'Nato chiefs are due to meet to consider committing more troops to Afghanistan, where a British general has warned combat is "more intense" than in Iraq.
Generals from Nato member states will meet in Poland to assess a request for more soldiers, planes and helicopters.
Nato head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has said some members are not doing enough.
Facing fierce Taleban resistance and mounting casualties in southern Afghanistan, Nato has never confronted such bad news, our correspondent says...
...The commander of British forces in Afghanistan has said combat there is more intense than in Iraq.
Brigadier Ed Butler said his troops were being attacked up to a dozen times a day but their morale remained high.
"The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis," Brig Butler told ITV News.
He said British forces had been involved in "fighting that is up close and personal" that at times included hand-to-hand combat.
Nato's top commander, Gen James Jones, on Thursday said the alliance had been taken aback by the scale of violence in the region.'
Is Afghanistan going to do to NATO what it did to Russia?
Of course not. Didn't you know that we're winning? Who do you believe, the guys sitting behind the desks in Washington or the guys sitting in the trenches at the front?
Posts: 509 | Location: Australia | Registered: 02-19-03
It's worth noting that the risk of dying when sent to Afghanistan is now greater than the risk of dying when sent to Iraq. There are fewer members of the armed forces killed in Afghanistan, but there are fewer there to begin with. The net result is, an individual is safer being sent to Iraq than Afghanistan these days.
'So, to recap: Bush promised us that not only terrorists, but any nation that aids terrorists, would feel America's wrath. Less than five years after the invasion of Afghanistan, that nation is being overrun once again by the Taliban. Their heroin production has reached historic peaks, thus leaving them flush with capital. Pakistan, meanwhile, enjoys ally status with the United States while cutting peace deals with the Taliban. Osama bin Laden, by the way, remains alive and free, and is far safer now that Pakistan has folded its cards.
That the Bush administration pretends it has even a tiny handle on the wars it has unleashed, in Afghanistan and Iraq, is almost beyond comprehension. The United States, thanks to their fuzzy-minded leadership, is presently losing two wars at the same time. Everyone knows matters are dire in Iraq. Soon now, the unraveling situation in Afghanistan will begin making banner headlines. The body counts will rise. At some point soon, as with Iraq, the rhetoric from the White House will once again transmogrify from "Mission Accomplished" to "Stay the Course."
But then again, there is an up-side to all this. The American economy is faltering, after all, while Afghan heroin production is exploding. What good is an economic downturn without a good supply of smack?'The Other War
bush's failure seem so obvious: it's not about politics, it's about looking at facts. And yet it's not at all sure (the opposite, I'm afraid) that reality will prevail in the upcoming elections. In fact, it's still true according to the latest polls, that nearly half of Americans believe Saddam had something to do with 9/11 and al Queda. So being failures at policy does not mean the Republicans are failures at propoganda and planting falsehoods. In fact it's what they clearly excel at. So, as I've said, I expect no change in the political landscape. We are, to a depressing and dangerous extent, a nation of sheep. No. Of the proverbial frogs in the slowing warming pot.
Posts: 1505 | Location: Puget Sound, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
'Soldiers deployed in Helmand province five years on from the US-led invasion, and six months after the deployment of a large British force, have told The Independent that the sheer ferocity of the fighting in the Sangin valley, and privations faced by the troops, are far worse than generally known.
"We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming, either locally or from across the border," one said. "We have used B1 bombers, Harriers, F16s and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and even 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches [helicopter gunships] ran out of missiles they have fired so many. Almost any movement on the ground gets ambushed. We need an entire battle group to move things. Yet they will not give us the helicopters we have been asking for...
...Lt Gen Richards, who says British forces have been involved in some of the fiercest fighting since Korea, has now decided to withdraw from outlying positions, which will be taken over by the Afghan forces. It is a decision that some have questioned. An officer who has served in Helmand said: "We have to ask, can we rely on them? Especially the police."
He continued: "We did not expect the ferocity of the engagements. We also expected the Taliban to carry out hit and run raids. Instead we have often been fighting toe to toe, endless close-quarters combat.' news.independent.co.u
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- NATO members have failed to respond to a call from military commanders for reinforcements to try to quell the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan, an alliance spokesman said.
"No formal offers were made at the table," James Appathurai told reporters Wednesday in Brussels, where the 26-nation group was meeting.
NATO's top operational commander, U.S. General James Jones, appealed for 2,000 to 2,500 more troops last week, saying the force was about 15 percent short of full strength.
The Taliban have recently staged a resurgence following an initial routing of the Islamic militant group from its control of Afghanistan by a U.S.-led operation two months after the September 11, 2001, terrorists attacks in the United States.
"The signs are not particularly good for a rapid response," Lord Timothy Garden of London's Chatham House think tank, told The Associated Press.
"This has been going on in different theaters for years and years now, really since 1999 in Kosovo, and all our militaries are getting pretty threadbare."
"Nations are saying they are tapped out," one anonymous alliance diplomat told Reuters.
"Do not expect much today," said another NATO source.
Last week, a U.S. military official in Afghanistan said nine of 21 districts in Ghazni province -- only about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Afghan capital of Kabul -- "have significant Taliban influence."
This development, which has caught the attention of the U.S. military in the past month, represents an important shift by the Taliban from their traditional strongholds in the south and east of the country. They had had little or no presence in Ghazni since the Taliban's fall in November 2001.
The official said the Taliban are moving around Ghazni province in units of 15 to 20 and will take over towns if no Afghan police units are around to stop them.
There are currently about 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, in addition to the 20,000 international troops that make up the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is led by NATO. - CNN -------- Let's see...Western Iraq needs 16,000 more troops, Bagdhad needs more troops, and Afghanistan needs more troops. I guess the military needs to lower entrance standards again, and raise the age limit...again.
You know, if it weren't for the fact that thousands have died, and thousands more will die, and that more than that are wounded, some with lifetime disabilities, and that active officers have said that our military is stretched to the breaking point, and that Iraq is costing over us almost $2 billion a week, and that world opinion of the US is at an all-time low, and that we have created more terrorists than we have killed, and that terrorist activity is up since we invaded Iraq, and that the situation is getting worse, instead of better, this whole thing just might be funny. Somehow, though, I just can't laugh.
The Vietnam mess took 4 Presidents to create. bush has done this all on his own.
Posts: 17236 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
watching CNN & BBC, Pakistan president Musharraf is taking some criticism for his handling of Taliban affair. I have a slight bad feeling about things to come in the future....
'General Boris Gromov, the charismatic Soviet commander who supervised the withdrawal in 1989, warned, "The Afghan resistance is, in my opinion, growing. Such behavior on the part of the intractable Afghans is to my mind understandable. It is conditioned by centuries of tradition, geography, climate and religion.
"We saw over a period of many years how the country was torn apart by civil war ... But in the face of outside aggressions, Afghans have always put aside their differences and united. Evidently, the [US-led] coalition forces are also being seen as a threat to the nation."
A comparison with the 1980s is in order. The 100,000-strong Soviet army operated alongside a full-fledged Afghan army of equal strength with an officer corps trained in the elite Soviet military academies, and backed by aviation, armored vehicles and artillery, with all the advantages of a functioning, politically motivated government in Kabul. And yet it proved no match for the Afghan resistance.
In comparison, there are about 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan, plus roughly the same number of troops belonging to NATO contingents, which includes 5,400 troops from Britain, 2,500 from Canada and 2,300 from the Netherlands. Nominally, there is a 42,000-strong Afghan National Army, but it suffers from a high rate of defection...
... In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, in an international environment where "we are all Americans", as Le Monde famously wrote, no one asked any hard questions as to whether Washington's decision to attack Afghanistan was justified or not. The international community simply acquiesced.
But the fact remains that Washington, indeed, had the option to forgo direct intervention and instead to extend its decisive political, diplomatic and military support to the anti-Taliban Afghan groups that, under the compulsions arising out of the assassination of the Northern Alliance's Ahmad Shah Masoud, were finally rallying under the leadership of former king Zahir Shah and were just about ready by late September 2001 to announce the establishment of an Afghan government-in-exile.
The Afghan king himself was persuaded at long last to give up his reticence about returning to active politics after three decades of exile in Rome. That option, had it been pursued, would have opened the way for a quintessentially "Afghan solution" to the challenge posed by the Taliban regime - a solution that would have enjoyed the full sanctity of Afghan traditions and culture.
But the Bush administration deliberately chose not to take that option. Conceivably, Washington decided that only a spectacular military operation would assuage the US public, which was traumatized by the September 11 attacks, and highlight the decisive leadership in the White House in safeguarding national security...
...The repeated and brazen manipulations by the US during the past five years, especially during the parliamentary and presidential elections in Afghanistan held under election rules that were tailor-made for predictable results, failed to ensure that Karzai commanded respect in the Afghan bazaar.
US attempts to consolidate a Pashtun power base for Karzai have virtually failed. Equally, the episodic attempts to create dissension within the Taliban have also not worked. In turn, these failures led to large-scale Pashtun alienation. US efforts to marginalize the Northern Alliance and to enlarge the ethnic-Pashtun representation in Karzai's cabinet have not had the desired effect of meaningfully tackling Pashtun alienation, either. Arguably, they may have created latent resentment among Northern Alliance leaders, which lies below the surface for the time being.
In other words, there is a fundamental issue of the legitimacy of state power that remains unresolved in Afghanistan. At a minimum, in these past five years there should have been an intra-Afghan dialogue that included the Taliban. This initiative could have been under UN auspices on a parallel track.
The inability to earn respect and command authority plus the heavy visible dependence on day-to-day US support have rendered the Kabul setup ineffective. Alongside this, the Afghan malaise of nepotism, tribal affiliations and corruption has also led to bad governance. It is in this combination of circumstances that the Taliban have succeeded in staging a comeback.'Afghanistan: Why NATO cannot win
I am reminded of a great, and historically accurate (for a movie), quote from a terrible movie, Rambo 3. -------- Mousa: This is Afghanistan... Alexander the Great try to conquer this country... then Genghis Khan, then the British. Now Russia. But Afghan people fight hard, they never be defeated. Ancient enemy make prayer about these people... you wish to hear?
Rambo: Um-hum.
Mousa: Very good. It says, 'May God deliver us from the venom of the Cobra, teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan.' Understand what this means?
Rambo: That you guys don't take any ****?
Mousa: Yes... something like this. -------- These people are like the Slavs of the Balkans. They forget nothing; they forgive nothing. Insults are remembered for generations. There is only one way to completely win a war with Afghans; kill them all. If you don't, they will pick you apart year after year until you give up.
The US was right to go into Afghanistan, but that was about the only thing that we did there that was right. We needed to go in with full force, not a partial army. We ignore 2300 years of history and tried to do it on the cheap. If the Soviets couldn't do it nine years with am army of over 100,000, how could we expect to do it in less time with a fewer forces? We needed to kill the Taliban (not just drive it out into the country), find bin Laden and bring him to justice, and then tell the tribal leaders that they had 30 days to figure out how they were going to run their country. We'd help them set up what they wanted, but after 30 days, we should have wished them well and left.
There will be some who disagree with this. To those people, I ask one question. Had we done what I suggest above, would Afghanistan be in any worse shape than it is right now?
Posts: 17236 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
