The Afghanistan Strategy: Chaos

The dismissal of NATO Commander Stanley McChrystal is also a clear verdict on the viability of Barack Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan. The campaign is becoming a lost cause.

The history of relations between the West and Afghanistan is filled with misunderstandings. As absurd as Afghanistan’s role as a haven for hippies was in the 1970s, the current idea that Afghanistan can be pacified and democratized is equally curious. Afghanistan was, and has remained, terra incognita; it is both a mysterious battlefield and a nation whose internal politics are difficult to understand from the outside.

The United States has had a particularly difficult time with the country both during and since the Soviet occupation, and they thought it to be a central geopolitical key in the following senses: Afghanistan as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism, as a bridge and stabilizing force in the sub-continental dispute between India and Pakistan, as an outpost in the energy-rich central Asia region, and, finally, as a listening post for any possible Chinese hegemonic desires. All these goals can be logically pursued, but only after one has solved the most difficult problem: developing stability in Afghanistan so that the nation is predictable. The solution to this problem has eluded every foreign power thus far, and even the U.S. has underestimated that necessity in a fatal fashion.

The post-9/11 occupation of Afghanistan thus became a sad history of missed opportunities. Nothing illustrates that better than the collection of official strategies that were concocted and then discarded over the past nine years: a central government vs. regionalization; civilian vs. military rule; a parliament or an assembly of tribal leaders (known as “jirga”); open warfare against the Taliban or surgical strikes; reconciliation or destruction. Everything has been tried in Afghanistan, and very little has worked.

It was only during the final days of the Bush administration that then-Commander General David McKiernan was successful in convincing policy-makers in Washington of something that had long been circulating in Germany as a “networked” approach: a closely cooperative meshing of military and civilian plans, the inclusion of local powers, and a turnover of responsibility to the Afghans. Today, that strategy bears the hallmarks of the current president, which was worked out closely with the now-departed Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal’s departure foreshadows a clear verdict for the survival chances of that strategy. The switch to General David Petraeus cannot obscure the fact that America’s Afghanistan policy will again be written with a view on domestic policy. In the end, McChrystal probably gave up on his own strategy since he so publicly doubted the capabilities of the many major actors on the Afghan stage.

In Washington, which is hardly the birthplace of political patience, support for McChrystal finally ran out. The difficulty of military actions this past spring; the postponed, and probably now abandoned, offensive on Kandahar; President Hamid Karzai’s unpredictability – all these sources of frustration were dumped on the commander who, in just under one year, had done everything to become an arrogant Mr. Success or Mr. Failure in the final phase of the operation.

This characterization was as ineffable as the impatience displayed by President Barack Obama in deliberately setting a firm date for the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Both show how little this government understands the concerns in Afghanistan, where every deadline – whether about an individual or a schedule – is immediately seized upon as a weakness and exploited.

In any case, President Karzai has already drawn his own conclusions. He recently dismissed two capable governmental ministers, who were both Tajiks. Obviously he’s looking to do business with the Pashtun majority and with Pakistan. The West can only be disruptive to that strategy.