Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Counterinsurgency Add-On – 2AC

1. 
   PMCs hurts the hearts and minds effort in local populations.
   

Kelemen 6/22 (Michele, NPR, June 22, 2010, “A 'Shocking' Report: U.S. Is Funding Afghan Warlords”, http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/06/22/a–shocking–report–us–is–funding–afghan–warlords/) KFC

Another Pentagon official says a new Defense Department task force is already trying to get a better handle on how U.S. taxpayer dollars are flowing through Afghanistan. Moshe Schwartz of the Congressional Research Service says the Pentagon has improved the way it oversees contracts but still has a ways to go. He says that there are about 16,000 armed security contractors in Afghanistan, most of them Afghans, and that vetting them is key to U.S. strategy. "That is one of the concerns that has been raised by a number of analysts, which is, who are these people being hired by the Department of Defense to provide private security? To the extent that the local population does not look kindly on those individuals, that could hurt our effort to win hearts and minds," Schwartz says. Another analyst says the problem isn't just a contracting issue but the strategy the U.S. is pursuing. Frederick Starr, who runs the Central Asia–Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, says so far the U.S. is only worried about transporting military goods so the Afghans who want to help are only the ones the U.S. pays off.

2. 
   Localities are the center of gravity in Afghani politics – any serious effort at stability must start there.
   

Jones 7 (Seth,prof of security studies @ Georgetown U,  Jan 31–7, The New York Times)KFC

The rising violence and the near certainty of a Taliban spring offensive have triggered calls for an increase in U.S. military forces in Afghanistan. But a military strategy is not likely to succeed. Counterinsurgencies are almost always won by establishing a viable and legitimate government at the local level that can win popular support. In Afghanistan, all politics is local. The country's history is littered with empires that failed to understand this reality, from Alexander the Great more than 2,000 ago to the British and Soviet empires more recently. The Taliban and its allies certainly understand the importance of local politics. They have successfully re–emerged by co–opting or threatening local villagers, and promising better governance and security than the current Afghan government. On my most recent trip to southern Afghanistan in January, I saw that the message of the Taliban clearly resonated with a growing number of locals in southern and eastern parts of the country. Afghans are frustrated by the lack of development over the past five years, and unhappy with widespread government corruption. This makes the Taliban's threat real and significant. The Taliban and its allies have a strong presence in local villages throughout such provinces as Kandahar and Helmand, and are preparing sustained operations. It is telling that the Taliban's primary target is not U.S. or NATO forces, but local Afghans. This reflects the understanding that the local population represents the center of gravity, as Mao Zedong famously wrote. The lesson for the United States and NATO is stark. They will win or lose Afghanistan in the rural villages and districts of the country, not in the capital city of Kabul. And if they are to win, they must begin by understanding the local nature of the insurgency

Counterinsurgency Add-On – 2AC

3. 
   Hearts and minds are key to perception of government and troop legitimacy which is key to counterinsurgency.
   

Clarke 9 (“More Effort Needed to Win Hearts and Minds - Afghanistan Opinion Poll 2009” Michael Clarke, Director, Royal United Services Institute, http://www.rusi.org/analysis/commentary/ref:C4990051938E13/)KM

The news from these polls is not all bad. The investment put into infrastructural development over recent years is becoming evident to ordinary Afghans and the visibility of the benefit in terms of schools, roads, water, power and so on, is either increased or at least not diminished from previous polls. Support remains generally strong for women’s rights – a good indicator for the development of civil society as well as for the female population – though these rights will inevitably be expressed in an Afghan way. And there is no intrinsic love for the narcotics business, even if it is ubiquitous in many parts of Southern Afghanistan. Building on the results of last year’s polling, the Afghan people emerge from these surveys as patient, stoical, politically realistic and depressed. The battle for hearts and minds that will ultimately contain the Taliban and chase the jihadis out of Afghanistan is not yet lost, but it is further than ever from being won. The poll reinforces the idea that the credibility of the Afghan government in the eyes of ordinary people is the most critical commodity at stake. The military effectiveness of the Coalition is secondary to that, though important enough in itself; and the perception of that effectiveness may now have slipped to dangerous levels. This will be a difficult year in which Afghan elections will also have to take place and be seen to be successful. The Coalition must articulate a new strategy, based around the fresh approach of the Obama Administration, emphasising the centrality of governance, training and mentoring, and dealing with corruption. There is still something in the Afghan public’s well of patience to work with in these respects, but on the trends presently discernable, it will not last indefinitely.

4. 
   Conflict in the Middle East escalates and goes nuclear.
   

Steinbach 2 (John, Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee, March 2002, http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.03/0331steinbachisraeli.htm)IM

Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum (and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major (if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon – for whatever reason – the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration." (44).