The Economist (6.24.10):
The national security adviser of the world's greatest superpower is a "clown", its vice-president a nobody and its president "uncomfortable and intimidated". With those words the officers around General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan, engulfed America in a storm as damaging to its war effort as any Taliban raid. America rightly sets great store by civilian control of its armed forces and on June 23rd a distinctly unintimidated President Barack Obama made General McChrystal pay for his insubordination with his job. But presidential decisiveness cannot conceal a deeper truth. America and its allies are losing in Afghanistan.
Mr Obama had every reason to cashier General McChrystal. Officers, including his predecessor, have gone for less. Not to act could have left the president looking weak. And yet it was a heavy price to pay. Nothing could cheer the Taliban more than seeing General McChrystal out on his ear. He is a master of counterinsurgency (COIN), he was one of the few Americans who could work with President Hamid Karzai and his hand-picked commanding officers are in charge of a forthcoming operation in Kandahar that will probably determine the course of the campaign (see article). To Mr Obama's credit, his place has been filled by General David Petraeus, the star of the war in Iraq and the man who wrote the manual on COIN. Even so, the dismissal leaves America's campaign pitched on the edge of failure.
Mr Obama once described the fighting in Afghanistan as "a war of necessity". The president must now put necessity aside and pose two fundamental questions. Can the American-led coalition still win in Afghanistan? And if so, how?
...That is where the appointment of General Petraeus comes in. A losing cause does not automatically have to become a lost one: Iraq showed that. The operation in Marja went badly, but putting down an insurgency needs time and lots of troops, preferably local ones. The real test will come in Kandahar. Worryingly, one of General McChrystal's last acts was to postpone the operation there until the autumn, amid signs that local people were not yet ready to back it. Even so, Mr Obama owes it to the West and to the Afghan people to determine whether COIN can in fact succeed under his best general. The Afghan war may yet end in an ignominious retreat. But nobody should welcome such an outcome.
But it is coming. Welcome it or not, and however characterized, our staged exit is nearing. It is the inevitable end game.
I was ready to address the case for exiting Afghanistan sooner rather than later in the summer 2009, but held back thinking there might still be important considerations I didn't know about that the government or the Pentagon did. Then, on September 13, President Obama convened the first of 10 meetings that would address our mission and strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is reported in a most intriguing Newsweek article (5.15.10) that he gathered 16 advisers in the Situation Room in the basement of the White House for the purpose of carrying out a thorough and methodical national security review of our commitment to AfPak, the most thorough review of it's kind since before the Vietnam war.
But the Pentagon and the generals central to the review were advocating a significant surge in troop strength, and were also leaking their views to the press and the public. General Stanley McChrystal, the new commander in Afghanistan, brashly leaked his private report requesting 40,000 additional troops to the press and was particularly visible and vocal in his public advocacy. This reckless, unprecedented policy negotiating strategy angered Obama and his White House national security team. And many viewed his tack as not only unprofessional, but insubordinate and disregarding of the proper role of the military in advising the president. (This would presage his and his staff's outrageous on-the-record comments reported a year later, comments resulting in his resignation and replacement.)
The president then made clear there would be no more leaks of military proposals or point of view. And he steeled his resolve that decisions would be made and accountability agreed to by all responsible White House, Pentagon and military leaders. There would be unequivocal, shared commitment by all. The Newsweek article offers this account of how the review process concluded:
Obama was moving out of his probing mode and toward conclusions and eventually presidential orders. This would not be a five- to seven-year nation-building commitment, much less an open-ended one. The time frame the military was offering for both getting in and getting out must shrink dramatically, he said. There would be no nationwide counterinsurgency strategy; the Pentagon was to present a "targeted" plan for protecting population centers, training Afghan security forces, and beginning a real—not a token—withdrawal within 18 months of the escalation.
On Sunday, Nov. 29, having made his decision, the president decided to hold a final Oval Office meeting with the Pentagon brass and commanders in the region who would carry out his orders. He wanted to put it directly to the military: Gates, Mullen, Cartwright, Petraeus, and national-security adviser Jim Jones, without any of the others. Obama asked Biden to come back early from Thanksgiving in Nantucket to join him for the meeting.
As they walked along the portico toward the Oval Office, Biden asked if the new policy of beginning a significant withdrawal in 2011 was a direct presidential order that couldn't be countermanded by the military. Obama said yes. The president didn't need the reminder. Obama had already learned something about leaving no room for ambiguity with the military. He would often summarize his own meetings in a purposeful, clear style by saying, "Let me tell you where I am," before enumerating points ("One, two, three") and finishing with, "And that's my order."
Inside the Oval Office, Obama asked Petraeus, "David, tell me now. I want you to be honest with me. You can do this in 18 months?"
"Sir, I'm confident we can train and hand over to the ANA [Afghan National Army] in that time frame," Petraeus replied.
"Good. No problem," the president said. "If you can't do the things you say you can in 18 months, then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?"
"Yes, sir, in agreement," Petraeus said. "Yes, sir," Mullen said.
The president was crisp but informal. "Bob, you have any problems?" he asked Gates, who said he was fine with it. The president then encapsulated the new policy: in quickly, out quickly, focus on Al Qaeda, and build the Afghan Army. "I'm not asking you to change what you believe, but if you don't agree with me that we can execute this, say so now," he said. No one said anything.
"Tell me now," Obama repeated. "Fully support, sir," Mullen said. "Ditto," Petraeus said.
Obama was trying to turn the tables on the military, to box them in after they had spent most of the year boxing him in. If, after 18 months, the situation in Afghanistan had stabilized as he expected, then troops could begin to come home. If conditions didn't stabilize enough to begin an orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces (or if they deteriorated further), that would undermine the Pentagon's belief in the effectiveness of more troops. The commanders couldn't say they didn't have enough time to make the escalation work because they had specifically said, under explicit questioning, that they did.
...When he spoke to McChrystal by teleconference, Obama couldn't have been clearer in his instructions. "Do not occupy what you cannot transfer," the president ordered. In a later call he said it again: "Do not occupy what you cannot transfer." He didn't want the United States moving into a section of the country unless it was to prepare for transferring security responsibilities to the Afghans. The troops should dig wells and pass out seeds and all the other development ideas they had talked about for months, but if he learned that U.S. soldiers had been camped in a town without any timetable for transfer of authority he wasn't going to be happy.
At the conclusion of an interview in his West Wing office, Biden was adamant. "In July of 2011 you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it," Biden said as he wheeled to leave the room, late for lunch with the president. He turned at the door and said once more, "Bet. On. It."
--"Secrets From Inside the Obama War Room," by Jonathan Alter, Newsweek (5.15.10)
I took from all this no sense of confidence or optimism that our mission in Afghanistan was now more realistic, or success more likely. Quite the contrary. Obama, Gates, and the generals had agreed on the already revised mission (push back and contain the Taliban until the Afghan government and military are prepared to contain them) and revised strategy (community-supporting counterinsurgency (COIN)), and added to it an increase, or "surge," of 30,000 new troops and a new time line (begin to exit Afghanistan in mid-2011, in 18 months). That, and relying on the brash, do-or-die in-country leadership of General McChrystal.
But all they appeared to accomplish was to raise the stakes, tighten the screws, and shorten the time line and fuse of a failing mission and strategy. It seemed to promise only 18 more months of American and Afghan military casualties, and more civilian casualties, too--and more weariness and resentment, more fear of destruction and death for the Afghan people, and increasingly for the American public, as well. And then, perhaps, we could begin to come home.
Yet, I trusted Obama, his intellect and process, his values and instincts about the war. So on the surface, this did not seem to make sense. Yes, like others of us, he'd been wrong about the effectiveness of the surge in Iraq, and now was more careful about opposing the same tactic in Afghanistan. And yes, like many of us, he thought Afghanistan was the "good war," the justified war, at least so far as that meant chasing al Qaeda into the Afghistan mountains and routing their Taliban sponsors and protectors in the process. But that's when realism might have suggested a new, pan-Afghanistan government structure that included representation by a Taliban now defeated and weak, a Taliban more likely to abandon al Qaeda for a place at the table of new shared or delegated governance.
But that kind of realism in Afghanistan was not on our minds as we turned our attention and resources to a misguided, military nation-building boondoggle in Iraq--a serious Middle-East strategic misjudgment, and an indefensible price to pay in lives and resources lost. And at the same time, by neglect at first, and then the step-by-step inevitabilities of ignored realities, a default mission, and a miscast strategy, we slipped into the same mired situation in Afghanistan, but one now lacking the same strength of justification and, as it evolved, more hopeless.
Central to the failings of our mission and strategy in Afghanistan is the historical condition and circumstances of Afghanistan, the same condition and circumstances in which COIN was misprescribed and has so far failed. All agree, it seems, that for the US to be successful, to "win," ultimately requires us to to be able to turn over completely the successful military control or management of the Taliban and a successful nation building role to the Afghan government and military. But that would appear wishful thinking, at least any time in the foreseeable future.
First, that assumes that American forces are in control, that they are containing or managing the military and social influence of the Taliban, which they are not. And as the Taliban grow stronger, with more control and influence over the people of the southern provinces and outlying areas, it seems highly unlikely American forces will be successful in meeting that goal. And even if they were, the frustrating, lagging development of the Afghan military capability is far behind the learning curve. While appearing to meet recruiting goals, their preparedness, experience and effectiveness is well short of what is required to assume responsibility for military control in Afghanistan. The young Afghan centralized government lacks credibility and the respect of the people and tribal authorities, and lacks effective authority and power over those same southern provinces and outlying areas. In part, this is the forbidding geography of Afghanistan, the enclaves of tribal community and power separated and protected by rugged, difficult terrain. Significant decentralized power has always, unavoidably resided in the various tribal areas. And it still does. But it is also the corrupt, ineffective and disrespected Karzai government.
As we focused on Iraq, we allowed the resurgence of the Taliban. Defeated by us in the field in 2001, it has since been given time and opportunity to rebuild, recruit and re-establish itself as a power that will not go away. And they've not only reestablished themselves, they've learned. They've learned from their own history and the experience of their own Mujahideen, and added to that the experience and knowledge of insurgent factions in Iraq. It's now a different war, their kind of war. It's on their turf, where they have the most experience, best knowledge, and the unwavering, death-inviting commitment to an interminable insurgency. And so, it cannot be surprising that the provinces and outlying territories of Afghanistan are increasingly coming under their control or influence.
If there is to be an effective government in Afghanistan, it must somehow include the Taliban--that, or be constantly at war with them. Most all now recognize this, however reluctantly, as Karzai, first, and now Pakistan desperately try to negotiate a shared role in government with some of the Taliban--a role that would necessarily require them to disavow and turn away al Qaeda and other terrorist factions. But that ship has likely sailed. What might have been accomplished with a dispirited and weak Taliban in the period after their defeat in 2001, is now unlikely, and for the most militant Taliban factions, near impossible.
More than the Mujahideen, the Taliban are a home-grown national power, and prepared to fight their guerilla insurgency for national and cultural identity as long as it takes. And we are unprepared to wage interminable counter-terrorist guerilla war and costly, ineffectual counterinsurgency. We lack the justification and political will to continue doing so. It now appears clearly a losing war, and we rightly lack the same commitment and resolve, the same acceptance of lost life and resources, to continue a mission and strategy conceived in mistaken judgments.
[It is also instructive to consider the assessments of a variety of public commentators covering the period from just before last year's strategic review through this year. Through them, the case and sentiment for ending our war effort in Afghanistan has been made clearer to whomever was open to accepting the reality of these misjudgments of mission and strategy. Excerpts of some from the Economist, Newsweek, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Foreign Affairs appear in the body of this article. I have chosen a representative sample of others from Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and the Associated Press that address the "surge" and other issues, and included them in an Appendix at the end of the article. They are worth reading.]
Obama's Deal
So, if that is at all a reasonable assessment of where we are in Afghanistan, what do we now make of President Obama's December 2009 personal deal with the generals? Is it the best or most practical of a set of bad options? Is it at all responsible or sensible?
The May 15 Newsweek article by Jonathan Alter suggests a shrewd, practical characterization of Obama's deal with the generals and his personal strategy. He avoided the political risk in opposing generals straight up and denying their proposals. Neither did he dispute that the mission in Afghanistan is still necessary to the war on al Qaeda and terrorism, nor oppose the failing counterinsurgency strategy in support of Vice President Biden's more limited, more practical approach. Instead, he would first put an end to the de facto open-ended commitment of time and resources to test the failing military analysis and strategy. Instead, he agreed to most all they wanted in the short term, but challenged their preferred strategy to produce results, tangible documentable success over an aggressive, more-or less fixed and agreed time frame.
That is, he established a clear performance measurement standard and a challenging 18-month time frame within which to judge failure. And then he could let experience with that plan and time frame set the table for a staged exit from Afghanistan. He appears to have set the terms for an end-game with a practical, pre-agreed way out, while retaining the flexibility he needs to make it work.
That personal strategy takes Obama off the hook with America's political right, and places the responsibility for an unlikely "win" on the generals, a burden made more difficult by an 18-month time line that will almost surely prove insuperable. Of course, that 18-month time line may also strengthen the resolve of the Taliban (although they were already resolute), undermine the confidence and commitment of the people in the Afghan government (although there is little left to lose), and further undermine hopes for a successful counterinsurgency intervention (which is already unlikely under any circumstances). So it appears quite likely that Obama agreed to strongly but temporarily support a failing strategy as the most practical and least politically risky way to work toward ending an open-ended, failing mission in Afghanistan.
COIN & McChrystal
This part of our discussion seems to me best introduced by sharing some of the conclusions of Michael Hastings' now well-parsed and widely reviewed Rolling Stone article, "Stanley McChrystal: The Runaway General," which led to the general's resignation and this next chapter in the examination of our mission and war in Afghanistan. Mr. Hastings:
When it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on McChrystal's side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis Khan – and he wasn't hampered by things like human rights, economic development and press scrutiny. The COIN doctrine, bizarrely, draws inspiration from some of the biggest Western military embarrassments in recent memory: France's nasty war in Algeria (lost in 1962) and the American misadventure in Vietnam (lost in 1975). McChrystal, like other advocates of COIN, readily acknowledges that counterinsurgency campaigns are inherently messy, expensive and easy to lose. "Even Afghans are confused by Afghanistan," he says. But even if he somehow manages to succeed, after years of bloody fighting with Afghan kids who pose no threat to the U.S. homeland, the war will do little to shut down Al Qaeda, which has shifted its operations to Pakistan. Dispatching 150,000 troops to build new schools, roads, mosques and water-treatment facilities around Kandahar is like trying to stop the drug war in Mexico by occupying Arkansas and building Baptist churches in Little Rock. "It's all very cynical, politically," says Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who has extensive experience in the region. "Afghanistan is not in our vital interest – there's nothing for us there."
..."They are trying to manipulate perceptions because there is no definition of victory – because victory is not even defined or recognizable," says Celeste Ward, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation who served as a political adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq in 2006. "That's the game we're in right now. What we need, for strategic purposes, is to create the perception that we didn't get run off. The facts on the ground are not great, and are not going to become great in the near future."
But facts on the ground, as history has proven, offer little deterrent to a military determined to stay the course. Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn't begin to reflect how deeply f****d up things are in Afghanistan. "If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular," a senior adviser to McChrystal says. Such realism, however, doesn't prevent advocates of counterinsurgency from dreaming big: Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further. "There's a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here," a senior military official in Kabul tells me.
Back in Afghanistan, less than a month after the White House meeting with Karzai and all the talk of "progress," McChrystal is hit by the biggest blow to his vision of counterinsurgency. Since last year, the Pentagon had been planning to launch a major military operation this summer in Kandahar, the country's second-largest city and the Taliban's original home base. It was supposed to be a decisive turning point in the war – the primary reason for the troop surge that McChrystal wrested from Obama late last year. But on June 10th, acknowledging that the military still needs to lay more groundwork, the general announced that he is postponing the offensive until the fall. Rather than one big battle, like Fallujah or Ramadi, U.S. troops will implement what McChrystal calls a "rising tide of security." The Afghan police and army will enter Kandahar to attempt to seize control of neighborhoods, while the U.S. pours $90 million of aid into the city to win over the civilian population.
Even proponents of counterinsurgency are hard-pressed to explain the new plan. "This isn't a classic operation," says a U.S. military official. "It's not going to be Black Hawk Down. There aren't going to be doors kicked in." Other U.S. officials insist that doors are going to be kicked in, but that it's going to be a kinder, gentler offensive than the disaster in Marja. "The Taliban have a jackboot on the city," says a military official. "We have to remove them, but we have to do it in a way that doesn't alienate the population." When Vice President Biden was briefed on the new plan in the Oval Office, insiders say he was shocked to see how much it mirrored the more gradual plan of counterterrorism that he advocated last fall. "This looks like CT-plus!" he said, according to U.S. officials familiar with the meeting.
Whatever the nature of the new plan, the delay underscores the fundamental flaws of counterinsurgency. After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. "Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem," says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we're picking winners and losers" – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.
"Stanley McChrystal: the Runaway General," by Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone magazine, as reprinted in msnbc.com (6.22.10). This article originally appeared in RS 1108/1109 from July 8-22, 2010.
In retrospect, perhaps the clearest errors and strongest indicators of the hopelessness of the U.S. Afghanistan strategy were electing counterinsurgency as the centerpiece on which success or failure would depend, and choosing General Stanley McChrystal as its commander and standard bearer.
Counterinsurgency, as imagined and shaped by the Pentagon, was a strategy of limited possibilities in limited circumstances, a strategy with a cautionary history of qualified successes and notable failures. And the failure of this misprescribed military-social experiment in Afghanistan must be called out for what it is. It has neither built popular support nor bought us additional time.
Isn't it now clear that none of the conditions and required elements of success is now present in Afghanistan? Success depends not only on "winning the minds and hearts" of the Afghan people, and doing so across the far-flung geographical outposts of its forbidding, mountainous terrain where territory is hard to win and harder to hold, if it can be held. And the people of Afghanistan are tired and resentful of the long-term US occupation, the endless war and civilian casualties at the hands of the US and Afghan military. More, they increasingly fear and are cowed by the resurgent strength of the Taliban now brutally exercised against any who support the American or Afghan military, or the Afghan government.
Substantial and increasing numbers of Afghans now prefer the stability of Taliban rule--however ruthless and bereft of freedom--to the chaos, the random danger and death that attend the presence of the US military and the stumbling Karzai government. The minds and hearts of the dispersed Afghan people now appear largely lost to us and beyond reaching again. Our costly efforts at community or tribal support are now directed at a largely unreceptive, fearful and jaded decentralized population. It's time is now past.
So it appears we cannot succeed with COIN in Afghanistan--nor can we "win", not in any meaningful sense of the word. No one has, and no one likely will. Not any more than the Russians could "win" in Afghanistan. Not any more than we could "win" in Vietnam--and Afghanistan is now more and more feeling like the last phase of the Vietnam War. Those of us serving during that war remember so well.
And to the extent some in denial hold rigidly to a nervous confidence in superficial similarities with the situation and strategy in Iraq, they must understand the greater, more substantive differences, determinative differences. From a NY Times article by David E. Sanger excerpted in the Appendix:
But probe beneath the surface, and it becomes clear that Mr. Obama is heading into his new strategy with his ears ringing with warnings — from some of his own aides and military commanders — that many of the conditions that made the Iraq surge work do not exist in Afghanistan. As one of the strategists deeply involved in the White House Situation Room debates put it, "We spent a lot of time discussing the fact that the only thing Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is a lot of sand."
...The Iraq surge worked in large part because there was powerful support in Anbar Province from the so-called Awakening, the movement by local Sunni tribes who rose up against extremists who were killing people... Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, were foreigners.
[B]ut a series of intelligence reports supplied to Mr. Obama since September found no evidence in Afghanistan of anything on the scale of the Iraqi Awakening movement. What's more, in Afghanistan the extremists, the Taliban, are natives. "They are part of the furniture in Afghanistan; they have always been there," one of Mr. Obama's counterterrorism experts said...
And more, the actual numbers of al Qaeda in Afghanistan have been recently reported by the CIA to be "60-100, maybe less." That may be as close to a success as anyone could reasonably hope for. After all, there are reported to be larger contingents of al Qaeda or similar terrorist groups operating in Somalia and Yemen, and working groups in many other countries. Would we consider new military and nation building ventures in those places as well? Isn't this now largely about the Taliban, "part of the furniture" of Afghanistan, and how to work out an acceptable territorial and governance arrangement that recognizes actual power and authority? Also, isn't the matter as much about the relationship of the Taliban with Pakistan as Kabul? Aren't we talking about an AfPak strategy?
As to the choice of General Stanley McChrystal: Regardless of our chances to succeed with COIN, the selection of a career-long special forces, black-ops commander would seem an unlikely gamble. A plausible choice, perhaps, if conditions somehow forced a desperation tactic of finding a personality and operations profile commensurate with the forbidding character of the terrain; the weak central government fractured and denied by decentralized, tribal power and politics; the rigid local religion and culture; the gritty militia guerilla warfare, and the willingness of the Taliban to continue fighting, hell or high water. Yet, a situation like that, one also burdened by the U.S. military's devotion to their misapplied social science experiment, the intractable ambiguities of central and tribal politics, often cunning power politics, might more likely call for a commander of more balanced military and government-service experience. That might have seemed a more logical, more appropriate choice. And now, in General Petraeus, we have just that.
A more appropriate choice, when faced with the realities on the ground, might more likely acknowledge the error and hopelessness of the situation, and his leadership might more likely reflect that. With General Petraeus now commanding, we shall soon see. For only a soldier of McChrystals talents, experience, and do-or-die mentality could take on his task with unqualified commitment and unshakable resolve. Only a commander like that could place upon his soldiers the impossible task of identifying the enemy, engaging them and killing them, but also demand little or no risk of civilian casualties. Impossible, most might say, but he earnestly charged them to do just that and embrace the mission at the same time. Only a commander like that could and would continue to advocate for the strategy and the fight even when the cause was failing or lost.
Regrettably, a soldier like that, even a flag officer and commander like that, often comes also with an arrogance, with an inclination to flaunt authority, a willingness to challenge it. He's more often an outlier, not part of the central, mainstream leadership team and experience. Consensus building, diplomacy, and broad accountability are less often the strengths of such a person. And so, McChrystal and his team's careless and callous disparagement of the President and his White House team, cannot be that surprising, especially after the general had already flown those colors before the White House so recently. Nor could this apparently calculated--or incredibly stupid--public questioning and disparagement of presidential and White House leadership, this breach of the bright-line dictates of presidential and civilian leadership over a respectful military--this insubordination--result in anything short of him being relieved of command. That's where it all was going. The stars were aligning from the beginning. We should have seen it coming.
The revelations in Rolling Stone and resulting controversy regarding General McChrystal revealed both a flailing puerile expression and a dispiriting reflection of the Pentagon's and generals' frustration with their inability to effect their desired result through sheer resolve and commitment. And now it falls to General Petraeus to reshape our effort in Afghanistan, to set the table for the critical assessment in mid-2011, and the next steps to follow.
Next Steps: What is Left to Us
So then, we called upon an improbable, inappropriate commander for an inappropriate, miscast strategy in a mission that had to fail as defined. In light of this reality, Vice President Biden's interim proposal for troops in population centers combined with counter-terrorism special ops in the provinces now sounds like the height of sensibility and practicality. And since our only defensible goal or mission is to deny al Qaeda an accomodating and successful base of operations, it's actually an approach that might have worked--and worked with lower cost and loss of life. ("Biden. Who's that?" says McChrystal. "Bite Me," says his aide.) It too was proposed as a transition stage in turning all responsibility over to the Afghan government and army. Arguably, it could still be part of such a plan, but the "turn over" would still likely take longer than acceptable.
More likely, we will continue to go with our commitment to both counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism as far is they will take us by mid-2011. Then soon after we will likely declare sufficient progress achieved--a "win," so to say--and begin to turn more control and responsibility over to the Afghanistan government. A "win" will be whatever the situation is then. And that appears to be how President Obama is thinking and approaching the plan. Flexibility in military and political priorities and timing will still be necessary. But since the repository of our goodwill in Afghanistan is now near empty, and the failings of our mission ever more apparent, our military men and women should begin their staged repatriation within the next year.
It's real politick, Mr. Obama. It's a smart and practical, if unsatisfying, approach to resolution--and offers the likelihood of a successful staged exit with the vaunted General Petraeus in command.
So, let me to say it again: welcome it or not, our military departure from Afghanistan is approaching. Yes, we will somehow try to position or posture ourselves as not having been "run out"--like Vietnam, I suppose. But it is what it is. And at some level, substantive honesty about the mission's failings, and the absence of sufficient continuing national justification to continue, must be acknowledged. Candor and responsibility, however diplomatic, must rule the day. That's what Obama will have to deliver sometime in the course of the next year or so.
We may in fact move through an interim period like Vice President Biden's prescription. That may be a prudent, even necessary step. But that would still allow for considerable troop reductions in the process. And next steps, timely next steps, must extricate us from a significant military presence in Afghanistan. But whatever the steps or process, whatever the other possibilities, if Obama manages it deftly enough, the redoubtable General Petraeus--our consensus best-of-class commander and military thinker--will be in command and leading the early stages. Responsibly, no doubt, with thoughtful coordination with the Afghan government and other UN forces, to be sure, but we will begin to take our leave. It seems the only sensible conclusion.
But we must understand this: Afghanistan will sooner or later have to accomodate and coexist with the Taliban. Most likely, that will mean ceding considerable authority to them again, possibly all authority--at least outside the major population areas. If it is not ceded, it will be taken. We and the rest of the world must prepare to work with that inevitability. But there is another approach in that direction, another possibility for establishing a semblance of order and a more workable political order in Afghanistan.
Decentralized, "Mixed Sovereignty." A Possibility?
Too logical to be seriously considered, perhaps, there is another possibility that could be compatible with our timely staged exit. We could try to help Afghanistan become a better functioning and more acceptable version of what it really is: a patchwork quilt of decentralized areas of "mixed sovereignty." That is the term used and the concept offered by Stephen Biddle, et. al., in a recent Foreign Affairs article.
Yes, it would likely take considerably more time to reach a place of trust, agreement and commitment on the part of all parties. With the continuing efforts of Karzai and the new brokering role of Pakistan, a commitment by the U.S. and U.N. to support the "mixed sovereignty" approach might help create the needed context and climate to advance it. But it still seems unlikely the Tribal leaders, the Taliban and Kabul government will anytime soon reach that place of trust and agreement. Not when the Taliban's ascendency is now so full of promise of recaptured dominance in Afghanistan. Not when some of the more militant Taliban factions are likely to remain sympathetic and supportive of al Qaeda. And it serves us poorly if it does not eliminate or significantly reduce the areas of refuge and support for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
If only we had the prescience and wisdom to see the strength of merit in this thoughtful, realistic approach in 2002 or 2003, when it's prospects for success were so much better. If only frogs had wings. Still, it is likely worth the effort--if it could be approached and carried out concurrently and consistent with significantly reducing our U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan. For we cannot hope to advance the cause of a better functioning Afghanistan of this description as long as our unwelcome dominating presence--our occupation, in the view of most--continues in it's posture of war and Western-defined notions of nation building.
Biddle, et. al., recognize the reality of most all I've discussed above, yet believe this remains a realistic possibility. From the article:
The original plan for a post-Taliban Afghanistan called for rapid, transformational nation building. But such a vision no longer appears feasible, if it ever was. Many Americans are now skeptical that even a stable and acceptable outcome in Afghanistan is possible. They believe that Afghanistan has never been administered effectively and is simply ungovernable. Much of today's public opposition to the war centers on the widespread fear that whatever the military outcome, there is no Afghan political end state that is both acceptable and achievable at a reasonable cost....
Mixed sovereignty is an even more decentralized model. Much like decentralized democracy, this approach would take many powers that are now held in Kabul and delegate them to the provincial or district level. But mixed sovereignty would go one step further, granting local authorities the additional power to rule without transparency or elections if they so chose...
There are feasible options for acceptable end states that would meet core U.S. security interests and place the country on a path toward tolerable stability. The United States will have to step back from its ambitious but unrealistic project to create a strong, centralized Afghan state. If it does, then a range of power-sharing models could balance the needs of Afghanistan's internal factions and constituencies in ways that today's design cannot, while ensuring that Afghanistan does not again become a base for terrorists. In war, as in so many other things, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. The perfect is probably not achievable in Afghanistan -- but the acceptable can still be salvaged.
Perhaps. But it is another social-political experiment, of sorts, and it is late in the game. And if it is still worth the effort, it is so only if it does not deter or significantly postpone a timely exit of most U.S. military forces from our posture of war in Afghanistan--leaving behind only a counter-terrorism special ops capability and coordinating military presence.
Appendix: Additional Published Commentary
Time Magazine, Joe Klein, August 2009:
These reflections by Time columnist Joe Klein are as insightful, relevant and valid today as they were last September:
So what should Obama do about Afghanistan? His dilemma isn't as stark as has been posed in recent press accounts, with screamers on the right demanding slavish devotion to the military's wish list and screamers on the left demanding a withdrawal. The U.S. military has become far more ... nuanced when it comes to making requests of Presidents. The negotiations about what McChrystal can officially request will not take place anywhere near the public eye. [But that would soon end.] It is very likely that more troops will be sent — to build and train the Afghan security forces, it will be said. Obama's problems on the left will be mitigated by the fact that most Democrats have also supported this war — as opposed to Iraq's — and have little desire to reverse themselves. They don't want to hurt the President, and they don't want to be perceived as weak on defense come election time.
Which still leaves the nagging question: What is the right thing to do in Afghanistan? It should be remembered that we invaded with cause: the Taliban government was providing safe havens for al-Qaeda, from which the Sept. 11 attacks were launched. Having routed the existing Afghan government, we had a responsibility to restore order. We have bungled that responsibility for eight years, attempting a Western version of order: central governance, the appearance of democracy — but largely ignoring traditional Afghan ways of social organization. The national-security challenge still exists, although its locus has shifted across the border to Pakistan.
Even if we help the Afghans establish a brilliant government in Kabul, that threat will remain — and it's legitimate to ask whether pouring our resources into Afghan nation-building is the best way to confront al-Qaeda. Unless the new Karzai government quickly changes course, the only reasonable answer is no. The question then becomes, What's Plan B? And is anyone working on that?
---"Obama's Next Afghan Move," by Joe Klein, Time (8.27.09)
Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria, October 2009:
As to the "surge" strategy in Afghanistan, there have been many other voices quick to point up the errors of this course and its incongruence with the unique set of challenges and issues in Afghanistan. Among them is that of Fareed Zakaria, a well-informed and thoughtful voice on issues of the Middle East, heard often on CNN and read in Newsweek, among other places. This from his article:
The United States has had one central objective: to deny Al Qaeda the means to reconstitute, train, and plan major terror attacks. This mission has been largely successful for the past eight years. Al Qaeda is dispersed, on the run, and unable to direct attacks of the kind it planned and executed routinely in the 1990s. Fourteen of the top 20 leaders of the group have been killed by drone attacks. Its funding sources are drying up, and its political appeal is at an all-time low. All this is not an accident but rather a product of the U.S. presence in the region and efforts to disrupt terrorists, track funds, gain intelligence, aid development, help allies, and kill enemies.
It's true that the security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated considerably. While it is nothing like Iraq in 2006—civilian deaths are a 10th as numerous [but no longer]—parts of the country are effectively controlled by the Taliban. Other parts are no man's land. But these areas are sparsely populated tracts of countryside. All the major population centers remain in the hands of the Kabul government. Is it worth the effort to gain control of all 35,000 Afghan villages scattered throughout the country? That goal has eluded most Afghan governments for the last 200 years and is a very high bar to set for the U.S. mission there.
Why has security gotten worse? Largely because Hamid Karzai's government is ineffective and corrupt and has alienated large numbers of Pashtuns, who have migrated to the Taliban. It is not clear that this problem can be solved by force, even using a smart counterinsurgency strategy. In fact, more troops injected into the current climate could provoke an antigovernment or nationalist backlash.
...It's important to remember that the crucial, lasting element of the surge in Iraq was not the influx of troops, but getting Sunni tribes to switch sides by offering them security, money, and a place at the table. U.S. troops are now drawing down, and yet—despite some violence—the Sunnis have not resumed fighting because Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is courting their support. [Although, that may not last much longer.]
...The United States and the Afghan government need to make much greater efforts to wean Pashtun tribes away from the most radical Taliban factions. It is unclear how many Taliban fighters believe in a global jihadist ideology, but most U.S. commanders with whom I've spoken feel that the number is less than 30 percent. The other 70 percent are driven by money, gangland peer pressure, or opposition to Karzai.
And when we think through our strategy in Afghanistan, let's please remember that there is virtually no al Qaeda presence there. Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen recently acknowledged what U.S. intelligence and all independent observers have long said: Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, as is the leadership of the hard-core Afghan Taliban. (That's why it's called the Quetta Shura, Quetta being a Pakistani city.) All attacks against Western targets that have emanated from the region in the past eight years have come from Pakistan and not Afghanistan. Even the most recently foiled plot in the United States, which involved the first Afghan that I know of to be implicated in global terrorism, originated in Pakistan. Yet we spend $30 in Afghanistan for every dollar in Pakistan.
...What about the argument that Osama bin Laden and his minions will simply shift back across the border if the Taliban is allowed free rein? Well, they haven't done so yet, despite the pockets of turf the insurgents control. And it is easier for us to deny them territory than to insist that we control it all ourselves—we can fight like guerrillas too. Remember that the U.S. and its allies have close to 100,000 troops in Afghanistan now. Keeping them there is the right commitment, one that keeps in mind the stakes, but also the costs and, most important, the other vital interests around the world to which U.S. foreign policy must also be attentive.
Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria, November 2009:
What alternative strategy does Zakaria suggest? Mr. Zakaria:
The real question we should be asking in Afghanistan is not "Do we need a surge?" but rather "Do we need a third surge?" The number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in January 2008 was 26,607. Over the next six months, the Bush administration raised the total to 48,250. President Bush described this policy as "the quiet surge," and he made the standard arguments about the need for a counterinsurgency capacity—the troops had to not only fight the Taliban but protect the Afghan population, strengthen and train the Afghan Army and police, and assist in development.
In January 2009, another 3,000 troops, originally ordered by President Bush, went to Afghanistan in the first days of the Obama presidency. In February, responding to a request from the commander in the field, Obama ordered an additional 17,000 troops into the country. In other words, over the past 18 months, troop levels in Afghanistan have almost tripled. An additional 40,000 troops sent in the next few months would mean an almost 400 percent increase in U.S. troops since 2008. (The total surge in Iraq, incidentally, was just over 20,000 troops.) It is not dithering to try to figure out why previous increases have not worked and why we think additional ones would.
...Advocates of a troop increase act as if counterinsurgency is applied physics. General McChrystal's team, having done the mathematical calculations, has apparently arrived at the exact answer. There is no room for variation or middle courses. It's 40,000 troops or no counterinsurgency. This is absurd, as is best demonstrated by the fact that senior military officers had assured me at various points over the past year that with the latest increase in troops (first to 42,000, then 68,000), they finally had enough forces to do counterinsurgency.
In fact, the crucial judgments that have to be made involve what the troops will do and how much of Afghanistan to cover. Ricks said to me, "Why not do the Petraeus plan [counterinsurgency] for the major population centers and the Biden plan [counterterrorism] for the rest of the country?" That sounds like a middle course that is smart and practical, which might need some more forces or perhaps can make do with the almost 100,000 already there. Obama should carefully consider these and other options before racing out to demonstrate how tough he is.
--"A Third Surge?: The troops need a smarter vision," by Newsweek (11.2.09)
The New York Times, David E. Sanger, December 2009:
But probe beneath the surface, and it becomes clear that Mr. Obama is heading into his new strategy with his ears ringing with warnings — from some of his own aides and military commanders — that many of the conditions that made the Iraq surge work do not exist in Afghanistan. As one of the strategists deeply involved in the White House Situation Room debates put it, "We spent a lot of time discussing the fact that the only thing Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is a lot of sand."
..The Iraq surge worked in large part because there was powerful support in Anbar Province from the so-called Awakening, the movement by local Sunni tribes who rose up against extremists who were killing people, forcibly marrying local women and cutting off the hands of men who smoked in public. In Iraq, American officials believed that most leaders of a vigorous opposition, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, were foreigners.
The United States remains hopeful that it can capitalize on Afghan militias that have taken up arms against the Taliban in local areas, but a series of intelligence reports supplied to Mr. Obama since September found no evidence in Afghanistan of anything on the scale of the Iraqi Awakening movement. What's more, in Afghanistan the extremists, the Taliban, are natives. "They are part of the furniture in Afghanistan; they have always been there," one of Mr. Obama's counterterrorism experts said, explaining why Mr. Obama's goal is simply to degrade the Taliban's power, not to defeat the group. In Iraq, the aim was to defeat the insurgents, a goal that has been largely achieved.
Then there is the question of whether Afghanistan's military is trainable. Iraq's forces were in a shambles, but the country had a tradition of military order. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminded senators this week that in Iraq it took several years to get traction, and that in Afghanistan it could take longer. "It was really late '07 before the police in Iraq really started to step out," he said, adding later, "we have to be careful with comparisons."
--"Similarities to Iraq Surge Mask Risks in Afghanistan," by David E. Sanger, New York Times (12.2.09)
Associated Press, January 2010:
KABUL - "Brother, why are you angry with us?" said a passenger leaning out of one of the vehicles blocking his path. "It's you who are going the wrong way!" "I'm not angry at you, I'm angry at Afghanistan," the man cried back, waving his arm dismissively as he negotiated his bike onto a crowded sidewalk and drove off in a trail of exhaust fumes. "These are sad days," said the passenger.
In Kabul, even a traffic jam can provoke a comment on this Islamic nation's dismal state, which most people here believe is at its bleakest since the U.S. invaded to topple the Taliban in 2001. It's a striking sentiment when you consider it comes after eight years of international intervention, $60 billion in foreign aid and the lives of thousands of foreign troops and Afghan civilians....
[Commentary on the "surge" from the AP article:]
The Obama administration is hoping to reverse that trend by pouring 30,000 more American troops into the conflict over the next few months. But "the more soldiers they send here, the worse it gets," said 19-year-old carpet seller Hamid Hashimi. In the year after the Taliban fell, international forces numbered a modest 16,000. Today that number is already well over 100,000, and the insurgency has mushroomed along with it.
The war — once mostly limited to Pakistan border — has touched nearly ever corner of the country. It has also penetrated the frontier-like capital, where car bombings or other spectacular attacks like the October storming of a guest house filled with U.N. staff make news every couple of weeks.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. When the Taliban were overthrown in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, aid groups, analysts and Afghans themselves all believed the nation was finally emerging from a quarter century of war. "In those days people had hope, but unfortunately everything has turned upside down since then," said Hanif Hangam, who stars in an Afghan comedy TV show called Alarm Bell. "People expected things to go forward, but we've just been sliding back."
...Indeed, the news today is the same as it was eight years previous, there is just more of it: Car bombs and rockets rock Kabul. Civilians die accidentally in U.S. air strikes. Afghan security forces in dire need of training. The opium trade is booming. And just like 2001, President Hamid Karzai is derided as the "mayor of Kabul" by critics who say his authority doesn't extend much further than the city limits.
"It's a disaster," said Ramazan Bashardost, a lawmaker who came in a distant third in the country's botched August election, which was marred by fraud so widespread a third of Karzai's ballots were thrown out. "The situation is getting worse every day for ordinary Afghans." According to Bashardost, about 80 percent of the country is without electricity and unemployment is 60 percent. Many families can only afford to eat once a day and corruption is so rampant, "it's practically legal," he said.
