The new conventional wisdom is that the Afghanistan war is unwinnable, said Jochen Buchsteiner in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “We all know that we can’t win militarily,” the U.N.’s top representative in Kabul, Kai Eide, said last week. His words were echoed almost verbatim by two top generals in the field, NATO commander Richard Blanchette and British commander Mark Carleton-Smith. British diplomats have reportedly told their French colleagues that it’s time to find an “acceptable dictator” and get out. And newspapers in the U.S. reported last week that the next U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan would conclude that the country is in a “downward spiral.” There also have been reports that the Afghan government has been secretly meeting with the Taliban, trying to work out some kind of peace deal. Is it time to give up hope of victory and just call a truce?
The West has already checked out of the Afghan conflict—at least mentally, said Pakistan’s Daily Times in an editorial. The Brits are openly talking about pulling their troops out, and the Canadians won’t be far behind. At a meeting of NATO defense ministers last week, the Germans pledged 1,000 more troops—but only with the stipulation that the soldiers wouldn’t be deployed in the actual war zone of the south. No wonder everyone is demoralized. Seven years of fighting in Afghanistan has not stabilized the country. It may be time to turn away from fighting and toward politics. A “regional forum that includes India, Pakistan, and Iran may be better.”
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