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March 12, 2010
Afghan action
One of the early ways that the Obama administration set itself apart from its predecessor (and there were many) was in its re-conceptualization of the war in Afghanistan. Recognizing that the challenges presented by that conflict couldn't be neatly confined within political borders, the administration began to present them as part of a wider “AfPak” problem, which included Pakistan as much as it did Afghanistan. Although the term is more bureaucratic shorthand than anything else, the sentiment behind it is valid. The multiple economic and security challenges in the region are interconnected, and it is only logical that any solution would need to be interconnected, as well. Recent events in both Afghanistan and Pakistan have proven this, but they also suggest that the interconnectedness of the conflict is more complex than the “AfPak” term may imply. They also suggest that the definition of “success” will be as complicated as the definition of the problem.
In Afghanistan itself, U.S. and allied forces — together with their Afghan counterparts — launched a major offensive to clear the town of Marja, in the Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. Billed as the largest effort of its kind since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the Marja offensive seeks to clear a region that has been an important Taliban sanctuary and a hub for drug production and trafficking. The effort is notable for more than just its magnitude. U.S. commanders have tried to emphasize that Afghan government forces have been given a lead role in the operation. Although the bulk of the fighting has been borne by U.S. and British soldiers, it is true that a significant number of Afghan troops have been involved in the operation.
The Marja offensive is also notable for what it is not. Although sharp fighting was reported early in the operation, the most significant challenge—openly acknowledged by U.S. commanders—will come after the fighting has ended. Since 2006, the Taliban has been increasingly successful in undermining government legitimacy across wide swaths of Afghanistan. Fighters are drawn from the local population and are difficult for U.S. forces to target without more troops on the ground. As Taliban forces are attacked, they disappear among the population, only to re-emerge when U.S. forces depart — as they inevitably do. The Taliban have instituted “shadow” governments in parts of the country that allied forces could not secure and that the regime of President Hamid Karzai could not control. In Marja, the objective is to restore that control and regain government legitimacy. Once the region is cleared of Taliban fighters, U.S. and allied forces will hold and secure the area as the Afghan government attempts to provide police, services, and development assistance. “We've got a government in a box, ready to roll in,” said General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The challenge will lie in making the “government in a box” take root.
Just as U.S. and Afghan forces were beginning to clear Marja, news emerged of the capture of a major Taliban leader in Pakistan. U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agents arrested Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's military commander and the deputy to the movement's founder, in Karachi. He is the highest-ranking Taliban official yet arrested by U.S. or Pakistani forces, and he potentially could provide a wealth of intelligence about Taliban operations. His arrest also could place significant limitations on the capacity of the Taliban leadership, which might prove to be an important advantage as the Marja campaign unfolds. Several days after news of Baradar's arrest emerged, it was reported that two of the Taliban's “shadow governors” had also been arrested, also in Pakistan. Just as with Baradar's arrest, the capture of the shadow governors could provide a wealth of information and significantly hinder Taliban operations. At the very least, it provides a morale boost for U.S. and Afghan soldiers fighting in Marja.
Perhaps the most important fact about the recent Taliban arrests, however, is that they took place in Pakistan. In Baradar's case, the arrest occurred hundreds of miles from the Afghan border, giving immediate credence to the entire “AfPak” construction. The arrests could not have taken place without the cooperation of Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which sponsored the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s. The ISI's support for the Taliban was deep-seated and complex, but it was rooted Pakistan's desire to have a stable western border. If that was possible, Pakistan could focus its defenses eastward, toward its main rival India. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan upended this policy, forcing Pakistan into a very conflicted position. The tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have served as a base for Taliban fighters, but Pakistan has done little to eliminate their safe haven, despite facing its own growing threat from a Pakistani variant of the Taliban. The recent arrests may indicate a change of mood among the Pakistani leadership, particularly in the ISI. If they have become convinced that the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban are pieces of a larger threat to the region, and if they see their own security threatened by a resurgent Taliban movement in Afghanistan, Pakistani authorities may be more willing to crack down on Taliban fighters in their midst.
Taken together, the operation in Marja and the arrests in Pakistan could signal an important shift of momentum in the Afghan war, away from a resurgent Taliban and toward U.S. and Afghan government forces. This would be a significant fulfillment of Obama's Afghanistan strategy, pieces of which have been developed and revealed over the past year. Richard Holbrooke, the person credited by many as the source for the “AfPak” term, was appointed by Obama as his special representative in the region early in his presidency. Months of diplomacy by him, Stanley McChrystal, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and General David Petraeus (commander of the U.S. Central Command) may have helped convince Pakistan to cooperate more fully in fighting the Afghan Taliban. Last December, Obama announced the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to bolster McChrystal's new counter-insurgency strategy. The Marja operation is an important test of that strategy, which requires more soldiers to defend the civilian population from Taliban influence and to give the Afghan government a chance to reassert control.
Even if recent events do signal a change in momentum, it isn't clear that this would be sufficient to defeat the Taliban in the long-run. As novel as McChrystal's population-centric counter-insurgency may appear — especially in comparison to earlier U.S. tactics in Afghanistan — it really is nothing new. The “clear, hold, build” strategy is a classic approach to dealing with a robust insurgency and a weak central government. It is premised on the fact that an insurgency's greatest source of strength is its popularity among the civilian population. If that loyalty can be transferred to the preferred governmental authorities—if their “hearts and minds” can be won, in other words—the insurgency can be deprived of its lifeblood. The problem is that while this strategy is eminently logical on paper, it is not foolproof in practice. It is true that each insurgency is unique, and there is no indication that the Taliban holds the genuine loyalty of many Afghans; whatever popular support the Taliban has comes from intimidation and ethnic Pashtun solidarity. But the tactics employed by McChrystal do not differ from those used unsuccessfully in countless other counterinsurgency operations through history. He is further burdened by the inherent corruption and ineffectiveness of the Karzai regime, which has yet to acquit itself well. U.S. and allied forces will undoubtedly be able to “clear” and “hold” Marja, but if the Afghan government cannot “build,” their effort will be for naught.
None of this may matter. The goals of Obama's Afghan strategy, as presented last December, are strikingly clear: deny al-Qaeda a safe haven; reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the Afghan government; and strengthen Afghanistan's security forces and government. Notably absent from those goals is any mention of “defeating” the Taliban. This is probably borne both of necessity and good judgment. Politically, it would have been difficult for Obama to send McChrystal the 80,000 additional soldiers he requested, and it is questionable whether even that number would have been sufficient to destroy the Taliban. Strategically, the notion of conclusively “defeating” an insurgency is as old as the “clear, hold, build” strategy itself; barring enormous investment of resources and a nearly limitless appetite for destruction, central governments have poor track record of crushing insurgencies (for more, see The Water's Edge, May 2009). It is to Obama's credit that his Afghanistan policy matches capability with ambition so closely. But to succeed, expectations must be equally realistic. The Taliban will not be defeated. With more troops, better tactics, and closer cooperation from Pakistan, the most that the United States and the Afghan government ultimately can hope for is some kind of negotiated settlement with the Taliban. Given the tumult of Afghan history, such an outcome would not be half bad.
Foreign Policy Association, 5 March 2010
Posted by Daniel Widome at 06:38 PM to Asia, Middle East, Trans-geographical
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