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Vol. 79/No. 39 November 2, 2015
Washington reverses course,
troops to stay in Afghanistan
BY EMMA JOHNSON
Following the precipitous loss by Washington-backed Afghan forces of the
major northern city of Kunduz to a much smaller force of Taliban
insurgents Sept. 28, the Barack Obama administration reversed course and
announced it will prolong U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan beyond the
end of 2016. At the same time, Islamic State forces are making inroads
against both the government in Kabul and the Taliban.
The Afghan government had as many as 7,000 troops in the area when
Taliban forces took over the provincial capital, a district governor in
Kunduz province, Zalmai Farooqi, told the New York Times. “The problem
wasn’t lack of security forces, but there was no good leadership to
command these men,” he said. The Taliban routed them with an estimated
force of some 500. They held Kunduz for two weeks before government
forces retook it, backed by U.S. airstrikes and Special Operations
advisers.
The specter looming over Washington is a repeat of the collapse and rout
of the Baghdad army as Islamic State took control over western Iraq last
year.
As in Iraq, Obama had made the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan a
centerpiece of his foreign policy. The administration’s plan was to
remove all combat forces by the end of 2016, leaving 1,000 troops to
defend the U.S. Embassy in the capital. But in recent months, senior
military officials have pressed the administration to change course.
“The Afghan security forces’ uneven performance in the fighting season
underscores that their shortfalls will persist well beyond this year,”
Army Gen. John Campbell, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan,
told the Senate Armed Services Committee Oct. 6.
“Afghan forces are not as strong as they need to be,” said Obama in an
Oct. 15 statement. “The bottom line is, in key areas of the country, the
security situation is still very fragile, and in some places there is
risk of deterioration.”
He then announced the decision to keep 9,800 troops through most of 2016
and 5,500 beyond, when Obama will no longer be in office.
NATO officials announced Oct. 19 that their deployment of 6,000 troops
would also continue. The largest troop commitments in the 40-country
force are from Germany, Italy and Turkey.
In the revised plan U.S. troops will stay at bases in Bagram and
Jalalabad in the east and Kandahar in the south. Obama said the troops
have the twofold task of continuing to train Afghan forces and
supporting counterterrorism operations.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan says the Taliban
insurgency is more widespread in the country than at any time since
2001. The U.N. group has evacuated four of its 13 provincial offices.
The Taliban controls or heavily influences close to 50 percent of
Afghanistan as their forces have regained areas lost during the U.S.-led
“surge” from 2009-12, the editors of Long War Journal wrote Oct. 16. The
journal says it provides information for use by military and
intelligence officers in Washington in the “global war on terror.”
Since December, Islamic State has made inroads, gaining its largest
foothold in the Nangahar province on the Pakistani border. A majority of
its fighters are deserters from the Taliban who have switched allegiance
out of disillusionment with the group’s leadership and for cash
inducements. There have been violent clashes between the Islamist
groups, both of which are fighting to control the narcotics trade as a
key source of income.
After 14 years of war, Washington has failed to create a regime in
Afghanistan that both serves the U.S. rulers’ interests and has the
political authority and military capacity to stop the country from
falling apart in sectarian violence.
In an Oct. 15 editorial, the Times said that the Obama administration
and the Pentagon have been “disingenuous, and at times downright
dishonest,” in their public assessment of the progress American forces
and civilians have made in Afghanistan. This “raises far-too-familiar
memories of the Pentagon’s habit of manipulating the facts to maintain
public support for wars that are going badly,” pointing to Vietnam, Iraq
and previous instances in Afghanistan.
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