New York Daily News: The grim reality in Afghanistan by Michael Cohen, ASP senior fellow
Five months into our new strategy, things are looking bleak
Last December, when President Obama traveled to West Point, he offered an ambitious agenda for reversing the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan. Five months later it seems increasingly clear that many of the assumptions underpinning the U.S. strategy are dangerously flawed – and in need of hasty reexamination.
The linchpin of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan is President Hamid Karzai and the hope that his government can become an effective partner in the counter-insurgency fight. But with Karzai’s chronic inability to crack down on rapacious corruption and minimal interest in improving governance, our prospective partner has seemingly become an impediment to coalition goals.
Overly restrictive rules of engagement, intended to protect civilians, have limited the military’s ability to fight the Taliban and are reportedly causing frustration among U.S. troops. Yet, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal noted in April, American troops continue to shoot and kill an “amazing number of people” and “none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.”
Equally distressing, the so-called civilian surge has not materialized and just this week the United Nations withdrew its staff from Kandahar because of the deteriorating security situation. The Afghan Army and police forces are not close to taking over security in the country’s most insurgent-filled regions, and the clock is ticking on Obama’s pledge that U.S. troops would begin to withdraw in June 2011.
These challenges are made more acute because operations are predominately occurring in southern and eastern Afghanistan, which is most inhospitable to the American presence. Indeed, military plans to “liberate” the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar from the Taliban have been met with broad opposition. The Army’s own public opinion surveys note that upward of 80% of Kandaharis view the Taliban as “Afghan brothers” and 94% oppose U.S. intervention there.
With the Taliban stepping up suicide attacks and assassinating public officials, it’s not difficult to see why many Afghans are skeptical of joining forces with the government and why efforts to build confidence among the people are unlikely to bear fruit in the near term.
Recent events in Marjah support that view. In February, the coalition sent 15,000 troops into the town, hailing the operation as a model for future joint U.S.-Afghan efforts in Kandahar. But now that the media attention and all but 2,000 of the U.S. troops have left, not much has changed. Locals continue to be intimidated and murdered by the Taliban; Afghan security forces are a minimal presence and McChrystal’s promise to provide “government in a box” has yet to materialize.
The seeding of good governance, the building up of the Afghan army and the extension of state legitimacy against a fearsome insurgent group will all take persistence, time and will. These are all elements to which the Taliban and not NATO has the advantage.
Quite simply, the ambitious goal of stabilizing southern Afghanistan is increasingly unrealistic – and with the lack of an effective host country partner to solidify gains, of dubious strategic value. Though it’s likely – and regrettably – too late to call off a military strike in Kandahar, it will make things worse if any short-term ability to stabilize the city is confused with long-term success.
Instead, the effectiveness of U.S. forces in putting military pressure on the insurgents should be used as a springboard for pivoting quickly to political negotiations with the Taliban – a move that the Obama administration has resisted.
Negotiations cannot wait for the civilian population to turn against the Taliban, for the Afghan government to reform itself or for the U.S. to guarantee security in the region. Instead, Obama must use whatever near-term military advantage comes out of the Kandahar operations to accelerate direct talks with the Taliban and seek a political resolution to the conflict.
To ensure that Afghanistan does not fall back into civil war, several accompanying steps must be taken. The U.S. will have to ensure that the interests of regional actors, particularly Pakistan, are fully taken into account. Efforts to create an Afghan army capable of preventing a Taliban takeover must be accelerated. And the U.S. and NATO should focus on consolidating support – and targeting Taliban groups – in the parts of the country where the government remains relatively popular.
While the U.S. must make clear that it will not tolerate an Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, it will likely be forced to embrace some unpalatable choices, such as allowing the Taliban to play an active role in the government or even offering them nominal autonomy. But it’s high time the U.S. recognized its own limitations in Afghanistan and sought a solution that is not perfect, but rather achievable.
