Nov 12 2009
The President’s options in Afghanistan
The President dithers. His advisers are now arguing in public, with the Ambassador urging no more troops whislt his General seeks 40,000 more. None of this delay is good for morale. It makes the military position more precarious, and makes it far more difficult to retain or augment the loyalty of Afghans to the civilian government and the foreign troops, as people worry about the length and depth of the commitment.
So what are the main options the President must be weighing?
1. Major reinforcement, to pursue the old strategy of fighting to win and control more territory. This would need many more troops, and the commitment to long term garrisons in many places to seek to prevent the insurgency gaining numbers and ground. This is unlikely. Even the military hawks are now talking about concentrating the win and hold strategy on a limited number of strategic cities.
2. The surge, as sought by the General. 40,000 extra troops would be sent to seek to kill more insurgents and impress people with the force of the commitment, whilst the civilian power uses the breathing space to intensify its training and deployment of its own forces to take over. This now seems less likely, given the briefing coming from sources close to the Oval Office.
3. Steady state, allied to moving more of the current roops deployed into safer bases, and using them more for training the Afghan army and police, and for support operations when needed. This also seems unlikely, as people would ask where was the new thinking and the greater clarity over the mission which many are now seeking.
4. An explicit change of policy, stepping up training of the Afghans and announcing a timetable for withdrawal of most allied troops. The idea that the allies were fighting a war would be replaced by the allies seeking to support the Afghan government who would make their own choices about how to handle the insurgency.
5. A change of policy towards many new political initiatives. The aim would be to see if there is a series of political deals over development, security and local government which could be done in order to allow a reduction in foreign troop numbers and their role.
6. A decision to withdraw, saying that now Afghanistan has a new government they need to sort out what remains themselves. This is most unlikely to be attractive to the US.
A possible outcome is some increase in troop numbers but less than the 40,000, an increase in political and training activity, and some recognition that the commitment to Afghanistan will be time limited.
5 Responses to “The President’s options in Afghanistan”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
” In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” – Albert Camus
Recent articles in the paper have shown that there is some hope of common sense prevailing.
Personally, I am in favour of a huge surge with garrisons – warmly supported by the British with lots of troops. That, in the end, is the only answer and it has worked in the past. Afghans respect a powerful and fair administration which has honour and might.
Fat chance!
Both Britain and America are skint and heavily in debt!
So, I suspect what will happen is:
No 6.
And what will our Pakistani allies have to say about that as they advance towards the Afghan border?
Unless we develop a comprehensive South Asia strategy, the most we can hope for is a temporary peace in Afghanistan.
What would such a strategy look like? Well, at the very least it requires some moderation of the strategic competition between India and Pakistan. Without attention to this aspect of the problem, we really are only playing around at the edges of the conflict.
We still haven’t been given the real reasons why we are in Afghanistan and what conditions would allow troop withdrawals. We are told that our troops’ presence is necessary to keep terrorism from the streets of Britain and that if the Taliban were allowed to succeed then Al-Qaeda would return to Afghanistan from Pakistan. Why should they want to do that? Furthermore, we are then warned that because Afghanistan is next to Pakistan with nuclear weapons that would be a much greater threat. How could it be greater than the threat presented right now if Al-Qaeda is in Pakistan? Failure to explain the real reason for the presence of NATO troops is leading to a lack of public support. Isn’t the nub of this problem really the future of Pakistan?
Surely history aught to tell our policy makers that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable.
The proclaimed reason for our being there is that it will prevent terrorist acts in Britain. A more pathetic reason for the sacrifice of over 200 British soldiers’ lives I cannot imagine. It is of the same genre as saying Saddam Hussein could send a nucler bomb to Britain in 45 minutes! Preventing terrorism in Britain should surely be right here in Britain.
We should withdraw our troops from Afghanistan a.s.a.p. It is true that we will suffer some humiliation because we have not decisively won a victory over the Taliban or over the hearts and minds of the people there. That’s too bad, and we should never have got ourselves into this mess in the first place.
We gave up our Empire half a century ago. Britain should keep her nose out of other countries business, and concentrate only on developing trade with them, and getting her own house in order – there is plenty to do in that respect.