There has been a substantial disconnect between the pre-inaugural
Obama position on Afghanistan troop reinforcement and now. After
the election, and in consultation with the Obama transition team,
Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, announced that
he expected U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan could reach 60,000
by summer ‘09.
Admiral Mullen was responding to the stated desire of the then
president-elect to militarily focus on that country immediately
after taking office. Recent Obama Administration orders do not
jibe with this original figure or the professed need, as set
forth consistently by Defense Secretary Gates, to have
reinforcements of scale in place to counter the expected Taliban
spring offensive.
With considerable press coverage President Obama announced 17,000
additional Marine and Army personnel would be sent to Afghanistan
to boost the now 30,000 plus troops currently in-country. The
problem is that of these new forces only 12,000 are combat
infantry (8,000 Marines, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, and
4,000 soldiers, 5th Brigade [Stryker] of 2nd Inf. Div.; the 5,000
additional are support troops). None of these reinforcements will
be fully available this spring as they have to be transported,
acclimatized, and field integrated.
Obama certainly shifted his position quickly on reinforcing the
American contingent in Afghanistan, even though the U.S. field
commander, General McKiernan, had already requested a minimum of
30,000 additional combat troops to prepare a proper defense
against the expected heavy Taliban attacks in the spring and
summer. So much for the Obama commitment to transfer the battle
focus to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile President Hamid Karzai has called for national
elections three months earlier than the August 20th date
projected by the White House. It is obvious that Karzai does not
trust the Obama Administration to work to preserve his leadership
and intends by pushing forward the election to gain a march on
his political opponents.
Unfortunately the Obama brain trust has been fixated on the
repeated reports of corruption during the Karzai regime. For some
reason the justification that appears to apply in Chicago does
not fit the bill for Afghanistan. The fact is that the ability to
run the central government in Kabul and the provincial
governments throughout the rest of the nation is directly tied to
the dispensing of largesse — no matter who runs Afghanistan.
As has been stated so often in the past, Afghanistan is a feudal
tribal society: to govern it takes an ability to manipulate the
varying traditional forces at play. Hamid Karzai was favored by
the U.S. originally because he knew well how to do this and also
was from an important Pushtun family. Nonetheless, Barack Obama
had made up his mind against the Bush-chosen Afghan leader even
before the November election. That’s why the new American
president left his Afghan counterpart waiting for weeks before
making a personal call to him.
While Barack Obama wants to prevent the Taliban from taking over
Afghanistan and returning it as an al Qaeda base, he is under the
impression that this can be accomplished by minimalized military
force and a greater commitment to development and technical
assistance. Essentially he is attempting to overlay his own
experiences as a community organizer on this arcane Islamic
tribal world.
The Obama strategy has been based on a view that it is the
“lawless tribal areas” of the mountain range between Afghanistan
and Pakistan that are the sole Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuaries.
This is only partially correct in respect to geographical
targeting and completely misleading as to terminology. The
so-called “lawless” mountain tribal areas are actually well
regulated by laws, usually harsh sharia-based laws not
necessarily consistent with Western concepts.
At the same time many tribal groupings are willing to accept
governance by distant authority as long as that body provides
material advantages and does not seek to supplant the basic
tribal code. It is at this point that Kabul and the Taliban
compete. Karzai may not be the only Afghan capable of leading his
country, but he understands and accepts the tribal ethos: Obama
does not.
President Obama appears to believe it’s a socio-economic battle
for hearts and minds and is unable to understand that Afghan
traditional culture accepts the simple physical premise of rule
by the strongest. He is far more at ease with European
intellectual concepts than Third World life and death struggles.
The additional problem that Obama foreign policy and defense
practitioners have is that the new administration wants to
establish its own political military credibility while eschewing
military force and not accepting anything that can be related to
the previous administration. Afghanistan is where Barack Obama
has planted his flag and now he is stuck with it.
