Obama's Plan Deepens the Afghan Crisis

Patrick Cockburn, long-time war correspondent in the Middle East, writes about American strategy in Af-stan:

The reality of Afghanistan is wholly different from the picture painted by Mr Obama in the US or Gordon Brown in the UK. The likelihood of the Taliban taking over the whole of Afghanistan has been systematically exaggerated. The insurgents have no support beyond the Pashtun community to which 42 per cent of Afghans belong. They are opposed by the 58 per cent who are Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara and many of their own Pashtun community. Even when backed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia before the US intervention of 2001, the Taliban failed to conquer all the country....

The Obama plan outlined last week envisages training 100,000 new Afghan soldiers and 100,000 new policemen over the next three years. But where are these recruits to come from? Given the high desertion rate, the combat strength of the Afghan army is reportedly only 46,000 troops in a country which is larger than France. These troops, and particularly the officer corps, are already disproportionately Tajik, the ethnic group to which a quarter of Afghans belong. The US can only increase the military strength of the Afghan state swiftly by skewing it towards the Tajiks, who were always the core of opposition to the Taliban. This will increase sectarian hatreds.

Afghans in the areas where extra US and British troops will be sent, mostly in southern Pashtun provinces such as Helmand and Kandahar, fear that more foreign troops will simply mean more violence and more dead Afghans according to opinion polls. Support for the Taliban is highest where civilians have been killed by shelling or bombing by foreign forces.

One of the most foolish and misleading claims by US and British generals is that fighting a guerrilla war can be successfully combined with dispensing aid and building bridges and roads. But, as one commentator puts it, such a mixture of Wyatt Earp and Mother Theresa is not feasible. Soldiers are trained to get what they want by force and that is generally what they do. Afghans whose families have just been killed by a bomb will not be conciliated by a fine new drainage system.

Other minefields face incoming American and British forces. The Afghan government is in many respects a criminal racket. Transparency International lists it as one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Foreign forces will either support this government, and suffer the odium of backing gangsters, or try to operate through provincial governors, police chiefs and local leaders, which will thereby confirm Taliban accusations that the Americans are seizing power in an occupied land.

Mr Obama’s plan will deepen and spread the Afghan crisis. It is not going to end the 30-year-old Afghan civil war. It is likely to radicalize the 12 million Pashtun in Afghanistan and the 20 million in Pakistan by conflating them with al-Qa’ida. American and British aims in Afghanistan could be achieved by measured support for the Afghan government. What is now planned will amount to full military occupation and turn the country and the region into a battlefield.