GEN Nicholson, CDR-US Forces Afghanistan, says we need to send more troops to Afghanistan to ‘break the stalemate’ in that country. He uses the term ‘thousands’. As some of you have indicated, there is a trust level with the locals that seems to be thinner than spring ice. http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/nicholson-afghanistan-more-troops-stalemate
What I take away from reading this article is that, while the Afghans are in the fight, the expectation of them by us is that they will fight the way we do, which ignores the centuries of their history of individual tribes constantly squabbling with each other and only uniting against what they consider to be a common foe.
To be clear, I would rather not see US forces expected to carry the burden of this, but instead, to shift it entirely to the Afghans. Nicholson does point out that he believes if we pull out entirely, there would be new terrorist attacks against the US. He doesn’t specify whether he thinks they would be as external attacks, or repeats of those we’ve already had since 2001 and those in France and Belgium.
When I read this article, I felt compelled to review the history of Afghanistan, and how the people there will be friendly one minute and undermine you the next. Whether Nicholson is going with his gut or basing his opinion on info he can’t give out publicly, my reaction to it is that I do not want to see this ramp up into a war in which we do the bulk of the work.
It bankrupted the Soviet Union to try to fight in the mountains of that country. The British Army couldn’t deal with the Afghans, either . The infamous Khyber Pass stopped them cold, because it is a notorious ambush spot where, in 1842, the Afghans engaged in a massive attack on Elphinstone’s army of 4,500 British and Indian troops, plus 12,000 camp followers including women and children, killing all but one British doctor and a few Sepoys, who managed to escape to Jalalabad, and Elphinstone and a few officers who surrendered as prisoners.
In view of all of this, and the fact that tribalism also has an ancient and very stubborn hold on that place, and that the Soviets couldn’t break the deadlock, why are we there? Why does no one consider the long-term history of those people? They’ve never done anything except make war on each other, unless it’s outsiders and then they loosely unite to fight and chase off the outsiders.
I’m only trying to understand this need to keep doing the same thing over and over, with no results that go any further than frustration, higher and higher costs, and losses that we do not need to suffer. We are, in fact, chasing our tails. Why?
