Ends With a Whimper Instead of a Bang
The much anticipated Afghanistan Strategy Review was wrapped up last week and presented to the public. Contrary to many expectations, the Review roll-out revealed no fissures, no dissent, no sniping at the President’s policy, and certainly no indications that anything but progress has been achieved.
The President trotted out his national security team and military leadership to a brief press conference who uniformly endorsed the conclusion that real progress was being made against the Taliban insurgency and in building up Afghan governance and military capabilities. Absent was any sign of impassioned dissent that all know is going on behind the scenes, as VP Joe Biden held his tongue (no mean feat!) and criticisms of the war effort were muted. Instead, the skeptics and the naysayers held their ammo for another day, probably next spring when the crucial decision will be made regarding the promised troop withdrawals slated to begin in July, 2011
This is not to say there is no reason to be optimistic. There are indications that significant progress has been made in degrading the various insurgencies that march under the Taliban banner, particularly in Helmand and the Pashtun areas in general. Its networks have been disrupted, key leaders eliminated, insurgents have been cleared in large areas in the south, and the Taliban momentum that was apparent this summer seems to have been arrested.
In Pakistan and well as Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is under considerable pressure from our intensified drone attacks. While safe havens haven’t been eliminated, they have been compromised and are no longer secure from U.S. UAV and special operations forces operations. The most important Taliban havens in Helmand and Kandahar have been eliminated, places that had gone unchallenged for years. The Taliban is no longer considered capable of launching major attacks on Kabul, explosives are more difficult to obtain, and, as General Dave Petraeus observed, “we have arrested the momentum of the Taliban and reversed it in some areas”.
Still, critics of the war, including many in the Administration, remain concerned that the gains achieved are fragile and subject to reversal once U.S./Allied forces leave the “inkpots” they now occupy. They remain unconvinced that the Afghan central and provincial governments can provide the competent and efficient governing and security forces once the ISAF militaries withdraw. There is little doubt that the security situation has improved in areas where U.S. military forces are operating in strength, but the gains are likely to fade in the wake of their departure. This is due to the weakness of central government institutions, the tenacity of the Taliban and their ties especially to the Pashtuns, and the reality that the insurgents enjoy a sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan.
All sides agree that the two primary concerns are the lack of Afghan governance and competent security forces (police and army), and safe havens in Pakistan. The central government under President Karzai is corrupt and inefficient and the provincial officials he appoints are incompetent and dishonest. Indeed, the Taliban derive much of their support from ordinary Afghans’ resentment of corruption and government incompetence (Transparency International ranks Afghanistan as the world’s 2nd-most corrupt country).
The problem of safe havens in Pakistan remains the core challenge. As the Chairman of the JCS, ADM Mike Mullen, has charged, Pakistan has the ability to shut down insurgent hideouts and stop the flow of fighters across the border into Afghanistan. But it hasn’t done so, despite repeated pleas and the funneling of significant financial aid. Islamabad seems interested only in the militias that threaten Pakistan itself, not those who operate in Afghanistan (or globally).
The optimism expressed by the American military on the ground and the Pentagon has been challenged by two recent estimates (NIEs) from the National Intelligence Council, one on Pakistan and the other on Afghanistan. The estimates conclude that it will be difficult if not impossible for the US and its allies to prevail unless Pakistan roots out militant groups that take sanctuary within its borders. The NIE concludes that it is unlikely that Islamabad will do so.
Public opinion continues to shift against the war in Afghanistan. 60% of Americans now say the war is not worth fighting, a more than 20-point rise since Obama’s election. His Democratic base is especially restive, but independents as well are united in opposition (72% for Dems, 63% for Indies) to continuing the war. They see that more than 500 American soldiers have lost their lives this year alone, and ten times that many have suffered casualties. In addition, fiscal hawks are questioning the value of spending more than $100 billion a year in this campaign. The strained federal budget means that the longer the war goes on the less money that is available for projects the President and the Congress believe are essential to ensuring long-term global competitiveness.
The Obama war—and it is now truly the President’s war as he himself has admitted—is also drawing flak from national security experts who feel that the longer the American military is engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, the less it is capable of conducting a serious campaign against North Korea or Iran (see the piece by former State and White House official in Republican administrations, Richard Haass, in today’s WSJ). Haass advocates a rapid disengagement, bringing U.S. forces down to 30,00 by 2012 and essentially relying on a “counterterrorism” strategy, that is “….a package of drones, special forces, and training of local forces”. He acknowledges that this could be a detriment to countering Taliban resurgence, but argues that the current COIN-nation-building-CT combined strategy offers no assurances of success either.
Obama’s principal allies in maintaining the current strategy are, ironically, those on the right side of the political spectrum—Speaker-designate John Boehner, SEN Mitch McConnell, conservative commentators like the Kagans and Max Boot. They believe that Obama now thinks that “success” in this war is vital to the success of his Presidency. However, I hold that the President is also set in reducing our force levels significantly starting next July, a move that could alienate his current backers but might just bolster his base before the 2012 elections.
This is a difficult tightrope for the President to walk. On the one hand he must defend the war as it is being fought and argue that great progress is being made. Increasingly he will also have to demonstrate that this is not an endless commitment—he will certainly begin to draw down forces in July, but will have to do it in such a way that both friend and foe alike do not interpret that as the “U.S. is heading for the exits”. That is, that our gains are “durable and sustainable”, as the Kagans claim.
So ends the third Afghanistan strategy review in two years, with an endorsement of the current strategy and a flouting of the successes it has brought. However, turmoil and dissent still are present within the Administration, the American public is growing more restive, and the pressure to announce significant withdrawals—despite Pentagon grumbling—will intensify. Stay tuned!
– Tyrus W. Cobb
December 20, 2010