Washington, September 12: Opposing any further increase in American troops’ number in Afghanistan, a top Congresswoman has said the US should not send the signal that it is “occupying” the war-ravaged country and sought “a clear exit strategy.”
Addressing the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey from California said that there are reports that Gen Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, may ask for as many as 30,000 more soldiers, which would bring the American troop level to about 100,000.
“Enlarging the American footprint in Afghanistan, will almost certainly lead the Afghanistan people to see the United States as an occupying force, and if history has taught us anything, it is that the Afghan people will resist any foreign occupation,” she said, adding that was the bitter lesson that the Soviet Union and the British empire had learnt.
Woolsey said Defence Secretary Robert Gates is also concerned about the problem of increasing the US footprint in Afghanistan.
“In a recent interview, Secretary Gates said he asked General McChrystal about the implications of significant additional forces and whether the Afghans will see this as the United States becoming more of an occupier rather than a partner,” she noted.
“Secretary Gates also spoke last week about the failures of previous foreign forces in Afghanistan. He said one reason for their failures is that the Afghans concluded that they were there for their own imperial interests and not there for the interests of the Afghan people,” Woolsey said.
The worst thing the US can do right now is to stumble into an occupation that the Afghan people do not want, one that will last many years, that will cost many lives and that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars that Americans cannot afford, she said.
“We should not double-down on a strategy that hasn’t worked. We need a brand new strategy, one that is based, among other things, on economic development for the Afghan people, on better governance and on improvements in policing and in intelligence,” she said.
“We need to have strategies that are the best ways to capture violent extremists, and we must have a clear exit strategy and a timetable for the withdrawal of our brave troops,” Woolsey argued.
–Agencies