A dangerous Afghanistan strategy

Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy is doomed to failure, said Mosharraf Zaidi in the Islamabad, Pakistan, News. His plan to send 30,000 more troops, which he announced last week, focuses only on Afghan territory. But it is here in Pakistan that the militants keep their bases. In his speech announcing the surge, Obama pretended this was no problem. He claimed that Pakistani public opinion had turned against extremists and that there was “no doubt” that the United States and Pakistan “share a common enemy.” In reality, Pakistani military and intelligence services don’t believe that for a minute. In their minds, “Pakistan’s enemies are those terrorists that are killing Pakistanis. America’s enemies are those that are killing Americans.” These are different groups, and Pakistan is going after only one of them. Obama apparently thinks he can continue the Bush strategy of trying “to buy, coerce, or cajole Pakistan’s military and political elite into doing things that they consider suicidal.” It won’t work.

Obama doesn’t really care about that, because he has already given up, said retired Pakistani Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, also in the News. The key feature of Obama’s new plan for Afghanistan isn’t the troop surge, or even the effort to bolster its civil society, but the exit strategy. By insisting that there be an end date to U.S. involvement, Obama essentially acknowledged that “the underlying idea is not to win the war, but to ensure a safe exit.” If Obama really wanted to defeat the Taliban and the other insurgent groups, he would commit far more than the 30,000 troops he promised, and for a longer period of time. Instead, he’s sending a token force. The pretense at a last great push is “meant to cover the shame of defeat, which is difficult for a superpower to admit.”

“Retreat is the reality,” said Khalid Iqbal in the Islamabad Nation. It’s just too bad that Obama had to cover it with a useless influx of troops. The surge will cost some $45 billion, and it will result only in the spilling of more “innocent blood.” Such a sum would be vastly more useful were it “spent on the economic rehabilitation and uplift of the affected areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.” As it is, Pakistan will have to brace for another “influx of refugees, including a significant number of hardened extremist fighters and terrorists,” as the Americans pound away at Afghanistan one last time.

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It’ll be even worse for us after the Americans leave, said Cyril Almeida in the Karachi, Pakistan, Dawn. The surge “is the last chance saloon.” If it fails, it is Pakistan that will have to live with an unstable neighbor ruled by the Taliban. Our border will be “the stamping ground of all kinds of militants, headlined by al Qaida,” and some of those militants will turn their guns on Pakistanis. If our country becomes unstable, the U.S. will be back. And “whatever the Americans will choose to do then, it won’t be pretty—and it definitely will not enhance Pakistan’s interests or stability.”