Vietnamistan

The long-standing pessimism prevalent in the U.S. about the war in Afghanistan has reached its zenith. In the eyes of the American people and media, Afghanistan is another Vietnamese swamp, where the United States was bogged down 50 years ago. This view has gained so much currency lately that Vietnamistan is what many American commentators now call Afghanistan.

The publication on the Internet of more than 90,000 military documents on the war in Afghanistan, which cover the years between 2004 and 2009, by a website called WikiLeaks aggravated this pessimistic mood. It is of course a mood-breaking scandal for the Obama administration that the American public has now found out about these thousands of documents, most of which were prepared by the Pentagon and CIA, ranging from top secret operations against some “high level” targets in Afghanistan to ordinary intelligence information.

But there is now an issue that became so certain to make it most clear to virtually everyone that this war will never be won: that the Pakistani intelligence provides support for the Taliban.

Is Pakistan A Friend or a Foe?

If there is an issue that gives President Obama trouble sleeping at night, it is surely Pakistan. The reason is Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. If an Islamic regime comes to power in Pakistan in one way or another one day, the nightmare scenario that the United States fears most — namely, that “an Islamic State [will] come to possess nuclear weapons” — will be sheer reality. This also explains why the United States has gone to great lengths on the Iranian issue, because the U.S. does not want to face a similar nightmare with Iran.

The most important information that leaked from the documents WikiLeaks published though is that some Islamist generals within the Pakistani intelligence are providing the Taliban in “Vietnamistan” with logistical and military assistance. In other words, the Islamist movement within Pakistan is so serious that even the official Pakistani intelligence is acting in cooperation with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This brings up two issues for the United States: first, how bleak the picture really is in Afghanistan. Pakistan, as it turns out, plays to both hands even though it is supposed to be a U.S. ally. It has been receiving military and economic assistance worth billions of dollars, but Obama’s hands are tied when it comes to achieving success in “Vietnamistan.”

The second issue that creates panic in addition to hopelessness mentioned above is the situation inside Pakistan itself. What happens if an Islamist general ousts the current government and comes to power? Imagine that the Taliban comes to possess the nuclear weapons in Pakistan. What could the next step be? What would the Taliban do with them? The Taliban would probably not use those weapons. But what if these weapons or the nuclear technology fall into the hands of terrorist groups such as al-Qaida or Lashkar-e-Taiba to be used against India? What would India do in such a scenario?

Assume that a nuclear war breaks out over Kashmir between Pakistan and India. On whose side would the United States stand in such a war that will undoubtedly lead to the death of millions? This explains why the issues with Pakistan and Vietnamistan keep Obama up at night. When he assumed the presidency, President Obama had described the war in Afghanistan as “legitimate and necessary” while the Iraqi war was a “wrong and unnecessary” adventure. It can be said that the American people shared this view in general. After all, a chain of causality had been established between the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Qaida, the Taliban and Afghanistan. Therefore, the war in Afghanistan was a legitimate and necessary war.

But for Washington, the goal to protect Pakistan also helped legitimize the war in Afghanistan. Otherwise, it was thought that if the Taliban were to control Afghanistan, this would mean success for the Taliban in Pakistan as well. Yet, we now learn from the documents leaked that the Taliban is already a force sanctioned and supported by the Pakistani state. But then again, why are American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan? When this is the case, what else, other than Vietnamistan, would American people call this war?