Back to Gideon RachmanObama’s new Afghanistan strategy, announced today, is much as expected: more troops, more training for the Afghan army and police, more reconstruction and more of a focus on terrorism and Pakistan, with less emphasis on democracy-building.
The whole exercise suggests that the distinctions between the Bush and the Obama approaches to foreign policy may be less hard-and-fast than we thought. In the caricature version, it was Bush who was obsessed with the “global war on terror”, while Obama pushed idealistic ideas about democracy and human-rights. But here we have Obama ramping up the emphasis on terrorism and downplaying the liberal nation-building.
So will it work? Obama emphasised the necessary diversion of troops and resources from Iraq to Afghanistan. And indeed the US troops I met in Logar province a couple of weeks ago had been re-directed at short notice from Iraq to Afghanistan. The US will end up sending roughly 21,000 more troops - which is pretty much the same number that were sent for the surge in Iraq. Even so, there will still be only 60,000 US troops in Afghanistan - compared to 140,000 at the height of the Iraq war. And, as Nato briefers were at pains to point out, Afghanistan is a larger and more populous country with much more inhospitable terrain - and with a safe haven for Taliban forces right next door in Pakistan.
What is more the situation has been getting worse for some time now. A newly-issued report from the Centre for International and Strategic Studies in Washington contains some sobering figures:
“The average monthly number of major incidents rose from only 50 in 2002 to 80 in 2003, 150 in 2005, 425 in 2006, and 566 in 2007. Suicide bombings rose from 1 in 2001 and 0 in 2002 to 2 in 2003, 6 in 2004, 21 in 2005, 123 in 2006, and 160 in 2007, and reached just over 1200 by the end of the first six months of 2008. The number of IEDs and roadside bombs rose from 22 in 2002 to 83 in 2003, 325 in 2004, 782 in 205, 1,931 in 2006, and 2,615 in 2007, although the number of effective IED attacks remained low …Peak monthly US casualties (killed and wounded) rose from less than 20 from 2002-2003 to the mid-30s in 2004, 70 in 2005 and 2006, and 130 in 2007. ”
The exit strategy is obviously to build up the Afghan forces. But, having watched the training in progress, I’m sceptical. The failure to recruit properly in the Pashtun heartlands of the insrugency looks like a pretty serious flaw.
Perhaps the most radical element in the new policy is the determination to take the fight against the Taliban right into Pakistan. You can see the logic behind this. But if the outcome is that the insurgency and violence in Pakistan is intensified this might well be a self-defeating strategy. The effort to stabilise Afghanistan would end up further destabilising Pakistan - a bigger and more important country.
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