Lets Figure Out Afghan Mission’s Objectives First
While everybody is awaiting President Obama’s Tuesday evening speech on Afghanistan strategy to be broadcast out of the United Military Academy at West Point, we are still awaiting some definition of what it is that we are trying to achieve there. To the best of our knowledge nobody has defined either the Iraqi, nor the Afghan war’s mission objectives – not Bush and not Obama.
At least, the president is reportedly going to address his planned exit strategy. That’s better than nothing, but are we waiting for a few more ministers of the Karzai government to be indicted for corruption, before we withdraw the troops which – at a cost of $1 million per year, per soldier – are propping up his regime?
The mission objectives should of course be the absolute first thing to be addressed and that’s why we have decided to re-post this article, originally published here on November 3, 2009.
Since the original article was posted there have been some overtures by the Karzai government to engage “moderate elements” of the Taliban, so we stand corrected on that point.
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While the Obama administration ponders whether to send tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, as General Stanley McChrystal proposed and as everybody is trying to figure out what impact the Afghan run-off election, which has never taken place will have on the overall situation there, we still haven’t really figured out what it is that we are trying to achieve there.
“A foreign army alone cannot beat an insurgency; the insurgency in Afghanistan requires an Afghan solution,” wrote General McChrystal. In view of that probably sound assessment, why would we need an additional 40,000 U.S. troops?
Lets first of all decide what is it that we are trying to achieve in Afghanistan. Is it hunting down the remains of al-Qaida and maybe finally catching up with Osama bin-Laden? Or maybe something that sells in Washington, DC, but it doesn’t sell in Afghanistan – a stable Karzai government? Or maybe we are trying to defeat the resurgent Taliban? Or are we trying to transform the Afghan society? Are we including Pakistan in our grand plan?
Speaking of the Taliban, we haven’t heard any proposals to include this group in possible talks about forming a coalition government. No doubt that this omission is a really big mistake.
As things stand, eight years into an occupation of Afghanistan even the military are saying that we have not achieved anything, but that the situation on the ground has in fact deteriorated. What in fact appears to be the main problem is not the remains of al-Qaida, or the Taliban itself, or even the rampant corruption among the ruling clique, but rather the militarization of the Afghan conflict.
The military “solution” is obviously not working in an environment as complex as the one in Afghanistan and Pakistan for that matter.
One cannot expect the average U.S. serviceman to understand the very complicated tribal, ethnic, or language problems of the country he, or she has been shipped to.
The actual solution to the problem staring us in the eye appears to be getting the foreigners out of Afghanistan, rather than increasing their number.
When in 2001-2003 troops were truly needed in Afghanistan, they got diverted to the insane invasion and occupation of Iraq.
To make a long story short: we don’t even know what problem, or problems that we are trying to solve in Afghanistan are and we are still talking about changing our military strategy and increasing the number of troops. What are those troops supposed to do there? What do we expect from them? What is their mission? Nobody seems to have an answer to any of these questions.
Our advice to the White House team is to first come up with a mission statement, to nail down what it is that we are trying to achieve in Afghanistan and whether getting involved in that country is really in the U.S., or the world’s interest.
Throwing more troops into the Afghan quagmire, without even having a clear objective is clearly not the way to proceed.
