Europe backs Afghanistan strategy aimed at “regionalization”

[IndianaGreen]

In a nutshell, the grand strategy is to break up the country into individual cantons run by local warlords, the same warlords accused of narcotrafficking and human rights abuses, particularly against women. This is the outcome we are being asked to support. This is the outcome our troops are being ordered to fight for.

Europe backs Afghanistan strategy aimed at “regionalization”

27 November 2009

The US and its allies are planning a massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan. In a television address next Tuesday, delivered from the West Point military academy, US president Barack Obama will announce his plans to increase the current American military contingent of 68,000 by an estimated additional 30,000 soldiers.

The NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen is at the same time seeking to drum up an additional 10,000 soldiers from European countries. There is every indication that he will get what he wants. Despite increasing economic and political tensions with the US, the European powers are completely behind the war in Afghanistan. Having supported the war from the start, European powers would suffer the consequences alongside the US of any Vietnam-style debacle.

According to the new German defense secretary, Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, the United States and its allies are condemned “to success” in Afghanistan. The deployment is “a litmus test, not only for the transatlantic alliance, but for the entire west,” he has said.

The decision by president Obama was preceded by fierce disputes within the American leadership and NATO. The result is not only a substantial increase in troops, but also a new strategy, the precise implications of which are being played down with the term “regionalization”.

During his inaugural visit to Washington, Guttenberg said it was necessary to put aside “the romantic idea of democratization of the whole country along the lines of the western model” and instead “transfer control of individual provinces step by step to the Afghan security forces.”

<snip>

The new strategy of “regionalization” is aimed at dividing Afghanistan into individual cantons—in a similar manner to what took place in Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia. Up to now the US-NATO occupation supported the government of Hamid Karzai and sold the process to the public as “democratization”. However, occupation forces are moving increasingly to hand over power directly to regional warlords and their militias—on the assumption that such regional forces will follow the orders of their imperial masters. As soon as there is no more danger in a specific province, Guttenberg declared, then the international troops should be withdrawn from that area.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n27.shtml

[fascisthunter]

1. this has nothing to do with democratization

this is about a fricking oil pipeline. I love how they use nonsense to cover their asses.