Obama’s Solution for Afghanistan

Barack Obama, the president of United States, announced his administration’s strategy for the war in Afghanistan on December 1. The strategy contains three main directives. The first involves maintaining pressure on al-Qaida at Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan and in other parts of the world, while the second directive involves sending an additional 30,000 American soldiers to the Afghan battlefield.

The third directive is based on the success of the previous two. Assuming that they will install security for the Afghan people, this last directive consists of the development and training of an Afghan army. The Afghan army would then be granted responsibility for the security of the Afghan nation. This last step is highly connected to the retreat of American forces from Afghanistan, which, according to Obama and stated by Stratfor, should start in July 2011.

In order to really understand Obama’s strategy, it is necessary to realize that the mission of the additional American forces that will be sent to Afghanistan will not be to defeat the Taliban. The extra troops will be sent to improve control of the territory’s current situation, and consequently, create auspicious conditions for the Afghan army to take control of the Afghan state.

In his speech, Obama emphasized the differences in the strategies for Afghanistan and Vietnam. Under the “Vietnamization” strategy adopted by Richard Nixon, the annihilation of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was desired, as was the training and motivation of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) for its fight against the NVA. This was done in parallel with the retreat of American troops from the battlefields.

Nixon, at the time, was confronted with the same two problems that Obama has to overcome today. First, during the Vietnam War, the United States was not able to assure the security of South Vietnam indefinitely. Second, the Vietnamese had to ensure their own security.

The ARVN’s failure resulted from the same problems that could cause the U.S.’s failure in Afghanistan today: Taliban infiltration in the future Afghan army, in the same way that sympathizers and communist agents were able to infiltrate the ARVN.

The presence of communist agents inside the ARVN determined their access to the flow of information regarding ARVN’s strategic details, operations and tactics, which, though superior in size and weapons, lacked the element of surprise.

For this reason, Obama’s administration designed a strategy in Afghanistan that does not attempt to prevent Taliban infiltration of the Afghan army, but is meant to penetrate and destroy the Taliban faction from within. In this sense, it is essential for the U.S.’s success in Afghanistan to be able to infiltrate the Taliban’s organization with Pakistan’s secret agents.

Only by appealing to the third actor, Pakistan, a territory in which the Taliban can take refuge and regroup, can the United States counterbalance the leakage of information from the Afghan army with elements that would make the Taliban’s plans extremely transparent and easy to combat.