Troop increases will help, but new strategy faces big challenges
‘Our first imperative, in a series of operational stages, is to gain the initiative and reverse the insurgency’s momentum.’ So wrote General Stanley McChrystal, the United States military commander in Afghanistan, in his August 2009 assessment of the situation facing his forces. The addition of 30,000 American troops during 2010, announced by President Barack Obama on 1 December, will improve the general’s chances of achieving this initial goal. Other countries are also expected to boost their presence by at least 7,000 troops. Without this increase, the new strategy being put into effect under McChrystal’s command would be in severe danger of becoming yet another ineffectual effort in the eight-year-long foreign military presence in Afghanistan. As the general wrote (his memo was published by the Washington Post in September), ‘The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves’.
That the risk of ignominious failure seems somewhat reduced is due to McChrystal’s enunciation of a new approach to the campaign, as well as the support it has received from US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and its endorsement by Obama and other government leaders. Most importantly, the strategy is one that military officers and civilian officials in Afghanistan – from the US and other countries involved – understand and believe they can execute. ‘There was not previously a real ISAF strategy’, said one senior officer, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Control and coordination had been poor, and troop-contributing nations were essentially carrying out their own policies in the areas where their soldiers were deployed. Military operations were reactive, and focused on force protection. McChrystal’s adoption of a more genuine counter-insurgency approach, and a marked tightening in command and control, are important steps forward.
But Obama also announced that American troops would begin to withdraw in July 2011. Gates indicated that the number going home at that date could be small and that the timetable for the drawdown would depend on handing over responsibility for individual districts to Afghan forces. This was not an exit strategy, but a transition, he said. Nevertheless, one way to view Obama’s announcement is that he was signalling his plans steadily to remove combat ground troops from 2011, but has first given McChrystal the opportunity to strike a blow against the insurgency and to build stability in populated areas. Taliban leaders know that the maximum 100,000-strong US troop presence will be maintained for only about nine months.
Many obstacles to success remain. The new strategy depends on the ability of Afghan security forces to assume much greater responsibilities, on the development of sound government structures in Kabul and the provinces, and on strong civilian involvement in reconstruction, including effective coordination with the United Nations and other bodies. In addition, it requires progress in Pakistan against extremist groups, including al-Qaeda. These elements all pose huge challenges.
Hard choices
Evidence that commanders and government officials were receptive to the general’s new approach is likely to have heavily influenced Obama’s three-month deliberation before he acted on McChrystal’s request for a substantial increase in resources. The president faced acute difficulties in his review of policy on Afghanistan. Many in his own Democratic party had tired of the campaign and opposed sending more troops to what they fear is an unwinnable war – unnecessary, perhaps another Vietnam, and in any case too expensive. At a time of economic and budgetary crisis, the addition of 30,000 more US troops will cost about $30 billion a year – and the 100,000 American troops deployed will represent a tripling of the number in Afghanistan when Obama took office. Blatant fraud in the Afghan elections in August led many to believe that the government did not merit support and that no transfer of responsibility would be possible. Dissident voices won considerable attention, such as that of a State Department official who resigned from a post in Afghanistan, arguing that the US had become an actor in a 35-year-old civil war, and should withdraw. Some Democrats, including Vice President Joe Biden, favoured a sharp reduction in the military presence, targeting al-Qaeda from the air and a closer focus on Pakistan, which they saw as posing bigger dangers. On the other hand, most Republicans – some viscerally hostile to the president – supported McChrystal’s request for more troops and criticised Obama’s ‘dithering’.
Risking political isolation in making the most difficult decision of his presidency so far, it was unsurprising that Obama’s speech to cadets at the West Point military academy was careful and sombre – a very subdued rallying call. Initial political reactions indicated that he had failed to overcome Democrats’ scepticism about the need to send troops, while his commitment to begin troop withdrawals within 18 months had left Republicans unsatisfied.
Obama’s decision provided the reinforcements that the commanding general requested, but placated sceptics by announcing the pull-out plan. Reports suggested that, during the review, he demanded that the schedule for both should be accelerated. However, he appeared open to criticism that the goals of his Afghan strategy were confused. While he concluded it was in America’s ‘vital national interest’ to send more troops, it could still be argued that threats to the US are not emanating from Afghanistan, but from places where al-Qaeda extremists have footholds, such as Pakistan. (The defeat of al-Qaeda remains the president’s ‘overarching goal’.) On this argument, the stabilisation of Afghanistan and the defeat of the Taliban are not essential for American security: if al-Qaeda’s leaders were to re-establish their bases in Afghanistan, they would be open to attacks from the US. However, the counter-argument was that, having invested so much in the stabilisation of Afghanistan as part of an effort to improve regional security, Washington needed in effect to set a deadline for Afghan leaders, including President Hamid Karzai, to create effective governance as a condition for continuing US support. Delivering a blow to the Taliban would create a more stable environment in which this might be done.
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