And Now What Are We Doing in Afghanistan?

I have followed the elections in Afghanistan with growing concern. The positive fact is that the Taliban have not succeeded at making them fail, and for the West this is an indisputable success, but from a wider prospective I have the impression that the entire electoral process is not very credible. What sense is there to making voters vote in a country where women continue to be forced to go out in a burqa? Where the local lords in many regions have much more power than the central government? Where the people who vote dip their fingers in ink, which results in the Taliban then going around from house to house to punish those who have done their duty? A country where the election is distorted by obvious fraud, so much so that American Envoy Richard Holbrook complained to Karzai? And where for two days there has not been any news about the vote count, while Karazai and Abdullah are treating their future political assets and who knows what else?

Anyway, in a little while we will have a new government. Good, but has the West decided how to resolve the Afghan crisis eight years after the invasion? Apparently, no. Obama is wavering between the soft, but morally unacceptable solution (agreements with the Taliban) and a solution that is hard, but full of sacrifices (massive reinforcements and prolonged war operations).

Sun Tzu believes, as put forth in the “Art of War,” that a conflict that lasts too long is never victorious. Since 2001, the West had only one strategic success: it kept the country from returning to a position as a base for al-Qaeda, but on all the rest in the balance has been disappointing.

I assert that the moment has arrived for definitive clarification on West’s role and its objectives in Afghanistan. Do we really want to win this war? Even at the cost of fighting for another five to six years? And with what troops other than the Americans? And with what prospects for a population that, since the Soviet invasion, has endured suffering and inexpressible hardship without guilt?