"The lion of the people will turn on you," warned Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, a former Taliban foreign minister, as we sipped green tea at his home in Kabul a few weeks ago. He noted that while Americans had been shocked by a series of spectacular insurgent attacks over the summer, the United States-led coalition faced a far greater danger than the resurgent Taliban: growing despair among average Afghans that their government is fundamentally illegitimate.
Every aspect of sound counterinsurgency strategy revolves around bolstering the government's legitimacy. When ordinary people lose their faith in their government, then they also lose faith in the foreigners who prop it up. The day that happens across Afghanistan is the day we lose the war.
With more than 230 military deaths since January, this year is on track to be the deadliest yet for the coalition in Afghanistan. July alone saw a brazen attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the deaths of nine Americans at a combat outpost in Nuristan and the killing of 10 French soldiers on the outskirts of Kabul. The response has been a growing consensus around sending two to four more combat brigades to Afghanistan - 8,000 to 16,000 troops.
Although larger and more populous than Iraq, Afghanistan has fewer than half the coalition forces, and critical programs to advise the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police operate at one-third to one-half of their authorized strength. As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Michael Mullen, told Congress last year, "In Afghanistan we do what we can; in Iraq we do what we must."
More at The New York Times.
Comments
ArifJAA,
I'm in Afghanistan. I can tell you that there are some Taliban and insurgents worth reconciling with and some that are not. There will be peace in this country without some type of surrenders, defection, or reconciliation...that is the key to many successful COIN operations. Look at Malaysia, Oman, and Northern Ireland for example. If we do what you propose in your last paragraph, we are dooming ourselves to defeat. I would also mention that a lot more of the Taliban are from Afghanistan and live here than people realize...
Are the editors actually endorsing reconcillation with the Taliban if they renounce violence? What if Al-Qaeda renounces violence and agrees to participate in the electoral process? Unlikely, but the same bought the Muslim Brotherhood an (undeserved) legtimacy in the eyes of many. Not to mention the endless second chances and fresh starts the farce of the "peace process" brings the Palestinians.
We need to remember why we are at war, what our interests are, and just maybe risk the sneers of the bien pensants by recalling what prompted us into Afghanistan in the first place.