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08 December 2010 By Rick Rozoff Over 150,000 foreign troops from more than fifty
nations will spend another Christmas in Afghanistan.
The tenth since the U.S. and Britain invaded the
nation on October 7, 2001 and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization activated its Article 5 collective
military assistance provision the preceding month. Western forces have occupied and waged war in the
nation for longer than Soviet troops were stationed
there, from December 27, 1979 until February 15, 1989.
There are approximately a time and a half as many U.S.
and NATO troops in the country as there were Soviet
ones at their peak. The duration of the war, also the most protracted
in U.S. history, is lengthening and the amount of
foreign soldiers in theater is growing, with a rash of
recent revelations establishing that the foreign
occupation will continue to 2014 and perhaps
substantially longer and documenting a steady increase
in reinforcements from several NATO nations and the
recruitment of new troop contributing nations. Christmas Day will find troops from the U.S. and
NATO allies also based, billeted and bivouacked in
Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as
well as other generally unacknowledged outposts in the
greater Afghan war, one which in truth ranges from the
Strait of Gibraltar on the Atlantic Ocean to the
Strait of Malacca in the Pacific. In addition to the
Afghan campaign, NATO's invocation of its Article 5
has been employed to support the over nine-year-old
Operation Active Endeavor maritime surveillance and
interdiction mission throughout the Mediterranean Sea,
and U.S. and NATO allies' naval and air deployments in
support of the Afghan war overlap with operations off
the Horn of Africa in the Gulf of Aden and throughout
the Indian Ocean and into the Persian Gulf. Last week the USS Halsey and USS Shoup destroyers
rejoined the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group
in the northern Indian Ocean region stretching from
Pakistan in the east to Somalia and Yemen in the west.
The two new warships linked up with the Abraham
Lincoln nuclear aircraft supercarrier and its attached
warplanes, the guided missile cruiser USS Cape St.
George and destroyers USS Momsen and USS Sterett. Indicating the range of the greater Afghan war area
of operations, that of the original Operation Enduring
Freedom and global war on terror, a U.S. Navy website
disclosed that the "Shoup will be initially assigned
to counter-piracy operations in and around the Gulf of
Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Red Sea; Momsen
will be initially assigned to Commander, Task Force (CTF)
152 in the Arabian Gulf; and Halsey will be initially
assigned to CTF 50, supporting Abraham Lincoln Strike
Group operations." [1] Arabian Gulf is an allusion to what is generally
known as the Persian Gulf and its use is an
intentional provocation to Iran. Combined Task Force
152, in its own words, "operates in the international
waters of the Arabian Gulf and takes part in Operation
Enduring Freedom." [2] CTF 50 is presumably Combined
Task Force 150, an American-led multinational naval
force with logistics facilities at Djibouti in the
Horn of Africa, where U.S. Africa Command maintains
its only full-service military base on the African
continent and stations its Combined Joint Task Force –
Horn of Africa whose area of responsibility includes
Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles,
Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen and
increasingly Comoros, Mauritius and Madagascar. The theater of operations for the greater Afghan
war stretches across the entire expanse of the Arabian
Sea. [3] After an unscheduled return to home port for
repairs, the Charles de Gaulle arrived in the Arabian
Sea recently where the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier
Strike Group and the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike
Group are currently deployed. The U.S. possesses all
eleven of the world's supercarriers and all but one of
its twelve nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, the
Charles de Gaulle being the other. American
supercarriers are accompanied by strike groups and
regularly prowl the planet's oceans and seas. In the skies over Afghanistan, the U.S. and its
NATO allies delivered 4,615 bombs and missiles to
targets in that Asian nation so far this year, already
surpassing last year's total of 4,184, with 1,000
bombs and Hellfire missiles used in October alone.
Total combat sorties have risen by 20 percent over the
same period. On November 29 the French Defense Ministry
announced that a Rafale multirole jet fighter plunged
into the Arabian Sea a hundred miles off the Pakistani
coast after taking off from the Charles de Gaulle and
flying a combat mission over Afghanistan. The U.S. Defense Department reported to Congress on
November 22 that "violence in Afghanistan was at an
all-time high since the nine-year-old war started" and
"progress made by the NATO-led forces there was
limited." [4] Combat incidents in Afghanistan so far
this year are up fourfold over 2007 and what the
Pentagon refers to as "kinetic events" – direct and
indirect fire, surface-to-air fire and exploded,
discovered and disabled roadside bombs – increased by
nearly 55 percent in this year's third quarter,
July-September, from the preceding one. NATO deaths in Afghanistan during the first eleven
months of 2010 are at 700, 30 percent of the total in
over nine years of fighting. Tony Karon wrote in Time magazine two days before
the event that on November 27 the U.S. and NATO "will
have been in Afghanistan a day longer than the Soviet
Union had been when it completed its 1989 withdrawal. "What's more, the U.S. announced during last
weekend's NATO summit that it intends to spend at
least four more years, and possibly longer, in the
Hindu Kush. Even then, many Afghans — perhaps even the
president installed by the U.S. invasion — appear to
doubt that the Americans will succeed where their
erstwhile Cold War nemesis failed." [5] Romanian President Traian Basescu was in
Afghanistan on November 30, accompanied by his defense
minister, Gabriel Oprea, U.S. ambassador to Romania
Mark Gitenstein and senior American defense official
at the American embassy in Bucharest Colonel Bruce
West. The head of state visited some of his nation's
1,663 troops in the country, all but eight of whom are
under NATO command, and announced that the number will
rise to 1,800 by the end of this month. Since Romania joined NATO in 2004, 17 of its
soldiers have been killed and 55 wounded in
Afghanistan, the nation's first casualties in a
wartime deployment, along with three killed and eight
injured in Iraq, since the Second World War. Romania joins its neighbor Bulgaria and other NATO
nations including Italy and the Czech Republic in
pledging an increase in troops and a shift from other
duties to combat roles for an Afghan war that shows no
sign of winding down. Just the opposite. In the past
year several countries have become new Troop
Contributing Nations for NATO's International Security
Assistance Force: Armenia, Montenegro, Mongolia,
Malaysia, South Korea and Tonga, and more being
enlisted. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell recently referred
to the latest deadline for the commencement of a
gradual withdrawal of American and other NATO forces
from Afghanistan – 2014 – as an "aspirational goal"
and the new chief of Britain's Defence Staff, Sir
David Richards, has suggested that Western troops
could remain in the country a good half century after
the 2001 invasion. Romania's Basescu, flanked by his American handlers
but where none but a Romanian reporter could hear him,
was equally if not more forthcoming in speaking of
NATO's tenure in South and Central Asia while
inspecting his country's expeditionary troops earlier
this week. Thanking the latter "for what you do for Romania,
for what you do for NATO, for what you do for the
civilized world," he added: "As we pledged when we came to Afghanistan, we are
only going to leave this country after accomplishing
our mission…..But what I am telling you for sure is
that 2014 must not be regarded as a deadline [when]
NATO withdraws from Afghanistan. "Examinations show that 2014 is still an optimistic
deadline. Therefore, we shall stay here till
Afghanistan is fully secure…." [6] If the beginning of a "drawdown" of U.S. and NATO
troops from Afghanistan and several neighboring and
nearby nations in 2014 is aspirational for the
Pentagon, it is at best problematic for Romania's
president and certainly a premature and transparently
dishonest schedule to disinterested observers. [7] Too many reinforcements, too many new nations
providing troops, too many new deployments of military
aircraft and armored vehicles, including 14 Abrams
tanks to be dispatched to southwest Afghanistan this
month, to allow for any other interpretation of events
but that of a war expanding without foreseeable
abatement. Moreover, the war is continuing to expand into
Pakistan with its population of 170 million. On November 26 and 28 the U.S. delivered the latest
of as many as 16 drone missile strikes in Pakistan's
tribal areas for the month, killing at least eight
people, making a total of close to 100 deaths in the
Central Intelligence Agency-directed attacks in
November. Last week a prominent Indian news agency revealed
that a U.S. Defense Department report confirmed that
American and NATO military personnel will be deployed
in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan
province. [8] On November 27 a Pakistani lawyer appealed to the
Lahore High Court against the deployment and
"submitted before the court that the government had
handed over a big area to foreign forces for setting
up an airbase, which was against the country's
sovereignty. "The government was not authorised to hand over the
country's lands to foreigners." [9] Four days earlier NATO helicopter gunships resumed
attacks inside Pakistan, in the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas where the U.S. has launched the bulk of
drone missile attacks that have killed almost 2,000
people. "[T]wo NATO gunship helicopters encroached
upon Pakistani airspace during flights near Landi
Kotal and Torkham and violated international
boundaries. "Officials…claimed hearing sounds of blasts while
the helicopters were hovering over…." [10] On November 26 another report surfaced of an attack
by NATO helicopters in Pakistan. "Witnesses said two
NATO helicopters were hovering for 10 minutes and
fired at the Lawra Mandi village in the Datta Khel
area in North Waziristan," injuring three people who
were rushed to a hospital in Miranshah, the capital of
the tribal district. [11] NATO launched four helicopter attacks in the
country in late September, killing three border troops
on September 30. In October NATO warplanes and helicopter gunships
intruded into both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the
North-West Frontier Province) and Balochistan. NATO warplanes violated Pakistani airspace over
Balochistan in February as well. A Chinese commentary of late last week warned:
"Despite Pakistan's clear-cut political stance adopted
amid stern warnings and the subsequent U. S. written
apology and denials, NATO aircraft continued breaching
Pakistani airspace, raising [questions] if these
incursions are being used as a barometer for testing
Pakistani tolerance to possible further advances into
[the nation's] territory, a general fear creeping into
Pakistani policy." [12] Moves to draw India into the West's military orbit,
both in reference to the Afghanistan-Pakistan war
theater and vis-a-vis China, have been typified by
visits to that country last month by U.S. President
Barack Obama and British Defence Secretary Liam Fox. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently on
a four-day trip to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan
and Bahrain. Former Indian diplomat and veteran journalist M. K.
Bhadrakumar penned a column for The Hindu last week in
which he observed: "From a seemingly reluctant arrival in Afghanistan
seven years ago, NATO is deepening its presence and
recasting its role and activities on a long-term
basis. "The summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation in Lisbon constituted a significant event
for South Asia. The alliance is transforming itself
into playing a global political-military role." He added: "Clearly, the U.S. will be in the driving
seat in the Hindu Kush for the long-term. The billions
of dollars the U.S. has been pumping in for upgrading
Soviet-era military bases in Afghanistan and
constructing new military bases now fall into
perspective….Overarching these considerations comes
the U.S. strategy visualising NATO as the provider of
security to the Silk Road that transports the
multi-trillion dollar mineral wealth in Central Asia
to the world market via the port of Gwadar" on
Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast. [13] NATO's top military chief, Supreme Allied Commander
Europe Admiral James Stavridis, recently boasted that
the U.S.-dominated military bloc is "a wealthy
alliance" with a $31 trillion collective Gross
Domestic Product and is a "big and capable alliance"
with 7 million troops and 3,400 ships…." [14] The West's, particularly Washington's, geopolitical
designs on Eurasia don't permit it to withdraw from
Central and South Asia. Nor do they give the U.S. and
its military allies any incentive to do so. 1) Navy NewsStand, November 25, 2010 http://www.cusnc.navy.mil/cmf/152/index.html 3) Arabian Sea: Center Of West's 21st Century
War http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../arabian-sea-center-of-wests-21st-century-war …. http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../u-s-nato-expand-afghan-war-to-horn-of-africa-and-indian-ocean-2 4) Xinhua News Agency, November 24, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/../timetable-abandoned-u-s-and-nato-to-wage-endless-war-in-afghanistan 8) Asian News International, November 25, 2010 http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article915523.ece?homepage=true 14) Defense News, November 29, 2010 |
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