Obama Races the Afghan Clock

As intended, Barack Obama's ramping up of the American war effort in Afghanistan, and his promise of an early exit ramp to escape it, have confounded his political supporters and opponents at home and thrown Islamist extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan at least momentarily on the defensive.  But the opening gambit of this "new" strategy requires intense follow-up on the political track, both inside Afghanistan and in the region, if it is to achieve durable results.

By spring, Obama will have nearly quadrupled U.S. forces in Afghanistan from the levels President Bush had stationed there at the start of the presidential primary season in January 2008.  The anguish among the antiwar Democratic activists who rallied then to Obama's improbable candidacy to block the hawkish Hillary is palpable. Their "hope" for a nonbelligerent foreign policy has been betrayed. 

Of course, it's not as if Obama misled them.  As a candidate, Obama vowed last year to increase the number of combat brigades in Afghanistan, bolster nonmilitary assistance, combat Kabul's corruption, and give top priority to "Afghanistan and the fight against Al Qaeda."  That's exactly what he is doing—the Democratic left can’t say he deceived them.

Hawks on the right are shrieking about the president’s 18-month timeline for the 30,000 fresh troops he announced Tuesday night, with a phase-down of unspecified speed to start in summer 2011.  Nobody wins a war, they insist, by fixing a date to walk away from it.  "The way that you win wars is you break the enemy's will," says John McCain--who languished six years in prisoner-of-war camps while devastating military force failed to break the will of the Vietnamese--"not announce when you are leaving."

Yet it is certain that no Republican candidate for president in 2012 will be campaigning to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan till "victory."  Obama has correctly gauged the outer limits of the public's patience for this last-ditch effort to salvage Afghanistan from the botched policies of the past.  Shrewd Democratic tacticians might consider the merits of posting bills to write a withdrawal timeline into law, allowing congressional conservatives to go on record for open-ended war.

Obama's timeline likewise recognizes Afghans' own growing weariness with foreign armies fighting on their soil.  His promise of speedy withdrawal inoculates Afghans against Taliban charges of a permanent infidel occupation.  Conservatives' claims that the Taliban will simply lie low for two years to wait out the Americans seem absurd on their face:  The extremists cannot afford to cede their strongholds to a reinvigorated Afghan government that may actually set down roots. 

Still, it is curious that the president's new approach continues to emphasize allied support only from other Western governments.  Admittedly, they are easy, familiar partners to work with.  Yet in so religiously conservative a society, one would think that the international community should be advancing a more Muslim-friendly face.  The Bush administration had quickly and unwisely torpedoed calls in late 2001 for U.N. peacekeepers from countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Egypt.  Eight grinding years later, such countries might at least be visibly represented among the trainers, teachers, and development workers needed to accelerate Afghanistan's reconstruction.

Obama's announcement of his "new" strategy also suggests scant change from the Bush administration's skepticism toward an Afghan political settlement.  The president offered his blessing to Hamid Karzai's government to "open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens."  But asking enemies to lay down their arms before you open the door to them is rarely a pathway to a negotiated settlement. 

To be sure, an Afghan peace settlement seems unlikely at the moment, given the fervently extremist agenda of many of the Taliban's leaders.  But a direct dialogue between Karzai and the Quetta Shura--the council of Taliban leaders living under Pakistani protection in Quetta--might clarify which Taliban factions are willing to accept a rights-based constitutional order, and Al Qaeda's suppression, in exchange for the complete withdrawal of all foreign security personnel--American, European, Pakistani, whatever.  If Obama's troop increase generates enough military pressure to disabuse Taliban leaders of the idea that they're on the comeback trail, a discreet negotiating channel may reveal any signs of flexibility within the shura.      

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan needs to be freed to explore any such opening, without imposed preconditions.  While former Taliban officials acknowledge that the United Nations has "good experience with dialogue" and "can give a guarantee to both sides," the U.N.'s impartiality as a mediator is inevitably complicated by the organization's simultaneous role as the international community's lead body working with the Kabul government.  Curiously, while the Obama administration pays public deference to the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, it is flirting with notions of creating a separate ad-hoc secretariat rather than rely on the U.N. for aid coordination.

On the other hand, the president's promise to circumvent Kabul on development aid to channel it directly to "local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people" seems general enough even to allow for the possibility of working with an occasional Taliban-friendly local administration.  Such experiments were key to the success of the 2007 "surge" in Iraq. 

Revealingly, Obama insisted at West Point that even without foreign reinforcements "there's no imminent threat of the [Kabul] government being overthrown."  But he is not yet reconciled to leaving Afghanistan in a stalemated civil war where Taliban forces secure control of part of the country, perhaps allowing the battered remnants of Osama bin Laden's terror network to leave their Pakistani sanctuary for earlier Afghan haunts. 

Obama’s conservative opponents will turn on him no matter what the outcome inside Afghanistan, and so he gambles that a time-limited troop reinforcement can fulfill his campaign promise to "finish the fight against bin Laden" before his own party deserts him.  His allies--at home, abroad, and most of all in Afghanistan--have much at stake in assuring success in that time window.  

Comments

[Sally McMillan]

As for Obama's speech, it was beautiful as usual and sincere, but very disappointing. He's been taken over by the Washington mindset. War is not the way to peace, and it never works out the way you expect. We need to protest loudly in some way, including to our congresspeople and to the editor. Perhaps a mass exodus from the Democratic party to independent. The escalation should not be funded. Already Gates and Clinton are clarifying the non 18-month deadline. Kucinich has it right.