Coming full circle
What was that sound you heard over the weekend? That was the sound of the other shoe dropping. Or put another way, we have come full circle, from Afghanistan to Iraq and now, back to Afghanistan.
It looks as if the military is wasting no time in fulfilling the pledges of Barack Obama. During his campaign he pledged to shift the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. Here’s hoping it doesn’t turn out to be a case of being careful what we wished for.
Obama and top U.S. commanders have vowed to increase U.S. troops in Afghanistan by 20,000, which could push the total U.S. military presence there above 50,000.
U.S. Joint Forces Command officials are working to help the Pentagon dispatch the last of four new brigades requested by commanders in Afghanistan by late spring or early summer.
The U.S. military will soon launch a pilot program to raise local militias, paid by the Pentagon, in an effort to improve security throughout Afghanistan.
Evidently this is supposed to be the Afghan version of the Iraqi Awakening movement. After initially being rejected by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the plan was developed this fall and approved just over two weeks ago.
Yet some officials warn that the forces must be carefully vetted to avoid repeating the mistakes of Afghanistan’s past, as in bolstering local warlords. They worry about launching a program modeled on the U.S.-financed militias of Iraq, given the considerable differences in the wars.
It would be a mistake to think that tactics and strategies that were successful in Iraq can just be transplanted into Afghanistan. Consider what Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on the Dec. 17 Charlie Rose show:
One of my concerns, in fact, my biggest concern in Afghanistan is the history of foreign armies in Afghanistan going back to Alexander the Great. As long as the Afghan people see us as their friend and ally, as long as they see us as in this fight for them, as well as for ourselves, then I think we’ll be okay, but if we get too many forces in there, if they come to see us as in it only for ourselves and not as their ally and they turn against us, then I think we cannot be successful.
…
I think we need to be very careful about drawing analogies between Iraq and Afghanistan. I think that Afghanistan is a very different place historically, the challenges are very different, just one basic fact, the revenues of the Iraqi government this year will probably be somewhere in the vicinity of $70 billion. The revenues for the Afghan government will probably be more like $700 million.
Yet sending more forces is what we are doing. This past Saturday Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 there. So we could be talking about 60,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan by summer.
Meanwhile a recent increase in Taliban attacks on a crucial NATO transportation route from Pakistan to Afghanistan has imperiled efforts to bolster the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported last week that attacks on NATO supply lines have become a regular occurrence in parts of northwestern Pakistan, including the country’s inhospitable tribal areas near the Afghan border. In the past two weeks, Taliban fighters have mounted at least six assaults on NATO supply depots near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, setting fire to more than 300 armored Humvees, military vehicles and other supply containers.
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