The higher number of Defense Department contractors, 160,000, added to over 100,000 troops - with the likely prospect of both numbers climbing yet more - will result in over a quarter of a million U.S. personnel serving under the Pentagon and NATO. The latter has 42,000 non-U.S. troops fighting under its command currently and pledges of 8,000 more to date, with thousands in addition to be conscripted after the London conference on Afghanistan next month. Approximately 35,000 U.S. soldiers are also assigned to NATO's ISAF and if the 33,000 new American troops are similarly deployed the North Atlantic bloc will have over 120,000 forces fighting a land war in Asia. Along with a Pakistani army of 700,000 active duty troops fighting on the other side of the border and an Afghan army of 100,000 soldiers, there will soon be well over a million military personnel engaged in a war with a few hundred al-Qaeda and a few thousand Taliban forces.
Washington's Afghan surge is not limited to uniformed personnel. The Wall Street Journal reported that "The White House hopes to have 1,000 State Department, Treasury and Department of Agriculture personnel in Afghanistan by next month, up from 300 a year ago."
The newspaper revealed that a former psychiatric hospital in the state of Indiana is currently "the staging ground for one of the biggest deployments of U.S. civilians since the Vietnam War." Non-Pentagon government officials en route to Afghanistan "are often paired with members of the Indiana National Guard, who are preparing for their own deployment in Afghanistan.
"Trainees spend a week on a make-believe forward operating base in the forest, where they go through military operations with the National Guard as if they were already deployed in Afghanistan. The civilian recruits learn to perform their own security functions." [4]
The dramatic escalation of the war is also not limited to increases in personnel. The U.S. Defense Department recently announced that it was expanding the deployment of Stealth warplanes and high-altitude, long-endurance Reaper "hunter-killer" drones which are equipped with fifteen times more deadly missiles than its Predator predecessor. "[T]he Air Force is looking toward developing unmanned, long-range surveillance aircraft that also can carry warheads so they can be used during combat." [5]
The U.S. Air Force's latest stealth reconnaissance drone, dubbed "the Beast of Kandahar," resembles "the much larger, swept-wing B-2 Stealth bomber, and officials confirmed this month that the military has begun using the classified, unarmed drone in Afghanistan." [6]
The skies over Afghanistan are crisscrossed by U.S. and NATO surveillance aircraft, bombers and helicopter gunships to such a degree that for Afghans to even leave their homes means to risk their lives. Three Afghans were killed and one wounded on December 17 in Kandahar province when NATO attack helicopters obliterated their minibus.
Matters are no less deadly on the Pakistani side of the border. The day before the Afghan attack, the U.S. launched ten missiles from five drones in the second of two assaults, "an unusually intense bombardment," [7] into North Waziristan, killing at least twenty people, identified as always as Taliban and al-Qaeda targets.
A Los Angeles Times feature on December 13 revealed that "Senior US officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan's tribal region.
"After confirmation that the CIA has been operating drone strikes in Pakistani territory, a new report says the US is seeking to expand the attacks into the country's cities."
The report added that "CIA spokesman George Little quoted spy agency Director Leon Panetta as saying that US has been launching the attacks from secret airfields in Pakistan and Afghanistan." [8]
The U.S. is not alone in ratcheting up the longest and largest war in the world.
On December 13 U.S. Central Command chief General David Petraeus said "The number of European NATO troops in Afghanistan should swell beyond the 8,000 troops already promised...." [9]
The Pentagon is dispatching 4,000 101st Airborne paratroopers to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in addition to a parachute battalion from the 82nd Airborne to join an American Stryker brigade and NATO ally Canada's forces there. The deployments are part of a plan to "flood areas close to Afghanistan's second largest city with Canadian and U.S. troops" and to "assist Canadian Forces to create a security noose around Kandahar City." [10]
Reuters recently reported that "Germany plans to send up to 2,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan in response to requests from the United States and other NATO partners," citing the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung which wrote "the United States and NATO members had already received signals to this effect." [11] Germany currently has 4,500 troops stationed in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent after the U.S. and Britain. The 4,500 figure is the maximum number permitted by the nation's parliament, but will soon be exceeded in another reversal of the nation's post-World War II limits on waging wars abroad.
Agence France-Presse reported that "NATO hopes to send two tactical groups, up to 3,000 troops, to north Afghanistan under German command," according to German General Karl-Heinz Lather, the chief of staff of NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, who said "From a military point of view, the allied headquarters in Europe thinks it necessary to send two tactical groups into this zone." [12]
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