Round The World

New Delhi, 8 December 2009

US’ New Afghan Policy

CAN OBAMA PULL IT THROUGH?

By Monish Tourangbam

Research Scholar, School of International Studies, JNU

In the run-up to the presidential elections that brought him to the White House, President Barrack Obama emphasized and re-emphasized the war in Afghanistan as a “war of necessity” and that in Iraq as a “war of choice”. But, his belief in seeing the Afghan campaign being brought to a meaningful end seems to be waning as doubts seem evident regarding the effectiveness of America’s role in the war-torn country. He definitely wants a better secured Afghanistan and the Al-Qaeda elements destroyed.

However, at the same time, he has been quite categorical in his statements that America cannot afford to fight an indefinite war. The result is a new strategy that includes the deployment of 30,000 more troops expected to help accelerate transfer of responsibility to the Afghan forces, which is then expected to allow the Americans to start leaving Afghanistan by July 2011. The domestic pressure is starkly evident in his decision to set a timeframe on the withdrawal process.

Public opinion in the US has become increasingly vocal against the continued engagement in Afghanistan in the face of a weakened American economy. Obama’s approval rate has been dipping, as Americans seem to worry that the cost of the war would increasingly make it difficult to manage domestic problems. The Congress will need to approve an additional $30 billion needed to fund the strategy over the next year. Even the new strategy is favoured only by a narrow majority (a mere 51 per cent surveyed with 40 per cent opposing it) according to a recent opinion poll. There is little consensus on how America should deal with the Afghan quagmire.

President Obama had often been criticized for being indecisive and dithering while assessing the Afghan situation. Even now, when he has made his new strategy public, unanimity is hardly the picture in American political circles. There have been heated debates in the Congress regarding the course of the American engagement in Afghanistan. Add to this the lukewarm response that the US gets from its major European allies in the Afghan war effort.

While some smaller European countries have made their commitment known, the bigger ones such as France, Britain and Germany have not been forthcoming regarding their decision to give substantial help in the troop increase, perhaps waiting for the Afghanistan conference in London early next year. Then, countries like Turkey are ready to consider increasing their assistance in training the Afghan forces, but are reluctant to send troops there. Similarly, Australia while supporting and endorsing the Obama strategy has not committed any additional troops.

How far will the troop surge help in curtailing the influence of the Taliban and wiping out the Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan? Well, the increase in the fighting force alone could not be the deciding factor in defeating the insurgency, as the sources are many-pronged and only a multifaceted and comprehensive strategy could bring substantial improvement in the situation. In the pursuit of normalcy, which is a long-term process, the Karzai government plays a primary role. It needs to strike at the deep-rooted corruption that reaches the highest levels of the system, and build confidence in all sections of the diverse Afghan population. 

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration plans to adopt strategies to win back various sections of the Afghan insurgency into the government’s side, but this is easier said than done. One of the serious impediments to this would be that the Taliban is on a high-point where it believes it is driving the NATO and the Aghan forces to frustration. It seems confident that it is the winning side in the present showdown and in such a scenario it is going to be hard to induce the insurgents to switch sides. Moreover, the Afghan terrain also adds to the woes of the NATO operations. The territory is highly mountainous and rural making it easier for the insurgency to locate to remote corners, thus stretching the force commitment across a wide terrain.

Serious concerns are being raised in the US legislature viz the repercussions of the new strategy on the fight against terrorism in Pakistan. There is definitely a section that feels that the threat emanating from across the border should be dealt with more sternly. They have hinted at and questioned the lack of a clear strategy in the Obama strategy to deal with the safe havens across the border in Pakistan. Democratic Senator John Kerry, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, said what happens in Pakistan, particularly near the Afghan border, “will do more to determine the outcome in Afghanistan than any increase in troops or shift in strategy.”

The Pentagon plans to send the bulk of the 30,000 new troops to southern Afghanistan, the Taliban heartland, as well as eastern provinces bordering Pakistan. But they cannot cross the border and the few U.S. troops and contractors in Pakistan have a limited training role. Moreover, the new strategy has not been received favourably in Pakistan. Islamabad is concerned that the troop surge in Afghanistan could force the Taliban fighters to cross over to Pakistan, thus undermining its own operations against terrorist activities. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged the Pakistani efforts in the Swat and Waziristan regions but said they were “far from sufficient.”

The exit strategy to start withdrawing by mid-2011 is raising more eyebrows than anything else, and rightly so. The Obama administration is visibly unhappy with the Karzai government’s inability to rein in wide-spread corruption and other inefficiencies of governance. By giving a withdrawal timeframe, President Obama might have wanted to tell the Karzai administration that America is not going to fund and fight “an open-ended war” and that someday soon a semblance of stability has to be achieved. Then, there is an American domestic platform to be assuaged that he is serious about bringing the troops back home. At the same time, the exit strategy would definitely send out another message to the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda.

The strategy runs the risk of furthering emboldening these elements and emphasizing their conviction that they are winning the war. Moreover, the strategy might make their game-plan easier by just lying low and waiting for the Americans to back-off. As of now, the new approach is raising more concerns than hope and more vagueness than direction. In the coming days, as President Obama and his administration goes around selling this new strategy, hordes of questions will confront them, especially at home as the US fights back the worst recession since the Great Depression.

President Obama clearly would not want the Afghan war to become what Vietnam became for President Johnson in the late 60s -- a political coffin. But in the grind of political survival, the hope is that the end-game does not mess up Afghanistan’s already worse situation. The country should not be left again to the mercy of the power-hungry warlords, who in their pursuit will lead the country yet again a few hundred years back in civilization. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)