Welcome to the Graveyard for Empire

On January 27, as Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, was giving his testimony at the Senate, he confirmed the information released by the spokesman of the White House a day earlier. That is, the President-appointed expert group led by Gates is dwelling on plans to actualize Obama’s promise from his inaugural speech to “responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.” Vice President Biden, who described the situation in Afghanistan as a “real mess,” said the nation should expect an “uptick” in American military casualties.

Obama’s dichotomy is that the Afghanistan war is “necessary” while the Iraq war is “unnecessary”; he reprehended the Bush administration for focusing its energies on the latter and lapsing on the former. As a result, Bin Laden has remained scott free and Afghanistan has remained the place where plans to make the next attack on the U.S are formulated.

Two Approaches That are Likely to Fail

Afghanistan and the Afghan-Pakistani border are the only two places in the world that allows al-Qaeda to roam; the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan before 2002 and has gone underground since then, is al-Qaeda’s staunchest partner. If the U.S. could destroy the anti-American Taliban and win Afghanistan over, then al-Qaeda would lose its base. This is the long-term strategic target set by the Obama administration.

There are two approaches to achieving this target : (1) using hard power to crush the Taliban and rebuild Afghanistan on debris and (2) through soft power, divide and dissolve the Taliban, leting it be part of the coalition of the Afghan power factions which allows the American army to station themselves long-term in the country to help eradicate international terrorists. Experts are of the view that these two approaches are not likely to succeed.

There are two factors that work against the first approach, i.e. historical factors and the limitation of American power. Pundits, especially British commentators, pointed out that Afghanistan is the “graveyard for empire” that has successfully warded off conquest from foreign invaderd for the past 2,000 years. After the British Empire, the U.S.S.R. suffered a bleeding loss in Afghanistan.

Next factor: the limitation of American power. First of all, the U.S army is highly exhausted. Secondly, the American allies have reached the limit of their support for the war and they are unlikely to commit any additional resources. Thirdly, the Taliban is a community of hybrid warriors who rove the hilly regions. When you attack them, they are “civilians.” They are “soldiers” who strike when you leave them alone. It is an uphill task to succumb foes like them.

The Obama administration is taking the first step to increase the number of American combat troops in Afghanistan from 30,000 to 60,000, a number dwarfed in comparison to the 600,000 troops in Iraq. As the Taliban takes its anti-American war to the rural region sprawling 78,000 square miles in Southern Afghanistan, it is challenging for 600,000 troops, let alone 60,000, to destroy them.

Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, said that there was a significant different between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq is a relatively advanced country with a sizeable middle-class whilst Afghanistan is a backwater tribal society with rampant corruption. The Taliban feeds its war with the U.S. with an annual income of $300 million from opium. The center stage of anti-American activities in Afghanistan, the rural region of about 80,000 square miles, is exactly where the key poppy planting region is located.

Zero Confidence in Karzai

To implement the soft power approach, Obama appointed a diplomat veteran, Richard Holbrooke, as the Special Envoy to Afghanistan. His job is to try to divide the Taliban and to put leverage on Afghanistan’s domestic force in eradicating and removing international terrorists.

Afghan President Harmid Karzai is the key person to Holbrooke’s success in the country. Hillary named Afghanistan a “narco state, plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption” at the Senate, and expressed no confidence in Karzai. Karzai, Bush’s blue-eyed boy, has never been well-respected in Afghanistan. His government is not only corrupt, but has also never been serious in curbing the opium trade. He luxuriates in his palace in Kabul and avoids making the rounds in the country. As a result, the Taliban fills the vacuum of power in the villages. Many American experts feel that the state of Afghanistan affairs could not be improved if Karzai stays on.

However, as Karzai is the result of American game of democracy, he has tricks under his sleeves to gain a second term in the coming election. This makes it difficult for the American to remove him. Karzai told the Afghan National Assembly that he had protested to the Obama administration on the civilian casualties caused by the U.S. attacks. The Speaker of the Assembly made it clear that Afghanistan would show the foreign armies the door if the American troops continue to harm its civilians.

The biggest problem with Afghanistan is its security issues. The most profitable industry in the country is, interestingly, security and not opium trading. The corrupt and incompetent Afghan police forces have forced its villages to arm themselves for self-protection. The U.S. operations in the country are largely run by the Special Forces which do not work in sync with Afghan army/police forces, NATO and other American bodies

al-Qaeda and the Taliban have turned the Afghan-Pakistan border, where minority ethnic groups reside, into their havens. This has added complexity to the war in Afghanistan. On January 23rd, Obama issued an executive order to dispatch a pilotless aircraft to bomb the minority ethnic region in the Western part of Pakistan and killed 22 people in the process. According to some reports, an al-Qaeda leader was amongst the casualty. As Obama has stressed since his election campaign — that if he knows the exact location of Osama Bin Laden, he would send troops into Pakistan to capture or slay the man even at the expense of protests from Pakistani. It was such a provocative speech that triggered the Bush administration to hit Pakistan more than 30 times last year, with no regard to Pakistani sovereign.

During the election, Obama has emphasized the severity of the Pakistan problem. How to prevent it from being “Taliban-ized” is the number 1 headache for Obama and Hillary. The Obama administration is expected to fail in Afghanistan, the so-called “graveyard of empire.”

The author is a retired scholar from India. She is staying in Chicago now.