Interpac Business and Migration Solutions Melbourne Australia

December 3, 2009

The American president’s new plan for Afghanistan is roughly what the generals ordered

AMERICA will win in Afghanistan, said Barack Obama on December 1st. He told an audience at West Point, a military academy, “our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might”. Yet he made it clear that his patience is limited. At a time when many Americans are out of work and struggling to pay the bills, he promised that “America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.”

President Obama outlined a three-pronged strategy for “disrupting, dismantling, and defeating” al-Qaeda and the “ruthless, repressive and radical” Taliban. The first prong will be a military surge. He promised to send 30,000 more troops early next year, to join the 68,000 Americans and 39,000 other NATO forces already in Afghanistan. NATO allies will also send reinforcements. This is about 10,000 less than requested by his commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, but some of the difference will be made up by greater contributions from NATO allies. The new force will be large enough to seize back the initiative from the Taliban, he predicted, by killing insurgents and protecting population centres.

Mr Obama faced a tricky balancing act of signalling resolve to the Taliban and while telling Americans that Afghanistan is not an open ended commitment. To do this he said that as the country becomes safer, America will bolster the Afghan government, and train and equip the local army and police. “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home,” he said (in time for his re-election campaign). But Mr Obama did not say how many would come home, or how quickly. That will depend on the circumstances on the ground—ie, whether the Afghan state is strong enough to defend itself.

The second prong of Mr Obama’s strategy is to make the civilian parts of the Afghan state less dysfunctional. American aid will support ministries, governors and local leaders who fight corruption and “deliver for the people”, he pledged. It will seek to boost agriculture, which affects ordinary Afghans directly. Mr Obama said he expected incompetent and crooked officials to be held to account. He offered only faint praise for the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, saying that his inauguration speech (after a crooked election) “sent the right message about moving in a new direction”. He reminded Afghans that America has “no interest in occupying your country,” which is something of an understatement.

Mr Obama’s third strategic prong is to work with the Pakistani government to crush the Taliban in Pakistan. This is a ticklish operation. The Pakistani government is anxious to crush the Pakistani Taliban (who want to overthrow it), but is less motivated to crush the Afghan Taliban (who are using the wild mountainous tribal regions of Pakistan as a safe haven from which to attack Afghanistan). Mr Obama promised hefty aid and military support to Pakistan. He gave few details as to how he would make the alliance work better, but he promised that “America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan’s security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent.”

The speech was intended to convince both friends and enemies in Afghanistan that Mr Obama will not let the country fail. “If the Taliban think they can wait us out,” said a senior White House official, “they’re misjudging the president’s approach.” Meanwhile, to rally wavering support for the war at home, Mr Obama reminded Americans of the attacks of September 11th 2001 and raised the dreadful prospect of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into terrorists’ hands.

Perhaps that will be enough. Mr Obama’s hawkish critics will continue to berate him for, as they see it, dithering and projecting an air of weakness that emboldens America’s enemies. Doves will continue to demand that he pull out straight away. Michael Moore, a polemicist, asked this week if the president has “drunk [George W.] Bush’s Kool-Aid?”

Congress will surely bankroll Mr Obama’s new strategy. Republicans will back it because they want to win the war, and even dovish Democrats will be reluctant to thwart a Democratic president. As a sop to the doves, Mr Obama insisted that America’s commitment to Afghanistan will not be open-ended, “because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.”

(Source from The Economist.com)