Stanley McChrystal: ''Strategy against the Taliban is not working''



New details of the report of the Commander of the Western occupation forces in Afghanistan on the situation in this country have leaked to the press.



According to the BBC in his report the General Stanley McChrystal said that the strategy of the occupation forces against the Taliban is not working.



The Afghans, he said, "are undergoing a crisis of confidence in the coalition because the war against the Taliban has not made their lives better".



At the same time McChrystal believes that "60 % of the problem with the Taliban would go away if they could be found jobs in modern Afghanistan".



Meanwhile, analysts and commentators are even more often asking a question what would happen if the US would be defeated in Afghanistan.



It was the defeat in Afghanistan which led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the Indian edition Kashmir Telegraph reminds thereupon.



According to the edition it looks very likely that the American fate is not going to be any different than Russia's fate.



In Afghanistan, Taliban have a long history of struggle. They fought and defeated the Soviet Union. They are engaged in fighting the American and the NATO troops for the last eight years. Over the last eight years they've been getting gradually stronger.



Besides support of Pashtuns, who are the majority tribe, the Taliban have a strong influence in the neighboring Pakistan which has a much bigger population than Iraq.



Today, the Indian subcontinent has the largest population of the Muslims compared to any other region in the World. The total population of the Muslims in the Indian subcontinent is about 500 million which is larger than the entire population of the Arab countries and Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the World.



As opposed to the Arab countries and Indonesia, Afghanistan is more strategically located. This is almost in the center of South Asia, central Asia and the Middle East. China and Russia are also close to Afghanistan. Therefore, an American defeat in Afghanistan can significantly change the global balance of power.



The defeat in Afghanistan will have much more impact than the defeats in Korea, Vietnam or Iraq.



The American strategy of having an alliance of America, India and Israel against China and the Islamic countries will fail and America no longer will remain the only super power of the world.



If America is defeated in Afghanistan then India will reconsider its policy toward America and China and probably will move closer to China.



President Obama advocated withdrawing troops from Iraq and increasing troops in Afghanistan. The American troops (besides NATO troops and Karzai gangs) have been increased to about 68,000 in Afghanistan but even that is not enough and the military experts are very pessimistic about the state of the war.



With the increase in the troops comes increase in the causalities. We also saw in Iraq that the growing number of American casualties turned the American public against the war. A recent survey showed that more than 50 % of the American people now oppose the war in Afghanistan.



Obama had hoped that he could unify the country which was bitterly divided by the Bush's policies and fight a decisive war in Afghanistan. Nothing like that really happened.



The recent events in Afghanistan, including the so-called "presidential election", have clearly shown that the Taliban are rapidly gaining influence.



According to Kashmir Telegraph all this signals doom for Karzai but also will hasten American defeat there.


Department of Monitoring,
Kavkaz Center