The media war in Afghanistan

Writing in the Independent on Sunday, Patrick Cockburn described the aim of NATO and the UK forces in Afghanistan and how it is essentially a media exercise to soften up opposition to the war in the NATO states. This was confirmed in an interview last night on Newsnight with the former US ambassador to NATO who stated that "opposition to the war will dissipate once victories start being achieved". This is clearly Obama's and Brown's hope but things are not nearly so straightfoward as Cockburn writes below. The killing of civilians, billed as an "accident" and which has already led to protests from the Afghan government shows that the offensive has already gone wrong. The anti-war movement must continue its efforts. In the interim, there will be many more bodies passing through the streets of Wooton Bassett. The wars and the cost of them must be a major issue in this general election

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/operation-moshtarak-biggest-offensive-since-2001-under-way-1899127.html


Billed as the largest military operation by Western forces since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, the offensive is partially aimed at the US and foreign media, which is present in force, to show US and Afghan forces succeeding in taking back territory from the Taliban. An aim of the Afghan "surge", with an extra 30,000 US troops, is to deny the Taliban any sanctuaries inside Afghanistan, particularly in heavily populated areas in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

The US aim is to allow the Afghan government to reassert its authority in Marjah and the well-irrigated opium poppy-growing agricultural land around it. Some 2,000 Afghan police and a team of government officials are waiting to enter the town and its surroundings in the wake of the US-led military assault in which the role of Afghan military forces is continually being emphasised.

The slogan of the new US strategy is "Clear, Hold, Build", and it has the declared intention of not withdrawing after expelling or killing the Taliban, but of winning the support of local people by protecting them and providing services such as roads, clean water and electricity. Major General Nick Carter, the Nato commander in southern Afghanistan, said: "Everybody has to understand that it's not so much the clear phase that's decisive. It's the hold phase."

The weaknesses of the new US military plan were spelled out by the US ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, in leaked cables to President Obama sent last November. In these, General Eikenberry, a former army officer, argues that the sanctuaries which matter most to the Taliban and the highly effective Haqqani network of anti-US insurgents are not in Afghanistan at all but just across the border in Pakistan. The loss of havens such as Marjah may inconvenience the Taliban, but will not cripple their fighting ability so long as they have base areas in the mountains of north-western Pakistan.

A further aim of US-led operations, starting with the capture of Marjah, is to allow the Afghan government to re-establish its authority and win the support of local people. But General Eikenberry says that the central problem is that the Afghan state has neither the will nor the ability to provide security, healthcare, education, justice and infrastructure.