Mortimer B. Zuckerman
It may be time to start paying off the tribal warlords
A clock has been quietly ticking away in the Oval Office throughout the hubbub of the upcoming
midterm elections: the countdown to withdrawing from
Many critics have been too ready to jump all over the president for not being totally committed to the war. In fact, the Obama administration did dramatically escalate our military efforts. It has a clear understanding that
We committed ourselves to a major military effort despite the fact that
Obama, who asserted that the war in
Obama, by contrast, made conventional U.S. forces the main combatants in the war against the Taliban. Further, he broadened our objectives to become involved in nation-building. As he put it, "We must strengthen the capacity of
The Obama administration not only changed the direction of the war effort, but increased its scale and costs by tripling the American military effort. This will require the investment of hundreds of billions of additional U.S. dollars for many years before it succeeds -- if it ever does. And that's not counting the thousands of Americans and allied personnel who might be killed or gravely wounded; more than 2,000 members of the U.S.-led coalition and
The core concern about this kind of effort is that it requires a shared purpose between the population and foreign armies, which have historically been rejected by Afghans. Today we seem to be creating more enemies by the day, even as our soldiers continue to die.
Meanwhile, so much of the money we now pump into
Virtually every phase of the war is going badly, with the Afghan government and army showing few signs of being able or even willing to take over. The Obama surge is not working as the Bush surge worked in
That is why the predominant view among military experts and diplomats is that the current counterinsurgency strategy will not work, leading to the belief among regional actors and
The result is that our opponents play for time, since it may be decades before
However, leaving has huge political and security costs. The very increase in our commitment makes it that much more difficult to walk away. Such a withdrawal might lead to the collapse of the Karzai government and a Taliban takeover of much of the country. This would be a disaster for
There is an alternative. We could develop a covert plan focusing on forging the kind of relationships necessary to keep
The alternative is to direct funds and arms to tribal leaders and warlords willing to fight the terrorists and attract Taliban fighters away from their cause. This would be easier than training Afghans to work in an organized army. Many of them cannot read, write, or drive; the officers reportedly steal their enlisted men's salaries; the soldiers extort money from civilians or sell off their American supplies for personal gain; and recruits tend to go AWOL once they get their first leave.
Meanwhile, at the national level, the extraordinary corruption of the Karzai administration, including its involvement in the opium trade, is a deterrent to developing grass-roots support. Without a legitimate Afghan government, there is no political end state that is achievable at a reasonable cost.
Pakistanis regard
None of the choices President Obama faces are good. They are choices between bad and worse; the choice, I'd say, between the evil of two lessers. He is correct to make sure to be thinking how best we can reduce our commitment for the sake of our blood and our treasure. The president understands that if it is true, as it seems, that the longer we stay, the more we are resented, then devising a realistic exit strategy is inescapable.
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