Time to Rethink Afghan Strategy

The widely anticipated review of the US strategy in the war on terror will now include inputs from the Afghan leadership.

Afghanistan is to send a team headed by Afghan Foreign Minister, Rangeen Dafdar Spanta later this month to offer its own inputs to help evolve a policy that is more in sync with ground realities. The announcement came at a joint press conference by Richard Holbrooke, the special US envoy to South West Asia, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai whose profuse gratitude to the Americans for being involved in the strategy review discussions appeared to be rather an outpouring of relief over Richard Holbrooke concluding his visit to Kabul without any public expression of rumoured US displeasure with the Afghan leadership.

Holbrooke’s trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan was significant as it stressed the new US government’s focus on the region. It was purported to be a “listen and learn” visit and is expected to provide important feedback to the US leadership before it undertakes a much-needed revision of Washington’s policy on the region.

In a direct censure of Karzai, President Obama recently described his government as being ‘very detached’ from the situation at home. “A narco-state,” that is “plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption” is how new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described Afghanistan in her confirmation hearing before the Congress. Besides narcotics, US officials are increasingly disturbed over reports of nearly one third of weapons that have gone missing — (approximately 87,000) from 242,000 that were provided by the US between December 2004 and June 2008. It is believed that corruption and illiteracy coupled with lack of governance in the respective sector has led to this debacle, for many of these weapons may have been passed on to the Taleban and other insurgents fighting the coalition forces. Even though tensions between the US and the Afghan government were downplayed by Holbrooke, US relations with the Karzai government have deteriorated considerably thanks to several factors.

The Afghan leader has of late been sharply critical of the civilian casualties in the indiscriminate air strikes and attacks by the coalition forces across the country. His overtures to former Mujahideen commanders and Taleban and looking at a possible realignment with Russia have not gone down well with Washington.

Alternately, the US and the Nato commanders are also increasingly concerned about the security situation in Afghanistan. The present government that has only a limited writ in some parts of the country has been overlooking blatant corruption and involvement in the narcotics trade by some government officials. No wonder there’s growing speculation in and outside Afghanistan that the US would not support Karzai in the forthcoming Presidential elections, scheduled for August this year. So it remains to be seen how the new US administration goes about clearing the mess in Afghanistan with the help and inputs of the Afghan leadership of course. Afghanistan has been bleeding for far too long. Too many innocents have already been killed and we are no way close to looking at an exit strategy. The US has to come up with a roadmap that could ensure the stabilization of Afghanistan enabling the coalition to leave as early as possible.