Despite opposition from many within the Democratic Party and even within the
White House against deepening US involvement in Afghanistan, President Obama has
courageously decided to fight this war--using, as he put it, "all elements of
our national power to defeat al Qaeda, and to defend America, our allies, and
all who seek a better future." In a White Paper, his administration has
affirmed that Washington aims "to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually destroy
extremists and their safe havens" within the "Af-Pak" region because doing
so constituted America’s "vital national security interest." All this is
good, but by failing to admit, out of political convenience, that the United
States will engage in nation-building in Afghanistan--even as Obama embarks on
just that mission--the president risks undermining his own strategy.
Comprehensive engagement in Afghanistan, of course, was opposed by a variety of
constituencies. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), for example, warned against any
reconstruction intended "to make [Afghanistan] our 51st state," suggesting
instead that allied objectives in that country be limited to ensuring that "it
does not become an al-Qaeda narco-state and terrorist beachhead capable of
destabilizing neighboring Pakistan." Others, such as the former president of
the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, urged Obama "to explore a
strategy of power extrication" by which the United States would "leave
Afghanistan" because "trying to eliminate the Taliban and Qaeda threat
[therein] is unattainable." Some other alternatives were proposed as well.
David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute wondered whether the US would "be
able to extricate [itself] sooner if we accept a decentralized Afghanistan with
some regions ruled by groups that are currently fighting against our troops?"
And, one senior NATO official, reflecting the view of many European governments
eager to end their involvement in Afghanistan, has been quoted by the Guardian
as arguing that Kabul "doesn’t need to be a democracy, just secure."
It is to President Obama’s credit that, despite strong pressures emerging from
various quarters, he has rejected all of these alternatives in favor of building
an effective democratic state in Afghanistan. That is the good news. If success
in Afghanistan--understood as the extirpation of al-Qaeda and the
marginalization of the Taliban as an armed opposition--is to be achieved,
Washington and its partners will have no choice but to erect an effective Afghan
state that can control its national territory and deliver its citizens security,
responsive governance, and economic development necessary to ensure internal
stability. Nothing less will suffice for attaining even the most minimal
strategic aim in Kabul. Obama’s new "Af-Pak" policy suggests that he has
understood this clearly and his administration’s White Paper corroborates his
intention to pursue precisely this goal. The bad news, however, is that the
administration has spelled this out only indistinctly and by circumlocution.
President Obama has asserted that the United States will have a "clear and
focused goal," namely, "to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in
Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the
future." Toward this end, he has rejected any "return to Taliban rule"; he
has upheld the need for "a more capable, accountable, and effective government
in Afghanistan that serves the Afghan people"; and he has endorsed the
objective of "developing increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that
can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced U.S.
assistance."
Whether explicitly admitted or not, these propositions indicate that the United
States will not abdicate state building in Afghanistan; will not recognize the
Taliban as an acceptable Islamist group in contrast to, for example, al-Qaeda;
and will not exit Afghanistan either as an end in itself or to better focus on
Pakistan, as some analysts have suggested. The administration’s reiteration of
the need for a "a more capable, accountable, and effective government in
Afghanistan" also implicitly conveys a rejection of all ambiguous strategies
of governance, a refusal to integrate an unrepentant Taliban into any Afghan
organs of rule, and a decisive repudiation of authoritarianism as a solution to
the political problems in Kabul.
But, the failure to transparently declare that the United States is committed to
building an effective democratic state in Afghanistan--a circumvention owed
probably as much to appeasing fears within the Democratic Party as it is to
calming NATO partners about nation-building--has opened the door to unreasonable
expectations that his strategy for defeating terrorism in Afghanistan (and
Pakistan) can be implemented without, what the New York Times calls, "the vast
attempt at nation-building [that] the Bush administration had sought in Iraq."
As the civilian surge already underway in Afghanistan suggests, the
administration understands that successful counterterrorism needs successful
state building. But the failure to own up to this could prove to be the
strategy’s undoing--within Congress and among the allies. Accordingly, the
president should clarify this ambiguity at the earliest opportunity.
Other doubts need to be cleared up as well: besides affirming the importance of
a democratic regime in Kabul, the president needs to tell the American people
clearly that the necessary task of state building will almost by definition be a
long term enterprise and, accordingly, will demand an extended American presence
in Afghanistan. Entertaining the notion of "exit strategy," as President
Obama himself has done previously, is dangerous because it will spur the
insurgents to outlast the international coalition; encourage important Afghan
bystanders to persist in their prevailing ambivalence; and be a disincentive to
Islamabad to relinquishing its support for the Taliban because after the US
withdrawal they may once again be required to protect Pakistan’s interests in
Kabul.
To demonstrate that he is serious, however, Obama must also do more beyond what
he has already committed to doing. He needs to commit far more American troops
to Afghanistan than the 55,000-odd soldiers that will soon be present in the
theater, if the counterinsurgency campaign in the southern and eastern Afghan
provinces is to be successful. He needs to build the Afghan National Army to an
end-strength of about 250,000 soldiers (vice the 134,000 now targeted) if the
appropriate force-to-population ratios needed for the counterinsurgency are to
be sustained. He needs to revamp considerably the current command and control
arrangements pertaining to both military operations and civil-military
coordination in Afghanistan. He needs to work with Kabul to improve quickly the
quality of governance and the delivery of services to the people most hit by the
Taliban insurgency. And, he needs to jettison those old and tired saws that
reconciliation with the Taliban or better counterterrorism performance by
Pakistan will be essential for success in Afghanistan; although both may well be
true, neither is particularly likely and, consequently, Obama ought to refocus
on securing victory in Afghanistan by "hardening" it from the inside out
rather than by counting on either Taliban or Pakistani cooperation.
Old Washington hands ruefully note that all incoming administrations usually get
their first reviews of pressing policy problems mostly wrong. Obama seems to
have beaten that rap. While his policy has got it mostly right, it is still
tarred by risky ambiguities and incomplete actions. That’s the unfinished
business Obama must now attend to.
Ashley J. Tellis is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Reconciling with the Taliban? Toward an Alternative Grand Strategy in Afghanistan. Rights: © 2009 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. YaleGlobal Online
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