[R-G] Obama Is Saying the Wrong Things About Afghanistan

[Anthony Fenton]

  Published on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 by Salon.com
Obama Is Saying the Wrong Things About Afghanistan
He hit the right notes during his swing through Iraq, but his plans  
for that other war could mean trouble.
by Juan Cole
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/23/obama/index.html

Barack Obama’s Afghanistan and Iraq policies are mirror images of each  
other. Obama wants to send 10,000 extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan,  
but wants to withdraw all American soldiers and Marines from Iraq on a  
short timetable. In contrast to the kid gloves with which he treated  
the Iraqi government, Obama repeated his threat to hit at al-Qaida in  
neighboring Pakistan unilaterally, drawing howls of outrage from  
Islamabad.

But Obama’s pledge to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan will not be  
easy to fulfill. While coalition troop deaths have declined  
significantly in Iraq, NATO casualties in Afghanistan are way up. By  
shifting emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, would a President Obama be  
jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

During the Baghdad stop of his ongoing overseas tour, the convergence  
between the worldview of the presumptive Democratic nominee and that  
of his Iraqi hosts provided some embarrassing moments for the Bush  
administration. Obama and his traveling companions, Senate colleagues  
Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., issued a statement Tuesday  
after a day of consultations with Iraqi politicians and U.S. military  
commanders, affirming the need to respect Iraqi aspirations for a  
“timeline, with a clear date, for the redeployment of American combat  
forces.” By then, in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel, Iraqi  
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had already expressed support for  
Obama’s proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months of  
his inauguration next January.

Although al-Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, attempted to soothe  
ruffled GOP feathers by suggesting the Der Spiegel interview was  
mistranslated, al-Dabbagh came clean while Obama was in Baghdad on  
Monday. He confirmed that the Iraqi government hoped U.S. troops would  
be withdrawn within two years. Obama was thus able, in his joint  
statement with Reed and Hagel, to cite Iraqi attitudes for his own  
stance: “The prime minister … stated his hope that U.S. combat forces  
could be out of Iraq in 2010.”

In general, Obama’s policies toward Iraq synchronize neatly with the  
aspirations of the Shiite-dominated elected Iraqi government, with an  
affirmation of the need to gain the consent of the Iraqis for any  
status-of-forces agreement with the U.S., and with a far greater  
emphasis on addressing the humanitarian crisis provoked by the U.S.  
invasion. On leaving al-Maliki’s office, Obama was able to call his  
consultations with the prime minister “very constructive.”

By comparison, Obama’s criticisms of Bush administration policy toward  
Afghanistan and Pakistan, and his determination to make those  
countries the centerpiece of his foreign policy, are more problematic.  
Obama’s determination to put down the tribal insurgencies in  
northwestern Pakistan and in southern Afghanistan reveals basic  
contradictions in his announced policies. His plans certainly have the  
potential to ruffle Afghan and Pakistani feathers, and have already  
done so in Pakistan.

On July 13, Obama criticized Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on  
CNN, saying, “I think the Karzai government has not gotten out of the  
bunker and helped organize Afghanistan and [the] government, the  
judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence.”  
Although the remark had the potential to make for awkward moments  
between Karzai and Obama during their meeting Sunday, it was welcomed  
by the independent Afghan press, which applauded the senator for  
bucking the “self-centered” policies of Bush and his knee-jerk support  
of Karzai.

After Obama met with Karzai, reporters asked his aide, Humayun  
Hamidzada, if the criticism had come up. He tried to put the best face  
on issue, saying the Afghan government did not see the comment as  
critical, but as a fair observation, since it had in fact been tied  
down fighting terrorism.

Less forgiving were the politicians in Pakistan, who reacted angrily  
to Obama’s comments on unilaterally attacking targets inside that  
country. The Democratic presidential hopeful told CBS on Sunday, “What  
I’ve said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value  
al-Qaida targets, and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go  
after those targets, that we should.” He added that he would put  
pressure on Islamabad to move aggressively against terrorist training  
camps in the country’s northwestern tribal areas.

Pakistan, a country of 165 million people, is composed of six major  
ethnic groups, one of them the Pashtuns of the northwest. The  
Pakistani Taliban are largely drawn from this group. The more settled  
Pashtun population is centered in the North-West Frontier province,  
with its capital at Peshawar. Between the NWFP and Afghanistan are  
badlands administered rather as Native American reservations are in  
the U.S., called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, with a  
population of some 3 million. These areas abut Pashtun provinces of  
Afghanistan, also a multiethnic society, but one in which Pashtuns are  
a plurality.

The tribal Pashtuns of the FATA no man’s land, a third of which is  
classified as “inaccessible” by the Pakistani government, have  
sometimes given shelter to al-Qaida or Afghan Taliban militants. Some  
of the Pashtun tribesmen themselves have turned militant, and have  
been responsible for suicide bombings at police checkpoints inside  
Pakistan. They are also accused of attacking targets across the border  
in Afghanistan and of giving refuge to Afghan Taliban who conduct  
cross-border raids.

The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani,  
immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator’s remarks  
had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last  
February. Ghani warned that a U.S. incursion into the northwestern  
tribal areas would have “disastrous” consequences for the globe.

The governor underlined that a “war on terrorism” policy depended on  
popular support for it, and that such support was being leeched away  
by U.S. strikes on the Pakistan side of the border and by statements  
such as Obama’s. A recent American attack mistakenly killed Pakistani  
troops who had been sent to fight the Pakistani Taliban at American  
insistence. The Pakistani public was furious. Ghani complained,  
“Candidate Obama gave these statements; I come out openly and say such  
statements undermine support, don’t do it.”

The NWFP governor is responsible for Pakistani counterinsurgency  
efforts in his province and in the neighboring tribal regions. He is  
well thought of in Pakistan because of his successes in Baluchistan  
province, which he governed for five years prior to January of this  
year, where he combined political negotiations with militants and  
targeted military action when he felt it necessary. He firmly  
subordinated the military strategy to civilian politics and  
negotiations. That is, Ghani is a politician with long experience in  
dealing with tribal insurgencies.

Obama’s aggressive stance, on the other hand, could be  
counterproductive. The Illinois senator had praised the Pakistani  
elections of last February, issuing a statement the next day saying,  
“Yesterday, a moderate majority of the Pakistani people made their  
voices heard, and chose a new direction.” He criticized the Bush  
administration, saying U.S. interests would be better served by  
“advancing the interests of the Pakistani people, not just Pakistan’s  
president.”

Yet the parties elected in February in Pakistan are precisely the ones  
demanding negotiations with the tribes and militants of the northwest,  
rather than frontal military assaults. Indeed, it is the Bush  
administration that has pushed for military strikes in the FATA areas.  
Obama will have to decide whether he wants to risk undermining the  
elected government and perhaps increasing the power of the military by  
continuing to insist loudly and publicly on unilateral U.S. attacks on  
Pakistani territory.

Nor is it at all clear that sending more U.S. troops to southern  
Afghanistan can resolve the problem of the resurgence of the Taliban  
there. American and NATO search-and-destroy missions alienate the  
local population and fuel, rather than quench, the insurgency.  
Resentment over U.S. airstrikes on innocent civilians and wedding  
parties is growing. Brazen attacks on U.S. forward bases and on  
institutions such as the prison in the southern city of Kandahar are  
becoming more frequent. To be sure, Obama advocates combining  
counterinsurgency military operations with development aid and  
attention to resolving the problem of poppy cultivation. (Afghan  
poppies are turned into heroin for the European market, and the  
profits have fueled some of the Taliban’s resurgence.) Stepped-up  
military action, however, is still the central component of his plan.

Before he jumps into Afghanistan with both feet, Obama would be well  
advised to consult with another group of officers. They are the  
veterans of the Russian campaign in Afghanistan. Russian officers  
caution that Afghans cannot be conquered, as the Soviets attempted to  
do in the 1980s with nearly twice as many troops as NATO and the U.S.  
now have in the country, and with three times the number of Afghan  
troops as Karzai can deploy. Afghanistan never fell to the British or  
Russian empires at the height of the age of colonialism. Conquering  
the tribal forces of a vast, rugged, thinly populated country proved  
beyond their powers. It may also well prove beyond the powers even of  
the energetic and charismatic Obama. In Iraq, he is listening to what  
the Iraqis want. In Pakistan, he is simply dictating policy in a  
somewhat bellicose fashion, and ignoring the wishes of those moderate  
parties whose election he lauded last February.

Salon contributor Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern  
and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author  
of “Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East.”