General Overhaul

U.S. air attacks have shaken Afghanistan’s trust in America. The United States embarks on a new strategy: they fire their commander.

“Let’s not kid ourselves – we’re not winning this war at the present time.” It’s a quote that will stick like chewing gum – even if it was never uttered. But David McKiernan, 4-star General in the United States Army and Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan (ISAF) may go down in history as having said it.

But before the book is even written, McKiernan himself is already history. On Monday evening, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates relieved him of command of over 60,000 soldiers from 42 different countries stationed in Afghanistan. No other commander has ever had to clean out his desk on such short notice and for such questionable reasons.

Gates, who had just visited troops in the Helmand Province with McKiernan last Friday, could come up with only a few weak explanations for cutting the commanding general’s tour from the usual two years to just eleven months: it was necessary to imbue the new strategy with a new look. The mission required “new thinking.” Gates couldn’t come up with anything better than that.

But it was McKiernan, in fact, that had brought “new thinking” to the coalition and above all to American troops there. He pressured departing President George W. Bush and his replacement, Barack Obama, for the 20,000 man troop surge.

Last summer he introduced a new strategy still gradually being implemented among the troops, a strategy different from the previous one in that it allows policies to be formulated on the ground and which then “bubble up” to higher echelons. After regime change in Washington, it was Obama who put together the strategic plan assembled mainly from the building blocks in McKiernan’s plan: more troops, more security, parallel civilian reconstruction. Shape, clear, hold and build – first put in the troops, then liberate areas from Taliban control, stabilize them and finally rebuild what is required.

It wasn’t until McKiernan’s tenure that the forces there really understood that sequence and had it drilled into them that the constant air attacks with the high civilian casualty rate were damaging the strategy.

Ironically, McKiernan might be a political victim of one of these air attacks. Last Wednesday, civilians in two villages probably being used as shields by the Taliban died in a U.S. attack.

The number of Afghan victims – reported to be 140 – was considered excessive. That resulted in serious political damage to President Hamid Karzai who was on an official visit to Washington at the time. On a visit to Germany in January, Karzai appeared before the cameras saying that despite the number of Taliban victims, the killing of civilians by foreign troops was a main source of instability in Afghanistan.

Gates is quoted as saying, “Nothing went wrong, and there was nothing specific,” – a clear indication that a political scapegoat had to be found. Even McKiernan’s quotation about the war being unwinnable was taken out of context.

The general was referring to the fact that some areas of Afghanistan might prove difficult to pacify unless the military changed the way they were doing things. But there’s not much room for such subtleties in Afghanistan.