Secretary Clinton Can Shorten the War and Save Sgt. Bergdahl

Call for action from Just Foreign Policy here regarding Government desire to have Afghan Taliban added to Terrorist list, and why it may be another policy fail. Thinking that deliberate poor training of Afghan soldiers and police - combined with procedures that make it easy for dissident groups to infiltrate - was done to keep them destabilized for mining, and prevent an effective enemy left behind.

"U.S. policy in Afghanistan is in a moment of crisis. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the commander for Special Operations forces in Afghanistan has suspended training for all new Afghan recruits until more than 27,000 Afghan troops working with his command can be re-vetted for ties to the insurgency, following a wave of attacks on U.S. and NATO troops by Afghan soldiers and police. Western military officials now admit that they knew the Afghan troops weren't properly vetted before.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Clinton is facing a deadline this week on demands from the military and some in Congress to declare the Haqqani network, part of the Afghan Taliban, to be a terrorist group. Some officials in the White House and the State Department say this largely symbolic move would likely obstruct a prisoner exchange that would free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl—and would also likely obstruct peace talks needed to end the war.

Urge President Obama and your representatives in Congress to oppose moves that would obstruct the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and peace talks needed to end the war.

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/haqqani-network

The front page of Sunday's Washington Post reported that the senior commander for Special Operations forces in Afghanistan "has suspended training for all new Afghan recruits until more than 27,000 Afghan troops working with his command can be re-vetted for ties to the insurgency."

"The vetting process for Afghan soldiers and police was never properly implemented, and NATO officials say they knew it," the Post says. [1] Officials now say that the laxity in security that was for years the norm is no longer acceptable, the Post says. This begs the question: why was it acceptable before?

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported on Friday [2] that Secretary of State Clinton faces a Congressionally-imposed deadline this week on whether to designate the Haqqani network - part of the Afghan Taliban - as a terrorist group. Some U.S. officials say doing so would make it more difficult to restart peace talks with the Taliban, and obstruct a prisoner exchange with the Taliban that would free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier held since 2009 by the Haqqanis. [3]

Officials in the White House and the State Department are pushing back against the military, the Post says. They say designation would be symbolic and would have little real impact, and that the military is using the Haqqanis as an excuse to deflect attention from the military's own failure to achieve what it claimed it could achieve when it demanded that Obama send more troops to Afghanistan.

A U.S. official who opposes designation says it would only make peace negotiations harder:

    Administration policy "heavily depends on a political solution," this official said. "Why not do everything we can to promote that? Why create one more obstacle, which is largely symbolic in nature?"

What does "heavily depends on a political solution" mean? It means that the Administration is counting on the ability, at some point, to achieve a political agreement or agreements with some or all of the Afghan Taliban. There is no plausible story that the training program now underway will be adequate to deal with the insurgency if there is no political agreement. But if there were a political agreement, so that most of the insurgency were removed from the battlefield by political means, then the training program underway could be sufficient to help deal with any remaining holdouts.