Looking Good It Ain't

[don]

"Now that its supply route to feed its war of aggression in Afghanistan is threatened, the American government has the delusion that it will be able to supply its army in Afghanistan through thousands of miles of Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. Only a government totally oblivious to reality would imagine that Russia’s Putin, whose nose is rubbed in excrement every day by the US government, will permit America to transit Russian territory to resupply US imperial legions in Afghanistan."
Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the Treasury under Reagan and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.

The initial press spin on this was what's 50-100 trucks blown up by the bad guys, we have thousands in the pipeline. Now the above torturous route is being cobbled together, at the forbearance of Russia. Once the Soviet Union was in the killing box, did the Agency ever want the Afghan Adventure to end? What the hell are we thinking?

Playing both sides is nothing new of which Putin is more than capable. The US and Europe supplied both combatants in the Iraq/Iran war, where a mutually exhausting stalemate was seen as the "best course". Is this where we're leading ourselves as we stagger towards financial exhaustion :confused::eek:

[D-Mack]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

I believe they could do something, if they really wanted.

Nato making same mistakes as Soviet army, says Zamir Kabulov

...

Ruslan Aushev, now 54 and head of Russia's War Veterans' Committee, served twice with a combat regiment in Afghanistan and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. “We have to ask what the Afghans want,” he told The Times. “What have the people of Afghanistan received from the coalition? They lived very poorly before and they still live poorly, but sometimes they also get bombed by mistake.”

He and other Russian veterans are quick to point out the key difference between then and now: the Mujahidin resistance received massive covert US support through the 1980s. The Taleban, by contrast, have no superpower support. Russia is even helping today's mission by providing air and land corridors for Nato and US supplies to Afghanistan.

However, Mr Aushev recalls that the Red Army poured 120,000 troops into Afghanistan, almost double the number of foreign troops there today. “We controlled maybe 20 per cent of the country by day, but at night the Afghans controlled all of it,” he said. “Force cannot resolve this question ... The Taleban is an idea and this idea has support among the local population because many problems were resolved when they ruled. Their methods were awful from a European perspective but they got results.”

...

[don]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

That support issue is a gas pedal subject to change in applied pressure. Iraq's ragtag-supplied resistance goes a way to validate Wallerstein's premise that modern weapons, even small arms, are sufficient to cause major powers mucho grief. (the "surge" was essentially a buying-time 100,000 Sunnis on the payroll move) The days are long gone when Britain's thin red line could survey the battlefield before combat, marking off the various weapon range lines, before the fuzzy wuzzies made their nirvana death charge.

[petertribo]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

I read one account of tha Afghan problem that went like this:

If the route from Pakistan is removed, then the West intends to supply their troops by air. One reason, however, that the Pakistan land route was used was that air supply may be subjected to ground-to-air missile (Stinger like) attacks on the slow flying transport planes used. This then involves how wide the secure area is around these airbases. I suspect that the contemplated surge of 30,000 US troops would be used at least in part to secure more area around air supply bases. I read an account that Canadian troops, who have taken many hits from IED ground attacks to their vehicles intend to rely more on air for supply.

One question arising from the above is whether there are Stinger-like attacks on Drones. I would not think it likely that the US would report such attacks. My understanding is that Drones fly low and slow and would thus be perfect targets for such attacks. (Maybe go long Drone Manufacturers?)

[c1ue]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

The surge in Afghanistan is a huge mistake.

Afghanistan has a LARGER population than Iraq.

If the US couldn't police a basically flat desert plain, I don't see how anything positive can be accomplished with a larger population base in a remote and mountainous region.

Even if only 1/100th of Afghanistan's population actively militates against the foreign occupiers - and fight the foreign occupier is about the only thing the all agree on - that's still 300K people.

How then will 60K troops as opposed to 30K make any damned difference?

And how will American troops in Afghanistan avoid IEDs when most heavily armored vehicle can't even go where the action is?

[whatnow]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

But expanding operations in Afghan territory is a great "make work" project during the Obama years. Even if it is a failure militarily it will still move lots of people and iron around. There's always money to be made for someone in those endeavours.

[audrey_girl]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

But expanding operations in Afghan territory is a great "make work" project during the Obama years. Even if it is a failure militarily it will still move lots of people and iron around. There's always money to be made for someone in those endeavours.

Afghanistan will destroy the Obama presidency. If he had any appreciation of the history of this place, he would be pulling out - not dropping in thousands of additional GIs. This will end very, very badly.

[Mega]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

Get a Map
Look where central Asia is!
One side China
One side Russia
One side Iran
One side AFGAN!

Now bear in mind all the GAS & Oil in Central Asia, no way to pipe it out, it would either fall under the control of Russia/Iran/China...........Unless you ran a pipeline though Afgan!

Now, wonder WHY US & Uk are there?
Mike

[audrey_girl]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

Get a Map
Look where central Asia is!
One side China
One side Russia
One side Iran
One side AFGAN!

Now bear in mind all the GAS & Oil in Central Asia, no way to pipe it out, it would either fall under the control of Russia/Iran/China...........Unless you ran a pipeline though Afgan!

Now, wonder WHY US & Uk are there?
Mike

Understood - but troops in Afghanistan with stretched supply lines is nuts.

see: Dien bien phu for worst case scenario:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu

[GRG55]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

I read one account of tha Afghan problem that went like this:

If the route from Pakistan is removed, then the West intends to supply their troops by air. One reason, however, that the Pakistan land route was used was that air supply may be subjected to ground-to-air missile (Stinger like) attacks on the slow flying transport planes used. This then involves how wide the secure area is around these airbases. I suspect that the contemplated surge of 30,000 US troops would be used at least in part to secure more area around air supply bases. I read an account that Canadian troops, who have taken many hits from IED ground attacks to their vehicles intend to rely more on air for supply...

That is correct, here's the announcement from Canada's DND. An immediate family member who is a military pilot deployed to Kandahar in early December in support of this. This is his second stint in the Afghan/Iraq war theatre.

...One question arising from the above is whether there are Stinger-like attacks on Drones. I would not think it likely that the US would report such attacks. My understanding is that Drones fly low and slow and would thus be perfect targets for such attacks. (Maybe go long Drone Manufacturers?)

There are a variety of drones, but the ones in Afghanistan have to be able to operate at high altitudes because of the high density altitudes in that theatre, especially in the hot summer months. Said family member once told me that in the early days of that "war" there were high losses of UAVs purely from operational problems because of their then limited altitude capability and lack of anti-icing.

[whatnow]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

If this thesis is true, it once again points out the utter fraud of "globalisation". Can't have those resources in the hands of our trading partners can we? (Iran excluded for the most part) Money may make the world go round, but iron, blood and lead can change the flows.

[bobola]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

Unocal was one of the key players in the CentGas consortium, an attempt to build the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to run from the Caspian area, through Afghanistan and probably Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. One of the consultants to Unocal at that time was Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Afghanistan then to Iraq and currently to the UN.

In the 1980s CIA chief Bill Casey had revived the agency's practise of gaining intelligence from traveling businessmen. Marty Miller, one of Unocal's top executives, conducted negotiations in several Central Asian countries from 1995, and voluntarily provided information gained on these trips to the CIA's Houston station.

In 1996 Unocal opened an office in Kandahar, Afghanistan, while the Taliban were in the process of taking control of the country.

Unocal rented a house in central Kandahar directly across the street from one of [Osama] bin Laden's new compounds. They did not choose this location deliberately. Most of the decent houses in town straddled the Herat Bazaar Road. Also near was the Pakistani consulate, which housed officers from [the Pakistani military Inter-Services Intelligence, the] ISI.

In 1997, Robert Oakley [ex-US ambassador to Pakistan, now Unocal's ad hoc advisory board] advised Miller to reach the Taliban by working through Pakistan's government
[then led by Benazir Bhutto]. He also suggested that Unocal hire Thomas Gouttiere, an Afghan specialist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, to develop a job training
program in Kandahar that would teach Pashtuns the technical skills needed to build a pipeline.

Unocal agreed to pay $900,000 via the University of Nebraska to set up a Unocal training facility on a fifty-six acre site in Kandahar, not far from bin Laden's compounds.
Gouttiere traveled in and out of Afghanistan and met with Taliban leaders. In December 1997 Gouttiere worked with Miller to arrange for another Taliban delegation to visit the United States.

Unocal seems to have had a deeper role. Intelligence "whistleblower" Julie Sirrs claimed that anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud told her he had "proof that Unocal had provided money that helped the Taliban take Kabul [in 1996]". And French journalist Richard Labeviere said, referring to the later 1990s, "The CIA and Unocal's security forces, provided military weapons and instructors to several Taleban militia[s] .

The Taleban and Unocal were in negotiations in Texas to discuss arrangements for the gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan in 1997 and a deal was struck but later failed.

The failure was believed to be because the deal was going to be struck with Bridas, an Argentinian company.

The CentGas pipeline was not built, due to inability of CentGas and the Taliban to come to a mutually acceptable economic understanding although rumours about a deal with Argentinian company Bridas were widespread.

The Argentinian economy collapsed soon after this deal had been struck.

Unocal was also the third largest member of the recently completed and opened Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.

[GRG55]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

Get a Map
Look where central Asia is!
One side China
One side Russia
One side Iran
One side AFGAN!

Now bear in mind all the GAS & Oil in Central Asia, no way to pipe it out, it would either fall under the control of Russia/Iran/China...........Unless you ran a pipeline though Afgan!

Now, wonder WHY US & Uk are there?
Mike

Mega: You've made this point before, and I'll ask the same question of you once again...Where in hell is said gas pipeline supposed to go after it crosses Afghanistan? Pakistan? [get real]. India? Why would the USA care, India has always been aligned with Russia since independence.

Look. There is absolutely no shortage of natural gas in the world. There may be imbalances between supply and demand in particular regions, such as Northern Europe in winter, but how is a pipeline across Afghanistan supposed to fix that problem? Let China fight it out with the Russians for control of Central Asian gas. Nobody else really needs it.

Europe's best hope should be that the Russians win that argument, btw. With Gazprom choking on the stuff they'll practically give it away to you good folks in the years to come, just to get rid of it.

[ASH]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

Understood - but troops in Afghanistan with stretched supply lines is nuts.

see: Dien bien phu for worst case scenario:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu

Your point is taken, but I don't think the Taliban have much in the way of heavy artillery. I read The Last Valley last year, and can recommend it as an engrossing read (of particular interest, I admit, to artillerymen). The French bet they could establish fire superiority and defend Dien Bien Phu with the superior firepower of Western artillery, but the Viet Minh actually managed to defeat the French through clever placement of their own artillery. Because the French base was, by its nature, immobile, there was no need for the Viet Minh to site their artillery to cover a wide battlefield. Instead, they dug it into the mountain side, where the French artillery couldn't silence it -- and then they proceeded to pummel the base into oblivion (culminating in attacks that denied the French the use of their air field).

In some respects, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu was a lot more like conventional warfare than the guerilla war we're fighting now. The US can certainly lose in Afghanistan, but I don't think we'll see anything like Dien Bien Phu. If we lose, I think it will look like steadily mounting casualties, steadily increasing costs, and a general lack of progress that forces a withdrawal. My bet is still that we end up pulling out for fiscal reasons.

[don]

Re: Looking Good It Ain't

Your point is taken, but I don't think the Taliban have much in the way of heavy artillery. I read The Last Valley last year, and can recommend it as an engrossing read (of particular interest, I admit, to artillerymen). The French bet they could establish fire superiority and defend Dien Bien Phu with the superior firepower of Western artillery, but the Viet Minh actually managed to defeat the French through clever placement of their own artillery. Because the French base was, by its nature, immobile, there was no need for the Viet Minh to site their artillery to cover a wide battlefield. Instead, they dug it into the mountain side, where the French artillery couldn't silence it -- and then they proceeded to pummel the base into oblivion (culminating in attacks that denied the French the use of their air field).

In some respects, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu was a lot more like conventional warfare than the guerilla war we're fighting now. The US can certainly lose in Afghanistan, but I don't think we'll see anything like Dien Bien Phu. If we lose, I think it will look like steadily mounting casualties, steadily increasing costs, and a general lack of progress that forces a withdrawal. My bet is still that we end up pulling out for fiscal reasons.

Ash: Did the French artillery commander commit suicide when the Viet Minh disclosed their arty assets? It's been a few decades since I last read Fall's Hell In A Very Small Place. I would agree the Taliban are unlikely to be well endowed in the Queen of Battle. The stinger talk doesn't hold water either. I think their shelf life ruled them out of the game some time ago.

As you know, once a national resistance is built, and that's mostly what these guys do, they win by outlasting us. The old story, they're home, we're not. That's a point Wallerstein makes. In the age of high imperialism, the Euros and us brought modernity to these areas, seducing a native admin strata to help out. With global comm. we no longer seem like space aliens or gods to the third worlders