Crowned with success in Iraq, US Army General David Petraeus, who took command yesterday of US military forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, inherited the next big challenge: devising a winning strategy in Afghanistan.
Responsible for a volatile theater of operations that extends from Kenya to Kazakhstan, the high profile general must also keep an eye on extremism in Pakistan and Iranian influence in the region, all under the orders of a new US president.
Sent to Iraq last year to salvage the explosive situation there, Petraeus has been credited with turning around a Sunni insurgency in the west and using a 30,000 troop “surge” to secure Baghdad and its environs.
Many hope that Petraeus will bring his counter-insurgency expertise to bear in Afghanistan as he did in Iraq, where levels of violence have dropped sharply and combat deaths are now at the lowest point since 2003.
The intensifying violence in Afghanistan has put the “forgotten war” on the front burner and has pushed the White House, the Joint Staff and Petraeus to launch strategic reviews of what the general has called the “longest campaign of the long war.”
The reviews extend to the extremism in Pakistan and the sanctuaries in its northwestern tribal areas from which the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been launching attacks into neighboring Afghanistan.
As it waits for these reports, Washington has already committed to send reinforcements to Afghanistan as US force levels decline in Iraq, to bolster the 70,000 NATO and US troops there.
Both presidential candidates, Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Senator John McCain, have advocated sending more troops to Afghanistan, which they promised to make a priority.
At the same time, calls have been made from a variety of sources in favor of a dialogue with the Taliban insurgents, following the Iraq model.
Petraeus, who emphasized the importance of political and economic efforts in defeating an insurgency, has publicly said the US should “talk to enemies,” as has US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“There is talk, not surprisingly, of a ‘surge’ for Afghanistan, and hope that we can soon accomplish there what has begun to take root in Iraq,” wrote Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, and Andrew Shearer of the Lowy Institute.
But they warned that conditions are different in Afghanistan. There were fewer troops, the country was poorer and had less resources, and the insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan were destabilizing.
Relying on local tribal militias was also risky in a country that historically had been ruled by warlords beyond the control of the central government, some experts said.
Added to the long list of challenges that awaited General Petreaus was Iran, which the US accused of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and of trying to keep the pot boiling in Iraq by supporting insurgents.
“In Iran, we face a tremendous threat to regional security, and also the country most likely to test the next US president,” Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to