Gains in Kandahar Came with More Brutal US Tactics

[unhappycamper]

In this Sept. 5 file photo, US Army soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division Alpha Battery 1-320th leave on a patrol from Combat Outpost Nolen in the village of Jellawar in the Arghandab Valley of southern Afghanistan.


Gains in Kandahar Came with More Brutal US Tactics
by Gareth Porter
Published on Friday, December 17, 2010 by Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration's claim of "progress" in its war strategy is based on the military seizure of three rural districts outside Kandahar City in October.

But those tactical gains have come at the price of further exacerbating the basic U.S. strategic weakness in Afghanistan - the antagonism toward the foreign presence shared throughout the Pashtun south.

The military offensive in Kandahar, which had been opposed clearly and vocally by the local leadership in the province, was accompanied by an array of military tactics marked by increased brutality. The most prominent of those tactics was a large-scale demolition of homes that has left widespread bitterness among the civilians who had remained in their villages when the U.S.-NATO offensive was launched, as well as those who had fled before the offensive.

The unprecedented home demolition policy and other harsh tactics used in the offensive suggest that Gen. Petraeus has abandoned the pretense that he will ever win over the population in those Taliban strongholds.

The New York Times first reported the large-scale demolition of houses in a Nov. 16 story that said U.S. troops in Arghandab, Zhari and Panjwaii districts had been using armored bulldozers, high explosives, missiles and airstrikes in "routinely destroying almost every unoccupied home or unused farm building in areas where they are operating".



unhappycamper comment: We did the same shit 45 years ago in Vietnam.