This Is Not About Al-Qaeda.
In March 2009, President Obama outlined his Af-Pak strategy, which sought as its primary goal to defeat al-Qaeda and its supporters in the Taliban (instead of engaging in full-scale nation-building). But, if the evidence is judge in these matters, what we’re engaged in is hardly a ‘counter-insurgency’ campaign aimed at defraying the political influence and operational capabilities of al-Qaeda.
Just last week, top U.S. intelligence officials claimed that there were somewhere in the range of 50-100 al-Qaeda members residing in Afghanistan and more than 300 in Pakistan.
Compare these numbers to the amount of U.S. and NATO troops (120,000 ISAF and 48,000 non-ISAF), Afghan National Army forces (120,000), Afghan National Police (105,000), U.S. and Afghan-allied private security contractors (114,000), and Pakistani Army (147,000) and Frontier Corps troops (60,000).
That’s a sum total of 714,000 U.S.-coalition forces (or a ratio of 1,785 coalition troops for every 1 al-Qaeda member in the South Asia region). I’m not sure what this kind of warfare would be called, but a counter-insurgency campaign aimed at stamping out al-Qaeda cannot be it.
What’s worse is that this enormous marshalling of resources is perpetually understated, often due to the dispersed nature of the multiple forces. While attention is paid to the size of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the size of the private-security contractors, the Afghan National Army and Police, the Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps, and even the non-US NATO force largely goes unreported.
This is criminal. Knowing all the actors involved in the conflict, their relationship to Washington, and their force levels makes the 100,000 U.S troops in Afghanistan a phantom number. The South Asian region is now the most heavily militarized area in the world, and people need to know it – for its own sake and for the sake of sorting out exactly what strategic goals Washington has up its sleeve. If it’s not about al-Qaeda, then what is it about?
(Source: http://tylercullis.wordpress.com/)
Recent Comments