Losing the War in Afghanistan

by Patrick Seale

Released: 16 Dec 2006

A few days ago, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan wept openly on national television. His tears were for Afghan children killed in America’s war against the Taliban and for his inability to protect them. The mounting civilian death toll is rapidly eroding his popular support.

Karzai puts the blame squarely on neighbouring Pakistan, which he accuses of supporting the Taliban. "Pakistan wants to make slaves of us," he declared, "but we will not surrender!"

Clearly, the reconciliation between Karzai and Pakistan’s leader Pervez Musharraf, which President George W. Bush tried to bring about at a White House dinner last September, is now a thing of the past.

Western intelligence agencies confirm that Pakistan continues to provide sanctuary for Taliban fighters in the tribal agencies flanking the Afghan border. Pakistan’s military intelligence service, the ISI, is said to funnel money to the Taliban and to the tribal agencies to keep them under a semblance of control. Pakistan has also not been particularly active against Al-Qaida.

The agreement which the Pakistan government signed with the rebels of North Waziristan on 5 September seems to have made the situation worse, because it limits the government’s ability to deploy troops in the tribal areas and gives the rebels a chance to regroup and rearm, before crossing the border to attack Afghan, U.S. and NATO troops.

Some 4,000 people have died in Afghanistan this year -- four times more than in 2005. They have included Taliban insurgents, Afghan soldiers and policemen, 189 foreign troops, and the victims of about one hundred suicide bombings. The figure also includes 1,000 civilians -- ‘collateral’ damage of America’s dependence on air power, which is inevitably a blunt instrument when seeking to destroy rebels deeply embedded in the civilian population.

The harsh truth of counter-insurgency operations is that, if you rely on air power rather than on ground troops, you cannot attack and kill insurgents without killing women and children as well. This was amply demonstrated by Israel’s war in Lebanon last summer, when Lebanese civilian casualties numbered at least 1,300.

In Afghanistan, the numerous incidents of civilians killed by poorly-targeted air strikes are a major reason why the United States and its allies are losing the battle for Afghan hearts and minds, and why the Taliban are making steady gains.

According to Pentagon figures quoted in the Financial Times of 17 December, the U.S. air force dropped nearly one thousand bombs on Afghanistan in the past six months, more than in the first three years of the campaign against the Taliban. U.S. aircraft also fired 150,000 cannon rounds in support of NATO allies fighting in the south of Afghanistan.

One of America’s best military analysts, Dr. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has recently visited Afghanistan, believes the United States will lose the war unless it greatly increases reconstruction aid -- from $2bn at present to $6bn -- and sends in at least two more infantry battalions and more Special Forces.

He predicts that if these additional resources are not committed, "it is almost certain that the Taliban and hostile elements in Afghanistan will have a much more successful 2007 offensive than they had in 2006."

In a briefing to the press in Washington on 13 December, Cordesman, declared: "To put it bluntly, we cannot afford to lose two wars." He was referring to the disaster the United States is already facing in Iraq. "I think that is the path that we are headed on without urgent action," he added.

Dr Cordesman was sharply critical of some of America’s NATO allies whom he accused of not pulling their weight. He singled out France, which is withdrawing its battalion of Special Forces from Afghanistan in January; Germany, whose programme to develop an effective Afghan police force was a "total failure"; and Spain, Turkey and Italy as well. Apart from the United States, the only NATO forces which, he said, were doing a good job were the British, the Dutch and the Canadians.

Most Western observers emphasise the need in Afghanistan to eradicate the poppy crop, a multi-billion dollar business which provides 90 per cent of the opium consumed in the West. But Cordesman attacks this received wisdom. Drug eradication simply does not work, he says. A far more urgent priority is to provide drinking water in Afghan villages, repair irrigation channels, build roads, schools and clinics. Economic aid must come before drug eradication. "If you don’t have economic aid and assistance first, you make things worse and you fail at eradication."

The United States is losing control of the Afghan countryside to the Taliban. Next spring it may lose control of key cities as well, because it does not seem ready to repulse the Taliban’s widely-predicted New Year offensive. This Afghan situation may be taken as an example of the dramatic deterioration of America’s standing throughout the Greater Middle East. Its destruction of Iraq, its blind support for Israel, its indifference for the suffering of Lebanese and Palestinians, its failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict -- all these have led to an unprecedented surge of anti-American sentiment across the region.

Yet Bush hesitates to act. In Iraq, in Afghanistan and in the Arab-Israeli arena, he and his advisers seem paralysed by fear, prejudice and indecision. In the meantime, Afghan and Palestinian children will continue to die.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

Copyright © 2006 Patrick Seale

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Released: 16 December 2006
Word Count: 886
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