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Updated April 22, 2017 08:19:46

American commanders in Afghanistan are not saying how many Islamic State fighters died when the largest conventional bomb in history was dropped on their hideouts last week but experts say it, like the missile strike in Syria, points to an American president more willing to intervene abroad.

American troops reached the bomb site a day after last Friday's detonation, but have not confirmed reports that between 90 and 100 IS fighters were killed.

US military spokesman Captain Bill Salvin said "access has been restricted ... because it's a combat zone".

In a statement, he said that the US had "high confidence" no civilians were harmed.

Kate Clark, director of the independent Afghan Analysts' network, said there had been an "information blackout" from Achin, the IS controlled part of Nangarhar province, for some time.

"Journalists haven't been able to reach there because of the IS control and the threats to them, even local elders, they'd fled," Ms Clark said.

IS, she said, was capitalising on the official silence.

"IS, Daesh locally, have been bullish about the attack, they claim that they didn't lose anyone.

"It may be that this actually helps their recruitment."

The bomb's fallout for Donald Trump is being assessed in foreign policy circles.

William H Avery, a former American diplomat who has served in and written about South Asia, said the action was consistent with the President's promise to target IS.

"I think he is following up on campaign promises, leaving America first to one side for a moment he did say that the wanted to bomb the hell out of ISIS," he said.

The New York Times has reported that America's military commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, did not ask the President for permission to drop the bomb.

Ms Clark said Mr Trump had promised "to take the gloves off his military".

What is still unclear though, she said, is what he will do on the ground.

"One of the things he said on Twitter is 'why should we support people who hate us?'," Ms Clark said.

That has prompted many to speculate Mr Trump would end the "nation building" aspect to America's support for Afghanistan.

This week Mr Trump's national security adviser, Lieutenant General HR McMaster, visited Afghanistan and told local television network Tolo that America was committed long-term.

"What's critical is the strengthening of Afghan security institutions, the army and the police," said Lt General McMaster, an Afghanistan veteran.

"So what can we do together, with the national unity government leaders and the ministries to strengthen those institutions?

"Provide them with better support, with the continuing commitment of the United States to back them up on the battlefield."

The big question is whether President Trump will agree to his generals' request for more boots on the ground there.

America currently has 8,400 troops in Afghanistan, bolstered by an additional 5,000 NATO personnel.

Military leaders are pressing for "several thousand" more.

Agreeing carries obvious risks for a President who campaigned on Americans' fatigue with long-running conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But analysts say President Trump's recent moves indicate he appears less willing to abandon the fight.

Ms Clark says reports of renewed Russian interest in Afghanistan will also likely factor into his decision.

"The thing about Afghanistan is for well over a century, its main attraction has been for countries who don't want someone else to control it," she said.

Mr Avery said concern over Russian influence was heightened following the Russians' defence of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad following the chemical attack in Syria.

He believes that would give the President more reason to stay the course in Afghanistan.

"I think you will see a willingness to get involved, to use US military might," he said.

"The Trump administration would make the case that that isn't in contradiction with 'America First' principles, but is really supporting them."

Topics: donald-trump, person, foreign-affairs, government-and-politics, unrest-conflict-and-war, afghanistan

First posted April 22, 2017 05:53:46

Link:
Donald Trump's Afghanistan 'mother of all bombs' shows US President's interventionist side, experts say - ABC Online

Despite the hullabaloo over the U.S. Air Forces decision to drop the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan, we still dont really understand the scope of the destruction caused by the mother of all bombs.

Sure, the footage of the detonation released by the Department of Defense is damn impressive, and reports suggest the blast killed at least 94 ISIS militants. But the Pentagon has remained relatively tight-lipped on the impact of the devastating weapon, and local media reports allege that U.S. forces have sealed off the area from civilians, journalists, and Afghan security forces.

But new satellite photos from aerospace firm Airbus Space and Defense appear to capture the devastating impact of the MOAB in all its glory:

The War Zone suggests that, based on these photos, the MOAB did exactly what it was supposed to do: flatten everything in its blast radius. The massive air blast appeared to have worked just as advertised, with the mountainside focusing it effects, and the shock wave expanding down into the valley below, The War Zones Tyler Rogoway observes. The images above also closely correlate with the official infrared video we have seen of the strike.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that despite the bombs high casualty rate, ISIS militants continue to engage American troops and Afghan security forceswho are calling in more airstrikes to target the militants positions.

Thats okay, though! If Mattis is impressed, then so are we and even the secretary of defense isnt too fixated on body counts.

For many years we have not been calculating the results of warfare by simply quantifying the number of enemy killed, Mattis told reporters of the MOAB during his trip to the Middle East on Thursday. You all know of the corrosive effect of that sort of metric back in the Vietnam War. Its something that has stayed with us all these years You dont want to start calculating things, as far as what matters, in the crude terms of battle casualties.

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New Satellite Photos Suggest The 'Mother Of All Bombs' Did Its Job In Afghanistan - Task & Purpose

4 hours ago.

In the span of just a week, US President Donald Trumps administration managed to flip flop on a dizzying number of top shelf foreign policy issues Syria, Russia, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Afghanistan.

The series of reversals began with an unexpected US strike on a Syrian airbase on April 6 in response to a chemical attack allegedly carried out by the Syrian regime in a rebel-held area in the country. Then, at a press conference on April 12, Trump spoke of the crucial role that NATO could play in fighting terrorism, an intergovernmental alliance he had earlier dismissed. He explained this disconnect by saying: I said it was obsolete. Its no longer obsolete. At the same event, he also said that ties with Russia were at an all-time low.

And on April 13, , the US military dropped the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast, termed fthe Mother of All Bombs in the Achin district of Nangarhar in Afghanistan targeting ISIS hideouts in a network of caves and tunnels.

Trump hailed the bombing as a very very successful mission. Caught off guard by both military actions, US commentators hurriedly gave the president a stamp of approval for acting presidential.

Given that Candidate Trump and pre-strike President Trump were noticeably averse to ramping up involvement in Afghanistan (and Syria), these military assaults came as bolts from the blue. On Afghanistan, it reversed hundreds of tweets and statements Trump had made over the years criticising US involvement in the region and calls for his predecessor Barack Obama to pull US troops out of the South Asian country.

This prompts the question: does the latest bombing in Afghanistan signify an important shift in Trumps thinking on US policy or is it merely grandstanding?

During his election campaign, Trump had repeatedly bashed the Obama administration for losing the war on terrorism. Trumps anti-terrorism invective has been mostly aimed at ISIS in the Middle East and during his campaign, he declared that as president he would quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS.

After the strike on Afghanistan last week, US officials made it clear that the Mother of All Bombs was used to directly target an ISIS stronghold in the craggy mountains of Nangarhar.

Thus the lethal attack in Nangarhar fits into Trumps dominant anti-terrorism outlook that sees ISIS as a principle threat. Besides, it is one campaign promise he can say he is keeping, particularly as the much ballyhooed repeal of the affordable healthcare plan or Obamacare that he promised his conservative base, suffered a dramatic fall last month.

Indeed, a day after the bombing in Afghanistan, Trumps son tweeted an emoji of a tick mark next to the phrase bomb the hell out of ISIS. Trump Jr also tweeted an emoji of a bomb and the hashtag #maga, (short for make America great again).

However, while all of this may go down well politically speaking, it does not say much about the new administrations longer term strategy on Afghanistan.

In February, soon after Trump took office, the top US General in Afghanistan, John Nicholson, testified in Congress that Americas longest war was in a stalemate, with the Taliban controlling much of the countryside, leaving the Kabul government with just the major cities.

According to him, the National Unity Government of Afghanistan under President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah now control only 57% of all districts, down from 72%. (Interestingly, in the same sobering testimony, General Nicholson said one positive development was that the area in which ISIS operated in Afghanistan had been greatly reduced). The general complained of a shortfall in his military force and called for a few thousand more troops to train and advise Afghan soldiers.

At present 8,400 US troops are deployed in Afghanistan, down from a high of 100,000 in 2010. In June 2011, a month after a US special forces raid in Pakistans Abottabad that killed Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration announced a plan for troop withdrawal, saying that US objectives in Afghanistan were being met. But in 2015, the situation in Afghanistan was deemed too fragile for a full military pullout, and plans were modified to keep some troops in the country indefinitely.

Breaking the Afghan stalemate is thus the real challenge, one that Trump seems to have given little thought to. Apart from criticising the American war in Afghanistan as a complete waste, Trump has expressed little on US priorities in Afghanistan or the best way to stabilise the country. Even in the aftermath of the April 13 bombing, evidence of real US policy change is hard to come by.

However, there are clues that some serious thinking may finally be taking place. National Security Advisor HR McMasters sudden unannounced visits to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India this week, right after the US military action, indicates quick and high-level engagement. More importantly, the reported strategic review underway of Americas Afghan policy offers a path to recalibration, if not a revamp.

Getting a workable US policy to defeat the Taliban and its continuing threat to a democratic Afghanistan ultimately means getting the Pakistan military to stop playing spoiler. McMasters comments in Kabul rather starkly put Pakistan on notice for its long standing double-dealing in the region. Speaking to the media, McMaster said, As all of us have hoped for many many years, we have hoped that Pakistani leaders will understand that it is in their interest to go after these groups less selectively than they have in the past and the best way to pursue their interest in Afghanistan and elsewhere is through diplomacy not through the use of proxies that engage in violence.

American frustration with Pakistan on this score is nothing new, with US-Pakistan relations hitting unprecedented lows under the Obama administration in 2011. But such statements indicate a lower tolerance.

No doubt, the Trump administration wants to demonstrate that it is going to do something different on terrorism and by extension, Afghanistan, than its predecessor. As Trump put it soon after the Nanganhar bombing, If you compare the last eight weeks to whats happened over the last eight years, big difference.

So far, a big difference is that the new administrations preferred instrument of foreign policy seems to be high decibel bombing and military shows of force. Recent American history would suggest that this hardly translates well in defeating terrorism and creating political stability.

Deepa Ollapally is Research Professor of International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.

Read the rest here:
US bombing of Afghanistan: Policy shift or just political grandstanding? - Scroll.in

Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai claimed Wednesday that the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) was a tool of the U.S. Karzai, a former ally to Washington who has become increasingly critical of U.S. foreign policy, said Americas two-year fight against ISIS has been weak.

Speaking to Voice of Americas (VOA) Afghan Service, Karzai criticized a recent U.S. attack on ISIS in Afghanistan. On April 13, the U.S. dropped the largest ever non-nuclear weapon known as the mother of all bombson an ISIS stronghold in the countrys east. Karzai said the attack, which he condemned at the time, failed to eliminate the group. (The assault killed 95 ISIS militants).

I consider Daesh [the U.S.] tool, Karzai went onto say, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. I do not differentiate at all between Daesh and America.

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Read more: Heres why ISIS isnt succeeding in Afghanistan

The U.S. is currently battling ISIS in Afghanistan, along with NATO forces and local troops. Washington has promised to defeat the group by the end of the year, while combined military efforts have already cut the number of districts ISIS holds from more than 10 to between three and five. (Afghanistan is split into 398 districts).

Karzai worked closely with U.S. officials when he was president of Afghanistan. He took office in 2001, and remained in power until 2014, governing throughout the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. For years he welcomed American efforts to try and rid his country of the Taliban.

But his relationship with Washington became increasingly tense and he eventually accused the U.S. of sharing a common goal with the Taliban to destabilize Afghanistan. In 2014, he refused to meet with then-President Barack Obama at a Bagram military base during a surprise visit with troops.

Now, Karzai seems to be lending his support to another country: Russia. During his VOA interview, he brushed away claimsmade by the U.S. and rights groupsthat Russia has been assisting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moscow, which supports including the militants in peace talks, says it has never armed the group, but it has communicated with them.

[Russia] talk[s] to the Taliban, the U.S. also talks to the Taliban. Norway, Germany and other countries also talk to them, Karzai said. Russia has the right to hold talks with the Taliban.

Karzai was also scathing of the U.S. refusal to attend Moscow-brokered talks last week on the future of Afghanistan, telling VOA that Washington is not sincere about bringing peace to the country. The U.S. had declined to attend the summit, the third of its kind, saying that Russias motives were unclear.

Here is the original post:
War in Afghanistan: Former President Hamid Karzai Claims There Is No Difference Between ISIS and America - Newsweek

Mohammad Ismail/Reuters Smoke from a battle between Taliban and Afghan forces, Kabul, Afghanistan, March 1, 2017

Since assuming office President Donald Trump has barely mentioned Afghanistan, a countrywhere US forces have been engaged in the longest war in American history. Perhaps this is because, after more than fifteen years and $700 billion, the US has little to show for it other than an incredibly weak and corrupt civilian government in Kabul and a never-ending Taliban insurgency. Now Afghanistan faces a new horroras a testing ground for what can only be called a US weapon of mass destruction.

Trumps silence on Afghanistan was finally broken on the evening of April 13not with the announcement of a new political strategy but with the dropping of a monster bomb, the GBU-43, nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs, on an ISIS base in a rural area of the country near the Pakistan border. Worse, while causing untold damage and giving local populations new reason to hate the United States, the bomb did nothing to address the countrys primary security problem, which is not ISIS but the ever-strengthening Taliban.

The target of the 21,600-pound bomb was a network of caves and tunnels in a twenty-five-mile-long valley in the Achin district of Nangarhar province. For the past two years the area has been the main base for ISIS in Afghanistan. On April 8, an American Special Forces soldier, Staff Sergeant Mark R. De Alencar, thirty-seven, was killed near there.

Local officials told Afghan journalists that ISIS was retreating intothe caves and tunnels when under fire. Frustrated Afghan officers then requested air support from the US, and on Thursday the US dropped the GBU-43, whichcarries 11,000 pounds of high explosives and is the most powerful non-nuclear device ever used. Its blast radius stretches for more than a mile, and the blast waves knocked people to the ground and punctured ear drums five miles away, according to Afghan journalists. General Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said on the day after the strike that initial information indicated that thirty-six militants had been killed and three large caves destroyed.That seems a low figure, given the fire power used. Later, Afghan officials said that ninety-one militants were killed. Neither figure is verifiable.

Although ISIS poses a global danger, it has not been a major threat to the Afghan government. Afghan and US officials place the number of ISIS fighters in the country at around seven hundred, compared to three thousand last year; attacks by the Taliban and by US forces have reduced their strength. By contrast, there are an estimated 40,000 Taliban fighters who now control one third of the country and last year attempted to capture major cities and topple the regime.

Whereas ISIS fighters in the region are isolated, the Taliban now receive clandestine support from Pakistan, Iran, and possibly Russia, according to US officials. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has long demanded that the US focus on stopping this assistance of the Taliban by neighboring countries. Ghani has also been insisting that the US help him put pressure on Pakistan to force the Taliban to enter into talks with the Kabul government. The bombing has only strengthened the Taliban conviction that US forces must leave Afghanistan before any cease-fire can take place, and they are likely to increase their military activity in the coming weeks.

Ghani faces multiple crises: a collapsing economy, tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the country, and tens of thousands more refugees being forced back into Afghanistan by Iran and Pakistan, and European countries thatdeport illegal Afghan migrants. Meanwhile, in Kabul, Ghani is facing dwindling popularity, the loss of support from his ruling partner and chief executiveAbdullah Abdullah, a power struggle between various warlords, and challenges from former President Hamid Karzai and his supporters.

The bombing will worsen this situation; already several leading politicians, including Karzai, have condemned Ghani for allowing such a bomb to be used. Afghans know about bombardment. The Soviets destroyed much of the country in their brutal conquest in the 1980s, the civil war in the 1990s turned much of Kabul into a cemetery, and the endless war with the Taliban has destroyed even more lives and property. This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing group for new and dangerous weapons, Karzai wrote on Twitter on April 13. Even the Taliban condemned the bombing.

Much of the $10 billion a year in foreign aid that is needed to run the Afghan government and fund the armycomes from the US, and Afghan leadersare deeply apprehensive that the Trump administration will not provide its share. So far the only promise being made by Washington is to send more troops, though the 8,500 American and 5,000 NATO soldierscurrently deployed have accomplished little.

General John Nicholson, head of US-NATO forces in the country, told reporters in Kabul that the bomb was the right weapon for the right target. The US military has not yet released a formalestimate, but US officials insisted that most civilians had already fled the area to escape ISIS. However, it is difficult to imagine there were zero civilian deaths, as the region is a fertile agricultural zone.

With no apparent strategy behind it, the bombing appears merely to intensify the dramatic militarization of US foreign policy we have already seen in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia. Trump has now clearly expressed his preference for force(as I discussedlast month). We have the greatest military in the world, Trump said after the bombing. We have given them total authorization and thats what theyre doing, and frankly, thats why they have been so successful recently.

The effects are clear in Yemen and Somalia, where the US military now has free-fire zones in which it canattack any target even at the cost of civilian casualties. The increase in US bombing in Iraq and Syria has resulted in many morecivilian casualties in both countries. Airwars, a group that tracks bombings, says that civilian casualties have doubled from February to March. Such an open-ended bombing campaign has killed and wounded not just civilians but also friendly forces. In mid-April, a US drone strike in northern Syria killed eighteen members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a rebel group allied with the West.

In Afghanistan, American and NATO forces have had limited success in training and supportinga demoralized Afghan army, which will face new Taliban offensives. Although there are 170,000 regular Afghan soldiers, 70 percent of the armys offensive operations have been undertaken by a much smaller contingent of 17,000 US-trained elite forces, because the rest are not considered competent enough; nevertheless the non-elite forces have sufferedvery high casualties. The current debate in Washington about sending troopshow many, what kind, with what mandateis over exactly the same issues that preoccupied the last years of the Obama administration.

Afghanistan desperately needs an overarching political strategy, which should include dialogue and diplomacy to deal with the problems that Ghani faces, as well as a regional strategy to counter external support for the Taliban. So far Trumps teameven though it includes several former Afghan hands, such as the highly respected National Security Adviser Lt. General H.R. McMasterhas only come up with excessive use of force. The capacity of the military to create lasting change remains limited. How many more lives will have to be lost before the Trump team figures that out?

Read more from the original source:
Afghanistan: Making It Worse - The New York Review of Books