Afghan Update

8/8/2019 Afghan Update

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Planet DebateAfghanistan Update #1 File Title

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Troop Surge Good ...................................................................................................................................... 2

Surge Succeeding ...................................................................................................................................... 3

Security Situation Bad.............................................................................................................................. 4

Taliban Winning Now .............................................................................................................................. 5

A2: Increased Casualties .......................................................................................................................... 6

A2: Terror Threats From Other Places.................................................................................................. 7

A2: July, 2011 Withdrawal Date is Bad.................................................................................................. 8

A2: Inadequate Intel Makes Mission Failure Inevitable....................................................................... 9

A2: Withdrawal Causes Shift to Yemen ............................................................................................... 10

A2: Defeat Inevitable .............................................................................................................................. 11

A2: India & Pakistan Opposition .......................................................................................................... 12

Afghanistan Failure Collapses NATO .................................................................................................. 13

Withdrawal Collapses U.S. Global Leadership................................................................................... 14

Troop Surge Bad ...................................................................................................................................... 15

Lack of Intelligence Dooms Afghanistan Operations .......................................................................... 16

Surge Will Not Stabilize Afghanistan ................................................................................................... 17

Link to Drug War Bad ........................................................................................................................... 19

Drug War Bad Corruption ................................................................................................................. 20

A2: Need Surge To Stop Ethnic Conflict .............................................................................................. 21A2: Need to Stop Terror......................................................................................................................... 22

Corruption Afghan Government........................................................................................................ 23

Corruption In Aid ................................................................................................................................ 24

U.S. Should Withdraw............................................................................................................................ 25


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Troop Surge Good


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Surge Succeeding

Surge is turning the tide against the Taliban now

Australian Broadcasting Corporation, January 12, 2010, p. online

The top United States general in Afghanistan says a surge in American troops has started to turn the tideagainst the Taliban . US President Barack Obama last month ordered an extra 30,000 American troops toAfghanistan and the top US commander there, General Stanley McChrystal, says the troops are shifting themomentum against the Taliban. "I believe we're doing that now, I believe we have changed the way we operatein Afghanistan, we've changed some of our structures and I believe we are on the way to convincing the Afghanpeople that we are here to protect them," he said .


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Security Situation Bad

Afghanistans security situation has deteriorated

General Accounting Office, November 5, 2009, Afghanistans SecurityEnvironment, p. 2

Afghanistans security situation has deteriorated significantly since 2005, affecting all aspects of U.S. and alliedreconstruction operations. As we reported in April 2009, the rise in enemy-initiated attacks on civilians and on U.S.,Afghan, and coalition security forces has resulted from various factors, including a resurgence of the Taliban, thelimited capabilities of Afghan security forces, a thriving illicit drug trade, and threats emanating from insurgent safehavens in Pakistan. Since 2005, attacks on civilians, as well as on Afghan and coalition forces, have increased everyyear. The most recent data available, as of August 2009, showed the highest rate of enemy-initiated attacks sinceAfghanistans security situation began to deteriorate. Overall, nearly 13,000 attacks were recorded between Januaryand August 2009more than two and a half times the number experienced during the same period last year and morethan five times the approximately 2,400 attacks reported in all of 2005. Violence has generally been concentrated inthe eastern and southern regions of Afghanistan where U.S. forces operate, with insurgents making increasing use of improvised explosive devices, suicide attacks, and attacks targeting infrastructure and development projects. As figure1 illustrates, the pattern of attacks is seasonal, generally peaking from June through September each year. Althoughnever reaching the highest level of attacks in Iraq, the number of attacks in Afghanistan surpassed those in Iraq for thefirst time in July 2008 and has continued to exceed levels in Iraq in recent months.

Systemic gun violence

ABC News, January 12, 2010, http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2010/01/inside-afghanistan-guns-guns-guns.html

Today, there is a virtual arms race among the nearly 2,000 militias which abound in this country, all armed to theteeth. The Northern Alliance alone, historically one of the most powerful militias, is still said to have more than 7,000weapons. To fill the void created by inadequate police and courts, guns settle many disputes here, whether tribal,domestic or personal -- and there is often little doubt who the winner is. Guns are the cause of all miseries in thiscountry, says a local village elder.


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Taliban Winning Now

Taliban threat has increased

Anthony Cordesman, CSIS Chair in Strategy, January 4, 2010,http://csis.org/files/publication/100104_afghan_war_at_end_09.pdf The Afghan War at the End of 2009: A Crisis and a

New Realism

This same realism applies to improved assessments of the insurgent threat. NATO/ISAF has issued far more realisticassessments of the links between the fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and how the growing strength andsophistication of the Taliban and other insurgent threats cuts across the border areas. Pages 48 and 47 show how thethreat has grown in size and complexity between 2007 and the end of 2009, where it is based in Pakistan, and how itsoperating areas and areas of influence have expanded.

Taliban can sustain itself unless defeated


New Realism

It notes that the Taliban has adopted new organizational structures to achieve its objectives (p. 51-52), and that theinsurgency can sustain itself indefinitely unless defeated. (p. 53). It also notes that detainees and insurgent fighters

perceive themselves as successful, and expect to again become the government with time as well as see the currentgovernment as corrupt and ineffective, aid efforts as a failure, the ANP as corrupt, and the US as a nation that seek a

permanent presence in Afghanistan. (p. 54).


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A2: Increased Casualties

More casualties doesnt mean the mission is failing it means we are fighting the enemy

Christian Science Monitor; 12/18/2009, p1-1, 1p, 30,000 more troops toAfghanistan but how to get them there?

Counting casualties in Afghanistan or Iraq is an "idiotic" measure of success or failure, said James Carafano, amilitary analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Success in Afghanistan will be judged by how much of the population issafe from the Taliban and how Pakistan deals with havens for insurgents on its side of the border. "Casualties inAfghanistan are likely to go way up at least initially," he said. "That's because we will be taking the fight to theenemy. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing."


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A2: Terror Threats From Other Places

We know there is a terror threat from Afghanistan

AMBASSADOR RICHARD HOLBROOKE, U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY TO PAKISTANAND AFGHANISTAN, DELIVERS REMARKS ON AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTANAT THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION, January 7, 2010, p.

And Bruce gave us 60 days, and I thank Strobe for lending him to us. And we concluded, quite simply, that America's basic national security interests were at stake in these two countries. This was not Vietnam where the Vietcong posedno direct threat to the American homeland. It was not Iraq where Saddam Hussein similarly did not pose a directthreat. This was an area from which attacks on our soil and other countries, including Pakistan itself, had been

planned. And the people out there had said very clearly they'd do it again, as the near-miss on Christmas Daydemonstrates so fully. The fact that this particular person was not trained in Pakistan does not change the fact that theinspiration for all of this comes from al Qaeda, and al Qaeda's leadership is based in the remotest areas on theAfghanistan-Pakistan border.


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A2: July, 2011 Withdrawal Date is Bad

There is no fixed July 11 withdrawal date

AMBASSADOR RICHARD HOLBROOKE, U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY TO PAKISTAN

AND AFGHANISTAN, DELIVERS REMARKS ON AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTANAT THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION, January 7, 2010, p.

But you're all aware of the controversies that surround this policy. The president believe that the -- and, by the way,there will be a review of all this in December of this year which he also mentioned in his speech. The president

believes that we need to put more emphasis on Afghan self-reliance and that, in 18 months, we need to show tangible,visible progress towards a transition for Afghans taking over responsibilities for themselves -- not across the country. Ileft for Europe while the president was speaking on December 1st and landed in Brussels after -- just after he'dspoken. And the Europeans had been, of course, with the time difference, they had not heard the speech. And theheadlines misportrayed the speech right at the beginning and said, you know, withdrawal in 2011. But that was -- andthat misunderstanding may have been perpetuated here to some extent by people either in innocence or deliberate themisconstruing the speech. Some public figures questioned the date, but they misrepresented it. The president madeclear in the speech that we are not abandoning Afghanistan; that this is a strategy to work with the Afghans and createthe time and space during which they can improve their own ability for governance. This was discussed at length withPresident Karzai and with his cabinet on numerous occasions, notably including the trip that Hillary Clinton and Imade to Afghanistan on October 18th and 19th in conjunction are President Karzai's inauguration. The Afghansunderstood this. They're very comfortable with it. So I need to underscore that's what July 2011 means, not awithdrawal but the start of a responsible transition in which American combat troops will begin to draw down.


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A2: Inadequate Intel Makes Mission Failure Inevitable

Intelligence reform solves

The White House Bulletin, January 5, 2010, p. online

The head of military intelligence in Afghanistan has ordered a reorganization of the way analysts under his commandwork, which senior officials hope will provide a more clear picture of conditions on the ground. Analysts will now dividetheir work along geographic, "instead of along functional lines," according to a report written by Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn,the Deputy Chief of Staff, Intelligence, for NATO forces since June, 2009. Flynn writes bluntly that "having all analystsstudy an entire province or region through the lens of a narrow, functional line (e.g. one analyst covers governance, another studies narcotics trafficking, a third looks at insurgent networks, etc) isn't working." The analysts will in turn provide all thedata they gather into teams of "information brokers" who will release the reports, according to the paper published by theCenter for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C. think tank with numerous ties to the Obama administration. In the

paper, Flynn notes that "eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevantto the overall strategy." Flynn adds, "Ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are andhow they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and the levels of cooperation among villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers ? whether aid workers or Afghan soldiers ? U.S. intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high level decision makersseeking the knowledge, analysis, and information they need to wage a successful counterinsurgency."


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A2: Withdrawal Causes Shift to Yemen

Obama wont send troops to Yemen

Agence France Presse, January 11, 2010, No plan to send troops to Yemen, Obama says, p.online

President Barack Obama says he has "no intention" of sending US troops to fight militants in Yemen and Somalia,despite growing concern over the presence of militant cells there. Obama made a fresh push for internationalcooperation to confront militants in Yemen, where the top US military officer, Admiral Michael Mullen, said sendingtroops was "not a possibility." "I never rule out any possibility in a world that is this complex... In countries likeYemen, in countries like Somalia, I think working with international partners is most effective at this point," Obamasaid in a People interview to be published Friday. The magazine released a transcript Sunday. "I have no intention of sending US boots on the ground in these regions." He insisted the lawless tribal belt straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border "remains the epicenter of Al-Qaeda," but acknowledged a Yemen-based affiliate of Osama binLaden's network has become "a more serious problem."

The U.S. will not send troops to Yemen

The New York Times, January 11, 2010, p. 1AIn November, the president announced he would send 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan to fight terrorists.But less than a month later, the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula suddenly came into focus when a Nigerianman who unsuccessfully tried to blow up a plane near Detroit on Christmas Day said he had received help fromIslamists in Yemen. As with the situation in Pakistan, fighting extremist strongholds in Yemen puts the United Statesgovernment in a difficult position. Yemeni leaders have made it clear over they past week that they do not wantAmerican forces on their soil. However, security experts say that the government might be too weak to effectivelyfight the terrorist elements. Instead, the U.S. has sent $70 million in military aid to the country a figure it plans todouble this year and Yemen has stepped up raids against militant outposts in recent months. Mr. Obama'sremarks echoed those of his top military commanders in recent days. In an interview with CNN's FareedZakaria earlier this week, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said sending U.S. troops toYemen is ''not a possibility.'' And in an interview that aired Sunday with the network's Christiane

Amanpour, General David H. Petreaus said he also does not want to send American forces to Yemen. ''Wewould always want a host nation to deal with a problem itself,'' he said. In playing down any talk of Americanmilitary intervention in Yemen, the Obama administration is apparently trying to strike a conciliatory tone to peoplein the region.


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A2: Defeat Inevitable

U.S. can still win if it adopts Obamas new strategy


New Realism

This is a key point. The grim story told in the graphics in this analysis does not reflect the impact of any solid strengthor popularity on the part of the Taliban or other insurgents. A future analysis will show that is the product of someeight years of failing to provide the proper military resources, of failing to deal with Afghan power brokers andcorruption, and of focusing aid efforts focused far more on donor goals and mid to long term development than therealities of a steadily intensifying war. The Taliban have reached their present level of success largely throughstrategic neglect that created a virtual power vacuum in much of the country. Accordingly, none of these data indicatethat the war is lost. The strategy President Obama has set forth in broad terms can still win if the Afghan governmentand Afghan forces become more effective, if NATO/ISAF national contingents provide more unity of effort, if aiddonors focus on the fact that development cannot succeed unless the Afghan people see real progress where they livein the near future, and if the United States shows strategic patience and finally provides the resources necessary towin.


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A2: India & Pakistan Opposition

India and Pakistan will cooperate on Afghanistan now

Wall Street Journal, 1-11, 10, Mr. Mehta is a retired general of the Indian Army and convenor of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung-sponsored India-Pakistan bilateral dialogue since 2003.

Cooperation was first discussed at an India-Pakistan conference in Singapore in 2007. Last year, Afghanistan joinedthe discussions to form a trialogue and more three-way conferences are on the way.Shifting Pakistani attitudes toward the Taliban have partially facilitated the cooperation. Most Pakistanis now admitthere is no such thing as "good Taliban," a significant change from the past. Two events catalyzed this changetheTaliban's April flogging of a young girl in Swat and the December attack on the Army General Headquarters mosquein Rawalpindi. Indians have always rejected the idea of a "good Taliban," and more and more people in Pakistan have

begun to agree with their neighbors.Cooperation won't come naturally though. Both India and Afghanistan have serious issues with Pakistan. The historyof terrorist attacks against India that are sourced in Pakistan has strained Delhi's relations with its neighbor. AndAfghans take serious issue with Taliban sanctuaries on Pakistani soil and the illegal Durand Line, which demarcatesthe boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They believe India and Pakistan should cooperate for the peace of the region, rather than negate each other's efforts.For their part, Pakistanis believe that Indians and Afghans, who share excellent relations, have a mutual interest

against them and see India's presence in Afghanistan as a threat. Reconciling conflicts of interests between India andPakistan in Afghanistan is crucial to relaxing tensions.There's plenty of room for expansion. At present, India is only involved in socio-economic development inAfghanistan. The Afghans want India to do more, including helping train the Afghan Army. The Afghan army chief,General Bismillah Khan, is keen on sending combat units for training in India's counterinsurgency schools. TheAfghan government has suggested that Delhi and Islamabad could undertake joint projects in technology, health,education, power and communications. In 2007, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India cooperated to renovate the memorialin Jalalabad to Badshah Khan, one of the most important Frontier leaders during the Partition struggle.Overall, the strategic focus has shifted from East to West in Pakistan, making the Taliban, not India, their primaryenemy. At the trilateral conference in Kabul, the Pakistanis openly admitted the country was in deep troubleand thatthe trouble would spread. The Indians have suggested that Pakistan could expand and intensify its war on the West byrelocating troops deployed against India in the East and assured that Delhi would take no advantage of the militaryvoids. At least six to eight combat brigades have been moved from Pakistan's eastern border to the west, according to

Indian military intelligence. Indian officials say that talks between military and intelligence officials to work onmilitary cooperation could start as soon as March or April.Pakistan-India relations are on the uptick in other areas too. Both sides came close to a settlement of the 2007 Kashmir dispute, and other disputes in areas such as Siachen, Sir Creek and Tulbul are only a whisker away from resolution.Mr. Khattak, the Pakistani senator, has already urged at the Kabul conference for an immediate revival of the India-Pakistan dialogue so that Islamabad could be more focused in its fight against the Taliban. In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is keen to restart talks early this year, despite opposition in his own party. Both Presidents Asif AliZardari and Hamid Karzai committed to President Barack Obama last May to conclude an agreement on trade andtransit by the end of 2009. Those talks are still in progress.Trilateral cooperation has never appeared as urgent and as likely as now. It was in this spirit that Afghanistan ForeignMinister Rangeen Dafdar Spanta made a proposal in early December to establish a trilateral commission of foreignministers to develop some of these ideas for collaboration. That would be the first step in realizing the collectivedream of breakfast in Kabul, lunch in Islamabad and dinner in Delhi.


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Afghanistan Failure Collapses NATO

Failure in Afghanistan will collapse the European alliance

David M. Abshire was the US ambassador to NATO from 1983-1987 and co-founder of the Centerfor Strategic and International Studies, Christian Science Monitor; 12/17/2009, p1-1, 1p InAfghanistan, NATO is fighting for its life

In the United States, there is a growing perception that our European allies are becoming security consumers and notsecurity providers. Waiting for the release of the strategic concept will undermine any immediate reform. Failure inAfghanistan will break the transatlantic alliance, hastening the rise of "the Pacific century" and the inevitable shift of US attention toward Asia.


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Withdrawal Collapses U.S. Global Leadership

Withdrawing before Afghanistan is stable will collapse U.S. global leadership

BBC Worldwide Monitoring, January 11, 2010, Russian expert views prospects for relations with USA, Iran, Afghanistanin 2010, http://english.taand.com/index.php?mod=article&cat=News&article=544 At that time it will become clear whether the Afghanistan model of conciliation announced by Barack Obama in November 2009 is working. If the expansion of the military presence helps the stabilization situation, plans to start withdrawing troopsin 2011 may be implemented. If this does not happen, then the American forces and NATO will find themselves in adesperate position - to leave Afghanistan without at least the appearance of success will mean a serious political defeat,which Washington cannot allow.


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Troop Surge Bad


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Lack of Intelligence Dooms Afghanistan Operations

U.S. Afghan intelligence inadequate to support military operationsVoice of America News, January 7, 2010, Gates Endorses Critique of Military Intelligence in Afghanistan, p. online

The 26-page publication called Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan says militaryintelligence efforts in the country over the past eight years have been "token and ineffectual," and have not providedcommanders or senior leaders the information they need. It says the current intelligence gathering and analysis processes "failto advance the war strategy and, as a result, expose more troops to danger over the long run." The paper's authors, led byMajor General Michael Flynn, the chief of U.S. and NATO military intelligence in Afghanistan, say it should be considered adirective to his subordinates on how they should reform their operations.

U.S. has inadequate intelligence to support military operations in AfghanistanThe Daily Telegraph (London), January 6, 2010, p. 14 US intelligence 'more like fortune telling than detective work'

THE most senior US military intelligence officer in Afghanistan has launched a scathing attack on American informationgathering in the country. Maj Gen Michael Flynn described the operation as "starved'' of information that could help wage asuccessful war against insurgents. He called for radical changes, saying that, after eight years, the US was still unable toanswer "fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and

persuade''. "US intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high-level decision-makers seeking theknowledge, analysis and information they need to wage a successful counter-insurgency,'' he said. Intelligence officersshould travel at grassroots level and avoid the temptation to congregate in regional headquarters, he said.

Afghan intel inadequate to support military operationsDaily Times (PK), January 6, 2010, p. online US 'spy work' lacking in Afghanistan: NATO official,

Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the US intelligence community is only "marginally relevant" to the overall mission,focusing too much on the enemy and not enough on civilian life, NATO's top intelligence official said, calling the US spiesignorant and out of touch with the Afghan people. The stinging assessment said field agents are not providing intelligenceanalysts with the information needed to answer questions asked by US President Barack Obama and the top commander inAfghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.


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Surge Will Not Stabilize Afghanistan

Troop surge will not stabilize Afghanistan

BBC Monitoring South Asia Political, January 8, 2010 Friday, Pakistan article says no success inAfghanistan without public "support," p. online The lousily framed, President Obama's West Point escalatory speech on Afghanistan on December 1, 2009 intends to resolve the Afghan conundrum but atthe moment the new strategy seems little more than a triumph of hope over experience, leaving behind cumulative, long-lasting and detrimental imprints onthe region in question and the world in general. Grossly deficient in convincing civilian, diplomatic, political and reconstructiondimensions, President Obama's fresh troop surge cannot defeat the mountains-based insurgents by force. Observingcriticality of the US interests in the region for safety of its citizens, it is unequivocally upheld that safety of US citizens mustnot come at the cost of Pakistanis. The Nobel-prize winning US war President's strategy downplays the fact that thesituation in FATA is the consequence of the collapse of security in Afghanistan and not the other way round. A largearmy alone is no guarantor of stability in Afghanistan, especially if the domestic forces and the central governmentthat controls them are driven by factionalism and ethnic tensions. Apparently, the large number of foreign troopsonly validate the Taleban claim of occupation, inevitably resulting in more incidents not only inflaming localsensitivities and supporting fundamentalist recruitment but also draining the support of the American public andconfirming the transient nature of American commitment . The heart of Obama's over-ambitious strategy lies not in the civilian surge, butturning the war over to the Afghans, whose corrosive state-craft is the instant bedrock and gravitational centre of the insurgents. As a politician, Obama has

made the choice to appease his domestic constituency, yet he has failed to develop a definite strategic blueprint toward the wayforward in Afghanistan, as his new AfPak strategy is particularly empty on the substance, spelling out only vaguegeneralities about Afghanistan by missing out as how to deal with the corrupt and incompetent Karzai governmentand commit to a long-haul nation-building to serve the Afghan people . A complicated and overly triangulated Obama's speech is anattempt to just placate a war weary multiple public in time for the 2012 US election. Familiar with the US history of turning its back on this volatile region,the memories of the US withdrawing from Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and leaving the country in chaos are still vivid in Afghanistanand Pakistan. A repeat of that scenario, before stabilizing ground situation in Afghanistan, would rather be catastrophic creating downward spiral of decreasing security in Afghanistan, collapse of the Afghan government, an even bloodier un-ending civil war, renewed humanitarian crisis and refugesexodus. Then the region is back to the old game, where the US would have again left the war-torn Afghanistan state to its own indeterminate disorderlydestiny, wreaking havoc to the stability of the region in general. This perceived weakness will in turn undermine the Afghan government, encourage manyAfghans to hedge their bets by cultivating better ties with the Taleban. It is paradoxical that approximately 250,000 US-NATO-ANA are going to fight withthe numerically minimum insurgents, who as per CIA's estimates are fewer than 100 Al-Qa'idah members and around 15,000 to 20,000 Taleban.The tug in Afghanistan is basically the Taleban-led-Pakhtun war fighting against occupation forces and for theirpolitical goals, something presently ill-perceived in the West. Obama paid no attention to the increasingly visibleopposition to the Karzai government and the US occupation from the majority Pakhtun population, which makes upthe majority of the Taleban and are increasingly defining Afghanistan's civil war as an ethnic war against supporters of the US-backedNorthern Alliance, whose Tajik and Uzbek militants now only constitute majority of the Afghan National Army. In this global, lethal and impoverishingwar, the main strategic flaw is that the U! S is visualizing the Afghan crisis through lens of the Northern Afghan populace, while simultaneously examiningthe Pakistani scenario through the same very Afghan lens, leading to the axiomatic phraseology that stability in Afghanistan lies via stability in Pakistan,whereas on ground realities substantiate the reversing order counting on an orderly situation first in Afghanistan and then in the region. Though thestrategy is linked to Pakistan, yet there is no cardinal change in policy towards Pakistan. The strategy puts Pakistanon the same level as Afghanistan, while the reality is quite the opposite. Afghanistan has no government and thecountry is completely destabilized, whereas Pakistan is not. Obama's Af-Pak policy disregarded the most importantregional dynamics and ignored the need for a broad regional diplomatic strategy; the Indian element in the wholegame did not appear in the speech and Obama ignored Islamabad's legitimate growing concerns vis-a -vis India thatis tempting to use the Afghan soil as part of the Indian encirclement strategy . Indicating a caveat of the need to avoid adverse fallout onPakistan, fears are getting sparked in Islamabad that Obama's troop rise will lead to more US drone attacks and military involvement in its border areas, possibly further destabilizing the Washington's ally. The reasonable concern for Pakistan is that when extra US troops land in south Afghanistan Taleban will just make a tactical retreat across the

porous border to Pakistan's tribal regions. Due to geographical proximity, intense operations in Helmand in summer 2010 may disturb peaceful Pakhtun belt of Pakistan,specifically Baluchistan and make that restive. The deeper military US-NATO push into the southern conflict zones near the Durand Line could suck in Pakistani troops and lead to

heavy innocent casualties. The campaign has already sparked a backlash of suicide attacks in cities, raising fears for Pakistan's stability. Unjustifiably, being dragged into theAfPak war, Pakistan may be the worst victim of the US-led troop surge. If things start to go wrong for Obama, Pakistan could easily be made into a scapegoat. President Obamahas acknowledged that Pakistan is pivotal for the new strategy to work. This makes it all the more necessary for Washington to adjust its policy approach to Islamabad's legitimateconcerns Addressing the daunting challenges of the ever-ballooning narco-led-terrorism enterprise in Afghanistan, the international community needs to realize the reality tostrategically run parallel not only the counter-insurgency, counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism drives to bring stability in the fragile Afghanistan but also simultaneouslymeeting the over-due objectives of nation-building, institutional-cum-civil engineering and human security of the Afghan people. The core policy elements involve Marshal Plantype longer-term reconstruction, rehabilitation and engagement of non-state actors in nation-building process to evolve a relatively stable peace through cultural building measuresfor all ethnic groups like Pakhtun, Hazara, Tajiks and Uzbeks. Unless a holistic and socio-economic-political engagement-based attractive softer approach to resolving the Afghan

problem is adopted , Obama's efforts to initiate a regional pea! ce process in Afghanistan will not succeed. As the presentconflict in Afghanistan has gone beyond mere tweaking of the present US-led approach, therefore without winning thehearts and minds of common public specifically, including the biggest Pakhtun segment, the wider support for newAmerican policy in the region and its success would remain a remote dream.


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Link to Drug War Bad

A key component of the Afghan strategy is to eliminate the opium trade

Christian Science Monitor, 1-12, 10, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0112/How-US-is-tackling-opium-trade-in-Afghanistan-poppy-heartland

A key plank of the US strategy in Afghanistan is breaking up the opium trade in Helmand Province, as underscored by USAgriculture Secretary Tom Vilsacks visit to the region Monday. Standing next to his cow and a squad of Marines on patrol,Afghan farmer Fathie Mohammad says the troops have upended the local opium economy. Outsiders once flocked to Khan Neshinto work the fields, process the poppy, and smuggle it to nearby Iran and Pakistan.


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Drug War Bad Corruption

Corruption and lack of strategy kill the drug war

AP, 12-23, 9, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ipcWsrqsmpSaUWRgb7xXmvQPLgIQD9CP7J580

The State Department's internal watchdog on Wednesday criticized the agency's nearly $2 billion anti-drug effort inAfghanistan for poor oversight and lack of a long-term strategy.The department's inspector general said the Afghanistan counter-narcotics program is hampered by too few personneland rampant corruption among Afghan officials.The inspector general's report also noted that despite a consensus among U.S. agencies that eradicating poppy fields isessential, the focus has shifted to interdiction of drug organizations and alternative crop projects. That shift isadvocated strongly by Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.The 69-page review also said U.S. embassies in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not adequately coordinating the

program's activities. It recommended that the State Department set out clear guidelines for measuring success, booststaffing and improve interagency cooperation."The department has not clarified an end state for counternarcotics efforts, engaged in long-term planning, or established performance measures for its multipillared approach to counter poppy cultivation and the resultant illegalnarcotics industry," the report said.


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A2: Need Surge To Stop Ethnic Conflict

Many barriers to ethic conflict in Afghanistan

Christian Science Monitor; 12/31/2009, p1-1, 1p Is power in Afghanistan returning to ethnic faultlines?

But strong bulwarks remain against any return to outright ethnic strife. First, Afghans themselves have beenconditioned through bloody history to deny the legitimacy of ethnic divisions. Political leaders avoid overt appeals toethnicity, and ordinary Afghans will often deny that clannish behavior is linked to ethnicity.Second, Dr. Abdullah has fastidiously avoided calling for "peaceful demonstrations," an oxymoron in Afghan culture.Abdullah's fondness of his emerging image as a statesman may keep him as a force for peace even if Karzai does littleto share the spoils of victory (something unknown at press time).Third, perhaps the only ethnic red line that exists in Afghanistan lies with Pashtuns who feel it is their historical anddemographic right to lead the nation. The final election result returned Karzai, a full-blooded Pashtun, to power. Insome ways, concerns of a coming ethnic clash would have been more serious if Abdullah had won, given that he isviewed as Tajik, despite having one Pashtun parent.


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A2: Need to Stop Terror

Troops in Afghanistan divert resources from the war on terror

Rep. Jared Polis, a Democrat, represents Colorado's 2nd Congressional District, December 17, 2009,http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/17/polis.afghanistan.iraq/

The very real war on terror must be fought, not just in Iraq or Afghanistan , but across the globe. The terrorists, mostnotably al Qaeda and their associates, are a stateless menace. With the manpower and financial resources we are

putting into occupying the nation of Afghanistan, we could improve our port security, increase our intelligencegathering to locate and infiltrate terrorist cells, and increase our special operation capacity. Three areas of focus --homeland security, intelligence, and special operations -- are the three best tools in our toolbox to fight the war onterror. Focusing our resources on occupying a small mountainous Asian nation is peripheral at best and a lethaldistraction at worst.

Wed have to occupy every country on the plan to solve terror this way


On military matters, I frequently turn to my colleagues who have more experience in the area, just as I hope they turnto me as it relates to education or small business issues. My colleague Eric Massa from New York, one of the highestranking retired officers now serving in Congress, stated my position far more eloquently and with more credibilitythan I ever could on a radio show last week: "If our security is at stake to the extent that we must rebuild a nation

because there are 100 terrorists in Afghanistan, then we better be willing to occupy every single nation on the face of this planet and do the same.

Occupation increases terror


In addition, our ongoing occupation increases the sympathy among some locals for the very terrorism we are there tofight. The inevitable innocent casualties can turn neutral families into terrorist collaborators and America-haters.The people that our soldiers are fighting day-in and day-out in Afghanistan are not terrorists. It is unclear to me howspending $4 billion per month and putting tens of thousands of American lives at risk in Afghanistan is the best wayto keep America safe from terrorist attack.


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23

Corruption Afghan Government

Corruption will not decrease in Afghanistan

Eric T. Olson was commander of the Combined Joint Task Force in Afghanistan in 2004-05, and deputy director of the IraqReconstruction Management Office in 2006-07, LA Times, January 4, 2010, p. online

At the national level, although security operations will have bought some breathing room for the Karzai governmentto make necessary reforms, there will probably be little improvement in its effectiveness and minimal progress infighting corruption.


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Corruption In Aid

Massive corruption in foreign aid

Fox News, 1-11, 10, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582784,00.html

Between 2004 and 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) showered more than $330 millionon an obscure United Nations agency known as UNOPS United Nations Office for Project Services to carry outdevelopment aid projects in Afghanistan. What happened next wasnt pretty. Among other things, USAID apparentlyoverlooked a growing stack of U.N. audits and investigations that pointed to fraud, mismanagement and lack of internal financial controls by UNOPS in Afghanistan, even as the U.S. agency continued to shovel money inUNOPSs direction. So did other branches of the U.S. government, to the tune of an additional $100 million. In astunning number of cases, however, USAID also ignored its own oversight procedures and did not even insist thatcontracts with UNOPS enshrine the agencys uncontested right to access financial records that would tell how the U.S.government money was spent. Consequently those records were never examined. In other cases, it looked like legalloopholes were created to make sure UNOPS got to keep its financial records out of USAIDs reach. Worse, theoversight disaster may still not be fixedeven as UNOPS, claiming that it has changed its ways, may get a bigger rolein Afghanistan, financed with dollops of U.S. money, in the months and years ahead. .


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U.S. Should Withdraw

The U.S. cannot win in Afghanistan; we should withdraw

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to president Ronald Reagan, he is the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire (Xulon). He is also a fellow with the American

Conservative Defense Alliance, The Australian, January 6, 2010, p. 12 Afghan War as Stopped Making SenseBy pursuing the intervention, Obama is repeating the mistake he accused Bush of making in the context of Iraq Washingtonis full of ivory-tower warriors who have never been anywhere near a military base WITH al-Qa'ida dispersed,Afghanistan , though a human tragedy, doesn't matter much to the US or its allies. Rather than allow the Afghanmission to slide into nation-building, the Obama administration should begin withdrawing US forces fromAfghanistan . Afghanistan originally looked like the good war. Consolidating power in a reasonably democraticgovernment in Kabul was never going to be easy, but the Bush administration tossed away the best chance of doing soby prematurely shifting military units to Iraq. The Obama administration now is attempting the geopoliticalequivalent of shutting the barn doors after the horses have fled. The situation is a mess. The Karzai government isillegitimate, corrupt and incompetent. Taliban forces and attacks are increasing . Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff, admits that Afghanistan is ``deteriorating''. Yet Barack Obama is sending an additional 30,000American troops. He argued that ``our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qa'ida'' andrefused to ``set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means or our interests''. Yet the President appears to have done

precisely the latter. Even after the build-up, the US and its allies will have only a few thousand more personnel than theSoviet Union did during its failed occupation. And Western forces will be barely one-fifth the numbers contemplatedby US anti-insurgency doctrine. Given its forbidding terrain and independent culture, it is easy to understand whyAfghanistan acquired a reputation as the graveyard of empires. Kabul has had periods of peaceful, stable rule, but byindigenous figures who respected local autonomy, as under the 20th-century monarchy . The only sensible argumentfor staying is, as Obama put it, ``to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qa'ida''. But that already has been done. Al-Qa'ida has been reduced largely to symbolic importance, as most terrorist threats now emanate from localised

jihadist cells scattered about the globe. US National Security Adviser Jim Jones estimates that there are just 100 al-Qa'ida operatives now in Afghanistan. Even if the Taliban returned to power , it might not welcome back the groupwhose activities triggered American intervention. Nor would al-Qa'ida necessarily want to come back, since a Talibangovernment could not shield terrorists from Western retaliation. Pakistan offers a better refuge, and there are plenty of other failed states -- Yemen comes to mind -- in which terrorists could locate. Far more important than Afghanistan isnuclear-armed Pakistan. However, continued fighting in the former is more likely to destabilise the latter than

increased Taliban influence . Some analysts offer humanitarian justifications for intervening. The Afghan people would be better off under some kind of Western-backed government. However, this is true largely despite rather than because of theKarzai regime. And many of the improvements are merely relative. Moreover, any gains are threatened by the bitter conflictnow raging. Estimates of the number of dead Afghan civilians since 2001 exceed 30,000. In any case, humanitarianism isan inadequate justification for waging war. Washington is full of ivory-tower warriors who have never been anywherenear a military base, yet who busily concoct grand humanitarian crusades for others to fight. However, the cost in lives and money -- aswell as the liberty inevitably lost in a more militarised society -- can be justified only when the American people have something fundamentally at stake in the conflict. Their interest in determining the form of Afghan government or liberties enjoyed by the Afghan people is not worth war. Imagine if George W. Bush had announced that his administration was going to sacrifice several thousand American lives,trigger a conflict that would kill tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, spend $US2 trillion or more, strengthen Iran's geopolitical position, damage America's international reputation, and reduce US militaryreadiness in order to organise an Iraqi election. Likely popular resistance offers one of the strongest arguments for drawing down forces and shifting from counter-insurgency to counter-terrorism. Even if

bolstering the Karzai government is feasible, doing so will be a costly and lengthy process, one for which popular support already has largely dissipated in America and among its allies. It makes no sense toembark on a lengthy campaign for which popular patience is likely to be quickly exhausted. As a state senator, Obama warned against `a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, and withunintended consequences'' in Iraq. Unfortunately, that looks like his policy for Afghanistan. War is sometimes an ugly necessity. But most of America's recent wars have turned out to be matters of foolish choice. Going into Afghanistan was necessary initially, but staying there today is not. The US and its allies shouldwork to bring the conflict to a close.

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