One year after announcing its Afghanistan strategy, which involved sending approximately 30,000 new U.S. troops to implement a broad counterinsurgency strategy to reverse the Taliban‘s gains, the Obama administration released a new review Thursday noting “some real military gains, but [which] acknowledges that they remain fragile and that NATO troops will need more time to achieve their goals.” Reviewing the strategy, Center for American Progress expert Caroline Wadhams wrote in Foreign Policy, “One year later, tactical successes on the battlefield do not add up to lasting strategic progress in the war in Afghanistan. Des pite a huge infusion of money and troops, we appear to be standing in place.” Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, Vice President Biden spoke about plans to begin transferring security authority to the Afghans themselves next year: ” We’re starting it in July of 2011 and we’re going to be totally out of there, come hell or high water by 2014.” The same day, a member of the NATO-led force was killed, “taking the total number of foreign troops killed in 2010 to 700, by far the deadliest year of the war since the Taliban were toppled in 2001.”
IS THE SURGE WORKING? : The administration’s review states that Taliban “momentum has been arrested in much of the country” and “reversed in some key areas.” However, analyst Josh Foust wrote that the review “gives no indication of what to expect moving forward. … While the implied threat of al Qaeda is peppered throughout the review document, there is no indication of how the large military campaign under way there now actually contributes to the national security of the United States — there are no details of which threats are being undone in Afghanistan or Pakistan.” Wadhams writes that “without shifts in the current political structures in Afghanistan, it will be sim ply futile for the United States and its NATO allies to wage continued war on behalf of a government that cannot consolidate domestic political support without indefinite massive international assistance and troops.” Meanwhile, Wired Magazine reported that “the air war over Afghanistan has reached a post-invasion high,” and “Afghan anger over air strikes is soaring as well.” Noting the problem of insurgent safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, Wired’s Spencer Ackerman characterized the strategy review this way: “One year and 30,000 new troops later, Afghanistan is peripheral to the Afghanistan war,” adding that the administration’s review makes clear that “this is a U.S. drone war in Pakistan with a big, big U.S. troop component next door.”
PAKISTAN: According to a November report by the Center American for Progress, core U.S. security interests in the region “center on reducing the risk of terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda and its affiliated networks against the United States and its allies. They also include increasing the political stability of the Pakistani state, a country of 170 million people with nuclear weapons.” The report concluded that “current U.S. efforts in Afghanistan are fundamentally out of balance, and they are not advancing U.S. interests and stability in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region.” A National Intelligence Estimate released earlier this month stated that “there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from h avens on its Afghan border.” Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, assured reporters that “[Pakistani military chief] General Kayani and others have been clear in recognizing that they need to do more for their security and indeed to carry out operations against those who threaten other countries’ security.” But Bruce Reidel, a former C.I.A. official who led a White House review of Afghan strategy last year, said, “[W]e have to deal with the world we have, not the world we’d like. We can’t make Pakistan stop being naughty.”
AFTER HOLBROOKE: On December 13, Richard Holbrooke, “the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2009 and a diplomatic troubleshooter who worked for every Democratic president since the late 1960s and oversaw the negotiations that ended the war in Bosnia,” died in a Washington, D.C. hospital due to complications from a torn aorta. President Obama paid tribute to Holbrooke as “atrue giant of American foreign policy who has made America stronger, safer, and more respected.” Responding to Petraeus’ remembrance of Holbrooke as “my diplomatic wingman,” Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Matthew Yglesias wrote, &quo t;The affection and respect Petraeus expressed were doubtlessly both genuine, but the sentiment is mistaken. It reverses the proper relationship between civilian and military authorities — generals and their troops are supposed to serve political objectives outlined by civilians, not view civilians as adjuncts to military campaigns.” As CAP’s November Afghanistan report asserted, “[m]ilitary operations drive our strategy while the political and diplomatic framework essential for long-term stability in Afghanistan remains undeveloped.” Reversing this dynamic is a key challenge for the Obama administration, one that reaches beyond Afghanistan.
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