Time is not on US side in Afghanistan

By S.P.SETH

The United States is in the midst of reappraising its military strategy to combat the Taliban threat in Afghanistan. Based on General Stanley McChrystal’s report, who heads the 100,000-strong NATO force (more than two-thirds Americans) in Afghanistan, the emphasis will be more on securing the population than engaging and chasing Taliban insurgents across the country’s wild and far-flung terrain.

There is a growing realization that the United States is not winning the war, but the situation is not yet hopeless and can be turned around. The report says, “The situation in Afghanistan is serious but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort.”

Two cardinal features of the proposed new strategy are: (i) to put more focus on securing population centers, as well as reducing civilian casualties from wild air strikes on suspected Taliban. In other words, NATO forces must become people friendly and development-oriented.

The recent air strikes hitting two NATO oil tankers, hijacked by the Taliban, have killed many civilians creating even greater anger against foreign forces in Afghanistan. Which is not a good sign for the unfolding policy.

At the operational level, it is felt that there should be greater flexibility in tasks assigned to different national components of the NATO forces. At present, only American and British troops seem to be doing much of the heavy fighting and suffering high casualties in the process.

Another feature of the new strategy is to expand the role of the Afghan troops through increased numbers and better training. The idea being that they will incrementally take over from the American forces.

But, in the interim period, the United States will pour in more troops in Afghanistan, estimated at about another 20,000. With this, the US contribution will rise to nearly 90, 000 troops, with the total NATO strength rising to 120,000 or more.

Which takes the number closer to the Soviet troop strength at the height of their occupation and eventual retreat. It is certainly an uncomfortable juxtaposition.

America’s Afghan operations increasingly look like another Vietnam in the making or the Soviet disaster. And it is tending to become Obama’s war.

Even the most comfortable assessment of the Afghan war by General McChrystal regards the situation as “serious” but capable of being turned around.

That is where the problem arises. Because all the assumptions of the new strategy are based on the idea that there is a functioning government in Afghanistan with institutional mechanisms in place to create and train an Afghan army under a chain of command and answering to an established civilian government.

This is more a cherished idea than a reality.

Afghanistan doesn’t have a legitimate functioning government. The chaos of the elections simply reinforces this reality.

And without a functioning government, any Afghan army will be a ragtag arrangement, which will disintegrate with the first whiff of American disengagement.

Time is not on America’s side. They are talking of turning the war around within a year or two. The counter-insurgency experts, on the other hand, put the time frame of at least a decade.

The war is becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States. Some estimates put the daily cost for the United States at $100 million a day. Even at the best of times, such outlays, combined with increasing casualties and with no exit strategy in sight, is not sustainable.

And these are not the best of times. The United States is in the midst of a worst recession since the thirties’ depression and its public debt is rising exponentially.

As things stand, the only sensible choice is to deal with terrorism not by occupying other countries and getting bogged down, but by a combination of deploying rapid reaction forces to deal with external threats and internal vigilance.