ANALYSIS:The plan for Afghanistan is now shifting towards a post-military mode of winning 'hearts and minds', writes TOM CLONAN
THE CONFLICT in Afghanistan is entering a critical phase for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) and its allies – including Ireland – with troops deployed to the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul due to begin withdrawing in July 2011.
The next 12-18 months therefore will be an acid test of US general Stanley McChrystal’s war against the Taliban. The US military’s endgame in Afghanistan may also represent an acid test for Barack Obama’s credibility as an effective world leader at home and abroad.
The war in Afghanistan – despite being referred to by Obama as “the good war” – is generally perceived as an unpopular war in the US, the UK and throughout Europe. Most Irish people are unaware that we are participants in the war, let alone understand the newly configured war aims and objectives that have now been framed by the Obama administration.
Two major conferences on the war in Afghanistan were held in Europe in the past fortnight or so to outline more explicitly the new US-led strategy in Afghanistan. Both conferences outlined a bold, high-risk strategy designed to win the war in Afghanistan within the next 12-18 months.
The strategy consists of three elements. The first involves a military surge with 30,000 extra US troops deployed to push the Taliban out of Afghan villages in the south and east of the country towards the border with Pakistan.
The second element consists of a “civilian surge” involving thousands of US and European civilian advisers and reconstruction experts to be deployed to newly liberated territory in the immediate aftermath of the renewed military offensive. The civilian surge is designed to kick-start reconstruction projects and build administrative and political “capacity”.
The third consists of a concurrent and concerted campaign of negotiations with the Taliban’s leadership incorporating massive financial inducements designed to achieve a Taliban ceasefire.
At British prime minister Gordon Brown’s London conference, Nato general secretary Anders Rasmussen concluded it would be necessary to “establish a [financial] trust to persuade militants to lay down their weapons”.
To persuade Taliban fighters to switch allegiance and pledge loyalty to Hamid Karzai’s central government, the London conference estimated some €600 million would be required immediately to pay for the livelihoods and salaries of “rehabilitated” Taliban militants.
It is a high-risk strategy within Afghanistan. The stakes at home in the US – ISAF’s main coalition partner – are even higher. The US – which has lost 976 troops in Afghanistan, with almost 10,000 seriously wounded – is expected to experience a record budget deficit this year of $1.56 trillion (€1.14 trillion). This is mirrored by the cost of the US global war on terror, which will reach $1.3 trillion this year.
The total spend on the global war on terror – not including US domestic defence – is expected to rise to $1.8 trillion dollars in the next year or two.
This figure is more than double Obama’s entire spend of $787 billion in his stimulus package for the US economy. While the US cannot afford to lose the war in Afghanistan, it cannot afford to continue the global war indefinitely.
Nato’s Prague conference focused on the “civilian surge” set to begin after the heavily reinforced US “spring offensive” against the Taliban in the next few months.
The “new” civilian surge concept being adopted for Afghanistan by Nato consists of the imminent deployment of over 30 Provincial Reconstruction Teams that will work with local Afghan villagers after US and British-led military operations have concluded.
The civilians consist of US state department employees, USAid personnel and US department of agriculture and justice workers from all over the US.
All are volunteers, and all have been trained at simulated “Afghan villages” in US army bases as far afield as the US Marine Corps 29 Palms base at Palm Springs, California, and the Joint Multinational Readiness Centre at Hohenfeld in Germany. In these simulated villages – where the US employs hundreds of Arabic-speaking “role-players” – US civilians are prepared for life in rural Afghanistan.
Bay Fang (36), a state department employee from Boston and now the US senior adviser for Southern Afghanistan based at Kandahar Airforce Base, told The Irish Timesthat "there are almost 100 US civilians operating in villages in the south of Afghanistan now, including farmers from Nebraska and people who've never been outside the US before now".
Combining a civilian surge with a military surge is based on lessons learned in Iraq after reinvigorated military operations there appeared to bolster the Iraqi government’s authority in 2008 and 2009.
The deployment of USAid and department of agriculture personnel also echoes the final stages of the Vietnam war effort to win the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese populace. One senior US general told The Irish Times: "This time, we are going to win Afghanistan village by village". But the challenges are substantial and the precedents worrying.
Tom Clonan is The Irish TimesSecurity Analyst. He lectures in the School of Media, DIT