:::True islam:::

Monday, December 07, 2009
Dr Maleeha Lodhi

The writer is a former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News.

President Barack Obama’s much awaited speech announced a military strategy to turn the tide in Afghanistan, but no political plan. The absence – thus far – of a political approach to underpin the military effort makes the new strategy defective. Military escalation in Afghanistan and the expansion of aerial strikes in Pakistan is fraught with great danger for this country, which is already confronted with mounting security challenges — a consequence, not a cause, of the prolonged strife in Afghanistan.

Billing his plan for a fast and furious military surge to be necessary for a quick exit from Afghanistan, President Obama ordered an additional 30,000 US troops to the war zone. By adding more troops to the 22,000 despatched by him early this year, Obama has taken a high-risk gamble in which the scale of the military challenge will be matched by the political and diplomatic challenges, which will include securing cooperation from other nations to execute a plan that several of Washington’s allies as indeed many Americans doubt will succeed.

The seeming contradiction in Obama’s surge-and-exit plan reflects a balancing act aimed at mollifying those in America – which is deeply conflicted over the war – who support a deeper military engagement and others, especially war-weary Democrats, who see it as a quagmire. Unlikely to placate either, the politics behind Obama’s decision will confront him with daunting problems down the road. More importantly it makes his strategy subject to exacting timelines and also sends mixed signals.

The implications for Pakistan of further military escalation are unquestionably deleterious. Intensified fighting in Afghanistan, far from diminishing the threat of more instability in Pakistan – being marshalled out as a spurious rationale by US officials in a curious version of the old domino theory – it will enhance it.

This is especially so with the anticipated expansion of the covert war involving drone-launched missile attacks in the country’s tribal areas and beyond. This was the unstated part of Obama’s speech, but it was more than evident from his identification of the border areas as the “epicentre” of the threat that had to be dealt with.

The reliance on military means in Obama’s plan is accompanied by near-silence on a political strategy. This assumes that a military solution can be successfully applied to the dire situation in Afghanistan, without addressing the political causes of the growing insurgency, especially Pakhtun alienation.

The speech refers in passing to US support for efforts by the Afghan government to reach out to those Taliban who abandon violence. But this does not constitute a reconciliation plan. Nor does it square with the aim to squelch the Taliban and “reverse its momentum.” If the surge is expected to strengthen the hand for negotiations later, it is not clear how the strategy will reconcile eliminating the Taliban leaders with talking to them.

A fundamental question that Obama’s plan raises is whether military escalation can be a game changer in the next 18 months when previous troop surges have been unsuccessful in pushing back the Taliban. Will the latest surge reinforce this failure? If the surge is unable to alter the strategic equation is there a plan B?

The surge strategy seems to be an effort to replicate the (principally urban) Iraq experience, but there are fundamental differences between the two situations. The Iraq surge was only one among other, more significant, non-military factors that contributed to improving security. A decisive factor was political accommodation with the insurgents – the critical missing component in the Afghan strategy.

Obama’s strategy rests on questionable military assumptions. The plan to turn over security responsibilities to the Afghan National Army (ANA) in 18 months is unfeasible. It has taken eight years to establish a force of 90,000, of which not one battalion can undertake combat missions on its own. Desertion rates remain high. The ANA lacks the capacity, but more importantly the ethnic balance, to become a genuinely national force. It is unlikely to be miraculously transformed to achieve the projected target of 134,000 by 2010 set under the Obama plan.

The other key assumption on which the new US strategy rests is that the Karzai government can emerge as a competent partner capable of reform. How the failed political project of governance in Afghanistan can be transformed is not explained by the strategy.

The flaw at the heart of the new strategy is that it sees it necessary to take on the Taliban in order to achieve its core objective of defeating Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda can only be neutralised if it is rejected by, and ejected from, the Taliban “sea” in which it survives. This urges an approach to separate the two by military and political means. Military escalation will push them closer and in fact impede the main goal.

Other factors also raise questions about the sustainability of this strategy. The first is the anticipated rise in casualties, which the top US military commander Admiral Mike Mullen acknowledges will occur “in the short term.” Mounting Western/American casualties will further erode plummeting public support in both the US and Europe. Can Western governments absorb heavy human losses and still count on public support for the war?

Another factor is the escalation in the economic cost of the war. The surge will cost an additional $30 billion a year at a time when the US is spending $3.6 billion a month in Afghanistan. With members of Obama’s own party demanding a new war tax to pay for this, how long will Congress, preoccupied with economic recovery, agree to defray the rising costs of a war whose success cannot be guaranteed?

For Pakistan Obama’s new strategy poses two especially taxing challenges. The first is the risk that the public consensus against militancy forged with so much difficulty and effort can shatter and unravel with the expansion of the war. Stepped up Drone attacks could increase civilian casualties. The covert air war will not just inflame opinion in Pakistan but also unite militants of different stripes. This will compound a fragile security situation.

Second, Washington’s demands on Pakistan to play an active role in its hammer and anvil strategy will stretch the capability of Pakistan’s army, already engaged in operations in a number of tribal areas. Pushing Pakistan into multiple military engagements can undercut its own counter-militancy efforts and jeopardise recent gains.

Military escalation on its border (two additional US brigades are being deployed in southern and one in eastern Afghanistan) is fraught with four more risks for Pakistan.

1) It could produce a spillover of militants and Al Qaeda fighters into Pakistan and an arms flow across the border.

2) It will enhance the vulnerability of US-NATO ground supply routes through the country as supply needs increase exponentially. Protecting these supply lines will overstretch Pakistani forces, at present engaged in quashing the Pakistani Taliban.

3) The surge could also lead to an influx of more Afghan refugees, which can be especially destabilising for Balochistan.

4) It could also provoke a spike in violent reprisals in mainland Pakistan already being rocked by the bloody backlash from the military operations.

It is therefore imperative for Islamabad to seek to minimise the negative fallout and try to persuade the US to modify its strategy to accommodate Pakistan’s concerns. President Obama has described the partnership with Pakistan as the third prong of his strategy that he says is “inextricably linked” to success in Afghanistan.

He can make good on his rhetoric of seeking a partnership based on “mutual respect” by listening to Pakistan. Unless this indispensable partner’s doubts and misgivings about the new strategy are allayed and Washington is prepared to adapt its policy accordingly, the relationship will run into more problems and tensions. Cooperation has to be predicated not just on common objectives but the strategy and tactics needed to achieve them.