Why Obama’s Good Taliban - Bad Taliban initiative will fail in Afghanistan

Free Vedic astrology article on astrology and Afghanistan.

There has been much talk in recent times about the need for differentiating between good Taliban and bad Taliban in Afghanistan. This is a prelude to wrapping up the Afghanistan operations and bringing the US-Nato troops home. This abject retreat in the face of dogged, wily and resilient Taliban has been camouflaged with words like surge, buying the support of the good Taliban and getting the troops home with in a stipulated period.
Let us take a close look at how the world’s number one super power can blunder so completely in such an important geopolitical area. The new policy, hammered and burnished in London, intends to drive a wedge in the Taliban ranks opposing US and Nato forces. According to this, some warlords who in the eyes of US policy makers are “Good” will be paid large sums of money to keep away from destabilizing the present government of Afghanistan. They may even be given some role to play in the governance of that hapless country.
While this is being done, there will be a “Surge” in the number of US troops on Afghan soil. This surge will supposedly decimate the bad Taliban through war of attrition and weaken them even further. Unmanned aircraft like Predators will target the bad guys in their lairs and eliminate them.
The third prong of the strategy aims at giving UAVs to Pakistan so that, they too can pursue the bad Taliban and help the US in their declared aim to rid the world of terror for ever.
The sale of 36 F-16C/D aircraft to Pakistan affirmed some time back is also a step in the same direction as every one knows that the shadowy Taliban in the rugged terrain and caves of Afghanistan are best killed through air power and missiles. Harpoon anti ship missiles have also been sold to Pakistan to decimate the Taliban Navy.
One ought to be permitted a few questions here. Osama Bin Laden carries a multi million dollar prize of his head and yet in the last nine years no one has come forward with the required information to betray him. If money power has not worked in capturing him, how will bribing a few warlords help?
ISI has a stranglehold on the intelligence system in Pakistan. The president whether elected or empowered through a coup is mostly a puppet. It is highly unlikely that the gentlemen running ISI have no inkling about the whereabouts of Osama. That they choose to keep this information really close to their collective chests should prove to the wise men in white house that Pakistan is a reluctant partner in the hunt for Taliban.
The famous “Surge” did not work in Iraq, why should it work in Afghanistan, a country tailor made for gorilla warfare? US and Nato armies sit in well defended garrisons and make a foray in the countryside to chase the “Bad” Taliban based on the intelligence provided by dubious informers. This hasn’t worked so far as informers inform both sides, a fair portion of their earnings going to Taliban. How would surge tackle this?
The pathway of time linking present to past is littered with asinine decisions taken by supposedly mature people. These decisions later came to haunt them for ever. Hitler’s decision to let English army at Dunkirk be evacuated, and later to base his decisions of D-day invasion on the basis of papers found on the dead body of a British general found floating in the channel come to mind. One is also reminded of the US invasion of Vietnam and Soviet’s of Afghanistan.
The question is how such blunders are made? Apart from the usual answer - because they happened to be the right idea at that time – does anything else influence the military decisions? We shall take a look in the second part of this Blog.

To be continued……
 
Rajiv Sethi
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