Obama's Afghan venture, a potential minefield

The US aims to succeed where Alexander the Great, among numerous others, ingloriously failed

For all the tortuous brainstorming and agonised debate that attended its birth, the Obama plan is a gamble with perhaps no more than a 50-50 chance of coming off. The price of victory, if such a term is applicable, will be high — for many in Afghanistan and the West, it is already far too high.

The price of failure is incalculable — for the Afghan people, for Pakistan’s shaky civilian government, for a reluctant Nato alliance, for the death struggle against Islamist extremism, and for Obama’s own political survival.

For these reasons perhaps, the plan contains something for everyone, including the Taliban foe. While boldly advancing, the US and its allies are simultaneously planning their retreat. While fighting with dramatically increased troop numbers, they are talking with redoubled energy about ‘Afghanisation’ and a negotiated settlement with so-called moderates. While urging President Hamid Karzai’s government to stand up for the Afghan nation, they seek a devolution of power to provincial, district and traditional tribal structures.

In the words of one White House aide, the carefully recalibrated strategy, in all its myriad aspects, remains a ‘potential minefield.’ As the battle for Afghanistan rapidly unfolds over coming months, it could, like some treacherous improvised explosive device, blow up in the president’s face. It’s Obama’s war now. And he could be its biggest casualty.

Climax

Will his plan work? The starting whistle has blown; the race is now on to build on the momentum generated at West Point. On the military front, up to 9,000 US marines will finalise preparations in the next few days for an expected deployment south to Kandahar and Helmand, scene of some of the bitterest fighting involving British and Canadian troops.

“The first troops out of the door are going to be marines,” General James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, said. “We’ve been leaning forward in anticipation of a decision. And we’ve got some pretty stiff fighting coming.”

The deployment will almost double the number of US troops in the south and bring welcome relief to British forces. An early target is expected to be the Taliban stronghold of Marjeh, a centre of the opium trade in central Helmand. About 1,000 US military trainers will head south, too.

Extra combat troops are also expected to be sent east into Paktia and Paktika provinces, and to Khost, an operational base of the Haqqani clan, whose influence extends across the notional Afghan-Pakistani border into Waziristan. US pressure on Islamabad to simultaneously expand its domestically controversial military offensive against Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas will likewise intensify.

Another main thrust of the Obama plan stresses the need to protect Afghan cities, civilian population centres and road and communications links, a tactic adopted by occupying Soviet forces in the 1980s and resurrected by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander. To this end a rapid build-up of allied forces around Kandahar and other cities is expected.

Speaking recently, the new commander in southern Afghanistan, British Major-General Nick Carter, described how troops currently deployed in rural areas would be concentrated in a protective shield around Kandahar. Economic, development, educational and indigenous security assistance will meanwhile be increased in a bid to create ‘normal’ urban living conditions untroubled by the insurgency. This is seen as a logical extension of the current ‘clear and hold’ policy.

At the same time, targeted ‘hunter killer’ raids against al-Qaeda and Taliban in the mountains and countryside, using special forces, unmanned missile-firing Predator drones, and a growing number of Afghan units, will rise in number, potentially obviating the need for the exposed rural patrolling that led to many British casualties this year.

Streamlining

Rapidly training and deploying Afghan army and police forces that may double in size by the end of 2010; seeking direct talks with the Taliban leadership in Quetta; developing local government resources in over 400 Afghan provinces and districts; leaning relentlessly on Karzai to deliver effective national governance and crack down on corruption; and setting benchmarks for progress in the military and civilian spheres — these are other key aspects of the allies’ plans.

Not all of it will work quickly enough, in part or at all. Obama’s gamble is that at least some of it will. Particular hope attaches to the impact of enhanced financial and other inducements to local and tribal militias to emulate the post-surge Sunni Awakening in Iraq in 2006-07 and abandon the insurgency. If that process takes off, and if the ‘Afghanisation’ of the conflict is successfully accelerated, it’s possible that the first, phased handovers of provincial control envisaged by Gordon Brown could go ahead at the end of 2010. That way lies the exit.

But it’s a massive gamble all the same. Time is severely limited, in terms of domestic US politics and popular support; Obama probably has less than a year to show substantive progress. Meanwhile costs are escalating, too. Pakistan, where speculation abounds about another military coup, is an acute worry; so is the staying power of the Nato allies, notwithstanding the fierce American arm-twisting that will be applied at this week’s foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels.

Most of all, in order to succeed, Obama must win over an Afghan population disillusioned by western failures since 2001 and outraged that Karzai’s fraud-stained re-election victory was allowed to stand. No outsider has ever succeeded in this aim. It is a tall order — even for a latter-day Alexander.

The Guardian