After reports of Americans installing Baathists in their haste to Iraqify the occupation, now we're seeking "good" Taliban in Afghanistan.
New Strategy Calls for Wooing Some in Taliban
U.S. military officials, after two years of narrowly focusing on anti-terrorist combat operations, say they are shifting to a broader strategy that includes trying to woo noncriminal members of the Islamic Taliban movement back into mainstream society and establishing long-term civilian assistance programs in conflict zones.
At the same time, the U.S. military does not appear to be having serious second thoughts about combat tactics after two controversial incidents this month in which a total of 15 children were inadvertently killed during U.S. air assaults on two villages in Paktia and Ghazni provinces.
Lt. Gen. David Barno, the new senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, said in a wide-ranging interview last week that U.S. military officials saw three distinct adversaries in different parts of the country, each requiring a different approach.
In southern provinces bordering Pakistan, such as Khost and Paktika, where Arab Islamic extremists and al Qaeda fighters have repeatedly attacked U.S. bases, Barno said U.S. combat troops would continue to aggressively track down, capture and kill as many as they could.
In northern border provinces such as Kunar and Nuristan, which armed followers of fugitive Afghan militia leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have used as a base for urban sabotage and links with other Islamic groups, Barno said U.S.-led combat sweeps would also continue in an effort to isolate and destroy these forces.
But in southeastern provinces such as Ghazni, Zabol and Kandahar, where revived Taliban forces have staged numerous attacks against civilians while also trying to win political influence, Barno said U.S. officials were shifting to an "integrated" approach that woos back former Islamic fighters into civilian life.
"Those who are criminals must be held accountable, but for the rank and file, the noncriminals, there will be opportunities for reconciliation and reintegration," Barno said. His remarks suggested that U.S. officials now agree with Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the revived Taliban movement needs to be courted politically.
In numerous speeches and interviews, Karzai has made a distinction between what he describes as good and bad members of the Taliban. He said recently that as few as 150 Taliban officials might be guilty of terrorism and abuse and that the rest needed to be brought back into civilian life, as is the case with thousands of other former Afghan militia forces, who previously fought the Taliban but are being formally disarmed and offered job training.
Until recently, U.S. military officials, headquartered at Bagram air base north of Kabul since the defeat of Taliban rule in late 2001, routinely mentioned Taliban and al Qaeda forces together, and always described the principal mission of some 11,000 U.S. forces stationed here as killing and capturing as many of both enemy groups as possible.
But Afghan and U.N. officials have conducted intensive consultations over the past two months, coinciding with Barno's arrival and with the shift of the U.S. military command from Bagram to Kabul, the Afghan capital. U.S. military officials said they had concluded that while al Qaeda forces represent a die-hard, armed threat, the Taliban revival was more complex and rooted in Afghan society, and thus required a more comprehensive solution.
There have been unconfirmed reports that U.S. military or civilian officials were meeting privately with some commanders of both the Taliban and Hekmatyar's forces. A senior former Taliban official, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, was recently released from U.S. custody and has been rumored to be acting as a mediator between Afghan and Taliban officials.
"Our move of the senior headquarters to Kabul, instead of a semi-isolated area, recognizes the change of an era in Afghanistan," Barno said. From being "absolutely focused" on combat, he said, U.S. military policy will now stress integrating a variety of efforts to stabilize and secure the country. "Our role will be to help set conditions for successful elections next summer," he said.
Afghanistan is moving gradually toward a democratic political system under U.S. auspices, with a national constitutional assembly being held here this month and presidential elections scheduled for June. Parliamentary elections would be held later.
Asked about the deaths of the 15 Afghan children in two U.S. military raids in early December, and the potential adverse effect of such mistakes on civilian attitudes toward the U.S. military role, Barno said officials would continue to "refine" their efforts to pinpoint targets and minimize civilian casualties, but would not become so cautious as to run the "risk of paralysis."
"The system is imperfect, and we learn from each incident," he said, adding that U.S. military forces here might need to adjust the current balance of human vs. technical intelligence gathering. But if civilians are "co-located" with terrorists or weapons caches, that is a "callous decision by the enemy" rather than a flaw in American planning, Barno said.
International human rights groups have been highly critical of the two attacks. The New York-based group Human Rights Watch said the U.S. military should "increase precautions and explain intelligence failures" as a result. It said a "pattern of mistakes" had led to "too many civilian deaths and no clear changes" in U.S. military operations planning.
In the new U.S. military effort to win Afghan hearts and minds, a key component is to be the rapid expansion of regional military aid centers known as "provincial reconstruction teams" -- some American, some staffed by other NATO members -- into the heartland of the Taliban revival.
Four such centers are already in operation, and eight more are expected to open by spring, including four in the troubled southeast. Last week, a new center opened in Kandahar, a major southeastern city that was once the Taliban religious headquarters. Barno said U.S. military teams there would work with Afghan and U.N. officials, hoping to create a role model for other provinces.
"It's a pretty big change," he said. "We will be out in patrols on the roads, we will be training 20,000 new Afghan police. We want to use the military to enable an integrated effort. . . . We will be planting the U.S. flag and telling the Taliban we are here to stay."
Like the idea of "reintegrating" some Taliban members into mainstream Afghan society, the U.S. decision to expand the military aid teams coincides with long-standing proposals from the Karzai government on the need to greatly improve government services and visibility in areas where the Taliban are active.
In recent interviews, both the interior minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, and the governor of Kandahar, Yusuf Pashtoon, said such efforts were urgently needed but that the Karzai government had few resources to bring them about.
washingtonpost.com
lurqer |
