NATO surge in Afghanistan next month?

According to the following article, Trump's Afghan policy will likely be finalized next month, at the about same time as he will hold a NATO meeting:

https://www.khaama.com/trump-administrations-afghan-policy-likely-to-be-finalized-next-month-khalilzad-02625

This bodes very interesting for Afghanistan. Rather than dragging more US troops into Afghanistan, Trump may decide instead for more NATO troops to shoulder the burden of Afghanistan to even the load between US and non-US NATO troops, which was mostly carried by the US in Afghanistan during the war.

This would fit with Trump's campaign promise, to make NATO more relevant: more focused on terrorism than Russia.

It would also help for NATO to be fully implemented in Afghanistan because Russia is flexing its muscles in Syria. To make the West still seem strong, strength is needed to be exerted somewhere else - Afghanistan provides a fitting target.

Though Afghanistan is important to America, Trump's immediate priorities are ISIS in Iraq and Syria, assessing the Yemen debacle, Iran and North Korea. For this reason there has been considerable delay in seeing Trump's policy in Afghanistan.

But as I have said before, a strong Afghanistan threatens Iran. And using NATO to make Afghanistan into a "block" would help Trump push back Iranian influence in the Middle-East, as well as remove a terror stronghold which has plagued the region for nearly 40 years.

What is going on in Libya?

For the Obama Administration, Libya "succeeded" where Syria failed.

In 2011, Obama ordered a "no-fly-zone" in Libya to knock out the Gidaffi's Libyan Government. They succeeded. Unfortunately, most of the government services lynched on Gidaffi's regime, which meant a complete collapse of Libya followed.

By 2014, two governments ended up vying for competition. The first - the legitimate government - uprooted itself and is to this day located in Tobruk. They are the remnants of Gidaffi's regime, backed by the Libyan National Army.

The second government - based in Tripoli - was largely militias allied to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda. That was their power on the ground.

In 2016, Obama and the European powers tried to create a compromise government between the two groups. This was never going to work, because the Tobruk government wants no Islamism, and the Tripoli government does.

So a new government was formed in Tripoli; the Government of National Accord. This government has even less power than the previous Tripoli government did, and is largely beholden to the same tribes and factions that the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda linked government was.

All that has really changed is the legitimate government of Libya was swapped from Tobruk to Tripoli. However, that has not stopped the Tobruk Government from getting stronger.

In recent months, the Tobruk-based government - spear-headed by Haftar Al-Khalifa, a strong man eyeing for complete control of Libya - has gained large swathes of Libyan territory from the Government of National Accord, both in the oil crescent in the north and also in the desert regions of the south.

The Tobruk government has backing of many of the top regional powers - such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia - while the Tripoli government has backing of Qatar, Turkey and Europe - mainly supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Tobruk Government is also allied with Russia. With America refusing to get involved in Libya -for which we must be incredibly thankful - Russia and Egypt are likely to see victory in Libya at the hands of Haftar Al-Khalifa and the Tobruk government, with a peaceful and stable Libya to follow.

What is going on in Yemen?

Yemen is a sovereign country being bombed by its richer neighbour.

There are three main areas of Yemen which need to be understood to understand the Yemeni conflict. First is Southern Yemen, stretching across all of Eastern Yemen and the southern port cities of Aden and Mukalla. The second and third main areas are located in Northern Yemen, divided in 2, one populated with mainly Sunnis and the other populated with mainly Zaidis.

Zaidiya is an ancient form of Islam that is neither Shi'ite nor Sunni, but halfway between each. For over a thousand years the Zaidi tribes ruled northern Yemen - both the Sunni and Zaidi parts of northern Yemen - and were only very recently thrown off from power - in the 1960's. They since reemerged in their full power in 2014 under the guise of the Houthis.

After the Arab Spring, the dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh was thrown off and his Vice President, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi was made the new President of Yemen. Ali Abdullah Saleh is a Zaidi Muslim from the north - Hadi is a Sunni Muslim from the South.

However with the downfall of the Saleh government, Yemen was ruled by more chaos than ever before. Worryingly, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (القاعدة في جزيرة العرب) had grown alarmingly strong, particularly in Southern Yemen. To solve the crisis, Ali Abdullah Saleh ordered the tribes still loyal to him, both Sunni and Zaidi, to ally with the Houthis. The Saleh-Houthi alliance meant Zaidi Muslims were back on top. They took control of Sana'a and forced Hadi to leave the capital.

But the Houthis wanted to capture Hadi. They wanted a fall-guy to pin the political debacle on and Hadi was it. So they invaded Southern Yemen.

Enter Saudi Arabia.

Hadi subsequently sought refuge in Saudi Arabia and, under then new king, King Salman, a coalition was brought together to target the Houthi-Saleh alliance with a bombing campaign, seeking to bring an end to the Zaidi dominance in Yemen and restore control to Hadi.

Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia's error is very costly and alarming. This war has largely benefitted Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which would have been completely driven out of Yemen had the Houthis controlled Southern Yemen as well as Northern Yemen. If Saudi Arabia succeeds in dislodging the Houthis from their power, the northern tribes - both Sunni and Zaidi - would sooner ally with Al-Qaeda than ally with Hadi. Then Yemen, on the side of Al-Qaeda, would be fighting Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

Of course the war would spread to Saudi Arabia.

That is nothing to say of the awful famine occurring in Yemen. Children are sticks. Five year olds look like toddlers. Toddlers look like infants. Infants look non-human. The barbarity and cruelty of the Yemen War is horrifying.

It is not a civil war. It is a war forced on the Yemenis to benefit Saudi standing in the region. The only reward Yemen can bring Saudi Arabia is a full-fledged Al-Qaeda insurgency on their southern doorstep. And that is the best case scenario.

Why Afghanistan is so important to Trump

Of all the Middle-East countries the US is militarily engaged in, Afghanistan is second in importance only to Iraq.

After Iraq, Afghanistan is the most geo-strategic country for American foreign policy. That is the reason America has been in the country so long.

Yet unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is out of the public eye. Trump is focused on defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq - and he is right to be doing so. However, Afghanistan is incredibly important to Trump for reasons other than simply ISIS:

1) Trump wants to end a Bush war.

There would be nothing quite so sweet for Trump as to succeed in Afghanistan where Obama failed in Iraq. If Trump actually won the Afghan War, he would go down in history as one of the great Presidents - and certainly as a greater President than Barrack Obama.

2) A Strong Afghanistan weakens Iran.

After dealing with the ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria, Trump's next Middle-East task will be quashing Iranian influence. His putting Iran "on notice" has stopped the theocracy from testing ballistic missiles. Beyond that, Trump's goal is to get Iraq out of Iranian influence - an enormous task. He may also try - diplomatically - to get rid of Bashar Al-Assad and replace him with a pro-Russian, anti-Iranian dictator - which will most certainly fail.

But Afghanistan! A strong Afghanistan puts more pressure on Iran to watch their eastern borders as they used to watch their western borders with Saddam Hussein. Trump will have to cede to nation-building in Afghanistan to create a "block" (in his words) against Iran.

3) Russia would like to take Afghanistan back.

Worryingly, Russia has been eyeing influence in Afghanistan on the side of the Taliban. After 16 years of bloodshed, Trump is unlikely to see Afghanistan fall into the hands of Russia.

It is more likely that Trump will allow Russian influence to continue unabated in Syria and Libya - as is currently occurring in Libya and to a lesser extent in Syria - than withdraw American support for Afghanistan. It makes no sense for Trump to give up Afghanistan when he could let Russia use their effort and resources in retaking Syria and Libya, which are less costly for America to lose.

4) Trade is Trump's forte.

Afghani President Ashraf Ghani has tempted Trump with an investment opportunity for America in Afghanistan. See the following article for reference:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-afghanistan-mineral-reserves-235962

The minerals in Afghanistan are worth an enormous amount of money. Trump will not let an investment like this fall flat on its face - not with so much else to lose by not intervening in Afghanistan.



Trump is more likely to engage militarily in Afghanistan than in Syria post-ISIS, Yemen against the Houthis or in Libya. It is just simply too strategic for the US - and, more specifically, Trump - to give up on it.

Introduction

For information on Syria, see here:

http://jwaversyria.blogspot.com.au/

For information on Iraq, see here:

http://iraqwarjwaver.blogspot.com.au/


Dear all,

This blog will mainly focus on the forgotten conflicts of the Middle-East - namely Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan. These conflicts do not receive the kind of media attention that they deserve.

For example, Yemen is in a brutal conflict in which a coalition of the richest Arab countries is oppressing the poorest; namely, Yemen. Yemen is practically in famine and it seems there is no end to the crisis.

As another example, Libya has been a lawless state for the past 6 years, since Hillary Clinton's "we came, we saw, he died." Currently Egypt and Russia are making progress in stabilizing Libya while Europe is floundering around, waiting for America to enter a conflict they will not enter.

As for Afghanistan, it is the war we hear has been going on for 16 years with no end in sight. Contrary to what you would think, Afghans don't mind the American presence - on the condition that the Americans can actually defeat the Taliban - which, under Trump, I think they will.

I will be posting more on this blog. Enjoy!