http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=203384Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Fighting rages across Afghanistan as U.S. military buildup continues
By Patrick Martin
Attacks by anti-occupation forces
spread across Afghanistan over the weekend, with major armed clashes,
bombings and other incidents in at least 10 provinces, including eight
that are outside the southern region where the U.S. and NATO forces
have launched a major military offensive.
Rather
than directly confront the greatly increased U.S. ground forces in
provinces like Helmand, the Taliban and other resistance forces are
employing typical guerrillas tactics, striking at “soft” targets well
away from the main combat zone, in many cases in areas where there has
been relatively little insurgent activity.
The bloodiest single incident took place Saturday in Farah
province, in western Afghanistan, where dozens were killed in U.S. air
strikes after a Taliban ambush killed three American soldiers and seven
Afghan army troops. The guerrillas staged a complex assault involving
two separate roadside bombs, gunfire and grenade launchers.
US military officials said that the firefight raged for as
long as six hours, with repeated air strikes called in to assist the
ambushed U.S.-led force. Press accounts cited military claims of 50
dead Taliban fighters and local reports of civilian casualties. This is
a regular pattern in the war, as the Pentagon routinely categorizes all
those killed by U.S. firepower as “insurgents,” regardless of their
actual role in the fighting.
There was another clash in the west in Herat province, with one Afghan policeman and two Taliban killed.
In southern Afghanistan, at least 20 civilians were killed,
reportedly by roadside bombs. In Uruzgan province, 14 people in a
minivan were killed, while six others died in a similar attack in
Kandahar province. In the city of Kandahar, the country’s second
largest and the provincial capital, three suicide bombers hit the
office of the national intelligence police in a coordinated but largely
unsuccessful attack, killing one officer.
There were incidents in six provinces of eastern Afghanistan,
which had been considered a military “success story” for the U.S.
forces, at least compared to the south. In Wardak, a roadside bomb
killed two American troops. In Kunar, a Taliban ambush killed six
private security guards working for a construction company, and wounded
ten. In Nangarhar, four policemen died when militants attacked a border
checkpoint. In Khost, a rocket attack killed three civilians. In
Ghazni, five Afghan army troops were killed by gunfire and mine
explosions. And in Paktika, a suicide bomber attacked, but killed only
himself.
In the previously quiescent north, there was an extremely
bloody incident in Kunduz province that suggests the degree of
insurgent infiltration of the local armed forces. A district policeman
poisoned eight other officers at a guard post, killed his commander,
and then handed over the other seven to the Taliban, who beheaded or
shot them and then burned the guard post.
Kunduz was the site of last week’s atrocity when U.S. war
planes hit two hijacked gasoline tanker trucks, creating a fireball
that killed as many as 150 people in the village of Omar Kheil.
In another incident that gives a glimpse of the popular hatred
of the U.S.-NATO occupation, a fight broke out in Kabul, the capital
city, when several Afghan National Police officers objected to a U.S.
soldier drinking in front of them while they were observing the Ramadan
fast. The argument turned into a shootout, in which the U.S. soldier
and his interpreter were seriously wounded and one Afghan policeman was
killed.
The Washington Post noted, “The geographical diversity of the
assaults was a fresh indication of the Taliban’s widening reach, which
now extends to about 80 percent of the country, according to the
International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), a
London-based research organization.”
The ICOS data, as reported by Reuters, found that there was
“substantial” insurgent activity in 97 percent of Afghanistan, and
“heavy” activity in 80 percent. Almost half of the country was
classified as either “high risk” or under “enemy control.” The most
significant change from a year ago was the increased guerrilla activity
in areas of the north.
The increasingly grim position for the US-backed Afghan puppet
regime of President Hamid Karzai has produced a crisis for the Obama
administration, which is deliberating how much to increase the U.S.
military intervention, under conditions where support for the Afghan
war among the American people is collapsing.
Since Obama ordered 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan
early in his presidency, there have been a series of additional,
incremental increases that have not been as widely reported. In
September alone, for instance, there have been several such additions
to the forces available to the U.S. Afghan commander, Gen. Stanley
McChrystal.
The New York Times reported Thursday that Defense Secretary
Robert Gates was preparing to send more U.S. counter-explosive forces
to Afghanistan, in a move that would be separate from any request by
McChrystal for additional troops.
The Los Angeles Times reported September 2 that as many as
14,000 additional combat troops would be deployed in Afghanistan by
sending home troops working in support functions and replacing them
with “trigger pullers.” The support duties would be handed over to
private contractors, who now outnumber the actual uniformed soldiers.
This would greatly increase the firepower of the U.S. occupation force
while allowing the White House to conceal the escalation.
In a statement on Capitol Hill Friday after a visit to
Afghanistan, Democrat Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, called for the Obama administration to focus its escalation
of the war on the buildup of Afghan troop strength, from 134,000 now to
240,000 by 2012—essentially conceding, with this time frame, that U.S.
military forces will be in Afghanistan in huge numbers at least until
then.
Levin said that such an increase should be prepared before any
additional U.S. ground combat forces were dispatched. General
McChrystal is believed to be requesting as many as 40,000 additional
U.S. troops, in a report now being reviewed in the Pentagon and White
House, and to be delivered to Congress by September 24.
The Obama administration is requesting more money for
Afghanistan-Pakistan operations in its 2010 military budget than for
Iraq, the first time that spending for the “Afpak” theater has exceeded
that in Iraq.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday, “I don’t think
there’s a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan
in the country or the Congress.” Such warnings are becoming
increasingly common from congressional Democrats, not because they
oppose further escalation—they have, on the contrary, fervently
supported the war in Afghanistan for eight years.
The Democrats are concerned that as antiwar sentiment mounts,
those opposed to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan will draw the
correct political conclusion—that both big business parties are
irrevocably committed to advancing the interests of U.S.
imperialism—and will seek a political alternative.
(Source: WSWS.org)
comment: the real news- the real issues are being hidden by the smoke screen of the Hoopla over the Pandemic - while national and critical issues are completely unreported for the most part in U.S. Media.
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