Afghanistan:
Stop the Widening War

Jan 12, 2009

The U.S. military has announced it is sending an additional 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan in a few months. This will double the U.S. presence there and bring the total occupation forces up to almost 100,000.

The Afghan insurrection against the occupation seems to be gaining more and more ground.

With good reason. The Western coalition was supposed to put an end to the Taliban dictatorship and restore democracy–which in fact had never existed in Afghanistan. Instead, seven years after the intervention of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” Afghanistan is suffering only more destruction and death. Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Today it suffers from drug traffickers, from war lords in the different regions, and from the corrupt Karzai government, which the U.S. installed in the capital, Kabul, but which today doesn’t control even all of Kabul. French troops control a region of Kabul only partly. In the south, British, Canadian and Dutch troops have suffered important reverses. And in 2008, the occupation troops suffered their biggest losses–including those of the U.S.

This doesn’t count civilian deaths, which the central command of the occupation troops makes no record of–nor do the journalists. The population is the victim of indiscriminate bombing and violent theft carried out by foreign troops, by mercenary soldiers from many countries and by the forces of the Afghan government.

The U.S. is having much bigger problems in resupplying troops. Trucks bring in three fourths of the supplies for coalition troops through the Khyber Pass, on the border with Pakistan. In the northwest portion of Pakistan, the so-called “tribal areas,” convoys are attacked. Pakistani drivers balk at being targets in order to resupply foreign armies. Thus, the U.S. army increases its bombings and incursions into this region of Pakistan, which doesn’t improve the situation, but simply extends the war from Afghanistan.

The Afghan government, a faithful ally of the U.S., led by Hamid Karzai, in fact doesn’t govern anything. Today, the U.S. is trying to replace his regime with the warlords, who carry out a reign of terror in different regions, selling themselves to the highest bidder. They traffic in opium or serve “democracy,” whatever pays the most. At the same time, the U.S. is sending in its own troops to control the capital Kabul, which is rapidly slipping out of Karzai’s hands.

Obama, who said and repeated that the war in Afghanistan was a “just war” and who made it his priority, not only called for sending additional U.S. soldiers; he also is asking the allied imperialist countries to intensify their war effort. General James Conway, commander of the U.S. Marine Corps, told CBS he wants to send as many as 10,000 additional Marines to Afghanistan. He said when the Obama Administration takes power, “that will help us greatly in determining where the forces need to go.” That is, to Afghanistan!

Each additional foreign soldier pushes this region a little more into barbarism.

Every single one of the occupation forces, beginning with U.S. troops, needs to get out!