The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan will probably ask President Obama for more U.S. forces. A leaked, classified document suggests that the mission “will likely result in failure” within the next year without additional troops. In a classified memo first leaked to The Washington Post, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said that failure to reverse insurgent momentum within the next 12 months “risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” The report comes at a time when the White House, the Pentagon, and the American public are debating whether a troop surge, much like the one in Iraq in 2007, would reverse recent gains by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Reports suggest that General McChrystal will put in a formal request to the White House for more troops, possibly as many as 30,000. The 66-page document criticizes Afghanistan’s weak central government and notes a strengthening Taliban insurgency. President Barack Obama has yet to say whether he’ll approve a second round of troop increases. The U.S. president committed 17,000 additional troops in February and is facing a Democratic Party skeptical of whether more boots on the ground will aid the effort.
A new survey of public opinion in Iran finds that most Iranians consider Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the legitimate president, despite the mass demonstrations that followed the hotly contested June elections. Of the more than 1,000 persons interviewed in the survey released by WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO), 83 percent expressed confidence in the election results that gave Ahmadinejad a second term, while two-thirds said they considered the June election to be “completely free and fair.” The respondents also showed strong support for domestic governing institutions. Some experts say fear could have played a role in the high approval ratings, especially in light of the harsh crackdown against the summer’s protests. “You can read it one of two ways,” said Gary Sick, an Iran scholar at Columbia University. “Either people are afraid to say things that could get them into trouble, or it could simply be that’s what they’re told day in and day out through public media, and that’s where they get most of their information.” The survey also examined Iran’s relations with the United States, finding that most Iranians (63 percent) favor restoring diplomatic ties with the United States, although a staggering 71 percent have little or no confidence that Obama can “do the right thing” in his handling of world affairs.
At least 18 people were killed and dozens more were wounded in renewed fighting between soldiers and rebels in the Darfur region of Sudan. The Sudanese army confirmed a battle against the main rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), last Thursday, and that it had “purged the areas of the remnants” of the SLA. The joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force, UNAMID, is sending an investigation team to verify the conflict and assess the humanitarian situation. The clashes are the first since Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, the outgoing commander UNAMID, said that war in the region was effectively over. Since the conflict broke out in 2003, 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have been displaced, according to UN figures.
China plans to leapfrog the United States in energy efficiency, renewable sources of power, cuts in vehicle pollution and closures of dirty plants, says UN climate chief, Yvo de Boer. In an interview with the Associated Press on the eve of this week’s climate change summit in New York, de Boer said China is poised to join the European Union as a “front-runner” in countries battling climate change. Reuters reports that Chinese President Hu Jintao may lay down a “carbon intensity” target, and a senior Chinese official has promised an important speech laying out “the next policies, measures and actions that China is going to take.” The steps would send a strong signal to the United States, which under the Bush administration pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol because emerging powers like China and India were not required to reduce emissions. The summit is intended to forge a consensus between developing and developed countries on climate change in preparation for a new deal set to be signed in Copenhagen in December, which if successful would replace the Kyoto Protocol. For more on global climate change, see Maurice Strong’s piece in World Policy Journal‘s Summer 2009 issue: Facing Down Armageddon: Our Environment at a Crossroads.