November 30th, 2009 by Jason

Marc Ambinder reports that President Obama will detail his Afghan strategy tomorrow in a speech at West Point. It is expected he will order approximately 30,000 more troops to the country with the primary goal of building up the Afghan National Army. While he will detail an exit strategy, he will not define any timetable based on political developments, nor will he “impose direct conditions” on President Karzai.

Writing for the National Interest, Nikolas Gvosdev discusses what President Obama should say during tomorrow’s speech. Among other points, Gvosdev urges Obama to clearly identify U.S. goals, as protecting American interests does not necessarily require a government that is “democratic or particularly liberal, nor, in some scenarios, does it even require a unified central government.” Additionally, Tony Karon, citing the shortcomings of the Afghan National Army and the difficulty of training competent soldiers, worries that President Obama’s strategy “will likely be grounded in the false hope of an early departure.”

In response to the likely troop increase, Senator Kirk (D-Mass.) urged President Obama to “not send a single additional dollar in aid or add a single American serviceman or woman to the 68,000 already courageously deployed in Afghanistan until we see a meaningful move by the Karzai regime to root out its corruption, assemble a more representative coalition government, and demonstrate some measure of transparency and accountability under the rule of law.” In addition, Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.) has called a potential troop surge to protect a corrupt Afghan regime a “fool’s errand” and continued his calls for a surtax to pay for the war. According to Alex de Waal, the NATO coalition is partially to blame for the rampant corruption by failing to recognize the necessity of “legitimate patronage.”

While admitting the difficulties of dealing with corruption and illegitimacy, Robert Fox in The Guardian calls the notion of an immediate troop withdrawal “sheer folly.” In addition, Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan argue that ”legitimacy is the most important outcome of a counterinsurgency, not, as some have suggested, an input.” In response, Marc Lynch critiques their argument for drawing misleading conclusions from the war in Iraq. Specifically, Lynch contends the surge in Iraq consolidated but did not initiate the Sunni Awakening movements, and Iraq only made progress towards political accommodation after a timeline for withdrawal was set. 

Meanwhile, analysts cannot agree on what the Taliban are fighting for. Citing a recent statement from Mullah Omar (see full text here) that promises “bitterness and pain” for any troop increase, Bruce Riedel suggests that the Taliban represents both a nationalist and jihadist movement. However, Jeremy Binnie argues in The Guardian that while the Taliban is largely a nationalist insurgency now, it is possible they may forge an alliance with Al Qaeda once again. According to Juan Cole, Mullah Omar’s speech has false-started proposed talks between the U.S. and the Taliban. However, 300 Taliban fighters in Herat recently defected to the Afghan government.

Finally, the White House welcomed the announcement by Prime Minister Brown that London would host an international conference on January 28 to discuss a timetable for transferring security to Kabul.

Posted in Afghanistan, Congress, Foreign Aid, Iraq, Military, Multilateralism, Reform, Taliban, US foreign policy, US politics, al-Qaeda |