Today Kim Howells, Labour MP and chairman of the British Intelligence and Security Committee, urged a withdrawal from Afghanistan - significant given that he was the former Labour foreign office minister and a strong supporter of the war. Support for the war is waning in both the US and Britain while, as Johann Hari points out (via), "[a]t the other end of the gun-barrel, 77 per cent of Afghans in the latest BBC poll say the on-going US air strikes are 'unacceptable', and the US troops should only remain if they are going to provide reconstruction assistance rather than bombs".
Despite this, Obama is preparing to significantly expand US commitment in Afghanistan, while the air strikes - which according to counter-insurgency expert Lt. Col. David Kilcullen kill approximately 98 civilians for every two 'insurgents' - continue. October was the deadliest month thus far for US forces in Afghanistan, while, as lenin reports,
"The latest analysis [.pdf] from what used to be known as the Senlis Council says that 80% of the territory of Afghanistan currently experiences "heavy" insurgent activity. 17% experiences what they call "substantial" insurgent activity. And a mere 3% of the territory, in a region called Sari Pul where the dominant language is Dari Persian and the dominant ethnicity Uzbek, experiences only "light" insurgent activity. The number of insurgents, as estimated by the US, has risen from 7,000 in 2006 to about 25,000 today, which slightly more than the total number of insurgents reported killed."
In this context, I thought it might be worth posting Noam Chomsky's recent appearance on HARDtalk. For those of you who aren't familiar with the program, it involves HARDman Stephen Sackur interrupting and talking over his guests or berating them with belligerent non-sequiturs in an effort to appear HARD. Nonetheless, Chomsky's arguments - on Afghanistan and much else besides - are as important now as they ever were, so give these a watch.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part3:
You can watch/listen to his recent talks at SOAS ('Crisis and the Unipolar Moment') and the LSE ('Human Rights in the 21st Century'), while you're at it.
Further reading:
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Everything you have been told about Afghanistan is wrong, Johann Hari
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Afghanistan as a Bailout State, TomDispatch
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A ruined tea party, and a brewing inferno, Lenin's Tomb
Cross-posted at The Heathlander