Obama's Comprehensive New Strategy for Afghanistan/PakistanAug 18 '09 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Obama is initiating a massive outlay of resources in an effort to create stable nations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the plan has very little likelihood of success
Barack Obama's Comprehensive New Strategy for Afghanistan/Pakistan is so jam-packed with high-minded idealism and can-do determination that one can't help wishing it could succeed. It won't, however, and the sooner America faces up to that reality the smaller will be our ultimate price. Almost nobody likes the Taliban or Al Qaida, so it's comforting to imagine that Obama's "clear and focused goal" is an achievable one: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is the so-called counter-terrorist objective that has driven the war in Afghanistan for the last seven years. Obama is determined to deprive Al Qaida of its "safe-havens" in Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to protect not only America from future terrorist attacks like 9/11, but, indeed, the entire international community. The Taliban and Al Qaida, however, consist of perhaps 2-3 thousand fighters in a mountainous region, with porous borders between contiguous countries, populated by many different clans, tribes, and ethnic groups, most of which share links with the Taliban and Al Qaida, at least as co-religionists. Since the Taliban and Al Qaida can melt into and recruit from these populations at will, dismantling or defeating Al Qaida, once and for all, is an utter impossibility. Al Qaida and/or the Taliban can dissolve when need be and, later, reform – as soon as we leave a region. They can also form or reform in other Islamic states. Disrupting Al Qaida is, at least, a plausible objective. Afghanistan expert Rory Stewart, for example, has urged the Obama administration to settle for a much smaller footprint in Afghanistan. The United States and its allies could keep a few tens of thousands of troops on the ground there to keep the Taliban and Al Qaida from settling in, but Afghanistan as a nation could fend for itself. Our very presence in Afghanistan and our drone attacks in Pakistan often have the effect of strengthening the very insurgencies we wish to suppress. An errant drone attack in April of this year, for example, reportedly resulted in a sharp increase in militant activity in Pakistan. The recent surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan resulted in July being the deadliest month yet for NATO troops. Rather than dismantling the Taliban or Al Qaida, we facilitate their recruitment efforts and spur them to action. The hardball approach being taken by the Obama administration in relation to both Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also has that effect. The counter-terrorist objective as stated by Obama is unattainable, but now we are told that America will need to invest in a much broader and lengthier counter-insurgency strategy in order to achieve the narrow counter-terrorist objective. To defeat the Taliban and Al Qaida, we will need to build a stable democracy is Afghanistan by ensuring fair elections, rooting out corruption, providing development assistance and humanitarian aid, and freeing their economy from the pernicious dependence on drug-trafficking. Furthermore, we must ensure regional stability by providing aid and military assistance in Pakistan. Obama plans to augment the military build-up with a civilian army of agricultural specialists, educators, engineers and lawyers. The counter-insurgency strategy appears to have taken hold in Iraq; why not in Afghanistan? Afghanistan is a very different place than Iraq. Iraq, for all its war- and sanctions-related scars and ethnic divisions, has a diverse economy, plenty of oil to generate wealth, and a sizeable middle-class. Afghanistan is an inherently unstable impoverished country where illiteracy is rampant and where teachers are under-qualified. One-quarter of children in Afghanistan die before age five. Sixty-percent of older children do not attend school – especially the girls because they are subject to Taliban reprisals if they do. Only 23% of the people even have access to safe drinking water and less than one in eight have bathroom facilities. Corruption is part of their way of life. Afghanistan soldiers trained by American troops routinely allow Taliban fighters to pass through the territories they "protect" if properly bribed. The drug trade breeds violence and corruption (as well as contributing to an international health problem), but any attempt to suppress it will further reduce the level of living of the Afghani population and drive them into cooperation with the Taliban insurgency. Growing poppies for production of opium is four times more profitable than the best alternative crop. Farmers in Afghanistan will reason that it is better to grow poppies even if you have to donate half of your proceeds to the Taliban than to grow cotton at one-quarter the value. Suppressing the drug trade in Afghanistan would require a massive economic transition plan for farmers as well as buying off the elite drug lords, but we've never had success with such efforts when attempted in places like Colombia. On the contrary, vigorous efforts to suppress drug-producing crops promote insurgencies. There is little "know-how" or "Yankee-ingenuity" if Afghanistan. The local populaces oftentimes can't even maintain what NATO forces have built. The $5 billion over five years ear-marked by Obama for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan will do very little to build a sustainable economy. Obama hopes to build an Afghan army of 134,000 troops as well as a police force of 82,000, but a country as poor as Afghanistan could not sustain such a force. They would exist only as long as America was prepared to pay them. Another element of Obama's plan is to ask more of its NATO partners. On April 4th, 2009, Obama attended the NATO Conference in Strasbourg to seek support for his Afghan-Pakistani border initiative. What he got from them was a mere 5000 additional troops for temporary, non-combat roles, 3000 of which would stay only long enough to provide security for the election this month. The other 2000 would serve as trainers and advisors in non-conflict regions. Meanwhile, Obama has already added more than 21,000 American troops and has allocated an additional $80 billion dollars to the Pentagon to support the effort. The problem is that the NATO allies don't share Obama's view that a small number of Al Qaida fighters roaming about in the mountains of the Kush region pose a great enough threat to world security to justify the kind of massage outlay of resources that Obama has in mind, especially in a time of worldwide economic crisis. Security depends as much on a nation's economic strength as its military muscle. Overspending for military adventures is the road down which many a previous empire has encountered an unceremonious demise. Just ask King Philip II of Spain. America will be shouldering almost the entire cost of this hyper-elaborate program for Afghanistan, with little likelihood that a stable nation will emerge. The Obama administration is rightly anticipating that America will soon grow impatient with this war. Almost 700 Americans have died so far in Afghanistan with little to show for their sacrifice. A CNN poll in July found only 41 percent of Americans support the war and 54 percent are opposed. The Obama administration hopes to allay rising concerns about the war by assuring the people that they "will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable" and "we will seek a new compact with the Afghan government to crack down on corrupt behavior and set clear benchmarks, clear metrics for international assistance." When asked how we will know if the effort in Afghanistan was meeting with success, Richard Holbrooke, Obama's appointment to coordinate the massive interagency civilian effort to stabilize Afghanistan, could only suggest (alluding to a Supreme Court decision about pornography), "We'll know it when we see it." So far, the actual metrics have not been forthcoming, though they are in development. The more critical problem is that Obama has said nothing about what happens if benchmarks are not met – by the Afghan government, the Pakistanis, or our own military or civilian contingents. What will be the consequences? Will we then pull out? There is plenty of reason to be concerned about wiggle-room and mission-creep, both of which the American public has encountered frequently in the past. Those of us who believe that this new strategy is flawed and cannot result in success would be comforted, at least in small degree, by evidence that an exit strategy has been considered for the likely circumstance that benchmarks are not met. None has been articulated. Several strategy reviews conducted in recent months have urged the administration to take a narrower view of the objectives for Afghanistan – to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe-haven for Al Qaida. Obama, however, thinks expansively and has an impressive capacity for detail. Sooner or later, however, his ideas and rhetoric, in each of the major policy areas, meet up with unfriendly realities, for which he has less aptitude. The expansive counter-insurgency effort is not going to succeed, nor would it advance the counter-terrorism goal. As with the bailouts, economic stimulus package, infrastructure and alternative energy investments, and healthcare proposals, Obama's inclination is to spend lavishly in promoting his agendas, but America's resources are limited. Each major expenditure undertaken at present adds constraint to future options. The Comprehensive New Strategy for Afghanistan/Pakistan will entail a massive outlay of human and monetary resources in an effort to create stable nations in Afghanistan and Pakistan – a task that is the kind of pipe-dream all too ordinary in an opium-producing nation.  |
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