UNSC Calls For More Troops For Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd

If General Petraeus wanted cover for "staying the course" - indeed, for doubling down - in Afghanistan, then he just got some from a major source - the UNSC.

The Security Council today extended the mission of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan for another year, calling on Governments to increase its current strength of 120,000 troops to counter growing terrorism by the Taliban and Al-Qaida.

In a unanimously adopted resolution, similar to last year�s call when the force numbered barely half its current strength at 67,700, the 15-member body recognized �the need to further strengthen ISAF to meet all its operational requirements.�

By now, we should all know the definition of insanity - repeatedly trying the same thing when it repeatedly and obviously doesn't work.

The UNSC call for more troops is insane.

Despite statistics suggesting insurgents are disproportionately responsible for civilian harm, our analysis found that Afghans blamed international forces as much, if not more, than insurgents. Few spoke warmly about the Taliban. But the vast majority described international forces as equally brutal toward civilians, and equally, if not more responsible for civilian casualties, detention abuses and other concerns.

They said international forces were often indiscriminate, and that many civilian deaths could have been prevented through better targeting, intelligence or coordination (pdf). "When an accident happens, or there is an attack against Nato troops, then Nato troops react and start firing on people. They never think about those around them as human. They think every person on the street is their enemy," said a man from western Herat province.

...More than any metrics about insurgents captured or roads built, the gulf between Afghans and the international community is perhaps the most concerning red flag for the Nato mission in Afghanistan. For any resolution of the conflict to be sustainable, it must be brokered from a base of trust � something the international military and policy community currently do not have, given the record of the last nine years. Many Afghans see the international community, particularly the international military force, as an entity they are forced to interact with, rather than engage with as a trusted partner. This does not engender productive relationship where differences of view can be negotiated, but simply a jockeying for position among groups where the priorities are, first, immediate survival, and then, short-term power grabs.

Adding more troops has solved nothing in Afghanistan - ever. Indeed, there's evidence that adding more troops in Afghanistan will actually make matters worse worldwide.

Pape and his team of researchers draw on data produced by a six-year study of suicide terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprising some 10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times � the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 U.S. Marines.

"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, ... and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100 percent of the terrorist campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.

Pape said there has been a dramatic spike in suicide bombings in Afghanistan since U.S. forces began to expand their presence to the south and east of the country in 2006. While there were a total of 12 suicide attacks from 2001 to 2005 in Afghanistan when the U.S. had a relatively limited troop presence of a few thousand troops mostly in Kabul, since 2006 there have been more than 450 suicide attacks in Afghanistan � and they are growing more lethal, Pape said.

Deaths due to suicide attacks in Afghanistan have gone up by a third in the year since President Barack Obama added 30,000 more U.S. troops. "It is not making it any better," Pape said.

Pape believes his findings have important implications even for countries where the U.S. does not have a significant direct military presence but is perceived by the population to be indirectly occupying.

For instance, across the border from Afghanistan, suicide terrorism exploded in Pakistan in 2006 as the U.S. put pressure on then-Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf "to divert 100,000 Pakistani army troops from their [perceived] main threat [India] to western Pakistan," Pape said.

That the UNSC resolution calling for escalation of troop numbers was a unanimous one amazes me - and makes me wonder what kind of horse-trading went on behind the scenes.