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Can US Eradicate Insurgency In Pakistan And Afghanistan

Author : P N Khera | .

Posted on : Thursday, December 31, 2009

Many in US, Pakistan and Afghanistan are beginning to have doubts about the US policies to combat Al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While commentators, in Pakistan are becoming more and more critical about the US policies in the Indian subcontinent, there are those who are beginning to have second thoughts in Washington too, America seems to be caught in an “aid trap” so far as its economic aid to Pakistan is concerned. It wants Pakistan to take the US aid whether it wants or not and hopes that Pakistan will take its war against terror more seriously. But Pakistan seemed unwilling and halfhearted leading to many in the United States it self-questioning the success of US military policies in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In this context some very significant comments have recently appeared in the media giving the White House ample cause for concern.

Anwar Iqbal wrote in the DAWN on October 10 that hours after deadly terror attacks killed scores of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the White House assured the world that it had no plans to quit the region. Recent reports in the international media had suggested that a rapid increase in attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan might force the United States to leave that country.

President Barack Obama has held a series of meetings with his top advisers on Afghanistan and Pakistan on how to best confront Taliban and Al Qaeda militants threatening the governments of both countries. The White House said that the United States was staying put.

‘We understand that we have a role to play in ensuring stability in the region, which is why the president is a taking his time to get this policy right’.

President Obama said that he would not be rushed into a decision on sending in more troops, despite Republican criticism that he was dithering. America’s top military commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, has urged Mr Obama to send upto 40,000 more troops to confront a Taliban insurgency. But some top Democratic lawmakers want a much smaller increase in troops.

Meanwhile, the US media quoted senior officials as saying that the White House was settling on an Afghan strategy that would send more US troops to protect top population centres.

The New York Times interpreted this as ‘recognising that the insurgency cannot be completely eradicated from the country’.

The media described the new strategy as a blend of rival proposals put forward by Vice-President Joe Biden and by Gen McChrystal. The strategy would focus US forces on some 10 major population centres in Afghanistan, while in the rest of the country surveillance drones and local informants would guide US attacks on the insurgents.

Vice-President Biden, however, opposed a major troop build-up and instead called for narrowing the mission on fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with drones and special operations forces.

‘At the heart of the strategy is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force, nor does it need to in order to protect American national security,’ the NYT commented.

‘Instead, the focus would be on preventing Al Qaeda from returning in force while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces that would eventually take over the mission.

M. Mohsin reported in NATION October 29 that Dick Cheney, George W Bush''s vice president, struggling to stay on line like Palin, accused the president of ''dithering'' over Afghanistan Appearing to be under a spell of amnesia, he advised the incumbent to ‘do what it takes to win’ He also emphasised that signals of indecision in Washington ‘hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries’. Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, also chimed in in Texas by blaming the president of creating confusion on the issue. ‘Republicans have developed a troubling pattern of blaming President Obama for trying to fix all the problems that they created’, said Senator Jack Reed, a member of the Armed Services Committee. Likewise, White House press secretary hit back saying: What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public." He added: "I think we''ve all seen what happens when somebody doesn''t take that responsibility seriously.

DAILY TIMES commented in an October 29 editorial that Foreign ministers of China, Russia and India, holding their 9th meeting in Bangalore in India, have jointly urged the international community not to let the focus slip from their mission in Afghanistan. They also jointly condemned “terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and reiterated that there could be no justification for any act of terrorism anywhere”.

The three countries spoke of “the commitment of restoring peace and stability and building a democratic, pluralistic and prosperous Afghanistan”. In the joint statement, China joined the other two countries in condemning the “recent terror attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul”. The context of the meeting was also found in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) which was “steadily becoming an important factor of emerging architecture of security, economy, culture, people-to-people contacts and cooperation in Asia”.

The meeting was ‘sanitised’ for Pakistan by the presence of China, and one can assume that Pakistan will not be in hostile company if it compared notes with other member and observer states of the SCO on what the neighbours of Afghanistan can do to ease the next stage of development in Afghanistan. The last time Afghanistan plunged into a Hobbesian “state of nature” its neighbours worked at cross-purposes and each suffered in varying degrees.

Zafar Hilaly wrote in the NEWS on October 29 that Fareed Zakaria, America''s resident Muslim pundit, who is ever trying to find the middle ground between dissimilar strategies and fighting doctrines, feels that the Biden (counterinsurgency) and McCrystal (counter terrorism) strategies can both be accommodated with only a slight increase in the number of American forces. He feels that a further increase of 15,000 American troops would suffice, and that the 40,000 General McCrystal asked for is unnecessary. What he is saying is not that half a loaf is better than no bread, but that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf. In the cockroach world of compromise that may make sense to some, but not to many others.

It seemed the conditionalities imposed by the Kerry-Lugar Act in return for unequivocal action against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism are not going to go away even if the much-predicted withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan takes place in any hurry. If Pakistan does not act it will not get the aid (which has already started flowing) and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has added a kink by suggesting that Pakistan need take the aid if it does not want it even as the FBI has revealed that a Pakistani diplomat in the US was working for the ISI in the plot to use American nationals to strike at India again.

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