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That newly elected US President Barrack Obama would adopt a new strategy to confront the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan was down right clear from his campaign rhetoric.
Obama criticized his predecessor’s overindulgence in Iraq and underperformance in Afghanistan and promised to focus his attention on the latter. No sooner did he enter the White House, he ordered an inter-agency study to come up with a credible and viable strategy to stem the tide of Taliban expansionism. He also quickly appointed a veteran diplomatic troubleshooter, Richard Holbrook as a special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
About two months after his inauguration as the US President, a new AfPak Strategy was ready and the White House White Paper on this was released for the public to read and understand his policy approach to a critical foreign policy challenge. Why is this strategy known as AfPak? It is in recognition of the fact that problems in Pakistan are integral to what has been happening in Afghanistan and that only an integrated strategy can face the challenge posed by the resurgence of Taliban in Afghanistan and expansion of Taliban influence in Pakistan.
Obama’s AfPak strategy’s main objective is “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.” In order to make it a durable achievement, two additional goals envisaged by the White Paper are:
(1) promotion of a capable, accountable and effective government in Afghanistan that can maintain internal security with limited external support and,
(2) establishment of a democratic government and vibrant economy in Pakistan.
By all accounts, it is an extremely ambitious foreign project of the Obama Administration. But some critics suspect it to be a narrowly defined strategy to exit from the costly military engagement in the region, preferably before the next round of US presidential election in 2012. It is argued that Obama would not like to give the same ammunition to his future political rival as he used against John McCain accusing the Republican Administration of dragging the country into a military quagmire in Iraq.
Some analysts have viewed the strategy as a middle path between a narrow military approach and an expensive nation-building programme. In actuality, it is neither. A careful reading of the strategy report indicates that it is a highly ambitious and elaborate strategy that aims at vanquishing the enemy and putting in place a structure that would preclude their re-emergence.
A cursory glance at the methods adopted in the strategy is enough to give us an insight into the grandness of the plan. For instance, The Obama Presidency intends to establish a self-reliant Afghan security force that includes both, the military and the police personnel. It seeks to break the nexus between narcotics and insurgency while promoting the Pak-Afghan cooperation. It wants to employ psychological warfare mechanisms to end the emergence of anti-Americanism in the society. It wants to strike a deal with the moderate wing of Taliban and encourage them to reject Al Qaeda in the region. It seeks to create a new “Contact Group” involving the regional powers. It desires to create a regional economic and security cooperative forum. It wants the UN to play a bigger role in the region . The strategy, moreover, intends to correct past mistakes and omissions by ensuring better coordination between civilian and military agencies, by increasing civilian resources and ensuring proper utilization of funds by preventing corruption,
Implications:
It has been a little more than a month since the AfPak Strategy Report was released and since then there has been a mind-blowing surge in the terrorist activities in the region. The death and injury count of civilians, security officials, insurgents and militants has risen to an unprecedented scale.
Significantly, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton sees an existential threat to Pakistan from the Taliban. US legislators have taken a serious note of the so-called conspiracy theories predicting disintegration of Pakistan into several independent territories. Security analysts no longer underestimate the possibility of nuclear terrorism.
The phrase ‘an unwise move by the Obama Administration’ best explains the attempt to classify the Taliban as the “moderate” and the“extremist” Taliban. Not only did President Obama make a statement on this, even the strategy report is quite explicit when it claims: “While Mullah Omar and the Taliban’s hard core that have aligned themselves with Al Qaeda are not reconcilable and we cannot make a deal that includes them, the war in Afghanistan (on the other hand), cannot be won without convincing non-ideologically committed insurgents to lay down their arms, reject Al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution.”
It served as a wake up call to the Taliban and their supporters to unite in the face of the US strategy to divide and defeat them. The fury and anger of Taliban, Al Qaeda and other like-minded militants since then are clearly reflected in events in Pakistan in recent weeks. When President Asif Ali Zardari signed a deal with the Taliban, it was expected that the Taliban would be satisfied with the Swat Valley. However, not only did they refuse to lay down arms but went on to spread their influence to Dir and Buner districts, much to the Americans’chagrin.
The Obama Administration has used the carrot and stick policy to pressurize Islamabad to stem the tide of Taliban expansionism. Pakistan Army appears to have come down heavily on the Taliban. But there is lack of trust between the US and Pakistan. In the absence of independent verification, no one knows the real situation on the ground. Displacement of hundreds of thousands of people is no indication that Taliban is being routed.
In any case, Pakistani army is severely infected with the Taliban virus and the ISI is hands in gloves with the Taliban. Thus it is difficult to hope for an end to Taliban and Al Qaeda presence in the region, despite the seriousness of the new Obama initiative. While the strategy envisages dialogue and reconciliation with the moderate Taliban, it seems futile to expect the Taliban to disarm and reject the Al Qaeda after the current operation against the Taliban by the Pakistani Army.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).
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