The Afghan quicksand

Mar 07, 2009 Editorial

President Barack Obama has, with the inevitable caveat (he cannot be sure that the “surge” worked as well as claimed), announced the timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The US had entered Iraq in the first place to eliminate ‘weapons of mass destruction’, establish military bases, and/or secure oil supplies.
All of these appear to have gone up in smoke, and one has to ask: “What was the carnage all about?” But as we pointed out in our editorial of last November, the war is not really over – President Obama has merely shifted the theatre to Afghanistan and, by the logic of the situation, Pakistan.

If the US is not to have a repetition of the Iraq debacle, however, President Obama will have to define his objectives much more clearly than his predecessor George Bush had done. The most obvious objective is the one that led to the original invasion of Afghanistan and the defeat of the Taliban government in 2001 – the capture of Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, and the neutralisation of Al Qaida.
But the routing of the Taliban merely saw them retreating with Bin Laden into the mountainous and porous border with Pakistan – and the US departing into Iraq.

The US military effort in Afghanistan, since 2001 augmented by NATO forces, appears to have shifted from the “hot pursuit” of Bin Laden to the support of the Karzai regime that took over in 2001. But the counter-offensive from Al Qaida and the Taliban never really disappeared, only sometimes dipped.
Last December, the US had to send in 3,000 additional troops even though winter is usually a period of comparative quietude. President Obama has committed 17,000 more troops this year. If the US had counted on a friendly regime to secure the support of Afghans while they tracked down Al Qaida, the endemic corruption of the Karzai regime has destroyed that hope.

While armed drones have killed some Al Qaida and Taliban leaders, they have sparked outrage over the civilian collateral deaths and swelled their ranks, already buttressed by recruits from across the Muslim world. Pakistan has been drawn into the fray, not only because as a US ally of long standing they were expected to lend support, but because the Taliban had as much support on their side of the border as Afghanistan’s.

Pakistan’s recent truce with the Taliban in the frontier area of Swat and the acceptance of Sharia there present a dilemma to the US, since it is unlikely that they will be able to count on mounting attacks on the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaida from that location.
President Obama essentially is faced with three options. Firstly, he can possibly decide to occupy Afghanistan while hunting down Al Qaida. But this would require hundreds of thousands of troops, practically all US, since NATO has indicated that it will not increase combat support.

He will also not be able to count on Pakistan. Some believe that the 9/11 attack was designed to lure the Americans into just such a quicksand as defeated the 500,000 Russian troops in the eighties and the British in the 19th century. The Taliban may be counting on the American people refusing a protracted war of occupation, a la Iraq.

Secondly, he may choose to maintain the status quo while putting into effect his offer of a “multilateral” solution by involving the surrounding countries – Iran, Russia, Pakistan, India, Central Asian states, etc. This route, while attractive, is very unlikely, given the conflicting agendas with the members of that grouping, for instance, Pakistan insisting on viewing Afghanistan as providing “strategic depth” against India, their arch-enemy.

Finally, the US could cut a deal with the Taliban as have the Pakistanis across the border, but this scenario would guarantee the return of a Taliban government, which the US could never be sure would not give a safe haven to Al Qaida as it did previously. From the standpoint of America’s definition of its strategic interests vis-à-vis Al Qaida, we unfortunately foresee an escalation of the war in Afghanistan that is going to be long and bloody.

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The Afghan quicksand

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The Afghan quicksand

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