A need to re-think Obama’s campaign promises
Important voices in the US media have begun to warn President-elect Obama about the risks of an escalation, or “surge”, in Afghanistan. War is not the answer, we read. There is no such thing as a military solution in Afghanistan, others say. The US military is stressed from years of war in Iraq and elsewhere, writes Bob Herbert in the New York Times, budgets and equipment are strained: “sending thousands of additional men and women (some to die, some to be terribly wounded) on a fool’s errand in the rural, mountainous guerrilla paradise of Afghanistan would be madness”. Andrew Bacevich, a professor at Boston University, on a Newsweek’s special edition urges the newly elected US president to focus on much more modest political objectives there, namely ensuring that terrorists can’t use the country as a safe haven for launching attacks around the world.
Is it the sign of a newfound realism in Washington? Or is it just common sense coming from well-informed analysts and pundits? It could be both. But what is interesting from a European perspective is that something which in our capitals has been discussed for months (and criticized by the US government) is now openly debated in American mainstream media.
Of course, the economic crisis drives some of this new thinking. Why, people ask, spending more money to send more troops for an escalation in Afghanistan, when the US is facing a profound economic crisis? Why countless billions of taxpayer dollars should be used to support the utterly corrupt government of Hamid Karzai? In fact, power in Afghanistan is not exercised from Kabul. Real power rests with tribal leaders and warlords.
The basis of our strategy in Afghanistan, argues Bacevich, “should therefore become decentralization and outsourcing, offering cash and other emoluments to local leaders who will collaborate in excluding terrorists from their territory”. This should be supported by an active monitoring of the situation by intelligence agencies and, when necessary, military strikes to crush Taliban or other radical insurgency.
Such a strategy would not necessarily require more troops. Just a better use of the resources that the allies have already deployed there. Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason, two counterinsurgency experts writing in The Atlantic last October, observed that fighting insurgents from provincial capitals in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan as NATO is doing was “disastrous”. “The Taliban”, they write, “are well aware that the center of gravity in Afghanistan is the rural Pashtun district and village, and that Afghan army and coalition are seldom there”. On the other hand, tribal leaders are not predisposed to support the Taliban, as their intolerant form of Islam goes against Afghan traditional values.
To implement a successful form of decentralization, the coalition would need to reconfigure its operations and abandon the concept of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) which are too thin on the ground. Much more effective would be to create small development and security teams posted in every district in the south and east of the country. Johnson and Mason estimate that 20,000 personnel (one-third of the 60,000 foreign personnel now present in Afghanistan) would be enough to man about 200 district-based teams. Each of these would include “roughly 60 to 70 NATO security personnel, 30 to 40 support staff to manage logistics and supervise local development efforts”. Air support would be crucial to provide security of such relatively small units.
But the reasons for re-thinking Obama’s campaign promises to send more troops to Afghanistan are also strategic. As Bacevich points out, “the chief effect of military operations there so far has been not to defeat the radical Islamists but to push them across the Pakistani border. As a result, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan, with potentially devastating implications”.
That the situation in Pakistan is becoming more dangerous than in Afghanistan has been stressed also by Pakistani analyst and writer Ahmed Rashid in a recent article for Foreign Affairs. In particular, he indicated that the Pakistani government needs more international support to face its problems with Islamist radicals in the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas near the Afghan border. At the same time, the Pakistani military is reluctant to move against insurgents.
No multilateral framework exists to deal with the complex and entwined problems of the region, Rashid points out. NATO has no clear Pakistan policy, despite the fact that its troops in Afghanistan are suffering losses from Pakistan-based insurgents. The UN Security Council “has hardly discussed Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan ”.
The incoming US administration promise of renewed political efforts in the region should be elevated to a high-level diplomatic initiative to build a genuine international consensus on the achievement of Afghan stability by addressing the sources of Pakistan’s instability, as suggested by Rashid. This should include a settlement of the Kashmir dispute, which would allow the Pakistani military to concentrate its efforts on the border with Afghanistan.
“A first step”, Rashid suggested, “could be the establishment of a contact group on the region authorized by the UN Security Council” including the five permanent members, NATO and moderate Muslim countries, and promoting dialogue among all regional actors. Such dialogue would have to be complemented by “a multilayer international development aid package”, aimed particularly at the border regions.
Over the past weekend, vice-President elect Joe Biden has traveled to both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and met with both government officials and coalition troops. No official statements have been published indicating what the new administration’s policy in Afghanistan and in the region will be. Let’s hope Mr Biden has been well briefed and that additional thinking will be made by Obama’s foreign policy team before January 20.
Important voices in the US media have begun to warn President-elect Obama about the risks of an escalation, or “surge”, in Afghanistan. War is not the answer, we read. There is no such thing as a military solution in Afghanistan, others say. The US military is stressed from years of war in Iraq and elsewhere, writes Bob Herbert in the New York Times, budgets and equipment are strained: “sending thousands of additional men and women (some to die, some to be terribly wounded) on a fool’s errand in the rural, mountainous guerrilla paradise of Afghanistan would be madness”. Andrew Bacevich, a professor at Boston University, on a Newsweek’s special edition urges the newly elected US president to focus on much more modest political objectives there, namely ensuring that terrorists can’t use the country as a safe haven for launching attacks around the world.
Is it the sign of a newfound realism in Washington? Or is it just common sense coming from well-informed analysts and pundits? It could be both. But what is interesting from a European perspective is that something which in our capitals has been discussed for months (and criticized by the US government) is now openly debated in American mainstream media.
Of course, the economic crisis drives some of this new thinking. Why, people ask, spending more money to send more troops for an escalation in Afghanistan, when the US is facing a profound economic crisis? Why countless billions of taxpayer dollars should be used to support the utterly corrupt government of Hamid Karzai? In fact, power in Afghanistan is not exercised from Kabul. Real power rests with tribal leaders and warlords.
The basis of our strategy in Afghanistan, argues Bacevich, “should therefore become decentralization and outsourcing, offering cash and other emoluments to local leaders who will collaborate in excluding terrorists from their territory”. This should be supported by an active monitoring of the situation by intelligence agencies and, when necessary, military strikes to crush Taliban or other radical insurgency.
Such a strategy would not necessarily require more troops. Just a better use of the resources that the allies have already deployed there. Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason, two counterinsurgency experts writing in The Atlantic last October, observed that fighting insurgents from provincial capitals in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan as NATO is doing was “disastrous”. “The Taliban”, they write, “are well aware that the center of gravity in Afghanistan is the rural Pashtun district and village, and that Afghan army and coalition are seldom there”. On the other hand, tribal leaders are not predisposed to support the Taliban, as their intolerant form of Islam goes against Afghan traditional values.
To implement a successful form of decentralization, the coalition would need to reconfigure its operations and abandon the concept of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) which are too thin on the ground. Much more effective would be to create small development and security teams posted in every district in the south and east of the country. Johnson and Mason estimate that 20,000 personnel (one-third of the 60,000 foreign personnel now present in Afghanistan) would be enough to man about 200 district-based teams. Each of these would include “roughly 60 to 70 NATO security personnel, 30 to 40 support staff to manage logistics and supervise local development efforts”. Air support would be crucial to provide security of such relatively small units.
But the reasons for re-thinking Obama’s campaign promises to send more troops to Afghanistan are also strategic. As Bacevich points out, “the chief effect of military operations there so far has been not to defeat the radical Islamists but to push them across the Pakistani border. As a result, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan, with potentially devastating implications”.
That the situation in Pakistan is becoming more dangerous than in Afghanistan has been stressed also by Pakistani analyst and writer Ahmed Rashid in a recent article for Foreign Affairs. In particular, he indicated that the Pakistani government needs more international support to face its problems with Islamist radicals in the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas near the Afghan border. At the same time, the Pakistani military is reluctant to move against insurgents.
No multilateral framework exists to deal with the complex and entwined problems of the region, Rashid points out. NATO has no clear Pakistan policy, despite the fact that its troops in Afghanistan are suffering losses from Pakistan-based insurgents. The UN Security Council “has hardly discussed Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan ”.
The incoming US administration promise of renewed political efforts in the region should be elevated to a high-level diplomatic initiative to build a genuine international consensus on the achievement of Afghan stability by addressing the sources of Pakistan’s instability, as suggested by Rashid. This should include a settlement of the Kashmir dispute, which would allow the Pakistani military to concentrate its efforts on the border with Afghanistan.
“A first step”, Rashid suggested, “could be the establishment of a contact group on the region authorized by the UN Security Council” including the five permanent members, NATO and moderate Muslim countries, and promoting dialogue among all regional actors. Such dialogue would have to be complemented by “a multilayer international development aid package”, aimed particularly at the border regions.
Over the past weekend, vice-President elect Joe Biden has traveled to both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and met with both government officials and coalition troops. No official statements have been published indicating what the new administration’s policy in Afghanistan and in the region will be. Let’s hope Mr Biden has been well briefed and that additional thinking will be made by Obama’s foreign policy team before January 20.
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