Even before Afghans went to the polls last week, Americans were getting queasy about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
At this writing, the election results are still unclear. But with 60,000 U.S. troops in the country and a chance that their commanders will request more, a recent Washington Post-ABC poll indicated 51 percent of Americans said they believed it was not worth fighting a war there. Seventy percent of the doubters are Democrats, which must give President Obama pause. And only 24 percent of Americans would back sending more forces.
Their concerns are understandable. But it’s far too early _ and far too dangerous _ for Americans to get cold feet.
I understand why so many Americans are worried; I am, too. Whatever the election outcome, Afghanistan will have a weak central government, riddled with corruption and reluctant to take on the drug mafia that funds the Taliban. The Afgha army and police are in their infancy and unreliable.
Moreover, if the purpose of the exercise is, as Obama argues, to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” al-Qaeda, why are we sending troops into the Afghan maw?
After all, al-Qaeda and its hard-line Taliban supporters are based in the wild Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghan border. So, some ask, why not minimize our presence in Afghanistan and focus on stabilizing Pakistan, which has both terrorists and nukes?
Having spent time in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, most recently in May, I’d argue one cannot address the problem in one country without stabilizing both.
Yes, the central problem lies in Pakistan, where local jihadis and al-Qaeda seek to destabilize the state and get hold of its nuclear weapons. They also would like to provoke a war with nuclear-armed India by carrying out terrorist attacks there.
But al-Qaeda is linked with senior Afghan Taliban leaders. Mullah Omar may have started out as a primitive rural Islamist with limited goals, but he and other top Afghan Taliban are now joined to a broader jihadi conglomerate with larger aspirations. Were his mullahs to retake control of much of Afghanistan, the ripple effect would strengthen terrorists in Pakistan.
Of course, the Obama team should spare no effort to help Pakistan confront its internal dangers. But this will be a frustrating process because Pakistan remains ambivalent about fighting the Taliban.
Although the Pakistani military recently took on one Taliban group in the Swat Valley after it had threatened Islamabad, the country’s security elite still hesitates to confront other jihadis.
Pakistan’s military and much of its political class still see India, not the jihadis, as their main enemy. This shortsightedness is chilling and could be suicidal.
Moreover, the Pakistani military declines to confront the Afghan Taliban for another reason: It thinks the United States will soon quit Afghanistan and favors a Taliban governmentthere that would be hostile to India. Members of Pakistan’s security elite helped Mullah Omar’s men in the 1990s, and they think they can control a restored Taliban regime in Kabul.I believe they are very wrong.
Top U.S. officials, both civilian and military, are trying to change this mind-set. They are urging Pakistan’s security elite to recognize the extent of the jihadi threat and are offering extensive military and economic aid.
In the meantime, something must be done to prevent the Afghan situation from deteriorating further. I found U.S. military commanders and civilian officials to be starkly realistic about what they face.
In the best-case scenario, they would be able to peel off local Taliban fighters and midlevel commanders who are in the fight for the money.
These “accidental guerrillas” make up the bulk of Taliban manpower; polls show most Afghans don’t want the return of the Taliban but do want jobs and a better life.
- Trudy Rubbin