Obama in a bind

A faltering Af-Pak policy

The situation in Af-Pak is getting complicated by the day and the Obama administration is bitterly divided over its future course of action to fashion a coherent strategy towards the region. Recent events have only compounded the confusion.

Some time last year, Terry Jones, pastor of a tiny Florida church, declared Islam’s holy book ‘guilty of crimes against humanity’ and ordered it set ablaze in a portable fire pit. Days later, after the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, decided to ask for Jones’ prosecution, Afghans took to the streets to protest the burning of the Quran in Florida.

An angry mob killed at least seven foreigners in Afghanistan and set fire to a UN compound in Mazar-e Sharif, a city where the Nato forces have transferred power to the local Afghan forces. Another bloody day followed in Kandahar, when police fought with protesters, leaving at least nine dead and more than 80 injured.

The ongoing tumult prompted Gen David H Petraeus, the top Nato commander in Afghanistan, and his civilian counterpart, ambassador Mark Sedwill, to issue a statement reiterating “our condemnation of any disrespect to the Holy Quran and the Muslim faith. We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Quran.”

When Jones threatened to burn a Quran on the anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks last year, Petraeus was among several top US officials who strongly urged against it and warned about the troubling consequences that could arise in Afghanistan.

Jones eventually called off the event only to announce this January that he was going to “put the Quran on trial.” He said he didn’t hear a single complaint. The ‘trial’ was held on March 20, and the holy text subsequently burned, leading to turmoil in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, suicide bombers struck a Sufi shrine compound in Pakistan, killing more than 40 people. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which has repeatedly aimed attacks at Sufi shrines across the country, along with government targets and security forces installations, promptly claimed responsibility for the attack. The latest attack is another attempt by militants to exacerbate the ideological divides that exist within different schools of Sunni Islam. There have been growing concerns that militants from the tribal regions of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, (formerly North-West Frontier Province), have been using Dera Ghazi Khan, where the shrine was based, as a route to enter Punjab.

Presidential elections

This turmoil comes at a time of growing tensions within the Obama administration over the size and pace of the planned pullout of US troops from Afghanistan this summer, with the military seeking to limit a reduction in combat forces and the White House pressing for a withdrawal substantial enough to placate a war-weary electorate. At a time of economic turmoil in the US, the war’s cost estimated to reach $120 billion this year is leading to increasing public disenchantment with the war. Attention is shifting to 2012 presidential elections and the political class, including Barack Obama, will be reluctant to challenge public opinion. Nearly two-thirds of Americans, according to latest surveys, no longer find the war in Afghanistan worth fighting.

Obama’s failure to take complete ownership of the war that he had once described as the necessary one is becoming a big liability. Moreover, he has failed to reconcile the differences among his advisors even as the perception is gaining ground that the war is going nowhere for the Nato forces. Though Obama made it clear that the current war strategy will continue and not be altered, there is a grudging acknowledgment in the US policy-making circles that Obama’s surge is not showing any signs of success so far.

Although military officials contend that the surge has enabled US forces to blunt the Taliban in key areas over the past several months, White House officials remain sceptical that those gains will survive without the presence of American troops and without US financial aid.

Obama had approved a 30,000-troop increase sought by the military in 2009 but at the same time he had made it clear that the surge forces would begin returning home by July 2011. The pace of that reduction, however, was ambiguous, with defence department officials describing the initial reductions as minor and some of Obama’s other advisers, including vice president Joe Biden, saying the pullout would be as rapid as the deployment of the surge troops.

Meanwhile, a major Pentagon task force that has sought to help Afghanistan exploit its mineral wealth and expand private-sector employment is facing a crisis with the resignation of several of its members alarming senior military officials, who view the group’s job-creation efforts as an important component of the overall US counterinsurgency mission.

As the United States struggles with its Af-Pak policy, India needs to be acutely aware of the implications of the rapidly deteriorating security environment in its neighbourhood. America’s diminishing capacity to come to terms with the challenges in Afghanistan will have long-term implications for regional security in South Asia. New Delhi will have to fashion a pro-active foreign policy response that relies less on Washington in crafting an appropriate response to the changing dynamic in Af-Pak. Whether a government mired in corruption scandals can step up to the plate remains an open question.