U.S. Escalates War in: Afghanistan and Pakistan

by Gerry Foley / March 2009

Perhaps the biggest land mine in the Middle East for the immediate future is the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, toward which the new White House administration has adopted an even more bellicose posture than its predecessor.

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold expressed worry, for example, in his March 4 interview with the Huffington Post that Obama's proposal to send greater military forces into Afghanistan could lead to a spreading conflict: "In some ways, I'm even more concerned about this proposal for Afghanistan than I am about the president's plans for Iraq," he said, "because I don't think the policy review and plan is in place to explain why these troops are going there....

"It doesn't really build an understanding of the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is the central problem. So to just put more troops into Afghanistan without a clear purpose, to me, is putting the cart before the horse and it is not the way to go."

It is obvious that the U.S. has failed to prop up a reliable and stable client regime in Afghanistan. The Karzai government remains weak and incompetent and increasingly discredited. The Taliban are rebuilding their backing and they have the benefit of the support of important forces in Pakistan, in particular in the Pushtun areas, which overlap with the Pushtun areas in Afghanistan that are the bastion of the Taliban.

The British Guardian reported March 4: "The top US diplomat in Kabul warned yesterday that Pakistan posed a bigger security challenge to America and the world than Afghanistan, as Islamabad grappled with the latest terrorist attack on its soil and the escalating Taliban insurgency on its north-western border."

The diplomat in question, Christopher Dell, the chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission in the Afghan capital, went on to say: "Pakistan is a bigger place, has a larger population, its nuclear-armed. It has certainly made radical Islam a part of its political life, and it now seems to be a deeply ingrained element of its political culture. It makes things there very hard."

In fact, the first "blow back" that the U.S. received was not from bin-Laden but from the structures that were built up in Pakistan under the military dictators supported by the U.S., who played the Islamic card to shore up their reactionary rule. The recently ousted military dictator, Musharaf, turned to support the U.S. "war on terror," but the latter is no more popular among the people of Pakistan than the disgraced ex-dictator.

There is abundant evidence of overwhelming anti-U.S. feeling among the Pakistani masses, which goes far wider than the influence of radical Islamism. That is the basic combustible that could fuel an explosion against the U.S. and its allies.

The chronic corruption of the Pakistani government, promoted by its subordination to imperialism, has created a large opening for radical Islamists, who speak in the name of anti-imperialism and call for liquidating the heritage of imperialist rule.

The size of the Pakistani population and its mood have inhibited the U.S. from sending large military contingents into the country to combat the Taliban cross-border forces and their supporters. But the device the U.S. has been using against those elements in Pakistan, killer drones, has infuriated the Pakistani people—and not just those who live in the border regions.

The policy of remote-controlled killer strikes is very much like the Israeli "directed assassinations" in Gaza, and is undoubtedly seen as that by the Pakistanis. Some international press reports have quoted Pakistanis as saying that the U.S. is dealing with them like "insects." And those strikes have continued and seem even to be increasing under the Obama administration.

The U.S.-supported Pakistani government has been forced to say that it opposes the use of the drones to kill its citizens, but its complicity is evident and is undermining its credibility with its own people and thereby increasingly weakening its faltering control of the country.