Obama’s ‘war of necessity’ is waged against the Taliban that are a ‘polyglot collection of conflicting political currents whose goals are local, not universal jihad.’ The Taliban have always asserted that they do not pose any international threat. They are not even interested in having anything to do with the al-Qaeda whose desired collapse is what the war on terror was originally intended for.

According to Anand Gopal, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor based in Afghanistan, “The insurgency is far from monolithic. There are shadowy, kohl-eyed mullahs and head-bobbing religious students, of course, but there are also erudite university students, poor illiterate farmers, and veteran anti-Soviet commanders. The movement is a mélange of nationalists, Islamists, and bandits…made up of competing commanders and differing ideologies and strategies who nonetheless agree on one essential goal: kicking out the foreigners.”

The US in Afghanistan has since been seen by the Taliban as the infringing and incursive presence of foreigners that they will naturally want to kick out. On the other hand, the US seems to see the Afghanistan situation as resembling the former Southeast Asian conflict in Vietnam: as an international conspiracy. The US misses the whole point: that what is going on in Afghanistan is ‘essentially a homegrown war of national liberation.’

The US doctrine of counterinsurgency, ‘the theory that an asymmetrical war against guerrillas can be won by capturing the “hearts and minds” of the people,’ may very well be the new American pipe dream. Today, there is a clueless dilemma of whether Afghanistan can be won through massive firepower or with a more benevolent tactic of ‘nation-building.’ The troop surges in the country only led to more violence, and a more diminished hope of ever winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of Afghans.

Even with NATO’s help, the US can’t seem to win the war in Afghanistan. Lesser even are its chances to hide the real reason why it is waging a war in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is at the core of the area that covers the oil pipeline from the Caspian. ‘Strategic control of energy is certainly a major factor in Central Asia.’ Afghanistan, unfortunately, has the ultra-strategic location that positions itself between the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia. This oil pipeline is touted to be the ‘golden future: a paradise of opportunity in the form of US$5 trillion of oil and gas in the Caspian basin and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.’

The US global petrostrategy has marked this place as ‘the end of America’s oil dependence on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).’ The Caspian states own ‘at least 200 billion barrels of oil, and Central Asia has 6.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas just begging to be exploited.’

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Via Foreign Policy in Focus