US intelligence, military deliver dire estimates of Afghanistan war

US intelligence, military deliver dire estimates of Afghanistan war
By Bill Van Auken
11 October 2008

Seven years after the Bush administration launched “Operation Enduring
Freedom” with the relentless bombing of Afghanistan, US intelligence
agencies have concluded that the situation in the devastated country
is on “a downward spiral,” and that prospects are poor for stabilizing
the US-backed government and militarily defeating the growing armed
resistance.

These are the conclusions drawn by a classified draft National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that is in the final stages of
preparation, according to US officials cited Wednesday in the New York
Times.

According to the Times account, the report, which represents the
consensus view of 16 separate US intelligence agencies, concludes that
“the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been
accelerated by rampant corruption within the government of President
Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence by militants who have
launched increasingly sophisticated attacks from havens in Pakistan.”

The report, which essentially warns that Washington is in danger of
losing its war in Afghanistan, is not to be released in final form
until after the US November elections.

While the US and its NATO allies have beefed up their occupation
forces by some 20,000 troops over the last 18 months, the same period
has seen a 50 percent increase in the number of armed attacks carried
out by Afghan resistance fighters, whose ranks have been swelled by
civilians seeking revenge for the deaths of relatives killed in
stepped-up American air strikes and house-to-house raids.

On Tuesday, villagers in the southern province of Helmand reported
that a US air strike claimed the lives of 40 civilians. In one
demolished house, a couple and their eight children perished. The
villagers reported that there were no Taliban fighters in the area
when the bombs struck.

“There are confirmed reports of civilian casualties; however, it is
unknown at this time how many,” a terse statement from the US-led
occupation forces read.

The Pentagon found itself compelled to acknowledge on Wednesday that
it indeed slaughtered dozens of civilians—most of them children—in an
August 22 air strike on the village of Azizabad in Afghanistan’s
western Herat province. The US military, which initially denied that
any civilians had been killed, now admits to killing 33 unarmed men,
women and children along with 22 “anti-coalition militants.” Afghan
officials have continued to insist that 90 civilians—the majority of
them women and children—died in the attack.

Hostility to the US puppet regime headed by Karzai has grown as the
country’s economy has continued to deteriorate. Most recent figures
put the national unemployment rate at 40 percent, and it is estimated
that nearly half the population are unable to get enough food to meet
minimal nutritional requirements.

According to US estimates, government forces control less than a third
of the country, and many believe that to be an overestimate.
Meanwhile, the Taliban and other forces opposing the US-led occupation
have established control over increasingly large swaths of the
country, installing their own mayors, courts and police forces.

At the same time, official corruption is rampant. As the NIE confirms,
the heroin trade accounts for fully half of the country’s gross
domestic product.

NATO officials announced this week that they had reached an agreement
with the Afghan regime to use the foreign occupation forces to
suppress the drug trade, which according to Pentagon estimates earns
$60 million a year for the Taliban. Germany, Spain and other NATO
countries have opposed such a move, believing that it will only stir
up further popular opposition to the occupation.

The problem is compounded by the fact that government officials are
probably making considerably more from narcotics trafficking. Last
week, the New York Times published an article citing multiple official
sources linking the Afghan president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, to
heroin trafficking.

The paper cited American narcotics investigators who reported that
“senior officials at the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] and the
office of the Director of National Intelligence complained to them
that the White House favored a hands-off approach toward Ahmed Wali
Karzai because of the political delicacy of the matter.”

The dismal assessment drafted by the US intelligence agency found
confirmation from senior military commanders this week.

Admiral Michael Mullens, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
told Pentagon reporters Thursday that the situation in Afghanistan has
been headed in “the wrong direction” for the last two years.

“The trends across the board are not going in the right direction,”
Mullen said. “It will be tougher next year unless we get at all these
challenges.”

Also on Thursday, the top US military commander in Afghanistan,
General David McKiernan, told the French news agency AFP that
“ultimately the solution here in this country will be a political
solution, not a military one.”

The intelligence estimate from Washington and the statements from the
US commanders echo recent assessments provided by a British military
commander and the British ambassador in Afghanistan.

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the outgoing commander of British
forces in Afghanistan, told the press last weekend, “We’re not going
to win this war,” and that the best that could be hoped for was
“reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a
strategic threat.”

Meanwhile, the French publication Le Canard enchaîné quoted a memo
recording a discussion between the British ambassador to Afghanistan,
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, and a French official last month in which
Cowper-Coles insisted that the US-NATO military presence in the
country “is part of the problem, not the solution.”

According to the document, the British ambassador described a corrupt
and bankrupt Afghan regime that survived only thanks to the foreign
occupation forces. The only way out of the crisis, he affirmed, was by
replacing Karzai’s regime with an “acceptable dictator.”

British officials have apparently concluded that the US-initiated war
in Afghanistan is unwinnable, and American military commanders, their
forces stretched to the breaking point by the deployment of 152,000
troops in the occupation of Iraq together with the 33,000 in
Afghanistan itself, appear largely in agreement.

There is no indication, however, that Washington is about to concede
defeat in this seven-year-old war. Justified as a retaliation for the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the war is part of a drive to
establish US hegemony over the oil-rich regions of Central Asia that
were opened up in the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. This
remains a key strategic objective of the American ruling elite.

According to a report in the Washington Post Thursday, the Bush
administration has responded to the NIE by ordering a major
reassessment of US strategy and tactics in Afghanistan, an initiative
that may well lead to a substantial escalation of the US intervention
there.

According to the Post, given the upcoming election and the subsequent
change in administrations, “senior officials have expressed worry that
the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is so tenuous that it may
fall apart while a new set of US policymakers settles in.”

Under consideration is a significant increase in the number of troops
as well as stepped-up intervention into western Pakistan, where
already, as the Post points out, “Military Special Operations forces
and operatives [are] now conducting regular secret incursions.”

The Post notes that an escalation of the dirty colonial war being
waged by American forces in Afghanistan would enjoy bipartisan
support.

“Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are unlikely to
question a major new US commitment; both have called for an increase
in US troops,” the Post writes. “And unlike Iraq, where lawmakers have
argued for years over funding and troop levels, there is bipartisan
backing for doing more, and doing it quickly, in Afghanistan.”

In short, the November election will provide no means for the American
people to express their overwhelming hostility to the ongoing wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead, it appears increasingly likely that an
escalation prepared by the Bush administration on the eve of the vote
will be continued by the next administration, no matter whether Obama
or McCain is victorious at the polls.