Ahmed Rashid: Obama must keep his eye on the Afghan exit
[The writer’s latest book is Descent into Chaos. A revised, 10th anniversary edition of his best seller, Taliban, has just been published.]
Another fraudulent election; a banking crisis that involves the president’s family; unstoppable corruption; a war still in big trouble; and disarray in the west’s continued commitment to that war – all but the blind can see that Afghanistan is not going well for the US and Nato.
The Nato summit in November and the Obama administration’s policy review in December must tackle these facts in a realistic manner rather than covering them with an “all is well” message. We now know, thanks to Bob Woodward’s new book Obama’s Wars, that the US president had no instinct for a surge in US troops when he made his last policy review in December. Barack Obama wanted to get out of Afghanistan as fast as he could, but the US military outmanoeuvred him on his own turf in the White House.
That may happen again as US generals are already setting down markers two months before the next policy review, demanding an extension of the surge for another 12-18 months. That may be too much to bear for the US Congress and many of the 47 countries with troops in Afghanistan. In the past year, violent incidents have risen by 50 per cent, the Taliban have spread to the north and west of the country and the battle for control of the Taliban-dominated Pashtun south and east gets bloodier by the day. The Nato offensive in Kandahar province, ongoing since March, still has to show positive results.
The formula for General David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy is “clear, hold, build and transfer”. The last part is the most important because it presumes that US forces will hand over territory and towns, responsibility and governance, piece by piece to the Afghans. But will that transfer ever be possible in the critical Pashtun belt where 80 per cent of the Taliban come from?..
Read entire article at Financial Times (UK)
Another fraudulent election; a banking crisis that involves the president’s family; unstoppable corruption; a war still in big trouble; and disarray in the west’s continued commitment to that war – all but the blind can see that Afghanistan is not going well for the US and Nato.
The Nato summit in November and the Obama administration’s policy review in December must tackle these facts in a realistic manner rather than covering them with an “all is well” message. We now know, thanks to Bob Woodward’s new book Obama’s Wars, that the US president had no instinct for a surge in US troops when he made his last policy review in December. Barack Obama wanted to get out of Afghanistan as fast as he could, but the US military outmanoeuvred him on his own turf in the White House.
That may happen again as US generals are already setting down markers two months before the next policy review, demanding an extension of the surge for another 12-18 months. That may be too much to bear for the US Congress and many of the 47 countries with troops in Afghanistan. In the past year, violent incidents have risen by 50 per cent, the Taliban have spread to the north and west of the country and the battle for control of the Taliban-dominated Pashtun south and east gets bloodier by the day. The Nato offensive in Kandahar province, ongoing since March, still has to show positive results.
The formula for General David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy is “clear, hold, build and transfer”. The last part is the most important because it presumes that US forces will hand over territory and towns, responsibility and governance, piece by piece to the Afghans. But will that transfer ever be possible in the critical Pashtun belt where 80 per cent of the Taliban come from?..