Forty More Years in Afghanistan? Plus: The Military Compiles "Hit List" of Afghan Drug Lords with Ties to the Taliban

by bartleby the scrivener | So says Anthony Cordesman, senior advisor to Gen. Stanley McChrystal.(ToL) From the Times of London: 

"Mr Cordesman, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said: “The insurgents may have lost virtually every tactical clash [against Nato troops], but they have expanded their areas of influence from a presence in some 30 of Afghanistan’s 364 districts in 2003 to one in some 160 districts by the end of 2008, while insurgent attacks increased by 60 per cent during October 2008 to April 2009 alone.

"“Nato must change its strategy and tactics after years in which member countries, particularly the United States, failed to react to the seriousness of the emerging insurgency,” he added." (Times of London)

WaPo has more on the expected "long-term, costly effort." At Newshoggers, Steve Hynd asks:  "Can everyone say "mission creep?'"  Michael Cohen agrees. "If McChrystal is listening to...Cordesman - and if the President is listening to McChrystal -- we are going to be in Afghanistan for not years, but potentially decades."  That's right.  As Cohen points out, Sir David Richards, the incoming head of the British army, is predicting 40 MORE YEARS in Afghanistan.

The above-referenced WaPo article contains dire warnings of exactly what a long-term effort in Afghanistan will mean:  "security and political commitments that will last at least a decade and a cost that will probably eclipse that of the Iraq war." (Washington Post)

The costs are almost certain to keep growing. The Obama administration is in the process of overhauling the U.S. approach to Afghanistan, putting its focus on long-term security, economic sustainability and development. That approach is also likely to require deployment of more American military personnel, at the very least to train additional Afghan security forces....

"We will need a large combat presence for many years to come, and we will probably need a large financial commitment longer than that," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the "strategic assessment" team advising McChrystal. The expansion of the Afghan security force that the general will recommend to secure the country "will inevitably cost much more than any imaginable Afghan government is going to be able to afford on its own," Biddle added.

"Afghan forces will need $4 billion a year for another decade, with a like sum for development," said Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine who has chronicled the Iraq and Afghan wars. (WaPo)

Some in Congress are worried, as well they might be.  ""The House Appropriations Committee said in its report on the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill that its members are "concerned about the prospects for an open-ended U.S. commitment to bring stability to a country that has a decades-long history of successfully rebuffing foreign military intervention and attempts to influence internal politics.""(WaPo)

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that our guys will be hunting down the Afghan drug lords who are supporting the Taliban.

The House Appropriations Committee said in its report on the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill that its members are "concerned about the prospects for an open-ended U.S. commitment to bring stability to a country that has a decades-long history of successfully rebuffing foreign military intervention and attempts to influence internal politics." (WaPo)

Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan, according to a Congressional study to be released this week....

United States military commanders have told Congress that they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military’s rules of engagement and international law. They also said the move is an essential part of their new plan to disrupt the flow of drug money that is helping finance the Taliban insurgency...“We have a list of 367 ‘kill or capture’ targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and the insurgency,” one of the generals told the committee staff....

The shift in policy comes as the Obama administration, deep into the war in Afghanistan, makes significant changes to its strategy for dealing with that country’s lucrative drug trade, which provides 90 percent of the world’s heroin and has led to substantial government corruption.

The Senate report’s disclosure of a hit list for drug traffickers may lead to criticism in the United States over the expansion of the military’s mission, and NATO allies have already raised questions about the strategy of killing individuals who are not traditional military targets. (NYT)

So there you have it:  a strategy. 

But the question of what we look like to ourselves and the rest of the world when we do what we do remains as troubling under Obama administration as it was under Bush. Truthdig comments:  "That’s not quite targeted assassination, but it comes pretty close."  Really?  I'd say it's right on the money.  How is it not?  

For more on that point, see Charles Lemos at MyDD.

For further blogger discussion, see Memeorandum.

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