Opinion: ISAF's Afghan mission hangs in the balance

[fatman17]

ANALYSIS
Date Posted: 12-Nov-2009

Jane's Defence Weekly


Opinion: ISAF's Afghan mission hangs in the balance

In the wake of the disastrous election in Afghanistan, and with Barack Obama still stalling over whether to commit more troops to the cause, ISAF faces yet another make-or-break year in 2010, says Trefor Moss

Good news, much like the Taliban insurgency, has become an elusive part of the Afghan landscape. So, it seems, has positive action. At the end of August the International Security Assistance Force's (ISAF's) newly appointed commander, General Stanley McChrystal, issued a rallying cry: there were only 12 months left to save Afghanistan, he said, and he needed 40,000 more troops with which to do it. At the time, it sounded like the latest new dawn in Afghanistan's long, dark night.

Yet nearly three months on, Gen McChrystal's call to arms is still echoing unanswered around the corridors of the White House, which has so far contributed only silence to the debate on whether to send more forces.

While President Barack Obama's studied caution is certainly to be favoured over any ill-conceived rush to judgement, we are fast reaching the point where a decision must be made one way or the other. A sense of drift and uncertainty is hobbling the ISAF mission and this will only be dispelled once Obama makes his mind known.

Publicly, ISAF denies that the president's indecision had cost it any forward momentum. "ISAF has continued operations and had some significant successes in reversing insurgent momentum in some areas," ISAF spokesman Colonel Wayne Shanks told Jane's, citing Helmand and Herat as two examples of recent or continuing gains.

Yet, as some NATO sources are now saying in private, there is a feeling that ISAF has been reduced to simply fighting fires while waiting for clarity on the bigger strategic calls. The northern province of Kunduz, where 130 insurgents were killed in heavy clashes on 9 November, according to ISAF, offers a case in point. Eliminating 130 militants is clearly a success of sorts, but that success came in a part of the country that had been largely peaceful until just a few months ago. Far from clearing new areas of hostile territory so that Afghan governance can come in behind them, ISAF and Afghan forces are instead having to fight hard just to hold on to what they've got.

Some good news did in fact emerge on 10 November from an unlikely source: Japan, whose new government has already voiced its intention to discontinue its Afghan support mission in the Indian Ocean, announced a significant increase in non-military aid for the country. USD5 billion will be spent over the next five years, Tokyo said, on infrastructure projects, police training and education.

Yet this contribution, extremely welcome though it is, cannot mask the body blows that the mission has suffered in the latter part of 2009. The UN's decision to pull out 600 staff after the Taliban killed five of its workers in Kabul in early November cannot but hinder development efforts. Separately, the murder of five British troops at the hands of an Afghan policeman they were training has shaken a central pillar of ISAF's plan: to work hand in glove with local security forces until they are sufficiently competent to assume control.

Most damaging, however, has been Afghanistan's election - a disaster for which Obama apparently delayed his decision on troop increases even though the outcome (a win for the incumbent, Hamid Karzai) was surely inevitable from the start. What made it worse was that ISAF troops died in unprecedented numbers to help underpin the whole, discredited process. In the four months from July to October, 298 were killed.

Even publicly, it has been hard for NATO to put a positive spin on the poll. "It is too early to tell" if ISAF's mission has been damaged by the result, Col Shanks suggested. "General McChrystal's COIN [counter-insurgency] guidance and assessment ... said that problems within the Afghan government contribute to its inability to gain the support of the Afghan people," he said. "If President Karzai's government implements reforms that improve the quality of governance - particularly at the local level, where it matters most to the majority of Afghans - ISAF's mission could be enhanced."

It would take an almost arch leap of faith, however, to expect Karzai - who has spent the last eight years averting his gaze - to move against corruption in any meaningful way, even with the added pressure that the international community will now bring to bear.

In Washington the electoral debacle must now focus minds rather than be allowed to lengthen the debate. Thankfully an end to the soul-searching could at last be in sight. On 10 November White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Obama would be consulting with his senior advisors over the coming days and that an announcement on troop increases could be made before the end of the month.

Most importantly, four options remain on the president's table, Gibbs revealed; these range from the troop increase that Gen McChrystal has recommended to lighter options that would focus on bolstering security in key towns. General George Casey, the US Army Chief of Staff, made clear where he stood on the issue when he told NBC on 8 November that he supported Gen McChrystal's request - and this from a former Iraq commander who opposed the 'surge' there.

Certainly, there are no more distractions to which the White House can defer: not voting in Afghanistan or, domestically, the governors' elections of 3 November. Once the strategy is clear, whatever it is, ISAF can refocus and steel itself for 2010: the latest make-or-break year in Afghanistan's ever parlous existence. If Gen McChrystal's assessment still holds true, there could now be just nine months between ISAF and failure.

Trefor Moss is the former JDW Asia Pacific editor

 

[BATMAN]

I think there will be no more US troops but Iran may enter into covert alliance with US for supply of manpower for fresh terrorist attacks in Balauchistan or FATA!

 

[S-2]

There's a lot to discuss in this excellent op-ed. Let's start at the end-

"If Gen McChrystal's assessment still holds true, there could now be just nine months between ISAF and failure."

Twice Trefor Moss implied that the question of "whether" ISAF is reinforced by U.S. troops awaits President Obama's final decision. Sadly, I don't think that there's any doubt this will happen. The only question is how many. Earlier this month, rumor had it that he was sitting somewhere between 30-40,000 additional troops.

However, if McChrystal's dire warning of twelve months is a stark and immutable timeline to be adhered (that also isn't clear nor necessarily true), we'll have spent three months arriving at some decision before the first boot moves to Afghanistan. All indications are that it'll take the rest of that twelve months just for all those troops to be in-country with the first of those additional troops not arriving before next year. Yet Senator Carl Levin swore that there'd be a review of our operations twelve months following our initial assessment LAST MARCH/APRIL.

That's a problem right there. It's almost as though these comments by Levin and then McChrystal sit adrift and alone in space-unrecognized and irrelevant. But they clearly aren't. Both matter to some-even great extent. Nonetheless, on we wallow. To what end, I'm more than ever unsure.

"Publicly, ISAF denies that the president's indecision had cost it any forward momentum. 'ISAF has continued operations and had some significant successes in reversing insurgent momentum in some areas,' ISAF spokesman Colonel Wayne Shanks told Jane's, citing Helmand and Herat as two examples of recent or continuing gains."

Col. Shanks' comments are accurate enough. There HAVE been gains in both areas bolstered by the addition of U.S. Marine forces in Helmand and Farah/Nimroz. It has made a difference on the ground for the near term. Yet Brig. Gen. Nicholson, USMC and local ground force commander worries that his troop's presence is not just less-than-permanent, but even temporal. Further, even with his added troops he's fully aware of areas in Helmand to which the taliban have displaced and are simply beyond reach for lack of more forces and are awaiting his withdrawal before reoccupying their previous stranglehold.

The locals of Nawa district where the marines are currently operating worry as well and have asked the marines when they'll be leaving. Not because they necessarily wish them to do so but because the taliban have insisted the marines will and that they, the taliban, will be back. The taliban may be correct. Already the British have suggested that without AMERICAN reinforcement, they'll abandon Musa Qala.

Funny enough, when Helmand finally began receiving the attention it long deserved if for no other reason but its stupendously prodigious opium output, the cultivation of opium has began falling markedly two years running. In point of fact, it has disappeared as a talking point among those opposed to the war as quickly as it came.

The opium hasn't disappeared. Not yet, but it's on its way to a great degree...yet hangs like a thread to be reversed in the blink of an eye the moment that eye is taken off the ball. One more mole to whack that's going down for now but can rear its ugly head at any moment.

We've asked our NATO allies, all of them, to provide 10% of recommended force level of 40,000-4,000 for them but with little confidence that they'll even find it in their hearts to do that much. A conference soon at NATO headquarters in Brussels will put a stake in the heart of that recommendation.

The Canadians will pull OUT this year. The Dutch will, at the same time, abandon Oruzgan in search of a safer mission or no mission at all and go home as well. The Germans have proved to be less than trustworthy in the handling of their area of operations up north and this stems as much from their callous disregard of cultural norms against alcohol (neither the British, Canadians, nor Yanks are drinking) much less some question as to whether they might have had a commander drinking on the job during the recent airstrike on some stolen fuel transport trucks. That may be disinformation but, without alcohol present, it would be a non-issue. Who knows but for their poor consideration.

The upshot of this remains the incongruity and misalignment of NATO objectives with national interests. Sadly, our operations in Iraq improved markedly as our allies left. There's actually something to one of our nine principles of war in UNITY OF COMMAND. Funny, like the comments by Levin and McChrystal, this immutable "principle" has been flexibly ignored to pursue broad consensus. Like most broadly pursued policies, the net result is a watered-down result that begs the effort of having pursued it at all.

"Most damaging, however, has been Afghanistan's election - a disaster for which Obama apparently delayed his decision on troop increases even though the outcome (a win for the incumbent, Hamid Karzai) was surely inevitable from the start. What made it worse was that ISAF troops died in unprecedented numbers to help underpin the whole, discredited process."

There are those here who cheer the deaths of ISAF soldiers and would like to trumpet the military prowess of the taliban but it simply isn't so. They've yet to stand over one ISAF facility and our dead bodies as champions of ground that they've TAKEN from us. Not once. On average America has lost slightly more than 100 soldiers per year since the initiation of OIF. Yet there's no doubt that our operations have become increasingly lethal and that the taliban have a simple formula to that end-IEDs.

That is the war at present. Small-arms contact continues but at a distance such that the insurgent is rarely even seen. Nor does that insurgent deliver aimed accurate fire. Not so with his IED attacks. They've proved lethal for us and for afghan civilians too. And like any war where boobytraps become the primary killer, they are beginning to wear morally upon our troops and public.

This is particularly so for two real reasons- 1.) our men have little faith in their afghan military partners. WE surged into Helmand. Not the ANA. Why? Nobody seems to know even three months later. And we still wait. Meanwhile shootings of American and British troops by an ally can't help but erode trust. This at a time when we're considering placing small groups of men in afghan communities with afghan soldiers as partners. Who knows the result of that if and when, and 2.) our public recognizes a poor and corrupt leader when it sees one. It does so with Karzai. His victory in this election was probably assured even without the attendant cheating. Nonetheless, the absence of viable alternatives in a country visibly BEGGING for good men to step forward coupled with the fact that widespread electoral fraud was patently obvious makes a mockery of our good efforts.

No public wishes to be associated with such. The 2004 elections WERE reasonably fair and offered hope of more and better to follow. That can no longer be said and Karzai will have served twelve years as the interim or elected president before he next stands election if term limits aren't in place (I don't know). That's been too long.

I only take heart that one of my heroes, Peter Galbraith, is the guy who blew the whistle. Like most good men, he took the fall although its clear that he was perfectly accurate and that Eide was engaged in a cover-up to make nice with the Afghan government. Why Eide didn't have the courage or integrity to call this a fraud from the beginning, I'm unsure. In so doing, he made the U.N. despite all their good work, a part of the problem and not the solution.

I'm tired. Trefor Moss has written a good op-ed. This operation is in deep trouble and that bodes badly for Pakistan despite all the cheering here by so many eager to see it fail. It now might and what lies beyond isn't pretty for those few here who've the insight to look beyond their own jingoistic ambitions.

Off to bed for S-2. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither shall Afghanistan be lost in a day.