WASHINGTON AND KABUL – With United States troop strength approaching 100,000, the Afghan war is entering its decisive phase.
Without measurable progress in the coming months, political support for the conflict may collapse.
Yesterday President Barack Obama hailed the coming end of the American combat mission in Iraq.
But he knows that his job now – if Iraq does not fall apart again – will be to hold together faltering political and public support for the increasingly bloody Afghan conflict.
With low public support and wavering resolve, the Obama Administration has launched a fresh effort to portray US goals in Afghanistan as modest.
“We face huge challenges in Afghanistan,” Obama said yesterday in Atlanta, where he announced the US would reduce its troop numbers to 50,000 in Iraq by the end of this month.
“But it’s important that the American people know that we are making progress and we’re focused on goals that are clear and achievable.”
Back-to-back months of record US military death tolls in Afghanistan – 60 in June and 66 in July – shocked many Americans, even though the Pentagon had been warning of higher casualties as the US and its allies push into longtime Taleban strongholds around Kandahar city and in the southern province of Helmand.
The campaign is aimed at securing Kandahar, a city of about a half million, the major urban area of the ethnic Pashtun south and the former Taleban headquarters.
Securing the city is considered pivotal if the Nato-led coalition is to reverse the Taleban momentum in their southern stronghold.
Failure would be a grave – if not fatal – blow to the entire Nato-led mission in Afghanistan.
It could encourage President Hamid Karzai to seek a political deal with Taleban leaders on terms that Afghan ethnic minorities, women and the US might find unfavourable.
And it could discourage Pakistan from ever cracking down on Afghan Taleban fighters living in border sanctuaries since they may someday wield power in Afghanistan after the US leaves.
But progress in breaking the Taleban’s grip has been slow and difficult to measure.
Supporters of the counterinsurgency strategy that Obama embraced last year acknowledge it will take time to determine whether the operations around Kandahar have achieved even modest success.
Even if Taleban attacks decline, it will take time to tell whether the insurgents have been driven off or simply went underground as they did in the Helmand town of Marjah, only to return later with more ambushes and roadside bombs.
“We’re at one of those moments where it’s very hard to tell whether things are going well or badly,” Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations said in an interview with CFR.org website.
“Counter-insurgency always has this ‘darkest before the dawn’ quality.”
Time is one resource the US and its allies don’t have.
Support for the war is already wavering in Washington and the capitals of the other allied nations.
The Dutch ended their combat mission last weekend, and the Canadians plan to pull out next year. The Poles want to leave in 2012.
Last week, Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives had to rely on Republican support to pass the almost US$59 billion ($80.7 billion) measure to finance Obama’s additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan and other programmes. Twelve Republicans and 102 Democrats opposed it.
A prominent Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Senator Lindsey Graham, said congressional support could collapse next year if conservative Republicans withdraw their backing to make Obama look bad and if anti-war Democrats insist on a pull-out.
“If, by December, we’re not showing some progress, we’re in trouble,” Graham told CNN. “And the question is, what is progress? Without some benchmarks and measurements, it’s going to be hard to sell to the American people a continued involvement in Afghanistan.”
US and Afghan troops have begun to challenge the Taleban in the lush Arghandab Valley and other districts around Kandahar. American troops are accelerating the training of Afghan police to provide security within the city itself.
The goal is to put an Afghan face on the security operation to counter Taleban allegations that international troops are a foreign occupation force. But the campaign faces major hurdles, some of them self-imposed.
Obama plans a review of the Afghan strategy at the end of the year and has pledged to begin withdrawing American troops next July.
The dates have left Afghan officials confused about the Western commitment, despite repeated assurances that America and its allies won’t abandon Afghanistan.
US officers in southern Afghanistan say villagers are reluctant to co-operate with the Americans and their Afghan partners because they fear the Taleban will take retribution against them once the Americans have gone.
“There is nothing more tragic than watching beautiful theories being assaulted by gangs of ugly facts. It is time, however, to be far more realistic about the war in Afghanistan,” former Pentagon analyst Anthony Cordesman wrote in June for the Centre for Strategic & International Studies.
“It may well still be winnable, but it is not going to be won by denying the risks, the complexity, and the time that any real hope of victory will take.”
While struggling with Afghanistan, Obama will be hoping his Iraq gamble won’t backfire. It’s a huge wager that the country will not fall back into murderous anarchy.
As he spoke yesterday of the need to be “humbled by the profound sacrifice” of American men and women who fought the war, Obama left out or glossed over some politically uncomfortable but huge facts.
That may reflect Obama’s sinking poll numbers, driven by stubborn 9.5 per cent unemployment, an anaemic economic recovery and broad anti-incumbent sentiment with just three months remaining until congressional elections.
There is a good chance Obama’s Democrats could surrender their big majority in the House of Representatives and several seats in the Senate.
Obama said the combat mission would end by August 31 “as promised and on schedule”, but the pull-out was, in fact, pre-ordained by the US-Iraqi “Status of Forces Agreement” that took effect before his inauguration.
And as Obama spoke glowingly of the end of combat, the President wisely issued a caveat – Iraqi reality.
The 50,000 US troops who will remain 16 more months as trainers, security forces and counterterror squads still face a grave mission.
“These are dangerous tasks,” Obama said. “And there are still those with bombs and bullets who will try to stop Iraq’s progress. The hard truth is we have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq.”
Nor is there an end to tragedy for Iraqi citizens, who still are dying in terrorist shootings and bombings at a rate that belies any claim to even near normalcy seven years after former President George W. Bush ordered the invasion.
Iraq’s political system remains wobbly. Nearly five months after inconclusive March 7 elections, politicians still are struggling to form a new government.
The bitter political tug-of-war and ensuing power struggle have heightened worries about concerted insurgent attacks. Al Qaeda in Iraq shows signs of returning to strength.
Oil production, the basis of the Iraqi economy, still has not returned to pre-war levels, and those were down significantly as a result of UN sanctions imposed after the first Gulf War.
At least 4413 members of the US military have died since the invasion and nearly 32,000 have been wounded.
Glad to be rid, or nearly so, of the resource- and life-draining fight in Iraq, the President sought plenty of attention for what he hopes will mark the real beginning of the end of a fight he believes should never have been fought, a war that produced searing divisions among Americans.
Be the first to comment