Fighting Other People’s Battles

As the war in Iraq winds down and attention shifts back to Afghanistan what little news coverage and think tank analysis there is describes a deteriorating situation. Suicide bombings are up. Convoys are hijacked. The opium trade is brisk. Air strikes are causing too many civilian casualties. Whole sections of Southern and Western Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan are safe havens for Taliban, Al Qaeda, and hostile war lords. Allied commanders are begging for more troops.

All of this is true, but the sky is hardly falling. American, NATO, and Afghan forces still win every tactical engagement. That’s why insurgents have reverted to more primitive asymmetric tactics aimed at soft targets. Whenever they mass forces for a conventional attack they are annihilated. Critics are right about one thing though. After seven years we have made far too little progress in building internal Afghan forces to the point where they can stand on their own. That was the mistake we made in Vietnam. We learned from that and that’s why we have been able to begin an orderly withdrawal from Iraq. There is less need for us there now. The same thing will be the key to ultimate success in Afghanistan. There is no way American troops can win this war. The best we can possible do is prevent a total collapse long enough for Afghans to become strong enough to maintain order among themselves and defend against foreign incursions.

There is no reason this shouldn’t happen, and fairly soon. The rebels are not numerous. They are poorly organized, equipped, trained, and led. Government troops and police out score them on every count already. (Excepting possibly leadership, I’m not sure about that.) Afghans justifiably complain about collateral casualties from air strikes but the intentional carnage among civilians inflicted by terrorists is far greater. They aren’t exactly winning hearts and minds.

It seems to me it’s important to remember why we are still there. It isn’t to find and kill every terrorist. That would be impossible. It’s to prevent a recurrence of the chaos that brought the Taliban to power in the first place. We can’t afford to be seen as having “lost” in Afghanistan, but victory should be defined as leaving behind a self sustaining government. The longer this is seen as an American war the more difficult that will be. If there is one thing we should have learned about Muslims over the past six decades or so, it is that they resent any interference by non-Muslims in their affairs, no matter how well intentioned, even when justified in self defense. Muslims can slaughter each other to their hearts’ content and elicit no more than a collective tut tut from the community at large. If Jews or Christians are involved they react with outrage.

I’m not sure the current plan to send in more combat troops is such a good idea. I would rather see a focus on building up Afghan self defense capabilities. The sooner this is recognized as an internal Afghan problem the better. That won’t happen as long as Americans are doing most of the fighting. I don’t really understand why we haven’t made more progress in this regard. Afghanistan has been far quieter than Iraq. We’ve had years to get this organized. There ought to be a steady pipeline of Afghan troops and police coming on stream. By now we should be pulling troops out, not sending in more.

I hope somebody is asking hard questions. What’s the plan? What exactly is it that more troops are supposed to accomplish? What’s been the hold up with Afghan forces? What’s going to change? Hasn’t that been NATO’s responsibility? They don’t seem to have been much help. Why are we even still part of that alliance?