
The United States has two compelling interests at issue in the Afghan conflict. One is the ongoing, increasingly successful but incomplete effort to reduce the threat posed by al Qaeda and related jihadi groups, and to finally eliminate the al Qaeda leadership that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. The second is the pursuit of a South and Central Asian region that is at least stable enough to ensure that Pakistan does not fail completely as a state or fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.
More than that may well be achievable. In my view, most current American commentary underestimates the potential for transformational changes in South Asia over the next decade or two, spurred by economic progress and integration. But there is no question that the immediate policy choices facing the United States in Afghanistan are very difficult. All of the courses of action now under consideration by the Obama administration and members of Congress carry with them risk and uncertainty.
To protect the security of the American people and the interests of the United States and its allies, we should persist with the difficult effort to stabilize Afghanistan and reverse the Taliban's momentum. This will probably require additional troops for a period of several years, until Afghan forces can play the leading role.
However, that depends on the answer to Gen. Colin Powell's reported question, "What will more troops do?" As Gen. Stanley McChrystal wrote in his recent assessment, "Focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely." Instead -- after years of neglect of U.S. policy and resources in Afghanistan and after a succession of failed strategies both in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the United States, as McChrystal put it, has an "urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate." While I cannot endorse or oppose McChyrstal's specific prescriptions for the next phase of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan because I do not know what they are, I do endorse the starting point of his analysis, as well as his general emphases on partnering with Afghan forces and focusing on the needs of the Afghan population. I believe those emphases are necessary but insufficient.
Whether President Obama's policy involves no new troops, a relatively small number of additional forces focused on training, or a much larger deployment, we can be certain of one thing: American soldiers will continue to put their lives on the line in Afghanistan and the U.S. Treasury will continue to be drained in pursuit of U.S. goals there. We know this because President Obama has publicly ruled out withdrawal from Afghanistan as an option. Instead, within the administration and prospectively in Congress, the question seems to be whether to pursue U.S. goals with the resources already invested, or to invest more in tandem with the adoption of a new strategy. It is important, then, to think through what U.S. interests in Afghanistan actually are and what means may be required to achieve them.
Chris Hondros/Getty Images
Steve Coll is president of the New America Foundation and the author of Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens. This article is adapted from his recent testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and posted here with permission.
The Case for Humility in Afghanistan
I agree with most of the arguments presented by the author in this article. However, keeping in view the fact that the recent developments happening Pakistan, especially the attack on the Army Headquarters, have proven beyond doubt that something is not right within the Pakistani military-intelligence set-up. It is easy to point fingers, and it is even easier to accuse Islamabad's politicians and generals. What is really hard to understand is strength and the power of the Taliban sympathizers within the Pakistani bureaucracy, both civil and military.
Whereas it is heartening to note that the US recognizes the efforts of the Pakistanis to support the war on terror, an extremely pertinent argument of the critics of providing tons of aid to Pakistan is that this may turn out to be a failed operation in the final analysis for the simple reason that the powers-that-be in Islamabad are the ones supporting the terrorist attacks within and outside the country.
Notwithstanding the glamour and glitter associated with the PR exercise that the Pakistanis are indulging in vis-a-vis the operation in South Waziristan, please remember that the ‘Mullahs’ in the Pakistani Army will never allow peace to be established unless the writ of the barbaric Shariah is imposed in the area.
One is not really sure about the background of the generals conducting these anti-Taliban operations. It'll be interesting to take a second look at the 'active role-players' who are influencing the outcome of these missions.
The way the attack on GHQ was carried out, it appears that the attackers were master planners and strategists. Strangely, not many details have been given out by the Pakistanis, with respect to the origin of the weapons used, the respective identities of the insurgents, etc.
'Trust but verify' is what the US needs to do. Pakistan may have been the greatest ally in the war on terror, yet, Pakistan may not been the greatest nation on the planet earth to trust. Pakistan's Army and the Inter Services Intelligence Service (ISI) are composed of officers who were instrumental in creating the Taliban. Being that it is a nuclear country, the US needs to think hard at the options available before committing itself on a long term basis to Pakistan's politico-economic betterment.
The War in Afghanistan is over, it's all about saving face now.
http://watching-history.blogspot.com/2009/10/war-in-afghanistan-2001-201x.html
Napalm the poppy fields.
Some seven million Afghans were believed to be starving in Afghanistan when the US military arrived in 2001, and the figure doesn't seem to have changed much since. This is the sort of thing that tends to be overlooked as unimportant in most analyses. and strengthens the impression that too many people see Afghanistan's main function in God's creation as a foreign generals' playground, and too few think about, well, the Afghans other than Karzai, warlords, poppy growers and the like.
Another sign of both these things -- the blind analyses and the foreign generals' madness -- is all the recent approving clucking over General McChrystal's repeated announcements that there should be no more 500-pound bombs dropped on Afghan civilians, a ruling twice ignored since he made it. (One such flouting was by a bombing run at 0140 hours, when it would have been entirely impossible for the pilot to tell who the hell the bomb would land on and kill.)
I'm all for the McChrystal ruling, but it was almost eight whole years after this unfortunate practice of dropping 500-pound bombs on innocent civilians started in November 2001: starting thatt month, the United Nations started giving news conferences in Kabul to point to the indefensible (well, there was a claimed defense: it was claimed that the bombing was needed to knock out anti-aircraft defenses that Afghanisatan did not, in fact, have) practice. The UN was employing bomb disposal personnel to extract these monster bombs from people's houses where possible and blow them up elsewhere. The experts were giving names and addresses of those whose misfortune had been mitigated by faulty bombs that smashed through their homes and failed to explode. Yes, Virginia, contrary to normal military briefing bravado, some American bombs don't go off. Quite a few, apparently.
How come it takes the US military nearly eight years before there's a formal public ruling calling for more care about who they're bombing? How come the US public seems to have paid no attention to the long-entrenched military practice? Who thinks that Afghans' memories are so conveniently short?
(4)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE