It appears that "neutrality of Afghanistan" is losing ground to "permanent military presence".

[seafan]

The Asia Times reports that just prior to last Tuesday's international conference on Afghanistan in Kabul, NATO's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, intimated that all the public talk about a desired "neutral status" for Afghanistan may not be in the grand plan after all, if NATO and the U. S. Defense Department have their way.

This article reports that as of the time of this conference last Tuesday, the U. S. Defense Department is on the verge of awarding a "priority" contract for at least $100 million to build a large Special Forces base in northern Afghanistan, near Mazar-i-Sharif, and set to become operational by the end of 2011.


Gosh, this seems familiar....

.....

Rasmussen's shot in the air

The stage for the shadow play was duly set by none other than the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. In an extraordinary "curtain-raiser" on the eve of the conference, exuding a high degree of optimism about the war, Rasmussen wrote that NATO was "finally taking the fight to the Taliban" aimed at the "marginalization of the Taliban as a political and military force ... will encourage many who joined the Taliban to quit their ranks and engage in the reconciliation effort."

But tucked away more than halfway down in his highly-publicized article was a curious sub-text:

BLOCKQUOTE> Starting the transition does not mean that the struggle for Afghanistan's future as a stable country in a volatile region will be over. Afghanistan will need the continued support of the international community, including NATO. The Afghan population needs to know that we will continue to stand by them as they chart their own course into the future. To underline this commitment, I believe that NATO should develop a long-term cooperation agreement with the Afghan government.



Very little ingenuity is needed to estimate that Rasmussen would never venture into the public airing of such a profound thought regarding NATO's future in the post-Afghan war Central Asian region - the hidden agenda of this Clausewitzean war all along - without checking out in advance with Washington, nay, except at the bidding of the Barack Obama administration.


By a coincidence, Rasmussen's idea has appeared on the eve of the expected award of a contract by the US Defense Department to build a sprawling US Special Forces base in northern Afghanistan near Mazar-i-Sharif. The US is undertaking the project on a priority footing at a cost of as much as US$100 million. The base, in the Amu Darya region straddling Central Asia, will become operational by the end of 2011, or at the latest by early 2012.

According to available details, the 17-acre (6.8 hectare) site of the new American military base is hardly 35 kilometers from the border of Uzbekistan and it seems set to become the pendant of a "string of pearls" that the US is kneading through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan along the "soft underbelly" of Russia and China's Xinjiang.

How would the countries in the region size up the startling prospect that the US and NATO are possibly quitting the Afghan war by 2014 and yet preparing to settle down for a long stay in the Hindu Kush?

.....

According to this article, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

pointedly underlined in his statement at the Kabul conference the importance of recognizing Afghanistan's future "neutral status", which would preclude any sort of permanent foreign military presence.

Significantly, Lavrov appealed to the "Afghan people" - and not to Karzai's government, which hosted the Kabul conference - to voice the demand for the neutrality of their country and the rejection of long term foreign military presence.

Also pointed out in this article is that as of last month, the Obama administration had affirmed the "neutral" language in referring to Afghanistan.



But something else seems afoot now:

Has Obama backtracked? The point is, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton uttered not a word about a "neutral" Afghanistan in all of her intervention in the Kabul conference on Tuesday, whereas she seemed to deliberately circle around Rasmussen's thought process, preferring to dilate on issues such as the importance of upholding women's rights in a future Afghanistan.

.....

US holding breath


At the end of the day what really matters is Clinton's silence. It needs to be carefully weighed.

It indicates the US seems to be wary of a rebuff from the region and is gingerly going about with the unveiling of the idea of setting up permanent US/NATO bases in Afghanistan? Of course, it has been fairly well known for quite a while among regional observers that the Pentagon has been feverishly beefing up the US military bases in Afghanistan, including construction of some new ones, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and equipping them with facilities that enable the American troops to maintain a familiar lifestyle far away from home, which is of course conducive to the presence of long-staying GIs into a distant future among people famous for their hostility toward foreign occupation.

This was exactly what the US has done in Iraq, too, despite the end of the "combat mission" as such by September.

The US diplomats have been gently persuading capitals in the region in recent months that, contrary to what Afghan history might suggest, the idea of a "neutral" Afghanistan isn't all that good for regional security and stability in a milieu where violent Islamist radicals are at large. Washington hopes to capitalize on the visceral fears in those capitals of a radical Islamist avalanche once the Taliban is co-opted in the power structure in Kabul.

.....

It appears that "neutrality of Afghanistan" is losing ground to "permanent military presence".



Gates Bangs Drum for Wartime Funds

July 14, 2010

.....

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently warned that the department would have to start doing “stupid things” — shifting funds from operations and maintenance accounts within the regular Pentagon budget to pay for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – if Congress did not pass the $33 billion bill by the Fourth of July recess.

That deadline came and went, and Gates visited Capitol Hill Tuesday to deliver a message: This time we really mean it.

Passage of the bill, which would in part pay for the increase of troops in Afghanistan, has stalled in part over Republican objections to domestic spending provisions that were tacked on to the House-passed version.

.....

Gates has now delivered a new deadline. According to McConnell, the Pentagon chief said the supplemental “has to be done by the end of this month” or the Pentagon will not be able to keep paying the troops, because the House will be going out of session at the end of July.
“This is a true emergency,” McConnell said.

Republican senators and the secretary of defense are not the only ones sounding the alarm. Defense contractors are worried that any shift between Pentagon accounts might mean delays or interruptions in contracts. In a statement issued Monday, Marion Blakey, the president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, said further delays had potential to “cause delays in critical equipment delivery, increased costs and could lead to lost jobs in the private sector.”

A "true emergency", according to Republicans, Gates and defense contractors, or it might lead to the DOD "doing stupid things" and the loss of private sector jobs...


That would surely be the private sector jobs slated to build a brand spanking new military base in Mazar-i-Sharif.




Someone, somewhere, had better get control of this pack of neocons. I am not at all confident it will be our president.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

1. BRING BACK THE DRAFT AND RETIRE THESE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS

THEIR BUSINESS IS TO MAKE WAR AND THEY NEED MORE WAR. PLAIN AND SIMPLE. WHAT IS GOOD FOR WAR IS GOOD FOR 'MERICA

[Bobbieo]

2. Someone has to protect the country;s mineral rights!!!!

[Hydra]

3. Huh...and I thought we left this little gem behind last year:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?_r=1

Empire...creating reality.

Maybe we should just call ourselves "The United States of the Middle East"?

[Radical Activist]

4. This is no surprise. It has been a goal at least since the Carter administration.

Part of the purpose of both wars was to establish a permanent military presence in new Middle Eastern nations. Iran was the first choice but opportunity presented itself in Afghanistan. Bases will be there to ensure stability (and American regional dominance) long after the war is over. Just like the Philippines, Korea, Germany and elsewhere.

[seafan]

5. Wikileaks strips away US-sanitized news about Afghanistan.

The truth will set us free.