HO Afghanistan Surge Aff DDI 10 HO 84
SURGE AFF—INDEX
SURGE AFF—INDEX 1
***1AC 3
1AC—Pakistan (1/7) 4
1AC—Jirga (1/8) 11
1AC—Solvency (1/3) 19
***AFGHANISTAN STABILITY ADVANTAGE 23
Yes Afghanistan Stability (1/3) 24
Yes Afghanistan Stability—South 27
Yes Afghanistan Stability—Taliban Weak Now (1/) 28
Counterinsurgency Working Now 29
Counterinsurgency Working Now—Afghan Police/Military 30
Yes Surge 32
Surge à Afghanistan Instability—General (1/3) 33
Surge à Afghanistan Instability—Warlords 36
Surge à Afghanistan Instability—Taliban/Al Qaeda 37
Surge à Afghanistan Instability—Civilians/Refugees 38
Blocking Surge à Stability 39
Afghan Collapse Hurts U.S. Heg 40
Afghan Collapse Causes Regional Instability 41
***PAKISTAN STABILITY ADVANTAGE 42
Surge à Pakistan Instability (1/2) 43
***PAKISTAN AL QAEDA COOPERATION 45
Yes US-Pakistan Cooperation—Al Qaeda (1/2) 46
Surge Hurts US-Pakistan Al Qaeda Cooperation 48
***JIRGA ADVANTAGE 49
Jirga Brink 50
Pakistan Supports Jirga 51
Taliban Support Jirga 52
Surge Kills the Jirga (1/6) 53
No Surge à Afghanistan Disintegration 59
Jirga Key to Peace/Stability (1/3) 60
Jirga Key to Regional Peace 63
Jirga Key to Peace—Military Approaches Fail 64
Jirga Key to Peace—Taliban Inclusion Key 65
Jirga Key to Split Taliban/Al Qaeda 66
Conflict Inev w/o Reconciliation 67
Stopping Surge à Jirga 68
AT: Taliban à Al Qaeda 69
AT: Taliban/Warlords Block Jirga Success 70
***SURGE FAILS 71
Surge Will Fail—General (1/3) 72
Surge Will Fail—Too Small for Counterinsurgency 75
AT: Surge Key to Defeat Taliban 76
***POLITICS 77
Surge Unpopular 78
***TOPICALITY 79
T Substantial—40 Percent 80
***OTHER 81
Allies Divided Over Surge 82
War Inevitable—Must Get Out 83
Withdrawal à State Collapse 84
***1AC
1AC—Pakistan (1/7)
Contention One: Pakistan
Pakistan is cooperating to defeat Al Qaeda and other militants now.
Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation, 10-13-2009. [Testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. Interests and Policy Choices in Afghanistan. p. http://www.newamerica.net/publications/resources/2009/us_interests_and_policy_choices_in_afghanistan]
The relationship between the Pakistani security services and Islamist extremist groups - Al Qaeda, the Taliban, sectarian groups, Kashmiri groups, and their many splinters - is not static or preordained. Pakistani public opinion, while it remains hostile to the United States, has of late turned sharply and intensely against violent Islamist militant groups. The Pakistan Army, itself reeling as an institution from deep public skepticism, is proving to be responsive to this change of public opinion. Moreover, the Army, civilian political leaders, landlords, business leaders and Pakistani civil society have entered into a period of competition and freewheeling discourse over how to think about the country's national interests and how to extricate their country from the Frankenstein-like problem of Islamic radicalism created by the Army's historical security policies. There is a growing recognition in this discourse among Pakistani elites that the country must find a new national security doctrine that does not fuel internal revolution and impede economic and social progress. The purpose of American policy should be to create conditions within and around Pakistan for the progressive side of this argument among Pakistani elites to prevail over time.
1AC—Pakistan (2/7)
Continued cooperation isn’t assured—U.S. has to balance against deep mistrust within the Pakistan military.
Pakistan Observer, 7/22/10, http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=42759
US Special Operations Forces have begun venturing out with Pakistani forces on aid projects, deepening the American role in the effort to defeat Islamist militants in Pakistani territory that has been off limits to U.S. ground troops, a report in the Wall Street Journal said(WSJ)Wednesday. The expansion of U.S. cooperation is significant given Pakistan’s deep aversion to allowing foreign military forces on its territory. The Special Operations teams join the aid missions only when commanders determine there is relatively little security risk, a senior U.S. military official said, in an effort to avoid direct engagement that would call attention to U.S. participation. The U.S. troops are allowed to defend themselves and return fire if attacked. But the official emphasized the joint missions aren’t supposed to be combat operations, and the Americans often participate in civilian garb. Pakistan has told the U.S. that troops need to keep a low profile. “Going out in the open that has negative optics, that is something we have to work out,” said a Pakistani official. “This whole exercise could be counterproductive if people see U.S. boots on the ground.” Because of Pakistan’s sensitivities, the U.S. role has developed slowly. In June 2008, top U.S. military officials announced 30 American troops would begin a military training program in Pakistan, but it took four months for Pakistan to allow the program to begin. The first U.S. Special Operations Forces were restricted to military classrooms and training bases. Pakistan has gradually allowed more trainers into the country and allowed the mission’s scope to expand. Today, the U.S. has about 120 trainers in the country, and the program is set to expand again with new joint missions to oversee small-scale development projects aimed at winning over tribal leaders, according to officials familiar with the plan. Such aid projects are a pillar of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, which the U.S. hopes to pass on to the Pakistanis through the training missions. U.S. military officials say if U.S. forces are able to help projects such as repairing infrastructure, distributing seeds and providing generators or solar panels, they can build trust with the Pakistani military, and encourage them to accept more training in the field. “You have to bring something to the dance,” said the senior military official. “And the way to do it is to have cash ready to do everything from force protection to other things that will protect the population.” Congressional leaders last month approved $10 million in funding for the aid missions, which will focus reconstruction projects in poor tribal areas that are off-limits to foreign civilian aid workers. The Pakistani government has warned the Pentagon that a more visible U.S. military presence could undermine the mission of pacifying the border region, which has provided a haven for militants staging attacks in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. The U.S. has already aroused local animosity with drone strikes targeting militants in the tribal areas, though the missile strikes have the tacit support of the Pakistani government and often aid the Pakistani army’s campaign against the militants. Providing money to U.S. troops to spend in communities they are trying to protect has been a tactic used for years to fight insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move to accompany Pakistani forces in the field is even more significant, and repeats a pattern seen in the Philippines during the Bush administration, when Army Green Berets took a gradually more expansive role in Manila’s fight against the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf in the southern islands of Mindanao. In Pakistan, the U.S. military helps train both the regular military and the Frontier Corps, a force drawn from residents of the tribal regions but led by Pakistani Army officers.
1AC—Pakistan (3/7)
Pakistan is the key to defeating Al Qaeda, but a surge would make it politically impossible.
The Nation 2-4-2009. [Don't Escalate in Afghanistan, http://www.thenation.com/article/dont-escalate-afghanistan]
The key to defeating Al Qaeda and its extremist protectors lies with the Pakistani government and its ability to control its remote territories. But there's the rub: major groups within Pakistan's military and intelligence services are reluctant to act against Pakistan's extremists for fear it would help the United States and India gain control over Afghanistan. Thus military escalation would likely counter our efforts to get Pakistan's government to secure its territory against Al Qaeda. Worse, expanding the war may only deepen divisions in Pakistan and further weaken its fragile democratic government. Even if US escalation achieves the limited goal of denying Al Qaeda a presence in Afghanistan, it could lead to the destabilization of Pakistan, with devastating implications for regional and international security. As Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and professor of history and international relations at Boston University, recently wrote, "To risk the stability of that nuclear-armed state in the vain hope of salvaging Afghanistan would be a terrible mistake."
By any measure, the disintegration of nuclear Pakistan would pose a much greater threat to our national security than would the continued presence of Al Qaeda in remote border areas. In fact, the value of Afghanistan and Pakistan as Al Qaeda safe havens is greatly exaggerated. Pakistan's tribal areas are of limited use in training extremists to blend into US society or learn how to fly airplanes or make explosives (most of the planning for the 9/11 attacks took place in Germany and Florida, not Afghanistan). Nor is this remote, isolated area a good location for directing a terror campaign, recruiting members or threatening global commerce. That is why Al Qaeda is a decentralized network whose leaders in Pakistan can offer little more than moral support and encouragement. American safety thus depends not on eliminating these faraway safe havens but on common-sense counterterrorist and security measures--intelligence cooperation, police work, border control and the occasional surgical use of special forces to disrupt imminent terrorist attacks.
1AC—Pakistan (4/7)
The threat of a nuclear Al Qaeda is high
Stephen J. Cimbala, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State U, 2006. [Comparative Strategy, 25:1–18, ebsco]
Are fears of nuclear terrorism exaggerated? According to Graham Allison, three observations make a compelling case for the imminence of the threat.2 First, thousands of nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of potential weapons (highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium are located in places where security against theft or diversion is insufficient. Second, the only “high hurdle” preventing terrorists from obtaining a nuclear weapon is access to fissionable material. Terrorists might easily obtain fissile material from rogue states. The possibility that the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq might transfer nuclear technology and weapons to terrorists was one of the principal justifications for the U.S. war to depose the Iraqi dictator in 2003. Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction failed to appear in postwar inspections, but the threat of rogues-to-radicals technology and weapons transfer remains a realistic concern. North Korea and Pakistan are now acknowledged nuclear weapons states. North Korea is a politically isolated Stalinist regime run by a dictator of uncertain personal qualities and political intentions. North Korea has previously transferred nuclear technology to Iran and Pakistan, among others. Pakistan’s current government has supported the U.S. in its war against al Qaeda and other transnational terrorist organizations. But the Musharraf regime has been under siege from terrorists and other domestic political opponents. Its survival is uncertain, and if it were to fall, political power in Islamabad might pass into the hands of anti-American leaders. Pakistan’s intelligence services and military are suspected of being penetrated by persons sympathetic to al Qaeda. Additional concerns about Pakistan’s management of its nuclear complex resulted from revelations about off-the-shelf activities of the scientist who was the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. According to reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Dr. A. Q. Khan headed a transnational network that supplied a “Wal-Mart of private sector proliferation” for profit, including designs and components for centrifuges, blueprints for warheads, and tons of uranium hexafluoride gas.3 North Korea’s exchange of its ballistic missile technology for Pakistani centrifuge designs may have been expedited by the same etwork.4 North Korea and Pakistan represent only two potential fronts in the effort to prevent nuclear weapons or materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. A third problem is Iran. Iran has declared its intention to develop a nuclear fuel cycle for peaceful purposes. The U.S. and its European allies suspect that Iran plans to use its completed fuel cycle to produce nuclear weapons. The IAEA has danced with Iran on the issue of nuclear inspections; some Iranian facilities have been acknowledged and inspected, but other suspected facilities have not. Iran’s political leadership is increasingly hostile toward the United States and Israel.5 Iran has strong ties to some of the more active anti-Israeli and anti-American terrorist groups in Palestine and elsewhere, including Hezbollah and Hamas. Another state of concern with regard to the possible leakage of fissile material to terrorists is Russia. In Russia the problem from the U.S. standpoint is not political intentions: the Putin administration had declared its shared interest in fighting terrorism, seen as a strategic threat to Russia. But Russia’s capability to protect its own vast storehouse of nuclear weapons and weapons-grade material has been doubted by Western experts.6 Russia’s post-Soviet nuclear weapons complex suffered from frostbite and neuralgia combined: interruptions of state funding for personnel and other expenses; inadequate accounting systems for weapons and fissile materials; former Soviet nomenklatura going “private” with state assets under their control, and in cahoots with criminals; and loss of scientific and weapons engineering expertise as formerly prestigious and highly paid experts were reduced to bartering for their services.7 A third reason for the U.S. and its allies to be concerned about the proximate threat of nuclear terrorism is the apparent ease with which a nuclear device might be smuggled onto American territory. Nuclear material sufficient for a bomb might be smaller than a football and easily concealed within a cargo container or airline baggage. Of some seven million cargo containers reaching American ports each year, fewer than five percent may be inspected.8 Depending on the type of weapon assembly and the yield required, terrorists could sneak into U.S. or allied territory a device sufficient to kill tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent civilians, apart from any damage done to military or government targets. For this purpose, terrorists might purchase an already assembled nuclear weapon or obtain fissile material and assemble it themselves. Instructions for making nuclear weapons, as in the case of other weapons of mass destruction, can be obtained from “open sources” including the internet.
1AC—Pakistan (5/7)
An attack causes extinction even if it fails
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, (Political Analyst for Al-Ahram Weekly), August 26, 2004. Al-Ahram Weekly. Issue No. 705. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm
What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive.