Petraeus Plans “Awakening” In Afghanistan Similar To One Engineered In Iraq

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This was run earlier. Due to an error the link to the original piece was inadvertantly dropped. We are now running the fixed version at the top of the site. Newer posts are underneath this so please make sure to scroll down after you read this. JG)

So now that General David Petraeus is also in charge of the command in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, does he have anything specific on tap to try and reverse what many say is a deteriorating situation in that country?

According to a fascinating piece in The Weekly Standard by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Joshua D. Goodman he most certainly does. He will be trying to clone a vital aspect of what he helped do in Iraq that helped stem what was a rapidly deteriorating situation there:

The United States needs a new military strategy in Afghanistan. In 2008, NATO casualties rose to an all-time annual high of 294, 155 of them U.S. soldiers. Roadside bombs and kidnappings doubled last year. Underscoring the gravity of the situation, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, warned the House Armed Services Committee in September, “I’m not convinced we’re winning in Afghanistan.”

In October, General David Petraeus–best known for revamping American strategy in Iraq–inherited responsibility for Afghanistan when he assumed command of CENTCOM (whose purview stretches from Egypt and the Horn of Africa all the way through Central Asia). None knows better than he that U.S. progress in Iraq over the past two years owes much to the rise of the “Awakening” movement, an alliance of Sunni tribesmen, Iraqi nationalists, ex-Baathists, and others united by the goal of driving al Qaeda from their country. Petraeus oversaw U.S. forces’ work in partnering with, protecting, and spreading the Iraqi Awakening. Now he has presented a plan to U.S. allies to spur a similar movement among Afghans.

Despite some objections (notably from Canadian defense minister Peter MacKay), the United States will almost certainly try to replicate the Iraqi Awakening’s achievements in Afghanistan in the coming year. How? In considering this question, there is no better place to start than a 47-page memorandum written by Sheikh Ahmad Abu Risha, the leader of Iraq’s Awakening movement, and submitted to the American embassy in Kabul last spring.

They give some details, then they write this:

These internal factors are compounded, in Abu Risha’s view, by a military picture unfavorable to the United States. He argues that “military attacks by air against Taliban locations will cause the loss of many civilian lives,” and so are likely to generate hostility to U.S. and NATO forces.

Abu Risha argues, nevertheless, that there are parallels between Afghanistan today and Iraq’s Anbar Province in 2006 and 2007. Most important, al Qaeda and affiliated groups in Afghanistan have created a “climate of terror” similar to what they created in Anbar, where “they murdered anyone who opposed or criticized their actions and behavior.” As in Anbar, he believes, an Awakening could help Afghanistan reverse its present deadly course.

Read it in its entirety.

This fits in with some of the stories and pages now on the web. Such as these from varying viewpoints:
–US-funded program to arm Afghan groups begins
–Secret Report Urges New Afghanistan Policy
–Awakening movements in Iraq
–NEFA Foundation: Taliban Reject Formation of “Awakening”-Style Movements in Afghanistan
–Afghanistan: The Occupiers’ New Strategy – Intensify the Occupation