Another day in Afghanistan, another setback for the coalition strategy

Simon Tisdall, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 March 2012 17.44 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/15/afghanistan-coalition-strategy-obama-cameron

Another day, another body-blow in Afghanistan. Except Thursday saw not one but two heavy diplomatic punches thumping into the solar plexus of the bruised and battered Nato coalition: a decision by the Taliban to boycott nascent peace talks; and a demand by President Hamid Karzai that US, British and other coalition troops withdraw back to base. How many more hits can the west's Afghan strategy take before it finally gives up the ghost?

The policy's many critics, backed by sceptical public opinion in the US and Britain, say it is already dead and gone. Seen this way, the Afghanistan talk-in featuring Barack Obama and David Cameron in Washington this week resembles a discussion between two undertakers about the most fitting way to dress a corpse. The nub: how to get out fast – without appearing to get out fast.

For the Oval Office record, nothing will shake Obama's 2014 timetable for handover and withdrawal. About 23,000 US troops are due to leave by September, out of a total of 91,000. White House armchair colonels hint that this schedule may be speeded up, in defiance of Pentagon advice. Defying the top brass has great appeal for Democrats in an election year.

But such tinkering aside, the policy's basic planks remain unchanged. Afghanistan was Obama's war of choice. He picked it in preference to Iraq, ordered a General Petraeus-patented surge, went after the bad guys and now, like Bush before him, is preparing to declare a victory, whatever the facts. Yet just how long Obama and Cameron can hold this line is ever more open to question.

Writing in the New Yorker, Steve Coll suggested the policy was disintegrating under the weight of its own wrong assumptions – and would not last until 2014. "The most glaring one is that Nato's surge in 2009 could induce better governance … There are at least two other dubious assumptions. One is that Afghan politics will be cohesive and stable enough in 2014 to bear the pressures of a dramatic reduction of foreign troops. A second is that Afghan security forces will be capable and politically unified enough to take on the burden assigned to them," Coll said.

Coll argues that it is not too late for Obama to recognizse the policy is fatally flawed, and that to persist with it inflexibly is folly. The US and Britain should consider, for example, paying greater attention to the broad political goals enunciated by Afghan leaders, and not just by Karzai.

"These goals include an end to night raids, greater and faster sovereignty over international military operations, and a review of the arming and supervision of militias. Even the announcement of such a direction might arrest the despair and contention that surrounds the American-Afghan partnership, bogged down for months in increasingly implausible negotiations over a strategic partnership accord."

For veteran reporter Sandy Gall, recent events pail into significance compared with what may happen when Nato leaves. "Afghans already feel that electoral considerations are more important to the west than the key question of whether the raw, new Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police will be up to the task of guaranteeing the country's security, especially if Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, continues to back the Taliban," Gall said. Civil war beckoned, he warned.

The Washington Post also said that humility, and a rethink, were badly needed lest Afghan policy definitively crash and burn. "Mr Obama and his aides have done much to damage the relationship between the two countries and public morale on both sides," it said. Obama's people had disrespected President Hamid Karzai and pursued talks with the Taliban over his head, unwisely overruled Pentagon advice, and let politics dictate strategy.

"Afghans, the Taliban and neighbours such as Pakistan can reasonably conclude that the United States, rather than trying to win the war, is racing to implement an exit strategy in which the interests of Afghans and their government are slighted," it said.

In other words, in Afghanistan, it's time to swallow pride and wise up, before it really is too late.