Just Foreign Policy News
November 3, 2009
Obama’s Decision on More Troops to "Someone Else’s Civil War"
In his letter of resignation, Matthew Hoh wrote, "I fail to see the value … in continuous U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war." A prominent American agrees: "It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war." That was Senator Barack Obama, announcing his candidacy for President in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10, 2007. A search through the New York Times and the Washington Post for the last 12 months turns up exactly one article mentioning the idea that there is a civil war in Afghanistan: the Post article on Hoh’s resignation.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/389
NoEscalation.org: Help Us Push and Track Congress on Afghanistan Escalation
No decision has been announced. Call Members of Congress, ask where they stand, and report the results.
http://NoEscalation.org
Rethink Afghanistan: "Congressman Alan Grayson on Afghanistan"
"I think that the aid program is a fig leaf to try to make Congress and the American people feel better about war…I think the basic premise that we can alter Afghan society is fatally flawed…everywhere you go, people want to be left alone. And that’s the best foreign policy of all: just to leave people alone."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVLJUUgIOv4
Veterans Brock McIntosh & Rick Reyes on Afghanistan
Brock McIntosh: "I don’t think what we’re doing in Afghanistan is making us safer at all." Rick Reyes: "There is no military solution in Afghanistan. You can’t solve Afghanistan’s problems with the military."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axkw-_lMJ8U
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) President Obama admonished President Karzai that he must take on the rampant corruption and drug trade that have fueled the resurgence of the Taliban, the New York Times reports. The administration wants Karzai to put into place an anticorruption commission to establish strict accountability for government officials at the national and provincial levels, administration officials said. US officials said the biggest leverage they had with Karzai was the number of US troops in Afghanistan, a number that could change as Obama saw fit. Robert Gibbs said the president’s announcement on troops was still weeks away. Fred Kagan said that a decision in mid- or late November to add to US forces meant most of those troops would not be in Afghanistan until April or May, past the beginning of what is traditionally considered the spring fighting season.
2) Sixteen US soldiers killed themselves in October in the U.S. and on duty overseas, fueling concerns about the mental health of the nation’s military personnel after more than eight years of continuous warfare, the Wall Street Journal reports. The October suicide figures mean that at least 134 active-duty soldiers have taken their own lives so far this year, putting the Army on pace to break last year’s record of 140 active-duty suicides. The number of Army suicides has risen 37% since 2006, and last year.
Army officials say the strain of repeated deployments with minimal time back in the U.S. is one of the biggest factors fueling the rise in military suicides. At a meeting Friday, the Joint Chiefs urged President Obama to send fresh troops to Afghanistan only if they have spent at least a year in the U.S. since their last overseas tour. If Obama agreed to that condition, many potential Afghanistan reinforcements wouldn’t be available until next summer at the earliest. A recent study concluded that the U.S. has only about 11,000 to 15,000 troops capable of deploying to Afghanistan this year after spending at least 12 months back in the U.S.
3) Canadian Defence Minister MacKay has ordered officials to look into allegations that innocent Afghans may have been sent to jail because of botched translations by Canadian military interpreters, the Canadian Press reports. A retired U.S. Marine colonel said U.S. forces are facing the same problems and concerns in Afghanistan.
4) A U.S. commission said the U.S. government does not know exactly how many contractors it employs in Afghanistan, Reuters reports. A traditional manual count by the U.S. military’s Central Command turned up nearly 74,000 U.S. Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan as of June 30 – more than twice the number shown in another survey by the Pentagon. An assistant deputy undersecretary of defense said that while the manual count system was not 100 percent precise, it was still the best gauge available.
5) With five days’ formal negotiations left before UN climate talks in Copenhagen, key figures are showing impatience at the US position, the Guardian reports. "We expect American leadership. President Obama has created great expectations around the world. Now we urge [the US] to contribute in the way that we have," said the Swedish environment minister on behalf of the EU presidency. "I remind the US that it is not the only country in the world that has to have discussions with its domestic parliament," said the Danish environment minister.
Israel/Palestine
6) Secretary of State Clinton tried to calm Arab government’s anger over statements she made praising the Israeli government’s offer to "restrain" growth in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying it "falls far short" of the Obama administration’s hopes and is "not enough," the Washington Post reports. But Clinton repeated her claim that Israeli offers of "restraint" were "unprecedented." Analysts disputed the claim. Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration who helped negotiate an unwritten agreement with Israel on settlement growth, said that based on the statements of Netanyahu and Clinton, "this is precisely what was agreed with the Israelis in the previous administration." Geoffrey Aronson of the Foundation for Middle East Peace said the number of housing starts that would be grandfathered in would be historically higher than the annual growth most years in the West Bank settlements. " ‘Unprecedented’ is a reach, in my view," Aronson said.
Iran
7) Secretary of State Clinton urged Iran to stick to an agreement to ship low-enriched uranium abroad, the Washington Post reports. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, stressed that Iran wants more assurances that the exported fuel would be enriched to a higher level and returned. "With our past experience with non-trustable elements, in spite of paying for fuel, we didn’t get it," Soltanieh said.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Obama Warns Karzai To Focus On Tackling Corruption
Helene Cooper and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times, November 3, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/asia/03afghan.html
Washington – President Obama on Monday admonished President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that he must take on what American officials have said he avoided during his first term: the rampant corruption and drug trade that have fueled the resurgence of the Taliban.
As Mr. Karzai was officially declared the winner of the much-disputed presidential election, Mr. Obama placed a congratulatory call in which he asked for a "new chapter" in the legitimacy of the Afghan government.
What he is seeking, Mr. Obama told reporters afterward, is "a sense on the part of President Karzai that, after some difficult years in which there has been some drift, that in fact he’s going to move boldly and forcefully forward and take advantage of the international community’s interest in his country to initiate reforms internally. That has to be one of our highest priorities."
The administration wants Mr. Karzai and the Afghan government to put into place an anticorruption commission to establish strict accountability for government officials at the national and provincial levels, senior administration officials said Monday.
In addition, some American officials and their European counterparts would like at least a few arrests of what one administration official called "the more blatantly corrupt" people in the Afghan government.
Administration officials declined to provide the names of people they wanted to see arrested and acknowledged that such arrests were a long shot. The international community’s wish list of potential defendants includes Mr. Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade; Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is accused of involvement in the killings of thousands of Taliban prisoners of war early in the Afghan conflict; and one of Mr. Karzai’s running mates, Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, a former defense minister who is also suspected of drug trafficking.
"A couple of high-profile heads on a platter would be nice," said one European diplomat involved in Afghanistan. The diplomat, like other officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.
[…] Administration officials said that the biggest leverage they had with Mr. Karzai was the number of American troops in Afghanistan, a number that could change as Mr. Obama saw fit.
White House officials said Monday that the resolution of the election would not affect the timing of their review of military strategy.
The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said that the president’s announcement was still weeks away. Mr. Obama is expected to hold at least one more meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and another with his national security advisers.
[…] The pace of Mr. Obama’s review of Afghanistan policy drew sharp criticism on Monday from several Republican leaders in Congress. Additional delays, they said, could endanger troops and erode efforts to battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"Now that it is clear that President Karzai will remain in office, the White House has no further pretext for delaying the decision on giving General McChrystal the resources he needs to achieve our goals in Afghanistan," said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, referring to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan. "There are no more excuses."
Frederick W. Kagan, a military expert at the American Enterprise Institute who has advised General McChrystal, said that a decision in mid- or late November to add to American forces meant that most of those troops would not be in Afghanistan until April or May, past the beginning of what is traditionally considered the spring fighting season in the country.
2) Suicide Toll Fuels Worry That Army Is Strained
Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125720469173424023.html
Sixteen American soldiers killed themselves in October in the U.S. and on duty overseas, an unusually high monthly toll that is fueling concerns about the mental health of the nation’s military personnel after more than eight years of continuous warfare.
The Army’s top generals worry that surging tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan could increase the strain felt by many military personnel after years of repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The October suicide figures mean that at least 134 active-duty soldiers have taken their own lives so far this year, putting the Army on pace to break last year’s record of 140 active-duty suicides. The number of Army suicides has risen 37% since 2006, and last year, the suicide rate surpassed that of the U.S. population for the first time.
The health of ground combat forces is emerging as an element of the Obama administration’s review of its Afghanistan strategy. Conditions there have deteriorated in recent months amid lingering political instability and a worsening Taliban-led insurgency.
[…] Some senior military officials worry that the troop-increase plans under discussion at the White House would require the Army and Marine Corps to keep forces in Afghanistan longer, or give forces less time in the U.S. between deployments, increasing the strain on military personnel.
At a White House meeting Friday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged President Barack Obama to send fresh troops to Afghanistan only if they have spent at least a year in the U.S. since their last overseas tour, according to people familiar with the matter. If Mr. Obama agreed to that condition, many potential Afghanistan reinforcements wouldn’t be available until next summer at the earliest.
A recent study by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, concluded that the U.S. has only three Army and Marine brigades – about 11,000 to 15,000 troops – capable of deploying to Afghanistan this year after spending at least 12 months back in the U.S.
Army officials say the strain of repeated deployments with minimal time back in the U.S. is one of the biggest factors fueling the rise in military suicides.
The Army hit a grim milestone last year when the suicide rate exceeded that of the general population for the first time: 20.2 per 100,000 people in the military, compared with the civilian rate of 19.5 per 100,000. The Army’s suicide rate was 12.7 per 100,000 in 2005, 15.3 in 2006 and 16.8 in 2007.
[…]
3) Afghan translation problems threaten mission
Canadian Press, Tuesday, November 3, 2009
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/11/03/afghan-translations-botched.html
Defence Minister Peter MacKay has ordered officials to look into allegations that innocent Afghans may have been sent to jail because of botched translations by Canadian military interpreters.
MacKay’s statement in the House of Commons on Monday came as a counter-insurgency expert said U.S. forces have been plagued with the same concerns.
A former language and cultural adviser to the Canadian Forces said he witnessed at least two instances where innocent people were wrongly labelled as Taliban supporters because Afghan-Canadian interpreters did not understand what had been said.
[…] Thomas Hammes, a retired U.S. Marine colonel with combat experience in Iraq, said U.S. forces are facing the same problems and concerns in Afghanistan.
"We’re willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure ice cream and steak is there," Hammes said in an interview from Washington. "And I would trade all of that for my entire tour if I could have one decent translator.
"Many times I’d trade body armour for a translator."
There have been a steady stream of complaints from U.S. army and marine units about the quality of their interpreters and concerns about what impression they’re leaving with local Afghans.
[…]
4) Still No Count Of U.S. Contractors In Afghanistan
Reuters, 03 Nov 2009 00:55:53 GMT
-No firm count of contractors in Afghanistan
-Lack of data creates questions about oversight
-U.S. official calls for funding, new regulations http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02467578.htm
Washington – The U.S. government does not know exactly how many contractors it employs in Afghanistan, a U.S. commission said on Monday, raising basic questions about oversight of wartime operations.
Contractors in Afghanistan outnumber U.S. troops there and scandals involving misconduct by employees of private firms on the U.S. payroll in Afghanistan and Iraq have prompted calls by Congress for greater accountability.
The Commission on Wartime Contracting, a bipartisan, independent commission mandated by Congress, presented data at a hearing showing major discrepancies in different accounting methods used to determine the number of U.S. contractors.
A traditional manual count by the U.S. military’s Central Command turned up nearly 74,000 U.S. Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan as of June 30 – more than twice the number shown in another survey by the Pentagon.
"I kind of want to scream…. Why if it’s so important, are we failing to do something so basic?" said Christopher Shays, a former Republican lawmaker and a co-chair of the bipartisan committee.
Gary Motsek, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense, acknowledged in testimony that U.S. efforts to create a system to better count the number of contractors in Afghanistan had so far come up short. "We failed," Motsek said, calling for better funding and regulations to require all U.S. agencies to report figures for contractors. "You should be concerned about the gap, because we are concerned about the gap."
Motsek and Redding Hobby, deputy director of logistics, contracting, and engineering at Central Command, indicated that while the manual count system was not 100 percent precise, it was still the best gauge available.
[…]
5) Climate Negotiators Grow Impatient at Lack of Leadership from America
UN and EU pile pressure on US to set ambitious carbon cuts and timetables to improve chances of deal at Copenhagen
John Vidal, Guardian, 2 November 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/02/barcelona-us-climate-talks
With just five days’ formal negotiations left before the start of crucial UN climate talks in Copenhagen next month, key figures in the negotiations are showing clear signs of impatience at the US position.
At international climate talks in Barcelona, the United Nations and European Union, backed by international environment and development groups, today piled pressure on the US to set more ambitious targets and timetables to cut greenhouse emissions in order to reach an agreement.
"We expect American leadership. President Obama has created great expectations around the world. Now we urge [the US] to contribute in the way that we have," said Andreas Carlgren, Swedish environment minister talking on behalf of the EU presidency. In a clear reference to the US, he added: "We are prepared to cut a deal. Other countries should demonstrate leadership and step up their current pledges."
Countries accept that the Obama administration’s hands have been tied by delays in Congress but they urged the president to show more personal leadership and to instruct his negotiators to be less intransigent. "I remind the US that it is not the only country in the world that has to have discussions with its domestic parliament," said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish environment minister who will host the talks in Copenhagen.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
6) In face of Arab anger, Clinton amends view on Israel’s offer to curb West Bank growth
U.S. wants construction frozen, not just curbed, she emphasizes
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, Tuesday, November 3, 2009 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/02/AR2009110203450.html
Marrakesh, Morocco – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to soothe Arab uneasiness Monday over weekend statements she made praising the Israeli government’s offer to "restrain" growth in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying it "falls far short" of the Obama administration’s hopes and is "not enough."
Reflecting her concern over the Arab reaction, Clinton decided to extend her week-long trip to the region, scheduled to end Tuesday, with a previously unplanned stop in Cairo on Wednesday to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. On Sunday, Egypt backed the Palestinian stance that negotiations cannot resume until Israel stops all settlement construction.
Clinton insisted that the administration still considers settlement activity on disputed territory "illegitimate" and advocates a freeze. But she repeated at a news conference here that Israel’s offer was "unprecedented" and that it "holds the promise of moving a step closer to a two-state solution."
In remarks made Saturday with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Clinton set off a firestorm in the Arab world by emphasizing the "unprecedented" nature of Israel’s offer while failing to add that it was "not enough." She described the overture as significant enough to draw the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, where they could argue the point with the Israelis.
Under the plan, Israel in the West Bank "will build no new settlements, expropriate no land, allow no new construction or approvals," as Clinton put it, for a period diplomats say would last nine to 12 months. But nearly 3,000 housing units currently on the books would still be built, and the ban would not include East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope to make their capital. About 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements.
Officials traveling with Clinton declined to characterize her earlier remarks as a mistake, saying it was important to praise Israeli movement even if it fell short of administration goals. But the officials acknowledged that her comments required further explanation.
Clinton’s attendance here at a conference on development and governance in the Arab world was initially intended to solidify the goodwill engendered by President Obama’s speech to the Islamic world in Cairo in June. But it was quickly overwhelmed by controversy over Clinton’s remarks.
[…] Clinton’s comments represented a shift in the dynamics since Obama took office, with initial pressure on Israel giving way over the past several weeks to apparent impatience over the refusal of Palestinian officials to resume peace talks in the absence of a settlement freeze.
[…] Analysts were also dubious that Israel’s offer represented any breakthrough.
Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration who helped negotiate an unwritten agreement with Israel on settlement growth, said that based on the statements of Netanyahu and Clinton, "this is precisely what was agreed with the Israelis in the previous administration."
Israel inconsistently lived up to the Bush-era agreement, and Clinton refused to acknowledge it when she took office, insisting instead on a full settlement freeze.
Geoffrey Aronson, executive director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and a close tracker of settlement growth, said he is puzzled about why the Obama administration is making its claims, because the number of housing starts that would be grandfathered in would be historically higher than the annual growth most years in the West Bank settlements.
"There is not a great deal of clarity, and it is hard to make an assessment," Aronson said. " ‘Unprecedented’ is a reach, in my view."
Iran
7) Clinton Tells Iran To Adhere To Plan
Tehran questions uranium swap, talks of buying fuel instead
Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, Tuesday, November 3, 2009 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/02/AR2009110200945.html
Tehran – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday urged Iran to stick to an agreement to ship low-enriched uranium abroad for processing for use in a Tehran research reactor, after a senior official Iranian official said his country wants to instead purchase nuclear fuel.
Clinton said there should be no backing away from the deal with the United States and other countries, which was intended to slow any Iranian efforts at developing uranium for a nuclear bomb. "This is a pivotal moment for Iran," she said while traveling in North Africa. "Acceptance of this proposal would be a good indication that Iran does not wish to be isolated."
Her comments came hours after the first Iranian statement on the issue since Iran formally submitted its response on the proposed deal to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on Thursday. The contents of that response have not been made public.
"The key point is guarantee of providing the fuel," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, told the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency regarding the deal.
The United States, Russia and France formally announced their acceptance of the draft agreement last month.
In talks in Geneva on Oct. 1, Iran tentatively agreed to the arrangement, under which nearly 80 percent of its low-enriched uranium stockpile would go to Russia and France to be fashioned into fuel for the research reactor, which produces isotopes for medical purposes. As part of the deal, the United States would support IAEA efforts to help Iran ensure the safe operation of the reactor, built by the United States in the 1960s.
Soltanieh stressed that Iran wants more assurances that the exported fuel would be enriched to a higher level and returned. "With our past experience with non-trustable elements, in spite of paying for fuel, we didn’t get it," Soltanieh said, echoing concerns by leading Iranian politicians, lawmakers and even opposition leaders that Western nations were trying to take Iran’s stockpile but not return the altered uranium.
Providing more guarantees for Iran would prove to be an "important and historic opportunity" for the IAEA and world powers to show their good intentions, Soltanieh said.
Soltanieh said Iran’s other option would be to buy medium-enriched uranium on the world market, which he said it is officially entitled to do as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. He noted that Iran was able to buy a batch of medium-grade uranium from Argentina in 1991 without problems.
–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
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