Obama�s New Exit Strategy

In a speech delivered at West Point Academy on  2 December 2009, President Barack Obama announced additional 30,000 troops to be deployed in Afghanistan over six months thus taking US troop levels to 100,000. By doing so the Obama administration hopes to regain the military initiative against the Taliban and arrest the country’s descent into chaos. Significantly this policy announcement appears to be a categorical departure from his initial stance of being in Afghanistan for the long haul. Obama has made a drastic volte face through this latest policy announcement which appears more like a face saving exit strategy. This latest policy formulation by the Obama administration envisages a pull out of American troops from Afghanistan beginning July 2011, thus helping prepare ground for the incumbent to launch his bid for second term in office in the 2012 elections. Besides, by categorically outlining the US plan to begin a phased withdrawal from July 2011 Obama hopes to exert greater pressure on the corrupt and ineffectual Kabul government to get its act together if it is to ensure its own political survival in case of a NATO pullout.

However eighteen months appears to be too ambitious a timeframe within which Obama hopes to bolster the capacity of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) to take on the Taliban. Although Obama talks of a phased withdrawal like in Iraq he seems to overlook the fact that unlike Iraq which had a professional standing army, the Afghan army disbanded soon after 1989 and warlords have ruled roost since. The current ANA, numbering around 93,000, is largely illiterate, ill-trained and ill-equipped to tackle the insurgency after a NATO withdrawal.

Obama’s problems are compounded by the lack of governance and rampant corruption that plagues all spheres of Afghan public life and is contributing to the ever increasing gulf between the Afghan people and the Kabul government. This governance void is being effectually filled in by the Taliban thus adding to their strength and reiterating the fact that a troop surge without measures to bolster governance and development will be ineffectual. Moreover Obama’s pledge of providing assistance after withdrawal – an uncanny similarity with the Soviet policy after 1989 – to an already fledging Afghan government will be of little consequence as the government lacks the will and capacity to spend aid money properly.

Second, Obama faces the arduous task of convincing his reluctant European allies to contribute more troops for the surge in Afghanistan. While NATO has announced a contribution of an additional 5000 troops it remains unclear as to how these numbers will be cobbled together. While Britain and Poland have announced contribution of a small number of additional troops 500 and 600 troops respectively, other allies most notably Germany and France have maintained a studied silence on the issue.

Third, no strategy for Afghanistan can aspire to succeed without addressing the issue of safe havens across the border in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions, which will be key to deciding the future trajectory of the war in Afghanistan. Transforming the establishment in Islamabad from a reluctant to a willing partner in ensuring decisive action against terrorist havens in the tribal regions will perhaps be one of the biggest challenges before Washington. Pakistan on its part will be willing to shed its reluctance, but that too to a degree only, if Washington exerts pressure on New Delhi to rekindle the stalled dialogue process and move towards some settlement on Kashmir.

With Obama’s announcement of a time bound withdrawal from Afghanistan and a virtual abandonment of earlier goals of nation building the Taliban will be encouraged to recapture power. If this were to happen, then its consequences will not be limited to the frontiers of Afghanistan but will have a bearing on all of South and Central Asia. Washington is likely to find the task of bringing elements from the Taliban to the negotiating table all the more arduous, as it bargains from a weak position which has been made more vulnerable after Obama laid bare the US exit plan.

On the regional plane Obama’s exit strategy will give an impetus to sections in the Pakistan establishment who continue to view Afghanistan as the country’s strategic depth and the Taliban as a strategic asset, especially in relation to India. On the other hand, New Delhi, Moscow and Tehran are likely to patronise different political players within Afghanistan, thus paving way for an intensified regional tussle – a far cry from the regional cooperation envisaged by Obama in March.

Clearly Obama has set for himself an overtly ambitious target of radically reforming the Afghan government, ANA, ANP and dismantling the network of the Taliban and al Qaeda in a terribly short span of eighteen months. If the Afghan mission flounders then Obama’s words that “the danger will only grow if the region slides backwards” will prove to be prophetic.

(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).