http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/23/obama/index.html
July 23, 2008 Salon.com
Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan
He hit the right notes during his swing through Iraq, but his plans for
that other war could mean trouble.
By Juan Cole
<snip>
Less forgiving were the politicians in Pakistan, who reacted angrily to
Obama's comments on unilaterally attacking targets inside that country.
The Democratic presidential hopeful told CBS on Sunday, "What I've said
is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value al-Qaida
targets, and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those
targets, that we should." He added that he would put pressure on
Islamabad to move aggressively against terrorist training camps in the
country's northwestern tribal areas.
Pakistan, a country of 165 million people, is composed of six major
ethnic groups, one of them the Pashtuns of the northwest. The Pakistani
Taliban are largely drawn from this group. The more settled Pashtun
population is centered in the North-West Frontier province, with its
capital at Peshawar. Between the NWFP and Afghanistan are badlands
administered rather as Native American reservations are in the U.S.,
called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, with a population of
some 3 million. These areas abut Pashtun provinces of Afghanistan, also
a multiethnic society, but one in which Pashtuns are a plurality.
The tribal Pashtuns of the FATA no man's land, a third of which is
classified as "inaccessible" by the Pakistani government, have
sometimes given shelter to al-Qaida or Afghan Taliban militants. Some
of the Pashtun tribesmen themselves have turned militant, and have been
responsible for suicide bombings at police checkpoints inside Pakistan.
They are also accused of attacking targets across the border in
Afghanistan and of giving refuge to Afghan Taliban who conduct
cross-border raids.
The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani,
immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator's remarks
had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last
February. Ghani warned that a U.S. incursion into the northwestern
tribal areas would have "disastrous" consequences for the globe.
The governor underlined that a "war on terrorism" policy depended on
popular support for it, and that such support was being leeched away by
U.S. strikes on the Pakistan side of the border and by statements such
as Obama's. A recent American attack mistakenly killed Pakistani troops
who had been sent to fight the Pakistani Taliban at American
insistence. The Pakistani public was furious. Ghani complained,
"Candidate Obama gave these statements; I come out openly and say such
statements undermine support, don't do it."
The NWFP governor is responsible for Pakistani counterinsurgency
efforts in his province and in the neighboring tribal regions. He is
well thought of in Pakistan because of his successes in Baluchistan
province, which he governed for five years prior to January of this
year, where he combined political negotiations with militants and
targeted military action when he felt it necessary. He firmly
subordinated the military strategy to civilian politics and
negotiations. That is, Ghani is a politician with long experience in
dealing with tribal insurgencies.
Obama's aggressive stance, on the other hand, could be
counterproductive. The Illinois senator had praised the Pakistani
elections of last February, issuing a statement the next day saying,
"Yesterday, a moderate majority of the Pakistani people made their
voices heard, and chose a new direction." He criticized the Bush
administration, saying U.S. interests would be better served by
"advancing the interests of the Pakistani people, not just Pakistan's
president."
Yet the parties elected in February in Pakistan are precisely the ones
demanding negotiations with the tribes and militants of the northwest,
rather than frontal military assaults. Indeed, it is the Bush
administration that has pushed for military strikes in the FATA areas.
Obama will have to decide whether he wants to risk undermining the
elected government and perhaps increasing the power of the military by
continuing to insist loudly and publicly on unilateral U.S. attacks on
Pakistani territory.
Nor is it at all clear that sending more U.S. troops to southern
Afghanistan can resolve the problem of the resurgence of the Taliban
there. American and NATO search-and-destroy missions alienate the local
population and fuel, rather than quench, the insurgency. Resentment
over U.S. airstrikes on innocent civilians and wedding parties is
growing. Brazen attacks on U.S. forward bases and on institutions such
as the prison in the southern city of Kandahar are becoming more
frequent. To be sure, Obama advocates combining counterinsurgency
military operations with development aid and attention to resolving the
problem of poppy cultivation. (Afghan poppies are turned into heroin
for the European market, and the profits have fueled some of the
Taliban's resurgence.) Stepped-up military action, however, is still
the central component of his plan.
Before he jumps into Afghanistan with both feet, Obama would be well
advised to consult with another group of officers. They are the
veterans of the Russian campaign in Afghanistan. Russian officers
caution that Afghans cannot be conquered, as the Soviets attempted to
do in the 1980s with nearly twice as many troops as NATO and the U.S.
now have in the country, and with three times the number of Afghan
troops as Karzai can deploy. Afghanistan never fell to the British or
Russian empires at the height of the age of colonialism. Conquering the
tribal forces of a vast, rugged, thinly populated country proved beyond
their powers. It may also well prove beyond the powers even of the
energetic and charismatic Obama. In Iraq, he is listening to what the
Iraqis want. In Pakistan, he is simply dictating policy in a somewhat
bellicose fashion, and ignoring the wishes of those moderate parties
whose election he lauded last February.
-- By Juan Cole