Surge, and then what? - Rahimullah Yusufzai

Tuesday, December 08, 2009 Rahimullah Yusufzai The first surge of 21,000 troops in Afghanistan ordered by President Barack Obama soon after he assumed office didn’t achieve much. After another review of the failed US strategy, and an agonisingly long wait of 92 days during which his war council repeatedly met, he has decided to send another 30,000 soldiers on a tough mission to reverse the Taliban momentum, increase the beleaguered Afghan government’s security capabilities over the next 18 months and stabilise a country that has come to be known as the graveyard of empires. With 68,000 US troops deployed in the country and another 30,000 set to join them by next summer, the United States was not only commanding the NATO forces but also setting the goals of the war. Now Obama will be overseeing a threefold increase in the number of US forces in Afghanistan and escalating a war in a distant, hostile land with no firm prospects of success. Its outcome will define his presidency, decide his political fate and influence the chances of Democratic Party candidates in the next year’s elections. The war hysteria built up by Washington has put pressure on reluctant US allies, particularly in Europe, to contribute troops and resources to the first NATO mission outside its traditional sphere of influence. Some 25 NATO members out of 28 have been coaxed to send 7,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and the organisation’s aggressive secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is pushing others to do their bit. About 42,000 troops from 42 nations, excluding the US, are already deployed in Afghanistan, and in the words of Rasmussen, the extra deployment will see “a new momentum” in the allies’ Afghan mission. Once the initial enthusiasm about the renewed war effort subsides and the NATO mission gets prolonged, the strong opposition in every western country to deployment of forces in Afghanistan could become still stronger. The most recent public opinion survey in Germany is instructive: two-thirds of the respondents wanted their soldiers to be pulled out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. It is obvious that President Obama’s hand was forced by his military commanders to send more troops to Afghanistan. The delay in his making up his mind underscored the president’s dilemma in choosing a course that would escalates fighting, cause more death and destruction, cost the limping US economy a fortune and still fall short of ensuring success. As the commander-in-chief of the US armed forces, he will be responsible for victory or defeat, though the military commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, will also have to bear responsibility and show results after demanding the 40,000 additional troops and warning that he could face defeat if his demand wasn’t conceded. The president tried to appease everyone: the Pentagon and the Republicans, who wanted the troops’ surge, Democrats who were opposed to an open-ended conflict and the vocal anti-war lobby that accused the military-industrial complex and the neo-conservatives of landing America in another unwinnable war. Despite being vague, his exit strategy marking July 2011 for starting the withdrawal of the 30,000 “surge” forces was designed to placate the Democrats and liberals, but it appears unrealistic and may not work. Besides, it has provoked the Republicans into accusing the president of endangering US troops and emboldening the Taliban fighters who may simply opt to retreat and wait out the 18 months before the American soldiers start pulling out from Afghanistan. Such a Taliban strategy would also provide the US and its allies an opportunity to claim that attacks by the insurgents have gone down and most of Afghanistan has been stabilised and thus it is time to start sending their troops home. A clever politician, President Obama didn’t promise outright victory in Afghanistan, even though he spoke forcefully about the need to defeat Al-Qaeda. A victory will also require defeating the emboldened Afghan Taliban, an uphill task considering the performance of US-led NATO forces during the last eight years. Other benchmarks of victory will require enabling the Afghan government to stand on its own feet, ridding President Hamid Karzai’s government of corruption and undertaking some “nation-building” projects in Afghanistan. Since victory in Afghanistan cannot be achieved without Pakistan’s cooperation, as US government functionaries say, reaching that elusive goal would require strengthening Islamabad’s ability to fight the terrorists and curb the militancy through both military and non-military assistance. This, indeed, is a tall order and will require patience from the US where voters are growing impatient that America is in the midst of its longest war. The “surge” of 21,000 troops ordered by President Obama achieved limited success. A strong contingent of 10,000 US Marines was sent last summer to the Taliban stronghold of Helmand, joining the 9,000 British and a few thousand Afghan National Army forces to launch offensives to capture territory and strengthen the Afghan government in outlying, poppy-growing districts. After much fighting and casualties and displacement of villagers, the US and British military commanders are now saying that their troops weren’t sufficient in number to control the captured places. The Taliban fighters simply pulled back to their safe havens, to bide time, launch hit-and-run attacks and plant roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that have taken a heavy toll of the foreign forces. This meant the need for more boots on the ground and thus the decision to double the number of US-led forces in one province, Helmand, alone in a bid to hold territory and keep the Taliban at bay. Gen McChrystal has already started implementing a new policy to abandon remote military bases and concentrate on defending towns and cities. The vacated outposts, like those in Nuristan, Paktia, Paktika and other Pakhtun-populated provinces, have been taken over by the Taliban and the change publicised through videotapes containing footage of their fighters happily displaying war booty. On the ground the battle in Afghanistan is starkly uneven. On the one hand are the US-led coalition forces that will total 147,000 by next summer when the “surge” troops from all NATO countries are in place. In addition, there are around 103,000 so-called private contractors — or, to put it bluntly, mercenaries — assigned all kinds of tasks ranging from supplying foreign forces to protecting convoys and sensitive installations. Then there is the Afghan National Army, now 90,000-strong and to be raised to 134,000 in 2010, and the Afghan National Police numbering more than 70,000. In fact, there are proposals to double the national army or even raise it to 400,000, without explanation as to who is going to pay for such a large force in a country that is dependent on foreign aid to run its government. Another armed force is the “Arbaki,” the village militias like the government-backed “lashkars” operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas and districts. All this makes a formidable force of heavily-equipped foreign troops alongside Afghan forces, who may be lacking in training but know how to fight, particularly if ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras are deployed in Pakhtun areas to battle the Taliban. And yet this huge force is unable to defeat the lightly-armed Taliban fighters, whose strength until now was estimated at not more than 15,000. Retired general James Jones, the national security adviser to President Obama, now believes the Taliban fighters number 27,000, a figure that appears on the high side. The same general recently estimated that there were less than one hundred Al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. It is intriguing that these one hundred loyalists of Osama bin Laden, based in Afghanistan and some more hiding in Pakistan and able to cross the long, porous border, constitute the group that in President Obama’s view is occupying the epicentre of violent extremism and posing the biggest security threat to the US. The outnumbered and outgunned Taliban and other resistance groups in Afghanistan know they cannot fight such a large and well-resourced military force. As has been their practice, they will retreat instead of fighting head-on, melting away and regrouping whenever opportunity arises to inflict painful blows on the coalition forces. They could follow the principle laid down by one Afghan Taliban commander who famously remarked that “the Americans have the watch and we have the time.” The Taliban have shown determination until now in facing a superior enemy, and they will try to wait out this period while still keeping the resistance alive, in the hope that the foreign forces will leave eventually or offer them a negotiated political deal.