in the last two years of the
country's military offensives.
Pakistani officials called the operations a success,
however, saying they had intercepted radio transmissions that
an al-Qaeda intelligence chief had been killed in the fighting.
However, they conceded they had no body to prove the claim.
Some 30,000 tribespeople from the region, forced to flee
"Mountain Storm," were outraged when they returned to find
their homes razed and looted.
And Pakistani Islamic groups held mass protests--including
nationwide demonstrations on March 26--against Mushar raf, who
had been the target of two assassination attempts in December
for his military subservience to Washington.
Afghan residents who live near a base on the border with
Pakistan that is used as a "forward operating site" by U.S.
Special Forces, and multinational and Afghan troops under
Pentagon command, are also enraged. "They have built the
military base near our village to use the village as a firewall
to protect themselves. We don't want them here," village elder
Naim Khan told the French Press Agency. The remote village
lacks basic healthcare for everyday crises, let alone
casualties resulting from the U.S.-led military assaults. Two
young girls were already injured in the fighting; one died
traveling to get treatment.
And many analysts linked the March 28 and 29 bombings in
Uzbekistan to that government's support for the U.S.-led war
against Afghanistan. After the blasts, the Associated Press
reiterated that hundreds of U.S. troops are stationed at an
Uzbek air base in the southern town of Khanabad, which was
created as a strategic staging point for Pentagon operations
against Afghanistan in 2001.
Reprinted from the April 8, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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