I am of course passingly familiar with the form and function of propaganda, and this Taliban press release is certainly a bit of it. That said, I have to say that it is quite free of the usual jihadi crap, and whoever is doing this for them is doing a good job. This part in particular I cannot disagree with:
“At the beginning, they were promising they would withdraw within three months, in their words, after eliminating the so-called terrorism. Contrarily, today eight years from that time have passed, but they have built up hundreds of military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. They say that they will raise the level of their troops to almost 110,000 troops. It is clear from this, that they have occupied Afghanistan for the execution of their expansionist plans in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Southeast Asia.”
CENTCOM and the US State Department can say what they want, but this is the truth. The US is WAY out of their sphere of influence in Central Asia, and one has to ask why they would plunge these sorts of resources into that part of the world. Containment of Russia and China could be reasons, but if so it's a stupid idea. Pipelines? It would be a hell of a lot easier to run one through once the dust settles and Afghanistan is running it's own show (for good or ill) and that will happen a lot faster if they pull out than if they fight an endless guerrilla war.
Please note that this doesn't represent a change in my position on Afghanistan. I have said from the get-go that we should have smashed the real problem children, established some bases in the Northern Alliance territory to guarantee no recurrence and to keep the Taliban away from the people who really didn't want them there.
I have to say that I believe them when they say that they have no designs on terrorizing the West. They figure that they can run Afghanistan better (read: less rampantly corruptly) than anyone else, and as long as you don't account for the enforced backwardness and misery, they probably can. The reason is that they keep things VERY simple, and punish transgressions mercilessly.
An earlier post of mine mused about just taking over the government. I'll showcase my incredible arrogance by saying that if you put me in charge I would do a better job than Karzai and his cronies. This assumes a mere Division of first-rate troops (10-15,000 depending on organization) with attendant air power and tactical transport. I'd be making deals left right and centre, and cracking heads in a big way when the deals were not held up. Walk softly and carry the biggest stick around. In other words, to run Afghanistan you have to be the biggest, baddest Warlord of the bunch.
I rather like not living in constant fear for my life, so this is completely academic, not a job application. One thing remains salient to this whole debacle: you can't make Afgthanistan into a stable democracy by any means that I see available to us. Exterminating the entire population and colonizing the place with less intransigent groups might be a start but isn't an option. People talk about an "exit strategy", but this is only important in terms of logistics. We have to bring our stuff home when we leave (tanks, guns, planes, etc.) but I guarantee if we told the Taliban tomorrow that we were leaving, there would be no attacks or bombs on our route.
The recent election showed the population what they can expect from Democracy, and they don't see a lot of difference from the old way of doing things. Karzai has the biggest stick (NATO) so he wins. That stick is not fully his to control so he can't hold the country. It would be interesting to see what Karzai would do if he had full tactical control of the NATO forces, but for now he plays us against the populace, reaming us every time we inevitably kill some "civilians".
A lot of people think Gen McChrystal is out-to-lunch with his COIN strategy, and a lot of others think this is the way forward. I think that if you need to double the number of troops in-country to even try this you should be thinking very clearly about the stakes involved. Again this is a time to "man up" and admit that we bit off more than we could swallow. We've lost the south, and we're losing parts that were initially friendly to us. We can recover the non-Pashtun parts, support them militarily to keep the Taliban from taking them over, maintain a presence to keep the pulse of the region, and it's but a matter of drawing some lines.
Pakistan you say? I don't have any answers there, but I will postulate that if they can't manage their internal security, nothing we do is going to help them. Get involved directly and we make more "Taliban", but a solid and dynamic military force to the north of "Talibanistan" would be a sword of Damocles over the Talibs in government to keep them (mostly) out of it. We can knock over their government any time we want to, the one lesson both sides should have learned from the "three month raid" we started out with eight years ago.
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