[Peace-discuss] A dirge for the surge

[C. G. Estabrook]

	"Surge" smoke follows Petraeus to Afpak
	By Pepe Escobar

Confirmed and reconfirmed by United States President Barack Obama, the US Senate 
and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and duly hailed as the new 
armored Messiah by US mainstream media, "tightly disciplined" political fox and 
former US Central Command chief General David Petraeus is about to land in 
Kabul. He will either hit the road to his 2012 Republican presidential 
nomination, or witness another disaster in a US$7 billion a month (and counting) 
quagmire.

The myth of Petraeus' "successful surge" in Iraq could not but linger on. The 
Pentagon never managed not to profit by selling a public relations operation to 
a gullible American public. Petraeus actually "won" the war in Iraq by 
disgorging Samsonites full of cash to selected strands of the Sunni resistance 
who were fiercely fighting the US occupation, while at the same time shielding 
the American military inside remote bases.

Let's assume that what in effect are mostly Afghan Pashtuns will now also take 
Petraeus' bundle of cash (after all Afghanistan is the second most corrupt 
country in the world, only behind Somalia). In this case will he have enough 
time to buy the whole Afghan resistance before the 2012 US presidential 
election? It depends on how much cash will flow.

What's certain is that the Pashtuns will be more than happy to take the money 
and not run, but wait - exactly as the Sunni Iraqis are doing (newsflash: the 
Sunni-Shi'ite civil war is still on, killing at least 300 civilians every month).

Naturally the infinite war lobby - from the Pentagon's "full-spectrum dominance" 
crowd to hawkish Zio-cons and assorted Republicans - wants "cold-eyed realist" 
Petraeus to engage in, what else, infinite war, with its attendant surge(s). 
We're already on our way; the general already said this is an "enduring" 
commitment. Maybe not exactly the White House sort of commitment, which until 
now was demoted General Stanley McChrystal's hardcore, "take, clear and hold" 
counter-insurgency (COIN) plus building up local "governance".

What US public opinion was sold on was McChrystal performing surge part two in 
Afghanistan. But from running Pentagon death squads in Iraq to performing COIN 
designed by Petraeus himself, McChrystal fell way out of his league; not to 
mention that you don't captivate Pashtun civilians' hearts and minds by bombing 
their villages to rubble and incinerating their sons, daughters and wedding parties.

Follow the money
Every shard of lapis lazuli and lithium in the Hindu Kush knows al-Qaeda 
abandoned Afghanistan ages ago. The Taliban remain. For Washington, the Taliban 
is the same as al-Qaeda. Thus Washington also remains.

Petraeus never ended the Sunni-Shi'ite civil war raging in Iraq between 2006 and 
2007. He tried to marginalize the Sadrists; he failed miserably. What he did, 
apart from showering US dollars, was to kill - via McChrystal's death squads - 
the leaders of many a Sunni resistance cell, while building a million 
checkpoints and installing a horrendous cement apartheid in Baghdad (a key 
factor into driving citywide unemployment to 80%).

Yet the civil war only diminished because the Shi'ites achieved a brutal, 
large-scale ethnic cleansing of Baghdad (and that showed to the Sunnis that the 
next best option was to cash in). Petraeus was peripheral at best during this 
whole (bloody) process. But he was stellar in selling to the US the notion of 
"victory".

Anyone who buys Pentagon spin believing the same successful “surge” will happen 
in the Pashtun south and southeast of Afghanistan must have smoked Hindu Kush's 
finest.

For starters, it's not only the "Taliban" - this James Joyce-style portmanteau 
word - who are fighting the US and NATO "invaders" as well as the Hamid Karzai 
"puppet" government in Kabul (the terminology is resistance-based). In crucial 
Kunar province the key resistance actor is notorious Ronald Reagan-friendly 
mujahid Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hizb-e-Islami. Karzai, crucially, has been 
talking to Hekmatyar. And Hekmatyar, apart from fighting some Taliban strands, 
has also been positioning himself as mediator - as long as the "invaders" leave.

Karzai is also talking to another key mujahid who is based in Pakistan's North 
Waziristan, Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of the legendary Jalaluddin, another Reagan 
"freedom fighter". And not leaving anything to chance, Karzai is also 
negotiating with the number two of the Mullah Omar-led historic Taliban - Mullah 
Baradar. Mullah Omar himself wants no tea with Petraeus: he firmly believes the 
infidels will eventually leave.

What this all means is that wily Karzai, seeing which way the wind blows, is 
essentially leaning towards Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence - and there's 
nothing Petraeus can do about it. The Central Intelligence Agency - always 
faithful to divide and rule tactics - predictably abominates the idea of Afghans 
talking among themselves to sort out their common future. In an aside with truly 
Dadaist overtones, the head of the Taliban in Kunar, Obaid al-Rahman, offered 
Petraeus a praetorian "Guard of Death".
The heart of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of Pashtuns in the 
south and southeast don't want Karzai, don't want Petraeus, don't want surge, 
don't want US and don't want NATO. They want to be left alone to rule their 
local tribal land as they see fit. And to top it off, all those strands lumped 
as "Taliban" believe in their heart of hearts that their own brand of 
counter-surge is the real deal - that is, taking over Kabul by the end of 2012.

Petraeus' cash diplomacy is doomed. The Taliban in all their strands, compared 
with Sunni Iraqis, are infinitely stronger, as much as Karzai is much weaker 
than Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. And even if only 30% of tribal Afghan 
Pashtuns actively support the Taliban, the majority totally supports their 
fierce anti-occupation struggle. The Washington notion that Petraeus can 
influence complex tribal Pashtun politics is risible.

If Petraeus goes "clear, hold and build" COIN in Pashtun lands he is doomed. If 
Petraeus gets restless and produces a Fallujah in Pashtun lands, he is also 
doomed (that may be in effect right away, as one of his minions told Fox News 
that rules of engagement will be more "kinetic" - code for more US firepower and 
more civilian casualties.)

So what's the point of all this upcoming carnage? Well, there are so many - the 
poppy trade, the "Saudi Arabia of lithium", the ultimate pipe dream known as 
Trans-Afghan Pipeline, those military bases spying both Russia and China ... So 
many rats scurrying around the sinking US flotilla in the sand, but what the 
hell, there's another successful "surge" to sell and the (war) show must go on.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is 
Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot 
of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan 
(Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com