Last Shot in Afghanistan

February 19, 2010

By The Diplomat

And there’s really no choice–this is the last strategic shot. The deadline is looming and there’s the election ahead for a second term for President Barack Obama, who doesn’t want to have a ten-year war on his hands. So we’ll have to make do with this, and this is what General McChrystal is trying to do. And I think it’s very interesting with the Marjah operation in Helmand Province, where McChrystal is really trying to capture the narrative on Afghanistan. This narrative had really been captured for many years by the Taliban who have been much better at propaganda, and at framing the troops as invaders, than we were. So McChrystal understood that the war is not so much on the battlefield anymore as in the narrative and in the rhetoric around the war.

But the question now is, how many Marjahs can we do? This is a major operation involving 15,000 US and British troops, and McChrystal is aware that he doesn’t have many bullets left in his gun, so to speak, so he has to use them wisely. It’s not about victory. It’s about turning the tide to the extent that the Afghan institutions can start doing the job. It’s not going to be easy–there are many pitfalls. One of these is that the Kabul government is not a willing reliable partner. Most Afghan people see Kabul as a threat, sometimes as much as the Taliban, so they’re feeling caught in between.

Meanwhile, too many times the US strategy–for example US commanders on the ground having their own funds that they can inject into the provinces–is fundamentally undercutting the Kabul government. Because basically you’re doing the government’s job, and telling Kabul that they are not doing their job. So this is another contradiction.

Another key question is will Pakistan really help put pressure on the Taliban bases in the frontier regions, which is absolutely key to McChrystal’s success. And also, how will the McChrystal counter-insurgency work out, because putting 15,000 troops into such a major operation can be done once, maybe twice, but it can’t be done throughout the next 18 months. Moreover there is the question of choosing strategically the parts of territory we are ready to fight for. For example, one can ask why we have made Helmand such a key frontline when only 5% of the Afghan population lives there, and it has mobilised almost half of NATO’s combat capacity. And once you’ve captured the new territory there is the issue of how you are going to hold on to it with an Afghan presence.

So I think the real question is whether we can sustain the progress we have made in the long term. And to me, it’s not clear whether that’s possible given the poor state of the Afghan government–which doesn’t have any functioning local institutions–and also the Afghan security forces.

The army is slightly better, but not capable of leading its own operations. For example, in the spring of last year, the Afghan national army was ordered by Karzai himself to secure Kandahar before the elections. This is obviously a very important place for Karzai since that’s where he comes from. And so they didn’t inform NATO because they wanted to lead their own operations, but then found they couldn’t sustain the efforts because they didn’t have the basic supply lines or the strategy to finish the operation. So they called in the Dutch commander for Regional Command South based in Kandahar to come and help. And this is what is considered to be the best functioning Afghan security force, the national army–we’re not even talking about the police, which are considered extensively corrupt, not qualified and where there are serious problems of retention.

So there are lots of pitfalls along the road, and the road is very short. We’ll have to see what we can settle with after 18 months.