Richard Haas makes the case for a “middle way” in Afghanistan in WaPo today: In the Afghan War, Aim for the Middle.
The middle in question is defined by Haas as follows:
there are options available to the United States that fall between sending tens of thousands of additional troops, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal is reportedly requesting, and simply abandoning the country to its fate — options in which the costs and benefits are consistent with what is at stake.
He argues for more training of Afghan security forces, focusing security on population centers, courting warlords, and forcing Karzai into a broad coalition government.
This appears to be the basic direction that the Obama administration is heading. However, large questions remain as to whether any of these tasks can be accomplished.
Apart from his recommendations, Haas makes a couple of key points that the hawks on Afghanistan (especially those who favor a massive troop expansion) ought to give more weight than they do. Specifically, the notion that the war in Afghanistan is some sort of make or break situation in the conflict with al Qaeda. On this he makes two fundamentally important points.
First:
Al-Qaeda does not require Afghan real estate to constitute a regional or global threat. Terrorists gravitate to areas of least resistance; if they cannot use Afghanistan, they will use countries such as Yemen or Somalia, as in fact they already are.
Indeed. The notion that Afghanistan is al Qaeda’s last battlefield is incorrect and so any attempt to cast the war in such terms is assuming facts not in evidence.
Second:
Certainly, allowing the Taliban and al-Qaeda to reestablish a sanctuary in Afghanistan would make it harder to defeat them in Pakistan. But the Taliban and al-Qaeda already have a sanctuary — in Pakistan itself.
Exactly. It is not as if there hasn’t been the ability of al Qaeda members to meet and plan since the invasion of Afghanistan almost a decade ago. If the purpose of fighting the fight in Afghanistan is to make such planning impossible, then that goal is not being reached–nor will it if the United States remains in Afghanistan for another decade or more.
BTW, I would point out that there is no mention of the complicating (to put it mildly) issue of the opium trade and how that makes fighting corruption and warlord-courting complicated, as well as providing an endless source of funding for the Taliban.
Haas correctly notes that whatever course is undertaken here must take into account the costs and the benefits of the policy and this is a debate I am not certain we have fully had, nor am I convinced that we will. I am far from certain that even a “middle way” fits the bill in terms of cost/benefit. I am beginning to think that whatever is done in Afghanistan will ultimately be nothing more than biding time until the decision is made that staying is simply unsustainable. In other words, a withdrawal sans “victory” seems inevitable at this point, because we don’t really know what “victory” looks like and so the issue becomes what constellation of political circumstances leads to such a decision being made?
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October 11th, 2024 at 12:47 pm
The problem with ‘In other words, a withdrawal sans “victory” seems inevitable at this point, because we don’t really know what “victory” looks like and so the issue becomes what constellation of political circumstances leads to such a decision being made?” is that a power base in Afghanistan would make Pakistan the target. And with Pakistan’s nukes this makes any decision even more difficult in the cost/benefit side.
October 11th, 2024 at 12:56 pm
I am not sure I follow your point.
And isn’t Pakistan already a target?