HELMANDWAL, AN elder who lives in one of the mud-brick villages dotting southern Afghanistan, buried four relatives last month, killed, he believes, in a Nato bombardment.
The prospect of thousands more US troops pouring into his native Helmand province with a mission to protect the population and train security forces strikes him as absurd.
“People in the West are dreaming,” he says. “If you ask anyone in Afghanistan what the Americans can do for the country, they will start laughing at you.”
The government of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, has welcomed the pledge by Barack Obama, his US counterpart, to send 30,000 more troops. But many Afghans are sceptical.
In a country that over the past 30 years has endured Soviet invasion, the chaos of warlord infighting and then the harsh rule of the Taliban, Mr Obama’s plan for a temporary surge has been met with a mix of cautious support, hostility and, in many cases, shoulder-shrugging indifference.
The US president’s desire to start withdrawing troops in mid-2011 and his reluctance to become entangled in an open-ended nation-building exercise have fed long-standing doubts on whether Washington has the stomach to act as guarantor of Afghanistan’s stability.
“Americans have been in Afghanistan for the past eight years and we have seen security getting worse day by day,” said Ahmad Saidi, a political analyst. “Now Afghans don’t trust Obama’s words. Afghans need to see action.” An extra 21,000 US troops sent as part of an initial increase early this year have improved security in some southern and eastern areas.
Mr Obama reiterated plans to support the Kabul leadership and local authorities to deliver better government, combat corruption and boost agriculture to underpin a new military focus on protecting population centres.
Yet in a counter-insurgency fight, where winning the support of the population is the ultimate goal, ambivalence over the depth of US commitment could help Taliban militants persuade the people that they, not western powers, are the ultimate arbiters of their fate.
Qari Mohammed Yousouf, a senior spokesman for the militants, said the surge testified to the Taliban’s success in battling 100,000 foreign troops already deployed. “We have proved that all those troops who are in Afghanistan are weaker than us,” he said.
Concerns over US strategy were echoed in Pakistan, focus of a new push by the Obama administration for a crackdown on leaders of the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda sheltering in its territory.
“Pakistan looks forward to engaging closely with the US in understanding the full import of the new strategy and to ensure that there would be no adverse fallout on Pakistan,” the country’s foreign ministry said. Analysts suggested this was a reference to Pakistani concerns that extra US troops will push militants across its border. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)