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Friday, July 18, 2008
Fending off big trouble in Afghanistan
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The rising casualty rate among our forces in Afghanistan — in the last two months, U.S. and allied fatalities in Afghanistan have exceeded the death toll in Iraq, with July likely to follow suit — has focused public and political attention on what has long been a secondary front.
This week alone, the Pentagon announced the deaths in Afghanistan of three metro Atlanta residents — Cpl. Jon Ayers of Snellville, Cpl. Matthew Phillips of Cumming and Master Sgt. Mitchell Young of Jonesboro. Ayers and Phillips were among nine U.S. soldiers killed when their isolated outpost was attacked in a coordinated assault by Taliban fighters.
That assault was repelled, but survivors of the attack have since been withdrawn and the outpost abandoned. The move is an acknowledgement by U.S. commanders that they do not have the manpower needed to defend that ground.
The same is true of Afghanistan as a whole. The Pentagon has been forced to fight the Taliban and Afghan warlords with manpower and resources it knows to be insufficient, as an “economy-of-force campaign.”
In military terms, that means Afghanistan has been getting just enough resources from the Pentagon to keep the situation roughly stable, while the bulk of the U.S. military was committed to a more aggressive battle for control of Iraq.
That calculation reflects the reality that Iraq and Afghanistan are not two separate wars but two theaters in the same war, with both theaters drawing from the same limited pool of military and civilian resources. The decision to concentrate our effort in Iraq was made despite the fact that Osama bin Laden had used Afghanistan, not Iraq, as his base and remains at large. (Afghanistan also has a bigger population and roughly 30 percent more land area than Iraq, both suggesting it would take more manpower to pacify.)
Unfortunately, that strategy has suited bin Laden and his Taliban supporters quite nicely. He too sees the struggle as a two-theater war, but from his perspective, he has managed to keep the bulk of the U.S. military tied down in far-off Iraq even though he is expending almost no resources there. Meanwhile, he has consolidated his position in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
We are now seeing the consequences of that strategic mistake. Almost seven years after the attacks of Sept. 11, the CIA reports that bin Laden and his allies have built a new stronghold in Pakistan to replace that lost in Afghanistan, and are using that sanctuary to destabilize not only our Afghan allies but parts of Pakistan as well.
There are no easy answers. The United States and its NATO allies have tried to suppress a Taliban and al Qaida offensive by gradually increasing troop strength, but so far the Afghan “surge” has had little effect. Taliban attacks continue to increase. In recent days, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has renewed his longstanding call to draw down our troop commitment in Iraq and use that manpower to further reinforce our effort in Afghanistan.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, takes a similar position, although Mullen also stresses the importance of maintaining recent security improvements in Iraq.
“I’ve made no secret of my desire to flow more forces, U.S. forces, to Afghanistan just as soon as I can,” Mullen said. “Nor have I been shy about saying that those forces will not be available unless or until the situation in Iraq permits us to do so.”
This week, Republican nominee John McCain joined the chorus, noting that “security in Afghanistan has deteriorated, and our enemies are on the offensive.” He called for three additional brigade combat teams in Afghanistan to blunt Taliban gains, but given McCain’s commitment to maintaining troop levels in Iraq, it is uncertain where that additional manpower could be found.
America’s two-theater strategy has been founded on the hope that we would get lucky on the timing. The Bush administration hoped that the battle in Iraq would be concluded fairly quickly, allowing reinforcements to pour into Afghanistan before the Taliban regained their footing. Nobody in the White House or Pentagon anticipated that more than five years after marching into Baghdad, well over 100,000 U.S. troops would still be tied up in combat in Iraq.
Now, time may be running out on that strategy, especially as the Taliban become more aggressive and entrenched. We have taken a gamble in Afghanistan by trying to do too much with too little for too long, and it’s a gamble we could end up losing.
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