Afghanistan: Snags in the "War on Terror" Fabric

Several analyses have come out over the past few days examining the near-failure of the West's strategic approach to Afghanistan. They make for dismal reading but offer a number of recommendations for a course correction, despite recent comments from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "I would say that the security situation is good," and Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher's comments before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, that "nobody can tell me it’s not going in a positive direction." He argued that "there is progress. It’s going in the right direction," that Afghanistan has "a government that works fairly well."
Perhaps a sign of "the right direction" is one found at the State Department's website which has, in a section called "Afghanistan Investment and Reconstruction Task Force" a notice that "a delegation of 10 Afghan rug businesses will exhibit their products at this winter’s Las Vegas Market at the World Center Market in Las Vegas."

Clearly, we have problems.

As for those analyses, they include: "Saving Afghanistan: An Appeal and Plan for Urgent Action" by The Atlantic Council Of The United States, which grimly observed "make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan." (hereafter ACUS); the National Defense University's report "Winning the Invisible War: An Agricultural Pilot Plan for Afghanistan" (hereafter NDU); the Center for the Study of the Presidency's "Afghanistan Study Group Report: Revitalizing Our Efforts and Rethinking Our Strategy" (hereafter ASGR); and, last November's "The Forgotten Front" by the Center For American Progress (hereafter CAP).
Each of these suggest recommendations for a more cohesive approach to that benighted , war-torn state. In sum, those suggestions amount to emphasizing the need to take Afghanistan's woes seriously in light of the Taliban and al Qaeda resurgences, and put in place a cohesive, comprehensive and comprehensible policy.
Yet these policy suggestions state what should be obvious to the US and its NATO partners.

Apparently not.

Here's Boucher stating the obvious: "Afghanistan is more than just a theater to fight enemies. It is a place of strategic opportunity. Afghanistan offers a rare opportunity to win a close, loyal, democratic ally in the heart of a continent with unmatched political and economic capital and potential. [It] is located at the crossroads of countries that are the focus of our foreign policy efforts and has the potential for becoming the linchpin for regional integration in South and Central Asia."
Okay. Nice summation of the region's importance. But, simply by looking at the lack of seriousness with which the US and NATO have approached the country, as evidenced by ineffective policy, one has to wonder whether the current Administration believes the words of its own officials, that Afghanistan "is ... at the crossroads of countries that are the focus of our foreign policy efforts ...."
ASGR: "The United States and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces, insufficient economic aid, and without a clear and consistent comprehensive strategy to fill the power vacuum outside Kabul and counter the combined challenges of reconstituted Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a runaway opium economy, and the stark poverty faced by most Afghans."

Too few resources. That doesn't sound like a serious policy.

CAP: "The United States must change its current approach. It must fully implement a counterinsurgency framework for all of Afghanistan. All elements of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, including development and reconstruction assistance, support for rule of law, counternarcotics strategy, and military operations should be coordinated within this framework."

Which means we've had, for the past six plus years an uncoordinated policy because, as CAP has it, "although the current administration has portrayed Iraq as the central front of the 'global war on terror,' Afghanistan and the borderlands of Pakistan remain the central battlefield."

Robert Gates: "militarily, NATO has had a very successful year in 2007. The Taliban is occupying no territory in Afghanistan on a continuing basis ... [he admitted to] a rising security issue [in Afghanistan but said] it’s because the Taliban are turning to terrorism, having failed in conventional military conflict with the NATO allies.
And so we are seeing more suicide bombings, more use of (improvised explosive devices), and so on. These are actions of people whose conventional military efforts have failed. The rise in violence and attacks like we saw in Kabul are manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms in 2007 and is turning to terrorism as a substitute for that."
Yet even as he said this at a press conference with French Defense Minister Herve Morin, the latter said, "the problem in Afghanistan is not only a military problem. We need a comprehensive solution."

Clearly there's not much unity of view there.

ACUS: "On the security side, a stalemate of sorts has taken hold. NATO and Afghan forces cannot be beaten by the insurgency or by the Taliban. Neither can our forces eliminate the Taliban by military means as long as they have sanctuary in Pakistan. Hence, the future of Afghanistan will be determined by progress or failure in the civil sector."
Gates: "The key, it seems to me, is how do we overcome this turn to terrorism on the part of the Taliban and, at the same time deal, as Minister Morin talked about, with the other aspects of concern in Afghanistan? And that is economic development, governance, counternarcotics and so on. All of these things need to be addressed for us to be successful."

It is astonishing beyond belief that the Defense Secretary talks of this in 2008--one would think these questions would have been asked and answered and policies designed and implemented at the beginning of 2002. Sec. Gates ought to be speaking of success at this point, not merely that "these things need to be addressed."

NDU: "When this paper was undertaken in the summer of 2007, one of its purposes was to sound the alarm over Afghanistan and the critical need for comprehensive action across all sectors of society to prevent that country from becoming a failed state. The second purpose was to lay out the major areas that needed immediate attention, largely within the civil side of reconstruction and development. The third was to propose specific pilot plans for rejuvenating the agricultural sector."

Doesn't this sound like something that should have been addressed by the Administration's vast stable of experts in 2002?

The NDU report adds: "it appears that the Bush administration and NATO are taking [our] warning seriously. At least three studies are underway: one at Central Command; a second at the State Department; and a third at NATO. Those studies need not take much time to finish. The issues are clear."
Three studies are underway! Even though "the issues are clear." They're certainly clear to Sen. Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

As I see it, here’s the situation in Afghanistan: Security is probably at its lowest ebb since 2001. Much of the country is only nominally under the control of Kabul. U.S. and coalition forces win every pitched battle, but the Taliban still grows stronger day by day.
Drug-trafficking dominates the national economy, and narco-barons operate with impunity. Reconstruction efforts have failed to bring substantial improvement to the lives of most Afghan citizens, and the slow pace is causing widespread resentment at both the Karzai government and the West.
And Bin Laden and the top Al Qaeda leaders enjoy safe haven somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
In fact, this summer, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Terror Threat found that Al Qaeda 'has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability.'
The Administration firmly believes that we are about to turn a corner and that we just need to give our policy a chance to work. I am curious as to what that policy is, because it’s not clear to me.
But that’s exactly what we’ve been hearing for the past five years: the tide is always about to turn.
I sure hope so. But I wouldn’t bet on it. If we’re not going to hold another hearing on Afghanistan next year, and have another retelling of the same story, we need a significant change in policy now."

So here we are, in the waning months of a presidency-gone-bad in so very many ways. And yet, this president's claim to "legacy" is his "war on terror." He will be compared, he seems to believe, to President Harry Truman: "By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America's victory in the cold war." (2006 commencement address to the United States Military Academy)
Now, if President Bush had only built institutions, forged alliances and established doctrines, he might have such a claim.
He didn't and he doesn't.