Afghanistan: More U.S. troops means growing resistance

The current U.S. administration is still reviewing what strategy to follow in Afghanistan, but its main thrust is moving toward expanding the war there.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted on Feb. 20 in Krakow, Poland, that the best the U.S. could hope for from its NATO allies was a few hundred additional troops. This was after the U.S. had announced it was sending 17,000 additional troops, bringing the total to 55,000.

Gates asked for enough available force so that the U.S. can claim that the upcoming provincial and national elections in Afghanistan are secure and fair. Under occupation, however, no elections can be considered legal, let alone secure and fair.

While Gates was in Krakow, a few hundred protesters, mainly youth, gathered to denounce NATO as an “expansionist, not defensive” alliance, carrying signs reading “Stop war, Stop NATO.” Major protests are scheduled for Strasbourg, France, in early April when NATO heads of state gather to celebrate the U.S.-dominated alliance’s 60th anniversary.

The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan has expanded so definitively into Pakistan that some media like the Financial Times have renamed it the “AfPak conflict.” Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi announced Feb. 22 that he is heading for a major conference called in Washington where he will discuss options for settling the AfPak conflict with Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, special envoy Richard Holbrooke and other top U.S. officials. (Press Trust of India)

Even though Washington invited them to participate, India’s government announced it would not attend this conference. (Xinhua, Feb. 21) The Indian government has pledged $1.2 billion for reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee recently expressed concern over the “peace deal” between the Pakistan government and the resistance movement in the portion of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas called the Swat in northwest Pakistan.

The details of the “peace deal,” even the length of time it is supposed to last, are murky.

The big-business media and the officials who comment on the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan are quick to call the resistance in those countries “terrorists,” “Taliban” and “Islamic fundamentalists.” Yet they are very slow to criticize the CIA drone attacks, such as the one Feb. 20 on one faction of the resistance.

The media presented the drone attack as showing increasing cooperation between the CIA and the Pakistani government, which supplied the intelligence the CIA acted on. But they failed to mention the civilian casualties and increased anger toward the government that these attacks sparked.

Because its supply lines through Pakistan are becoming untenable, the Pentagon is currently exploring supplying its troops in Afghanistan with supplies off-loaded in Latvia on the Baltic and then carried by train through Russia to northern Afghanistan.

This supply route may not be feasible. It is definitely much more costly. According to the Daily Times of Lahore (Pakistan), the U.S. military has asked for an additional $83 billion for the next fiscal year for its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Feb. 22)

In a time of growing financial crisis, adding $83 billion will arouse more opposition inside the U.S. to the Afghan occupation. Even the Pentagon strategists won’t promise a quick victory with an Afghan “surge.” For the Afghan people, increased U.S. military spending and more troops in Afghanistan mean more vicious attacks, more suffering and, in the long run, even greater popular resistance.