OBAMA GAMBLES ON HISTORIC GRAVEYARD

After wavering for three months and holding ten crisis meetings with top officials, US President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced a decision his chief commanding officer in Afghanistan wanted him to take. He agreed to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, disappointing a section of the population who voted him into office last year in the hope that he would be a peace president.

When compared with George W. Bush, his predecessor at the White House, Obama may look an angel. That he took nearly three months and ten meetings to take the plunge indicates that he is no war president like Bush. Placed between war and peace, Obama appears to be a thinking president. It was only this week that the Foreign Policy Magazine placed him second on the global list of 100 thinkers. The number one position went to US Central Bank head Ben Bernanke.

In the citation to justify the US president’s ranking, the magazine said Obama re-imagined America’s role in the world. He was hailed as both a “visionary” and a “fix-it guy” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an economic meltdown and other problems he inherited.

“He might yet fail. But if he succeeds, the sea change in America’s relationship with the world could become a tidal wave,” said Foreign Policy.

President Obama, a Nobel peace laureate, is well aware of this global expectation. He has a peace constituency, both at home and abroad, that expects him to roll back all the putrid plans his predecessor put into action with the intention of dominating or bullying weaker nations into submission and taking control of their natural resources.

While being the hope of the peace constituency, Obama is also compelled to work with hardliners. He does not want to be slammed as a softie by his Republican critics or as a leader who is incapable of responding to the US national interest demands.

Obama was also mindful of the quagmire-like situation in Afghanistan. He did not want to get bogged down in it and sought an exit strategy.

His Tuesday night speech at the West Point Military Academy was a mix of these concerns. That he set an 18-month deadline for General Stanley McChrystal to finish the job and get out of Afghanistan indicates that he was thinking not only of an exit strategy but also of his re-election bid in 2012. In 18 months time, Obama will have crossed the halfway mark of his first term in office. By then he also will have faced a mid-term congressional poll, which is a barometer to test a serving president’s popularity. If war was the primary demand of the American voters at the 2008 elections, they would have elected Republican candidate John McCain. Obama was elected largely on a wave of anti-war sentiment and the Americans’ desire to restore the respectability the office of US president had carried before Bush desecrated it.

Obama cannot afford to ignore the wishes of the peace constituency, if he is keen on winning a second term. But on Tuesday he gambled on it.

Award-winning film director and peace activist Michael Moore in an open letter to Obama on Monday pleaded with him not to send more troops to Afghanistan. He said: “Do you really want to be the new ‘war president’? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple! And with that, you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.”

Surely Moore must have felt betrayed, when Obama, under heavy pressure from the war lobby, decided to listen to General McChrystal, the top US General who will soon be commanding 140,000 NATO troops, including some 100,000 American forces, in Afghanistan. In a leaked letter in October, he called on the Obama administration to send some 40,000 more troops if the Afghan war was to be won.

The General apparently did not want to take the flak for the failure staring him in the face in a country which is known as the graveyard of invaders. He is not unaware of the fact that in the past Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Great Britain and the Soviet Union all failed in Afghanistan. He also knows that every Afghan is proud of this legacy and that every Afghan feels that taking up arms against foreign occupation is their God-given right.

But Gen. McChrystal believes the surge will work, the way it worked in Iraq. But in Iraq it was not merely a swell in the troop numbers that brought results. A series of measures and factors contributed to the de-escalation of violence. These included buying the loyalty of political parties and clan leaders who were sympathetic towards the so-called al-Qaeda militants with financial rewards, more parliamentary seats and job offers.

True, the US has bought over some big guys in Afghanistan too, but they are largely the drug lords, chief among them are Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s own brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, and Karzai’s running mate at the August election, Muhammad Qasim Fahim.

Besides, Afghanistan is also different from Iraq. Its terrain is different. Its people are different. Operating from mountainous areas, Taliban militants fighting NATO troops have the advantage of height when they fire at US positions below. Virtually, the NATO troops who come into the open make themselves sitting ducks. More troops will mean more casualties. So far this year, some 485 foreign troops have died in Afghanistan. Among the dead were 299 Americans, up from an overall total of 295 in 2008. Since the invasion in October 2001, a total of 1,532 foreign troops have died.

Afghan people are also unlike Iraqis. Drug lords and warlords often double cross, selling their loyalty to both the US and the Taliban, while the Pashtuns, who make up 60 percent of Afghanistan’s 30 million population are bound by tribal loyalty embedded in religious conservatism and support the Taliban. Of late, the Taliban have been riding a wave of success. They use sophisticated weaponry and move freely, shifting their areas of operation at will.

A question that troubles analysts now is what will happen after 18 months. Obama on Tuesday said the US would continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s Security Forces to ensure that they could succeed over the long haul. He sent a message to Karzai that after 18 months, the task of ensuring security in Afghanistan would be his.

This was exactly what the Soviets did when they withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. They left President Mohammad Najibullah to deal with the mujahideen fighters. He was captured and executed when the Taliban took control of Kabul in 1992.

As part of its Afghan strategy the US has now begun to say that its war is not against the Taliban but against al-Qaeda. The distinction was evident in Obama’s speech as well. But according to Obama’s own National Security Advisor James Jones, there are only about 100 al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan. Well, to capture or eliminate those 100-odd al-Qaeda operatives, a force of more than 140,000 is to be deployed at a cost of US$ 140 billion a year. The Jihadi literature says one jihadist is equivalent to ten enemies. Now Obama’s surge has made one al-Qaeda jihadist the equivalent to 1,300 or 1,400 enemy troops. Such an equation not only increases the resolve of the Jihadist but also boosts their morale.

Given the compound picture in Afghanistan, the surge is unlikely to succeed. Obama needs to concentrate on a plan B, which, of course, could be his exit plan.