Still necessary?
Sep 22nd 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC
From Economist.com
Is America's commitment to the war in Afghanistan waning?
AP
WHEN he was campaigning to be president, Barack Obama said over again that Afghanistan was the necessary war, the one that was justified by al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 but which had been starved of resources because of the unnecessary war in Iraq. Since taking office he has generally been as good as his word. He deployed an additional 17,000 troops, declaring in March that if the Afghan government fell to the Taliban, the country would "again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." In May he fired General David McKiernan and sent a new man, General Stanley McChrystal, to command the American and coalition forces. Now, however, the new man is asking for still more soldiers—and it is not clear whether Mr Obama will let him have them.
General McChrystal's assessment of the job he faces in Afghanistan, leaked to the Washington Post on Monday, pulls no punches. He says bluntly that success cannot be taken for granted, that the overall situation is deteriorating in the face of a resilient and growing insurgency, and that America and NATO are in urgent need of a completely re-engineered and "properly resourced" counter-insurgency campaign. He does not specify how many additional forces he will need. Indeed, he is careful to say that resources alone will not win the war. But he does say that "under-resourcing could lose it". And although he thinks it would be ideal if Afghan security forces could lead the fight, he concludes that they will not be strong enough soon enough, so coalition forces will have to bridge the gap. Once the coalition has adopted its new strategy, the general adds, "we must signal unwavering commitment to see it through to success."
As it happens, Mr Obama had a perfect opportunity to send just such a signal on September 20th, when he appeared on several of America's Sunday talk shows in an effort to boost support for health reform. He has had the general's report for several weeks and the White House confirms that he has read it. But no indication of unwavering commitment was forthcoming—if anything, the opposite. "Until I'm satisfied that we've got the right strategy I'm not gonna be sending some young man or woman over there—beyond what we already have," he told NBC's "Meet the Press". "I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face or, in some way—you know, sending a message that America is here for the duration."
This was not a case of a president being caught on the hop. Robert Gibbs, his press secretary, told reporters on Monday that an overall assessment of strategy in Afghanistan was continuing inside the administration and would not be completed for several more weeks. No decision would be made about sending more troops until it was. And this assessment, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said last week, was starting from "first principles".
Could Mr Obama's commitment to fight the "good" war in Afghanistan be fading? Two recent developments are bound to influence his thinking. First, support for the war is declining. A national CNN/Opinion Research poll in mid-September found 39% in favour of the war in Afghanistan compared with 58% against. Embarrassingly for a Democratic president whose concessions on health reform have already annoyed many on the left of his own party, most of the support comes from Republicans. A second factor weighing heavily on the administration is the blatant ballot-stuffing that occurred during last month's fraud-ridden presidential election in Afghanistan.
Although General McChrystal calls for additional resources, the chief conclusion of his leaked report is that victory will depend not on killing more Taliban fighters but on winning the confidence of the people, many of whom have been alienated by widespread corruption under President Hamid Karzai and have "little reason to support their government". This crisis of confidence, the general argues, has created fertile ground for the insurgency, which will not be defeated until Afghanistan has a capable government of its own. "A foreign army alone cannot beat an insurgency," he says. Mr Obama, it seems, may not be willing to send out a bigger one until he is persuaded that Afghanistan has a government that he too can believe in.
Pakistan's New Taliban
Managing another threat to stability.
By Haider Ali Hussein Mullick | NEWSWEEK
As president Obama mulls sending more troops to Afghanistan, he faces a reluctant Congress, unpersuaded Americans, and wary allies, who are all raising the quintessential question: why are we there? The one-word answer: Pakistan. If preventing September 11–type attacks is the goal, then no other country's stability is more important. But even as the old guard of the Pakistan Taliban is pushed out of the Swat Valley, Pakistan is in danger yet again. A new, more virulent faction is emerging in the volatile center and south—which, if left unchallenged, has the potential to destabilize the nuclear-armed country.
The new faction is an outgrowth of the old Pakistani Taliban, which made its debut in 2006, and was composed of the residual members of the 1980s Soviet-hating Afghan mujahedin and then augmented by fleeing Afghan Taliban and Qaeda after 9/11. They frequently shared techniques, arms, money, and recruits with allies in Afghanistan, but focused on controlling the northern border region of Pakistan through shadow governments, in which the Taliban set up their own administrative councils and Sharia courts to try to out-administer the country's official government bodies. By the end of this summer, a U.S.-supported Pakistani initiative had succeeded in driving out the Taliban, which lost territory, public support, and its firebrand leader, Baitullah Mehsud. The bickering group returned to its stronghold in Waziristan, undefeated but contained.
Pakistani military, intelligence, and law-enforcement officials say that within days of the Pakistani Taliban's apparent defeat, the new faction emerged, acutely aware of its weaknesses as well as the opportunities in the center and south of the country. The new Taliban's strategy is to abandon the shadow governments in the north because they had made it vulnerable, attracted little public support, and overstretched its resources. It also plans to decrease the number of suicide attacks, and execute precise attacks on the Army in the north. In the center of Pakistan, it plans to strengthen alliances with ethno-sectarian groups, increase recruitment, target police, and create shadow governments in a part of the country where strong support for such alternative administrative bodies already exists. In the south, it will keep the money flowing by colluding with drug cartels and kidnapping syndicates. The goal: open multiple fronts in the center and south to relieve pressure on the north, spreading the Pakistani military thin. The jackpot, Pakistani officials say, is another Mumbai-type attack in India.
There are signs the strategy is working. Although the Pakistani military continues to squeeze the new Taliban in the north, it is making significant inroads in the country's central province of Punjab, in Baluchistan, and in the port city of Karachi. And in a country rife with ethnic, sectarian, and class divisions, it has jettisoned non-useful allies and increased ties with Punjabi groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Sipah-e-Sahaba, which are notorious for terrorist attacks in Islamabad, Kabul, and Delhi. Now the situation in Pakistan's center and south is similar to what the north looked like two years ago, before the Taliban slowly out-administered the state. Amid multiplying radical madrassas and training camps run by Taliban allies, the Pakistani police, civilian intelligence, and judicial institutions are barely holding on. Thus, this new Taliban team is more dangerous than the old in its ability to give protection to terrorists.
To counter this, Islamabad has recently doubled police salaries and introduced sweeping changes to antiterrorist laws to give more power to the police and courts. The Supreme Court is implementing reforms that will allow the courts to compete with the Taliban's. Now Paki-stan needs to streamline intelligence cooperation on information-sharing and forensics. The U.S. should increase Pakistan's police budget and deploy U.S. Army police trainers, who have had significant success in Iraq and Afghanistan. A U.S.-Pakistani joint plan calls for sending a special force of 10,000 police officers to the north to "hold" territory, but the program should be expanded by bringing in 40,000 more officers for Pakistan's center and south. But the window of opportunity is running out fast: now is the time for effective police action to nip the new Taliban in the bud.
Mullick is senior fellow at the U.S. Joint Special Operations University, a research fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and the Author of the forthcoming book Pakistan's Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies.
AP sources: Obama may change Afghanistan course again
September 22, 2009 WASHINGTON (AP) — President
Obama may change course again as the war worsens in
Afghanistan, steering away from the comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy he laid out this spring and toward a narrower focus on counterterror operations aimed at al-Qaeda.
The White House is looking at expanding counterterror operations in Pakistan as an alternative to a major military escalation in Afghanistan.
Two senior administration officials said Monday that the renewed fight against al-Qaeda could lead to more missile attacks on Pakistan terrorist havens by unmanned U.S. spy planes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made.
The armed drones could contain al-Qaeda in a smaller, if more remote, area and keep its leaders from retreating back into Afghanistan, the officials said.
The prospect of a White House alternative to a deepening involvement in Afghanistan comes as administration officials debate whether to send more troops — as urged in a blunt assessment of the deteriorating conflict by the top U.S. commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
The president thus far has not endorsed the McChrystal approach, saying in television interviews over the weekend that he needs to be convinced that sending more troops would make Americans safer from al-Qaeda.
Tellingly, Obama reiterated in those interviews that his core goal is to destroy al-Qaeda, which is not present in significant numbers in Afghanistan. He did not focus on saving Afghanistan.
"I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face," Obama told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.
Top aides to Obama said he still has questions and wants more time to decide.
The officials said the administration aims to push ahead with the ground mission in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, still leaving the door open for sending more U.S. troops. But Obama's top advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, have indicated they are reluctant to send many more troops — if any at all — in the immediate future.
The proposed shift would bolster U.S. action on Obama's long-stated goal of dismantling terrorist havens, but it could also complicate American relations with Pakistan, long wary of the growing use of aerial drones to target militants along the porous border with Afghanistan.
Most U.S. military officials have preferred a classic counterinsurgency mission to keep al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan by defeating the Taliban and securing the local population.
However, one senior White House official said it's not clear that the Taliban would welcome al-Qaeda back into Afghanistan. The official noted that it was only after the 9/11 attacks that the United States invaded Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban in pursuit of al-Qaeda.
Pakistan will not allow the United States to deploy a large-scale military troop buildup on its soil. However, its military and intelligence services are believed to have assisted the U.S. with airstrikes, even while the government has publicly condemned them.
Wider use of missile strikes and less reliance on ground troops would mark Obama's second shift in strategy and tactics since taking office last January.
But stepping up attacks on the remnants of al-Qaeda also would dovetail with Obama's presidential campaign promise of directly going after the terrorist network that spawned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Over the past few weeks, White House and Pentagon officials have debated the best way to defeat al-Qaeda — and whether to send more troops to Afghanistan to battle the extremist Taliban elements that hosted Osama bin Laden and his operatives in the 1990s and have continued to aid the terrorist group.
McChrystal has argued that without more troops the United States could lose the war against the Taliban and allied insurgents.
"Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it," McChrystal wrote in a five-page Commander's Summary that was unveiled late Sunday by The Washington Post. His 66-page report, which was also made public by the Post in a partly classified version after appeals from Pentagon officials, was sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Aug. 30 and is now under review at the White House.
In an interview Monday with CNN, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said, "Where General McChrystal is asking for more resources, in all aspects, to boost the effort against terrorism, he has our support there."
But Karzai added that the U.S. and its allies also need to "concentrate on the sanctuaries for terrorists outside of Afghanistan."
White House officials have made clear that Pakistan, where the U.S. cannot send troops, should be the top concern since that is where top al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden himself, are believed to be hiding. Very few al-Qaeda extremists are believed to still be in Afghanistan, according to military and White House officials.
There have been more than 50 missile strikes against Pakistan targets since August 2008, according to an Associated Press count. Two weeks ago, a U.S. drone killed a key suspected al-Qaeda recruiter and trainer, Pakistani national Ilyas Kashmiri.
Clinton: Obama wise to think through Afghanistan
September 22, 2009 Former President Bill Clinton says he believes President Barack Obama is wise to step back and rethink U.S. policy in Afghanistan before approving the dispatch of additional U.S. troops there.
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON —
Former President Bill Clinton says he believes President Barack Obama is wise to step back and rethink U.S. policy in Afghanistan before approving the dispatch of additional U.S. troops there.
Appearing on a news show Tuesday, Clinton said he things are "teetering there," and he believes the Obama should wait at least until there is a resolution of the disputed presidential election.
Clinton told NBC's "Today" show "maybe the resolution would be to have both the top candidates in some configuration in the Afghani government going forward." Preliminary results from the Aug. 20 poll show President Hamid Karzai winning with 54.6 percent, but if enough votes are thrown out, it could drop him below 50 percent, forcing a runoff with top challenger Abdullah Abdullah.
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