By: Bill Stewart
This week President Barack Obama revealed his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan. It's a combination of the old and the new, including sending an additional 4,000 US troops to that war torn country. This is on top of the 17,000 troops already on their way. Significantly, he said the US would not needlessly "stay the course" in Afghanistan, a sharp shift, in words at least, from the policy laid out by former President George Bush. A little background here is useful.
First, the war does not take place in Afghanistan alone. Taliban and al Qaeda forces are aided and abetted by tribal forces across the border in Pakistan, as well as by elements of Pakistan's armed forces, specifically, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful and shadowy intelligence arm of the Pakistani military. As a result, fighting between Taliban and al-Qaeda forces on the one hand and US and NATO forces on the other, including air strikes, is sometimes cross-border, which makes nobody happy. As a result of the strategic review, there will be still more military operations in Pakistan to combat a resurgent Taliban.
Secondly, the war in Afghanistan must be seen in the context of an even larger struggle: that between India and Pakistan. Both countries are nuclear powers with atomic weapons at their disposal and the means to deliver them. Pakistan is much smaller than India, so it regards a friendly Afghanistan as essential for its strategic depth. It regards Iran in much the same way. Pakistan's armed forces need Afghanistan as a place to withdraw if need be in the event of an Indian armed incursion. India fully understands that both countries are essential for Pakistan's long-term defense planning. Thus a key element of India's foreign policy is friendly relations with both Afghanistan and Iran. Last summer, according to various intelligence sources, Pakistan's ISI played a direct role in the bombing of India's embassy in Kabul, an attack that left more than 50 people dead. Moreover, last November's terrorist attack in Mumbai, which left more than 200 dead, is known to have been planned in Pakistan, though the Pakistani government vigorously denies any involvement. That may be true, but then what else could Islamabad say? Both incidents have only served to ratchet up tensions between the two countries that have fought three war since their independence from Great Britain in 1947. Stable relations between India and Pakistan is a key objective of the Obama administration, not only for prosecuting the war in Afghanistan but for regional stability as well..
If we look even farther afield, we need to consider China and its attempts to build and hold a greater position in the Middle East, especially Iran. China not only needs Middle Eastern oil, it needs the means to transport it and the military means to defend it. This is why China is building naval facilities along the Indian Ocean coast of southern Pakistan. The last thing China wants is an expanding war in South Asia that could disrupt its plans to gain greater access to Iranian oil or threaten its means to protect that oil. In the meantime, plans are afoot to build pipelines and roads across Pakistan to deliver Middle Eastern oil to China and perhaps India as well. This could be a boon for Pakistan, but it also means even greater reasons for conciliating Iran, something that may not sit too well with the US.
These are only some of the greater foreign policy problems over the war in Afghanistan. What about the country itself? Afghanistan is perhaps more of a concept than an actual nation state. The Afghanistan-Pakistan border region contains the largest tribal society in the world. Moreover, we are dealing with a multi-ethnic society that has deep and perhaps unbridgeable tribal fault lines. Tribes can be bought, but they seldom stay bought. On the other hand, the tribes are the peoples with whom the US and its allies must work. As we know from Vietnam, local security is essential if the US and the Afghan government are going to achieve any kind of success, no matter how small. Without that security, the Taliban and al Qaeda eventually win.
This is not to say that US and NATO forces cannot sufficiently stabilize the situation to allow for an eventual withdrawal of western forces. Indeed, this, may well be Obama's strategic end-goal. "What we can't do," said Obama recently, "is think that just a military approach...is going to...solve our problems. So what we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's got to be an exit strategy. There's got to be a sense that this is not perpetual drift."
What many Americans fear, however, is that the recent dispatch of 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, and now another 4,000, will not serve to stabilize the country but only to deepen and widen our commitment . It's what John F. Kennedy did in Vietnam in the early 1960s, followed by Lyndon B. Johnson. But by the late 1960s, there were some 500,000 American troops in Vietnam. That's exactly what the American people do not want to see. The war in Afghanistan now belongs to Barack Obama. He almost certainly doesn't remember the Vietnam war. But Obama has read his history. Most of all, he wants an honorable exit. History will show whether he gets one.