THE TWO-DAY meeting in Washington between President Barack Obama, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan was framed by two dramatic events which underline the deep problems facing both countries and their relations with the United States. On Monday up to 100 people were killed in western Afghanistan when US aircraft attacked suspected Taliban militants there. And yesterday fighting intensified in the Swat Valley region north of Lahore between the Pakistani army and local Taliban forces, forcing thousands of civilians to flee.
The mutual entanglement of these two conflicts and their strategic importance for the US could hardly be more dramatically confirmed. This was frankly acknowledged by Mr Obama when he told his guests: “We meet today . . . to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda”. He has committed his administration to an all-out military and political campaign against that organisation and its Afghan and Pakistani allies. Official Washington is alarmed at the weakness shown by both Mr Karzai and Mr Zardari in confronting these threats, but is also learning it would be counter-productive to seek out replacements for them. This would only confirm the popular belief in both countries that the US is interfering unwarrantably in their affairs.
The commitments to greater cross-border political, military and intelligence co-operation between them, and to increased US and Nato aid, made at this summit show a greater appreciation of these realities. Despite the chronic weakness and endemic corruption of his government, Mr Karzai will likely be returned to power in forthcoming elections. Mr Zardari suffers from the same difficulty, but has lately shown a greater appreciation of the perilous position faced by his government following Taliban victories in the Swat region. An agreement made earlier this year to allow the introduction of Sharia law there in return for a ceasefire has been abandoned, as evidenced by this week’s intensive fighting. While there are large questions about the extent to which he fully controls the Pakistan army, there has been a definite surge among Pakistani public opinion in favour of the campaign following widespread Taliban atrocities and repression.
All this shows how risky is Mr Obama’s wholesale commitment to the military campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in this increasingly cross-border war. It has looked unwinnable in Afghanistan for quite some time without a major change of focus, including a willingness to reach agreements with regional nationalists that could bypass Mr Karzai. There is some evidence that Mr Obama is willing to follow that course.
But the recent spread of fighting to Pakistan, and the use of US drones to attack Taliban targets there which so antagonises local populations, has added a huge uncertainty to the conflict, giving it a deeper strategic aspect. Comparisons with US policy towards Vietnam in the 1960s are increasingly plausibly made. This conflict has rapidly become the most important foreign policy challenge for the new US administration.