[R-G] Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

[Anthony Fenton]

October 7, 2008
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

By PATRICK COCKBURN

http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick10072008.html

The first serious talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban  
took place ten days ago in Mecca under the auspices of King Abdullah  
of Saudi Arabia. During the discussions all sides agreed that the war  
in Afghanistan is going to be solved by dialogue and not by fighting.  
The Taliban leader Mullah Omar was not present but his representatives  
said he was no longer allied to al Qa’ida.

The admission by a senior British General Mark Carleton-Smith over the  
weekend that absolute military victory in Afghanistan is impossible  
has been overtaken by the talks in Mecca. “If the Taliban were  
prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a  
political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that  
concludes insurgencies like this,”  said Gen Carleton-Smith. “That  
shouldn’t make people uncomfortable.”

This sounds as if Britain’s latest military venture in Afghanistan is  
going to end in a retreat with none of its ill-defined objectives  
achieved. In the US an understanding of the real situation on the  
ground has been slower in coming. John McCain and Barack Obama still  
speak as if a  few more brigades of American soldiers sent to chase  
the Taliban around the mountains of southern Afghanistan would change  
the outcome of the war.

US policy in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has been  
constantly denigrated as a recipe for self-inflicted disaster. But  
President Bush’s policy in Afghanistan on the wake of the fall of the  
Taliban was just as catastrophically misconceived. In both countries  
the administration’s agenda was primarily geared to using military  
victory to make sure that  the Republicans won elections at home.

The Taliban has always been notoriously dependent on Pakistan and on  
the Pakistani military’s intelligence service (ISI). It was the ISI  
which propelled the Taliban into power in the 1990s and covertly gave  
its militants a safe haven after their retreat from Afghanistan in  
2001, enabling them to regroup and counter-attack.

But at the very moment this was happening Mr Bush was lauding the  
Pakistani government of General Pervez Musharaf, which had fostered  
the Taliban, as America’s great ally in its war on terror. The self- 
defeating absurdity of this policy has not struck home in the US as  
did the debacle in Iraq though it is obvious that so long as the  
Taliban have a vast mountainous hinterland in which to base  
themselves, they will never be defeated. The presence of foreign  
troops was always more popular in Afghanistan than in Iraq. The  
Afghans have a deep loathing for their warlords. But no foreign  
occupation force, particularly if reliant on ill-directed air attacks  
and engaged in combat, stays popular for long. This is particularly  
true if the foreign troops do not, in fact, deliver security.  
Meanwhile their presence means that Taliban fighters can portray  
themselves as patriots battling for their country and their faith.

The overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 was never quite what it looked   
like. Soon after they had given up the fight I drove from Kabul to  
Kandahar  along one of the world’s worst built roads. The Taliban were  
adroitly changing sides or going home as local deals were hammered  
out. Casualties on both sides were mercifully low. In the ancient town  
of Ghazni an accord on the end to Taliban power was only delayed  
because  of a disagreement on how many government cars could they  
retain. In a village outside Kandahar I asked a local leader if he  
could gather some  former Taliban for me to meet and in half an hour  
the village guest house  was full of confident and dangerous looking  
fighters. I thought it would not  take much for them to make a come  
back.

Yet they would not have been able to do so without the blunders of the  
White House and the Pentagon. By invading Iraq they convinced General  
Musharaf that it was safe to give support to the Taliban once again.  
There were enough foreign troops in Afghanistan to de-legitimize the  
Afghan government but not enough to defeat its enemies. Chasing  
Taliban fighters around the hinterland year after year only led to the  
insurgency expanding.

The talks in Saudi Arabia are a long way from negotiations but they  
are a sign that the present political logjam might be beginning to  
break. General Carleton-Smith’s forthright admission that there can be  
no  outright military victory also shows realism. The best route for  
Britain and the US in Afghanistan is to have modest and attainable  
objectives combined with a recognition that in its struggle for  
survival the Afghan government must fight and win its own battles.

Patrick Cockburn is the the author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the  
Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq.