Obama Unveils a Promising New Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Facing Facts

The President presented the key components of his administration’s new strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan in a press conference on Friday. Finally, it would seem, America is looking upon the obstacles at hand with open eyes and a clear head.

Before yesterday, any journalistic reference to ‘US policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan’ so constructed, would have been a media error. For all intents and purposes, Bush’s plan of action regarded Pakistan as a mere side-theater to the Afghanistan war, unworthy of further attention.

Obama’s announcement on Friday represented a clear rejection of past policy approaches, stating explicitly that America’s objective is “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future” – a construction that was both deliberate and realistic in its emphasis.

Pakistan: The New Frontier

Opting for the broader strategy advocated by General Petraeus, Hillary Clinton, and Richard Holbrooke, the President elected to triple development aid to Pakistan in a decisive bid for the hearts and minds of those living in Pakistan’s uncontrolled border areas.

The new US strategy recognizes that the Pakistani “government’s ability to destroy these safe-havens is tied to its own strength and security,” and that if US military action is not balanced by soft power incentives, Pakistan’s already weak civilian government will be undermined in the eyes of its people. With this in mind, Obama has called on Congress to authorize a bipartisan bill granting Pakistan $1.5 billion in aid every year over the next five years.

Furthermore, the new policy prioritizes the diffusion of tensions between Pakistan and India, noting that Pakistani security forces will be unable, and unwilling, to devote their resources to tackling the al-Qaeda threat with a menacing India waiting eagerly to exploit any sign of internal vulnerability. This diplomatic pressure has already born fruit; as early as this morning, The Economic Times reported that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari reached out to India, calling for the resumption of the composite dialogue process, and stating, “we will continue to seek the peaceful settlement for all outstanding disputes, including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Afghanistan

Obama’s announcement was well received in Afghanistan, where officials have long pushed for comprehensive engagement with Pakistan. In Kabul, President Karzai informed journalists that he was “in full agreement” with the strategy. According to the BBC, he went on to add: “this is better than we were expecting, as a matter of fact.”

The Afghan Minister of Defense, General Abdul Rahim Wardak, was particularly pleased to see that Obama had decided to deploy an additional 4,000 US ‘enablers’, otherwise defined as men charged with the responsibility of training Afghanistan’s national army and police force. In an interview with the BBC, Wardak said, “since the beginning of 2002 I have been telling everyone that the most cost-effective way for our friends and allies, and politically the less complex way… is to enable the Afghans themselves.”

The President’s addition of 4,000 more troops to the 17,000 he deployed soon after taking office will bring the total number of coalition troops on the ground to 68,000 by this fall – a substantial increase from the 31,000 committed at the end of Bush’s second term. 

Poppies and Agriculture

Perhaps more importantly, however, Obama’s policy team has markedly diverged from their predecessors by choosing to regard the war on drugs as secondary to the newly termed “campaign against extremism”.

Rather than directing more American funds towards the coalition’s notoriously unsuccessful poppy eradication program, which has more often than not driven impoverished local farmers into the hands of the Taliban, Holbrooke has indicated that his team will give the policy “a complete rethink.” As reported by David Corn, Holbrooke went on to say, “it’s just so damn complicated. You can’t eliminate the whole eradication program. You have to put more emphasis on the agricultural sector.”

While hardly explicit, Holbrooke’s remarks can be taken to represent a drift away from eradication in favor of a more realistic scheme of providing Afghan farmers with alternative livelihoods. To assist in this objective, Obama has called for an expanded civilian presence; in his words, this increase in educators, engineers, and agricultural specialists can only help “advance security, opportunity, and justice – not just in Kabul, but from the bottom up, in the provinces.”

The Questions Before Us

Obama’s new strategy is certainly ambitious; it boldly and rightly extends the Afghanistan war into the Pakistan theater. However, the success of this policy ultimately inheres in the delicate matter of its implementation.

Experts have noted that alongside the increase in development aid, Obama seems committed to escalating Drone attacks on al-Qaeda safe-havens in Pakistan. While these attacks have reportedly killed an estimated 9 of the top 20 al-Qaeda commanders, more terrorist leaders have emerged in their stead, and high rates of civilian casualties have only increased local resentment. It remains to be seen whether this policy can be reconciled with America’s fundamental aim to isolate the Pakistani people from the Taliban.

If the campaign against extremism is to succeed in Pakistan, it will be a battle hard-won through American deeds, rather than words. Obama’s strategic review represents a huge leap in the right direction, but there is much still to be done. 

Who’s really in control of the situation in India?

This is not a good sign. More evidence that India is allowing the country’s panic to fully determine the government’s response to terrorism. I can’t help but agree with Foreign Policy on this one:

It’s amazing how quickly India appears to be falling into the terrorists’ trap…. Cranking up the pressure on Pakistan may fit the public mood in India—and it may be smart politics for Singh and his ruling Congress Party—but it is folly as policy.

Mumbai: India’s 9/11? Not so fast

The IHT ran a heartfelt piece today about the recent extremist attacks in Mumbai, India. It’s worth noting because it affects the reader on a number of levels. For one, it gives a certain amount of insight into the collective Indian psyche in the aftermath of the attacks. For another, it tries to categorize the incident, to digest it in terms of the broader strategic realities that now face India’s leadership.

The article hits a lot of nails on the head. It’s passionate in the way it captures the emotion of the attackers, the victims and the onlookers. It asks the right questions, particularly about the Indian government’s response to the attacks and whether it was strong enough. And it was moving, which itself seems to count for a great deal in the wake of an attack like this.

Source: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/11/28/mumbaielite460.jpg

But the article is also in danger of responding to the Mumbai hostage crisis in the wrong way. It risks making the same mistakes the U.S. made on September 12, 2001. By dramatizing the incident, by raising the notion that the crisis somehow ushers in an entirely new age of history (“the uniqueness of now”), the author paves the way for a public response that could spiral out of control, losing all sense of proportion. This is just the response that the U.S. had after the Twin Towers fell. Americans felt insecure, which was natural. But they attributed the 9/11 attacks to, as President George W. Bush said, “enemies of freedom” who were irrational and desired only the destruction of the U.S. and its way of life. It was an explanation that seemed to fit the scale and surprising nature of the act.

This epic vision of terrorism is misguided. Not only does it play to the terrorists’ desires, who would like nothing more than to be recognized as the greatest threat to the world’s only superpower; not only has terrorism been proven, time and again, to be a rational tactic employed by completely ordinary individuals; it also implicitly calls for a massive retaliatory response. If terrorism poses such a grave threat, then resistance is absolutely necessary. And to ensure security, that threat must be wholly destroyed. And that means war.

“War” is exactly how President Bush saw the attacks of 9/11, and it is exactly how the author of this article sees the Mumbai crisis today:

As a surprise attack became a 48-hour struggle, the burden of responding transferred from the police to soldiers. The language was of war: television anchors spoke of buildings “sanitized” and “flushed out,” of “final assaults” and “collateral damage.” Helicopters hovered over Mumbai, and commandos dropped onto roofs. The grainy television imagery suggested not so much a terrorist attack as the shapeless, omnidirectional chaos of Iraq.

The reference to Iraq is intriguing, because although the article draws the right comparison, it comes to the wrong conclusions. If anything, the experience of Iraq should have taught us how inadequate the “war” metaphor is for describing the work of anti-terrorism. As a term, “war” defines a purely military venture. But—and the new American strategy in Iraq backs this up—force is the not the only tool in the toolbox.

Terrorism is perhaps best pursued as a law-enforcement issue rather than a “war” issue. “Law-enforcement” implies extended time horizons and broad-based strategy, whereas “war” connotes a need for the swift destruction of “the enemy”—an artificial concept that assumes a finite number of hostiles. The non-military approach suggests a better capacity to operate patiently and flexibly on a multilateral basis, whereas a military’s ultimate job is simply to shoot things.

Don’t get me wrong. The military can be a very effective tool under a variety of conditions. But let’s not forget the other resources at our disposal. Let’s not forget that the “war” against terrorism is about more than body counts. Let’s not forget that, as tragic as the attack in India was, life will go on. We cannot live under a wartime mentality indefinitely. Just as we can’t allow our lives to be dominated by fear, so must we deny our fear the opportunity to define our responses to terrorism. I would argue that the U.S. failed in this respect, and the Indians are on the verge of making the same mistake, seven years later:

[India's mood was that] of a country that wanted [Mumbai] to be 9/11—if not in the sense of war and conquest, then in the sense of instant clarity, of the simple feeling that an era had ended.

Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s never that simple.