The Obama Administration’s strategy for the war in Afghanistan centers on a policy of securing an agreement with President Hamid Karzai to keep ground troops in the nation through 2024. At the same time, officials have to keep up the public pretense of an imminent drawdown.
The excuses for the drawdown’s delay have usually been that the war is going too well or too poorly to change troop levels. The excuse now, it seems, is “anti-American” sentiment of Pakistan is making the withdrawal inconvenient.
Pakistan has been keeping the border to Afghanistan closed since November in retaliation for a random (and still inexplicable) US attack on a pair of their military bases. The Pakistani government has made reopening the border conditional on the US apologizing and also stopping the drone strikes against the tribal areas.
There was a surprising well of political support for the United States in Pakistan, and it has taken over a decade for the Bush and Obama Administrations to successfully burn through it all. Now, the US is so politically untouchable that Pakistani MPs fear nothing so much as being branded an “ally” of the US.
Though this has been a public relations nightmare for US diplomats and no small source of destabilization in Pakistan, it gives the administration a fresh new excuse for why Afghan troop levels are staying flat, even though there was no indication before the border’s closure that any US troops were going to leave the country by way of Pakistan and it seems a ridiculously unsafe route at any rate.
Of course, keeping Pakistanis so angry that they’ll hold massive anti-US rallies on a near-weekly basis takes some unkeep. To that end, the State Department today announced a $10 million bounty on Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. Saeed, a founding member of the Lashkar-e Taiba is being accused by the US of being behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Saeed is currently the head of a banned charity in Pakistan, the Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD). The group has run afoul of the Pakistani government as many other Islamist charities have, for being a successful foil to the government’s mostly inept attempts at humanitarian efforts. The JuD’s Islamist policies may make them an enemy to be targeted in the West, but the group’s history of charitable effort, particularly in helping refugees from US and Pakistani military adventures, has made them a lot of friends.
Pakistan’s government is unlikely to do much about Saeed either, having tried and failed to tie him to Mumbai and eventually being forced to abandon his house arrest over lack of evidence. The sudden US interest is likely to be one more reason Pakistani officials won’t want to touch him.
The DoD reported today a US Marine died March, 29 in Helmand province. Six US soldiers died in six days in Afghanistan between March 26 and March 31.
The Russians must be laughing and saying "we told you so!"
At least 3 more U.S. soldiers today. And these deaths are generally spread around the country but on a regular basis from Helmand, Kandahar, Kabul, Urzgan, Paktika, and a dozen more provinces. And no one is more furious than the poor suckers who are trapped in this nightmare
according to a PBS story on soldiers getting hit with IED almost every time they are on patrol.
They could really kick our buts if they decide to supply Strella anti-aircraft missiles to the Taliban.
“There was a surprising well of political support for the United States in Pakistan… Now, the US is so politically untouchable… no small source of destabilization in Pakistan”
But quite the reverse, for though it is most “destabilizing” for US government and its brutal drone imperialism, most reassuring and hopeful is it for the stability of any nation, such that we would hope that it happened to all nations, especially our own Empire USA nation.
If we keep this up we'll soon be at war with a populous, nuclear-armed Pakistan controlled by radical Islamists. India would get sucked into the war, too, and it would be long, bloody and expensive. The winners would be Russia and China.
The US can knock out Pak nukes with EMPs.
Don't worry Cassandra, the doughnut sent 250 Marines to Austraila……….
Pakistan will fight with Iran in the coming war.
Probably not! They have made an agreement to build a natural gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan. The Pakis flipped off the State Department arm twisters when they tried to stop it. All of our stupidity based foreign policy keeps coming back to bite us in the butt.
Anything and everything is a good excuse to keep the warmongering and profeteering going.
Other than the profiteering and warmongering, what's the purpose of keeping this war going? what's the long-term goal here? Is it to prop up the US economy, seemingly built to profit from perpetual war? Is it to plunder Afghanistan's supposed mineral wealth? Is it to annoy Russia and China? (If so, HAVE THE BALLS TO TAKE THEM ON FACE TO FACE and leave these poor virtually defenseless 3rd worlders ALONE!!!) Is it to fight Al-Qaeda? Funny because no one else in that area seems too over-concerned with the al-Qaeda boogeyman. Is it to fight "freedom" at home? Given the new laws on the books, it seems that yes, Obama IS fighting freedom…and winning.
The people paying and dying for this deserve a clear-cut answer! Enough with the Orwellian double-talking bulls**t already!!!
In October of last year I asked a rep from Senator Boozman's office to find out who was pulling the levers from behind the curtain to stay in Afghanistan for years past 2014. Boozman and Coburn had made a fast trip there in late Sept. I received a form letter in two days that said nothing. Ambassador Crocker and Generals Allen and Mattis need replaced as a message that we will leave before 2014, with no residual troops left behind.