Obama’s two wars
In designing its own strategy, Pakistan has to take note of an important development: the increasing American resolve to quit the Afghan scene.
By Shahid Javed Burki
Tuesday, 28 Dec, 2010
WHEN on Dec 1, 2009, President Barack Obama announced his intention to escalate the war in Afghanistan it was also his intention to keep the country fully informed about the success or failure of the strategy he was adopting.
There were three significant parts of the new strategy. The first was the deci sion to increase the size of the American force operating in Afghanistan by add ing another 30,000 soldiers, thus bring ing the total to 100,000.
The second was to shift the focus of America’s involvement away from ob taining an outright victory over the Taliban and to create, instead, areas which would be virtually free of the pres ence of the enemy. This was more likely to happen in the country’s urban areas where the government, aided by the expanding Afghan military force, could establish its control. There was also the expectation that once these areas had been pacified, economic development would win the hearts and minds of the people.
The third element of the strategy was to induce Pakistan to play a more aggressive role in helping the Americans achieve their limited aims. In return for Islamabad’s help, the Obama administration promised the country generous economic and military support valued at $9.5bn of which $7.5bn was for economic development and was to be disbursed over a period of five years.
To convince Pakistan that this assistance would be available for a reasonably long time, the US Congress passed what came to be known as the KerryLugar bill. America, in other words, was preparing to fight two wars, one each in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Americans also indicated that they would use unmanned aircrafts, the drones, to kill the leaders and commanders of the Taliban operating out of the tribal areas of Pakistan. This was to be done with the tacit approval of the Pakistani government. It was expected that Islamabad would continue to condemn the attacks while secretly providing the Americans intelligence about the targets to be struck.
Following the announcement of the new policy, President Obama promised that a full review would be carried out and released for public view a year from the adoption of the new approach. That has happened. On Dec 16, 2010, the White House released its appraisal of the US effort in the region the Obama administration had once called Af-Pak.
The United States announced in the review that it had ‘arrested’ even ‘reversed’ the Taliban’s momentum in much of Afghanistan, particularly in the country’s south. There were successes in and around the city of Kandahar, the area from where the Taliban had risen a decade and half earlier. However, in presenting his report to the public President Obama said that gains made “remained fragile and reversible”.
The review said that specific components of its strategy for both Afghanistan and Pakistan were working and highligh ted what it said were “notable gains”. The review added: “In Afghanistan, the momentum achieved by the Taliban in recent years has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in some key areas.” But it went on to say: “The challenge remains to make our gains durable and sustainable.” According to one assessment, “the review coincides with the administration’s bid to reverse what Robert Gates, defence secretary, acknowledged was public opposition to the war in both the US and its more than 40 partners”.
Although the public policy community quickly reached the conclusion that there was nothing unexpected in the review, one part of the assessment stood out. President Obama, while signalling to Pakistan that much more was expected of it for America to succeed in Afghanistan indicated that there was also growing recognition in Washington that Islamabad’s options were limited.
The American military leaders in the field were now of the view that their country’s limited goal — creating an environment that would help the US to begin to pull out of Afghanistan by July 2011 — could be achieved even if Pakistan was unable, or unwilling, to close the sanctuaries in North Waziristan. In other words, America was concentrating on fighting one war and not two, the other being waged with the help of the Pakistani army on the other side of the border. Success, the military strategists now believed, could be achieved without a thorough cleansing of the forces of resistance operating from the Pakistani side of the border.
That Pakistan’s all-out support for the American effort across the border in Afghanistan can have grave consequences for the country has lately been underscored by suicide attacks in Mohmand and Bajaur. The army appears to have had little success in eliminating the militants here. Such attacks are part of the Taliban strategy to signal their presence in a brutal way. Earlier in the month, twin attacks in Mohmand killed some 40 people, including senior tribesmen, journalists and security personnel, in an attack on a “peace jirga assembled to plan a strategy to stand up to the Taliban … Such attacks have by now become familiar tactics. Insurgents have been often struck with suicide bombers at meetings of government officials and tribal elders to prevent them from forming anti-Taliban militias”.
In fact on the day the US administration released its assessment Germany which has the second largest force in Afghanistan, announced that it would start withdrawing its contingent of 4,800 soldiers as early as next year and complete the pullback by 2014. This was also the date when the Americans were expecting to be out of the country.
In designing its own strategy, Pakistan has to take note of these developments: the increasing American resolve to quit the Afghan scene starting in 2011 and completing the process by 2014; unwillingness on the part of America’s Nato allies to stay engaged in the country; partial success by the US in bringing peace to some of the contested areas; and some doubt on the part of the American military commanders as to the sustainability of their successes in the battlefield. ¦ The writer is chairman of the Lahore-based Institute of Public Policy, a former finance minister of Pakistan and former vice president of the World Bank.