18.02.2010
Operation Moshtarak and the battle for Marjah
Jim Moody notes that the world hardly looks to be a safer place as a result of Nato intervention
The media are doing their best to be ‘on message’ when reporting operation Moshtarak (meaning ‘Together’ in the Dari language, Afghanistan’s lingua franca).
At last Nato is getting it right - that is the overwhelming message. Military might is being combined with subtle political vision and the promise of substantial economic development. Civilian causalities are being carefully avoided and bribes offered to ‘moderate’ Taliban leaders to encourage them to enter the country’s legitimate government. Hence Barack Obama is celebrated, where George W Bush was slated.
Six International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) battalions, comprising US marines, UK and Canadian forces, plus six battalions of the Afghan puppet army are taking part in the operation under the overall command of general Stanley McChrystal. As well as sweeping through large areas of the countryside, this 15,000-strong force is engaged in trying to secure Marjah. With a population of 80,000, this was the largest urban centre under Taliban control. Not surprisingly ISAF has met with some tough resistance. Most Taliban militants cleared out weeks ago, but they did leave behind them scores of fighters armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers and a mass of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). After three days of fighting Mohammad Gulab Mangal, the regional governor, raised the green, red and black Afghan government flag over the badly damaged bazaar. But apart from the commercial centre the rest of the town remains a no man’s land.
General McChrystal carefully formulated new rules of engagement for this mission. Broadly, they prohibit his troops from firing on someone simply because they are behaving suspiciously or even returning fire if to do so would ‘risk harming civilians’. Air attacks have similarly been restricted. During the current attack, however, US marines have been reported flouting McChrystal’s edicts, which, they say, put them under ‘unacceptable’ risk from Taliban snipers.
The allegedly ‘gently, gently’ approach is part of the strategy of “winning hearts and minds”, of course, since the military know full well that, while it is a relatively straightforward military task to take hold of almost any locality, that is a far cry from defeating the Taliban. But in any case the notion that non-combatants can be protected during such a ground offensive, especially one that is supported by numerous helicopters, drones and strike aircraft, is just so much bullshit. Two days after the attack on Marjah started, on Sunday February 14, US rockets killed 13 civilians, including children.
Two rockets had missed their target by about 600 metres, it was first claimed. Later a statement from the US military said it was the right building, but the wrong victims. The allegation is that the Taliban had been firing from it. An old story. After all, given the public relations importance of capturing Marjah, ‘collateral damage’ was not supposed to feature so prominently. Implicitly accepting blame, McChrystal apologised for the deaths and promised an ‘inquiry’. Five more civilian killings occurred the following day, when Nato and Afghan troops called in an air strike against men innocently digging along a path in the Zhari district of Kandahar province.
Afterwards, air chief marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the UK’s defence staff, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that it was “a very serious setback”. In a flash of comprehension, he revealed that despite ISAF’s stated aim of protecting the Afghan population from the Taliban, “You don’t protect them when you kill them.” Very astute.
From the second day of the operation, marine units had tried twice to reach Marjah’s bazaar and failed, being unable to remove Taliban snipers without risking an unacceptable level of ‘collateral damage’ and having to be on their guard for a reported 70,000 IEDs. One such device blew up a 30-tonne vehicle, though some are apparently small (though nonetheless deadly) booby traps.
At the time of writing, a total of 35 Taliban have been killed, according to press agencies. Official sources say two Nato soldiers died in the first few days. Obviously both sides may lose more before too long.
Writing in the US Veterans Today journal a couple of days into operation Moshtarak, Khalil Nouri castigates it in these terms: “This is theatre, and nothing more, but many of the players and much of the audience will suffer from this ill-fated production. I suspect they knew they were writing a tragedy from the beginning. None of us were fooled.”
He continued: “If ‘success’ is the word labelled for operation Moshtarak when that outcome means agony, death, disfigurement and disablement for life for mostly young men, who were children just a few short years ago, then how can the definition of winning hearts and minds be such heinous atrocities, atrocities tied to Karzai, tied to America and her allies, tied to them and remembered for generations.”1
Indeed, although the propaganda may be more subtle in many respects, the Afghanistan conflict is a rerun of the US experience of Vietnam. A case in point: when US forces are put under a more intense media spotlight, the militarily incompetent indigenous puppets must be seen to be doing some of the fighting.
Putting an extra gloss on the operation, the US authorities have made much of the capture in Pakistan of Afghan Taliban leader mullah Abdul Baradar in a joint operation by the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). However, not only did the Taliban deny Baradar had been captured: so did the Pakistani authorities, who were back-pedalling in horror from any public suggestion of a joint operation with the CIA. To have accepted that it took place would give Pakistan’s Islamists a potent propaganda weapon.
Pakistan demonstrates how the conflict in Afghanistan is spreading chaos outside its borders. Supporters of the two government coalition parties are killing each other on the streets of Karachi, while in the north-east the army fights the Pakistani Taliban half-heartedly, thanks to a split in the military and the ISI over how to deal with these erstwhile allies. After all, Pakistan’s Islamists proved useful in Kashmir, and the Indian enemy is always at the gate ... or so it seems to important sections of Pakistan’s state machine.
And back in Afghanistan ISAF and its satraps, despite overwhelming superiority in numbers and equipment, are also unable to inflict permanent defeat on the Taliban, who have roots in the local Pushtun population. During the current offensive many Taliban fighters will have crossed into Pakistan, while others will have moved north. Then there will be those who will have concealed their weapons in order to merge with the population until the ISAF troops have left. There are reports of Taliban guns being discarded in ditches.
Few Afghans will be fooled by the claim that foreign forces are acting on behalf of Afghanistan’s ‘legitimate government’. President Karzai has a narrow base of support and relies on cronyism. He was fraudulently elected and his regime’s officials, police and army are thoroughly corrupt. Unsurprisingly, the Kabul regime’s writ does not run over much of the country.
Nonsense about ISAF clearing out terrorism and thereby ending the drugs menace to the world is simply self-delusion. The US now has an official policy of allowing local governors to deal with the poppy trade. In practice that means they receive a slice of the profits and it is business as usual for growers and smugglers alike.
As for terrorism, the world hardly looks to be a safer place as a result of the Nato intervention. The latest adventure in Helmand looks likely to set the Afghan population against the ISAF occupation forces. Not the outcome that was hoped for, but then US generals still do not have anything approaching a coherent strategy. They seem unable to win “hearts and minds” even in their own countries.
Our role is straightforward. Working class partisans in Britain and the US must call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. We want no more Afghans - or, for that matter, British military personnel - to die there in the attempt to secure western imperialist interests.
Notes