It’s pretty amazing that we keep seeing reports the war in Afghanistan is one which the US and NATO forces (the only place we have a coalition fighting the “War on Terror”) are in real danger of losing. Afghanistan, where we were told by Bush that the Taliban was defeated once and for all back in 2002. Afghanistan, where we were told by Bush that Al Qaida would never again have a base from which to mount terrorist attacks against us.
Yet here we are in 2008, Osama Bin Ladin is still alive and kicking, and the Taliban is threatening to turn Afghanistan back into a place where terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists control a failed state, dominated by tribal warlords, and at the mercy of an economy based on opium production. Here’s the latest from Reuters where Lord Paddy Ashdown, a senior British diplomat and former High Representative to Bosnia, argues that NATO and the US are losing Afghanistan because of Bush’s strategy of using air power to fight the Taliban on the cheap rather than investing the time, money and troops necessary to mount an effective counterinsurgency:
(cont.)
NATO is in disarray and the West faces defeat in Afghanistan unless it overhauls its counter-insurgency and reconstruction strategy, Britain’s Paddy Ashdown wrote in an article published on Wednesday. […]
“With fighting in Afghanistan now entering its seventh year, no agreed international strategy, public support on both sides of the Atlantic crumbling, NATO in disarray and widening insecurity in Afghanistan, defeat is now a real possibility…” […]
Ashdown called for more cooperation between international military and civilian efforts and a greater focus on governance and the rule of law across in a country where corruption and lawlessness is widespread. […]
“Breaking up the Taliban by winning over the moderates is a far better route to success than bombing and body counts.”
I’m sure Lord Ashdown is correct. We do need to change the approach that the US and NATO are taking in Afghanistan if we hope to stave off the return of the Taliban to power, and the re-emergence of a terrorist haven there. The problem, however, is that the Bush administration has never invested the resources necessary to win the war and achieve a lasting peace in Afghanistan. Instead, Bush and his advisors unilaterally declared victory, held an election of no real consequence to install a government favorable to the US, and then abandoned Afghanistan for Bush’s tragically misguided and illegal war in Iraq. It is Iraq which continues to suck up the vast majority of the resources we have employed in this so-called War on Terror. Vast sums of money wasted, sucked down into the black hole of Halliburton and other private contractor’s profits. A military, and especially the Army and Marine Corps, the ground forces that are the backbone of any military action, which have been fatally overstretched and are now breaking apart because of the many extended tours of duty required of them. A strategy that relies on bombs and planes to defeat the Taliban, in part fueled no doubt by the lack of available troops, equipment and money to support a real effort to secure and stabilize Afghanistan.
I’m sure Lord Ashdown understand that President Bush will never commit the resources to put this proposed strategy in place, because to do so would require a withdrawal from Iraq, and/or a level of cooperation from our NATO allies they will not extend at this time because they are deeply and rightly suspicious of the Bush administration and its ability to change course and adopt a different approach in Afghanistan. So, I believe that his comments now are really addressed to a different audience: the next US President, whoever that may be, and to the rest of our European allies to give that next President the benefit of the doubt should she or he actually take the steps Lord Ashdown is urging the US to adopt:
“What we lack above all is a strategy that all (including, crucially, the Afghan government and the international military) can buy into,” the former international envoy to Bosnia-Hercegovina wrote.
He wrote that while increasing resources, in the form of more troops and aid, committed to the country was necessary, it was not the only thing that needed to be done, and listed three priorities: security, governance, and the rule of law.
“We (the international community) have to concentrate fiercely on the necessary and not to be distracted by the merely desirable,” Ashdown wrote.
On security, he wrote that in addition to convincing ordinary Afghans their government could provide better security than the Taliban, the international community would have to provide “human security” — electricity, the chance to get a job in a growing economy, effective governance and the rule of law.
He also advocated viewing security “from a political angle” by attempting to break up the Taliban by winning over moderates.
Ashdown wrote that international donors “should make improving governance the first, and if we can the only, priority for all future aid programmes” because until the Afghan government’s institutions were strengthened, “we cannot ask them to do more”.
The third priority was to link security and governance with a strengthened rule of law, underlining the importance of his point by writing: “Unless and until the rule of law is established there can be no safe democracy, no trusted government, no successful economy and no security for ordinary citizens.”
“We have not lost in Afghanistan,” Ashdown wrote.
“But we will lose if we do not start doing things differently. What we need is a strategy, not a disconnected collection of unco-ordinated tactics.”
Let’s face it. I can’t see Commander in Chief Bush ever taking Ashdown’s advice. It would mean admitting that what he claimed earlier, that Afghanistan had been liberated and an effective democracy established there, were lies. It would mean taking on the “hard work” of nation building, rather than bombing villages and destroying poppy fields with American chemicals sprayed from the skies. And most of all, it would mean drastically reducing our forces in Iraq, and redirecting our efforts to where the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, and the Islamic extremists who sheltered them while they made their plans, actually live. It would take the ability to admit he had been wrong, and the ability to cut his losses in order to focus on the real danger in the region. In short, it would take a measure of common sense and humility that neither Bush nor his neocon supporters possess.
Let’s hope there is still a chance to for the next President to implement something akin to Ashdown’s recommendations after Bush is retired to his “ranch” in Crawford. My fear, however, is that it is already far to late to reverse the damage done by the failed war policies of President Bush. At best, the next US President may simply have no choice but to adopt the “least worst” option to limit the harm which has already been done.
