By Michael O’Hanlon, December 22, 2015
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/12/afghanistan-explosion-obama-strategy-213456#ixzz3vELG0hMO
Barack Obama is almost certain to end up as the only two-term president in American history to have waged a single war—in Afghanistan—through his entire time in office. And no end is even in sight: Recent days have brought yet more troubling news. The Taliban killed 50 civilians near Kandahar Air Base on December 9, then struck again in Kabul, causing Spanish and Afghan losses. Most recently, they killed six Americans on patrol near Bagram Air Base on December 21. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani went to Pakistan in mid-December in the hope that Islamabad would rein in the Taliban, but instead all he got was the resignation of his top intelligence officer, who felt that Ghani was becoming a supplicant to the enemy.
All this happened even as the Islamic State has been establishing a foothold in the country, adding to the witches’ brew of extremist groups already there and continuing a nightmarish cycle by which violent radicals from Iraq have sent both their ideology and their fighters to Afghanistan, and vice versa. Given such a backdrop, some Americans may wonder why President Barack Obama recently decided to retain a significant U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan of 5,500 GIs to hand off to his successor, rather than to cut his losses and leave (as previously planned).
In fact, Obama is right to keep at it. Afghanistan remains very important to American security, largely because of the presence of those very groups that are causing the mayhem. Nonetheless, for all his commendable resolve, the president is still making mistakes in his Afghan policy. He is trying so hard to minimize the U.S. role and wean Afghans from international help that he runs unnecessary risks of losing America’s longest war in the short term. None of Obama’s thinking is reckless. But it pushes too far and too fast for an Afghan people and government who are still making several huge transitions, in political and economic as well as security terms, that leave their situation very fraught and fragile.The situation in Afghanistan is far from hopeless. For each negative trend, there is an important counterargument. Yes, security is somewhat worse this year—but that was to be expected, since NATO has pulled out more than 100,000 of the world’s best soldiers since 2012, and Afghan forces have barely grown over that time period.
The deterioration has been significant, to be sure, but far from apocalyptic. Big cities and major roads remain in government hands, and the Taliban controls only about 5 percent more of the Afghan population that a year ago. Yes the city of Kunduz fell to the Taliban in the early fall—but then it was liberated, mostly by Afghan forces themselves. Yes the coalition government of Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah has struggled to put together a cabinet and fill other key positions since being inaugurated in September 2014—but the two are nonetheless making gradual progress in filling out their government. (Does anyone think George W. Bush and Al Gore, or John McCain and Barack Obama, would have done any better if forced to form a single governing entity after their contentious rivalries, by the way?) Even the anticorruption fight is showing some progress; for example, government contracts exceeding $300,000 in value must now go through a formal review process headed by the president and chief executive.
But there are a few more things the United States and NATO could be doing to help progress along. In particular, we should make two changes promptly:
• Allow U.S. and NATO airpower to target ISIL and the Taliban. In recent years, and especially since the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan changed from the International Security Assistance Force to Resolute Support last December, Washington has restricted its use of combat power to two purposes: targeting Al Qaeda, and providing self-defense for our own troops. Sometimes in a pinch, we have helped Afghan forces when they were in desperate straits, as with the battle over Kunduz this past fall. But generally speaking, rules of engagement have been very narrowly construed in an effort to push the Afghan armed forces to defend their own territory, a seemingly reasonable proposition.
However, there are several problems with this approach. First, it is actually preventing us from attacking ISIL assets in Afghanistan today, unless specific individuals have already posed a direct threat to NATO. This is a nonsensical prohibition given what we know about ISIL’s worldwide ambitions and activities, as well as its growing strength in Afghanistan.
Second, this approach imposes unrealistically high demands on Afghan forces at this juncture in their development. They have already had to adjust to a 90 percent reduction in the strength of NATO troops over the past three years, even as the Taliban threat has remained resilient. Their air force remains at roughly two-thirds strength, in terms of pilots and airframes, according to the Pentagon’s recent 1225 Report—due to a conscious decision by NATO several years ago, since we understandably desired to build up their army and police first and their air force subsequently. Progress is being made toward redressing existing gaps; in fact, Afghan air forces increased their pace of aerial attacks by more than 1,000 percent in 2015, relative to the year before. But it will take the rest of the decade to complete the job. Given these realities, Taliban forces have learned that they can mass in the field with relative impunity from overhead attack in many cases.
Third, there are unholy alliances, shifting memberships and various pledges of allegiance linking key extremist groups in South Asia—Al Qaeda and ISIL and the Taliban, as well as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Pakistani Taliban. Making too fine a distinction of which extremist groups we can attack within Afghanistan and which we cannot fails to recognize that at least the above six are united in common ideology and often in common purpose.
• Postpone the reduction to 5,500 U.S. troops, which will almost certainly be premature. Indeed, we might better expand to 12,000 or so for a couple years (either way, American troops will be joined by up to several thousand more NATO forces from at least two dozen countries, as the alliance in general is showing remarkable patience with this prolonged mission).
In Washington, the debate over numbers can seem arcane and abstract. In the field, it is a quite different matter. President Obama’s welcome decision to keep at least 5,500 GIs into 2017 is very important because it allows the United States to keep operational combat bases in Helmand, Kandahar, Khost, Jalalabad, and Bagram near Kabu—five key hubs, all important for monitoring and tackling different parts of the extremist challenge.
But 5,500 troops is not enough to work with fielded Afghan forces. At present, NATO advises most of the half dozen Afghan army corps—the highest echelon of deployed combat capability that actually makes plans and conducts operations. Actually, in 2015 NATO found that it did not have quite enough forces to mentor all six continuously, so it skimped on helping with the 215th Corps in Helmand Province—and partly as a result, that area experienced the greatest challenges and setbacks of any part of the country. U.S. advisers are now working hard with Afghan partners to try to make amends and rebuild the 215th for the year ahead.
Fortunately, Obama’s timetable for downsizing forces will allow most of ongoing mentoring relationships to continue through 2016 and another fighting season. Given the Taliban threat, that is crucially important militarily. It is also important politically. It could help buy time for President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah as well as other Afghan political leaders to get through what is expected to be another tough transition year on the political front, as parliamentary elections are overdue and the two-year temporary power-sharing arrangement that Ghani and Abdullah fashioned with Secretary John Kerry’s help in 2014 is due to expire next fall.
In fact, we should be partnering and mentoring not only at the corps level, but even with some deployed Afghan brigades and perhaps even some battalions (or “kandaks”) as well—those performing worst and those facing the greatest challenges. This does NOT mean reintroducing American ground forces into the main fight in Afghanistan. But it does recognize that for a military that is still early in the process of making post-Karzai reforms, and still facing a tough foe, more time is needed on the long, slow road to self-sufficiency.
Over the course of the next U.S. president’s first term, we should be able to get back on the gradual path toward downsizing American troops in Afghanistan. But in the short term, further cuts now risk losing a war that while far from hopeless, is still too close to call, and still very important to American security.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/12/afghanistan-explosion-obama-strategy-213456#ixzz3vELKhf6Z
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/12/afghanistan-explosion-obama-strategy-213456#ixzz3vELG0hMO
Barack Obama is almost certain to end up as the only two-term president in American history to have waged a single war—in Afghanistan—through his entire time in office. And no end is even in sight: Recent days have brought yet more troubling news. The Taliban killed 50 civilians near Kandahar Air Base on December 9, then struck again in Kabul, causing Spanish and Afghan losses. Most recently, they killed six Americans on patrol near Bagram Air Base on December 21. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani went to Pakistan in mid-December in the hope that Islamabad would rein in the Taliban, but instead all he got was the resignation of his top intelligence officer, who felt that Ghani was becoming a supplicant to the enemy.
All this happened even as the Islamic State has been establishing a foothold in the country, adding to the witches’ brew of extremist groups already there and continuing a nightmarish cycle by which violent radicals from Iraq have sent both their ideology and their fighters to Afghanistan, and vice versa. Given such a backdrop, some Americans may wonder why President Barack Obama recently decided to retain a significant U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan of 5,500 GIs to hand off to his successor, rather than to cut his losses and leave (as previously planned).
In fact, Obama is right to keep at it. Afghanistan remains very important to American security, largely because of the presence of those very groups that are causing the mayhem. Nonetheless, for all his commendable resolve, the president is still making mistakes in his Afghan policy. He is trying so hard to minimize the U.S. role and wean Afghans from international help that he runs unnecessary risks of losing America’s longest war in the short term. None of Obama’s thinking is reckless. But it pushes too far and too fast for an Afghan people and government who are still making several huge transitions, in political and economic as well as security terms, that leave their situation very fraught and fragile.The situation in Afghanistan is far from hopeless. For each negative trend, there is an important counterargument. Yes, security is somewhat worse this year—but that was to be expected, since NATO has pulled out more than 100,000 of the world’s best soldiers since 2012, and Afghan forces have barely grown over that time period.
The deterioration has been significant, to be sure, but far from apocalyptic. Big cities and major roads remain in government hands, and the Taliban controls only about 5 percent more of the Afghan population that a year ago. Yes the city of Kunduz fell to the Taliban in the early fall—but then it was liberated, mostly by Afghan forces themselves. Yes the coalition government of Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah has struggled to put together a cabinet and fill other key positions since being inaugurated in September 2014—but the two are nonetheless making gradual progress in filling out their government. (Does anyone think George W. Bush and Al Gore, or John McCain and Barack Obama, would have done any better if forced to form a single governing entity after their contentious rivalries, by the way?) Even the anticorruption fight is showing some progress; for example, government contracts exceeding $300,000 in value must now go through a formal review process headed by the president and chief executive.
But there are a few more things the United States and NATO could be doing to help progress along. In particular, we should make two changes promptly:
• Allow U.S. and NATO airpower to target ISIL and the Taliban. In recent years, and especially since the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan changed from the International Security Assistance Force to Resolute Support last December, Washington has restricted its use of combat power to two purposes: targeting Al Qaeda, and providing self-defense for our own troops. Sometimes in a pinch, we have helped Afghan forces when they were in desperate straits, as with the battle over Kunduz this past fall. But generally speaking, rules of engagement have been very narrowly construed in an effort to push the Afghan armed forces to defend their own territory, a seemingly reasonable proposition.
However, there are several problems with this approach. First, it is actually preventing us from attacking ISIL assets in Afghanistan today, unless specific individuals have already posed a direct threat to NATO. This is a nonsensical prohibition given what we know about ISIL’s worldwide ambitions and activities, as well as its growing strength in Afghanistan.
Second, this approach imposes unrealistically high demands on Afghan forces at this juncture in their development. They have already had to adjust to a 90 percent reduction in the strength of NATO troops over the past three years, even as the Taliban threat has remained resilient. Their air force remains at roughly two-thirds strength, in terms of pilots and airframes, according to the Pentagon’s recent 1225 Report—due to a conscious decision by NATO several years ago, since we understandably desired to build up their army and police first and their air force subsequently. Progress is being made toward redressing existing gaps; in fact, Afghan air forces increased their pace of aerial attacks by more than 1,000 percent in 2015, relative to the year before. But it will take the rest of the decade to complete the job. Given these realities, Taliban forces have learned that they can mass in the field with relative impunity from overhead attack in many cases.
Third, there are unholy alliances, shifting memberships and various pledges of allegiance linking key extremist groups in South Asia—Al Qaeda and ISIL and the Taliban, as well as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Pakistani Taliban. Making too fine a distinction of which extremist groups we can attack within Afghanistan and which we cannot fails to recognize that at least the above six are united in common ideology and often in common purpose.
• Postpone the reduction to 5,500 U.S. troops, which will almost certainly be premature. Indeed, we might better expand to 12,000 or so for a couple years (either way, American troops will be joined by up to several thousand more NATO forces from at least two dozen countries, as the alliance in general is showing remarkable patience with this prolonged mission).
In Washington, the debate over numbers can seem arcane and abstract. In the field, it is a quite different matter. President Obama’s welcome decision to keep at least 5,500 GIs into 2017 is very important because it allows the United States to keep operational combat bases in Helmand, Kandahar, Khost, Jalalabad, and Bagram near Kabu—five key hubs, all important for monitoring and tackling different parts of the extremist challenge.
But 5,500 troops is not enough to work with fielded Afghan forces. At present, NATO advises most of the half dozen Afghan army corps—the highest echelon of deployed combat capability that actually makes plans and conducts operations. Actually, in 2015 NATO found that it did not have quite enough forces to mentor all six continuously, so it skimped on helping with the 215th Corps in Helmand Province—and partly as a result, that area experienced the greatest challenges and setbacks of any part of the country. U.S. advisers are now working hard with Afghan partners to try to make amends and rebuild the 215th for the year ahead.
Fortunately, Obama’s timetable for downsizing forces will allow most of ongoing mentoring relationships to continue through 2016 and another fighting season. Given the Taliban threat, that is crucially important militarily. It is also important politically. It could help buy time for President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah as well as other Afghan political leaders to get through what is expected to be another tough transition year on the political front, as parliamentary elections are overdue and the two-year temporary power-sharing arrangement that Ghani and Abdullah fashioned with Secretary John Kerry’s help in 2014 is due to expire next fall.
In fact, we should be partnering and mentoring not only at the corps level, but even with some deployed Afghan brigades and perhaps even some battalions (or “kandaks”) as well—those performing worst and those facing the greatest challenges. This does NOT mean reintroducing American ground forces into the main fight in Afghanistan. But it does recognize that for a military that is still early in the process of making post-Karzai reforms, and still facing a tough foe, more time is needed on the long, slow road to self-sufficiency.
Over the course of the next U.S. president’s first term, we should be able to get back on the gradual path toward downsizing American troops in Afghanistan. But in the short term, further cuts now risk losing a war that while far from hopeless, is still too close to call, and still very important to American security.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/12/afghanistan-explosion-obama-strategy-213456#ixzz3vELKhf6Z
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