![Bilaihaagd.jpg]The cynosure of the globe in Afghanistan
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US, as the sole super power, also became the global cynosure of other people hoping for American support in their struggles against oppressive regimes. The world hoped for a generous magnanimous nation trying to uplift the less advantaged. Instead, what they saw was an unshackled America pursuing only its interests and using other nations for promoting its interests. Besides, over the years, excessive use of military force has only exposed its limitations. In the 1990, as the Taliban threatened Afghanistan, the US was willing to do business with Taliban hoping this would help American petroleum companies like UNOCAL with the Turkmenistan gas connection. Less than a decade later, in a role reversal, the US was hunting the Taliban. Today, the discourse is that the US should do deals with them. In the process, the US does not get a high score on the reliability index. This is an unfortunate commentary on a superpower.
Meanwhile, the US is yet to decide what would be its next course of action in Afghanistan. But the White House has other items on its to-do list. Afghanistan is not one of them. One section seeks a greater military engagement in Afghanistan. The American commander in Afghanistan, General Nicholson, has sought an increase of US force by about a few thousand. If this increase is only to guard US embassies and interests in Afghanistan, this is bad optics. This implies that the US no longer feels safe in a country that it set out to rescue or fears its inhabitants. If this additional force is meant to reverse the tide, then it is hopelessly inadequate. America First is a fine slogan at home but this does not work in another country where troops are out to defend that country.
Years ago, writing for The Hindustan Times, I had said: "In Kashmir, Pak-sponsored terrorists have never numbered more than 3,000 to 3,500 in an operating season, yet the Indian force deployed along with the paramilitary has been anywhere up to 100,000. Assuming that there are 10,000 Taliban loose in Afghanistan, a force of 250,000 would be needed to engage the Taliban. What is needed is boots on the ground, not aerial attacks that create more enemies than they destroy. The present NATO/US force of 40,000 is not only inadequate, it is also counterproductive to deploy a force thinly."
What is needed is boots on the ground, not aerial attacks that create more enemies than they destroy.
Daniel Davis, a former lieutenant-colonel in the US army, who served in Afghanistan at the height of 2010, made a similar observation. He confirmed that even with more than one hundred thousand US troops on the ground, there were still massive swaths of the country that were no-go territory for friendly troops, and the Taliban and other insurgents ran wild. [i] He added that so long as Pakistan refused to stop the Taliban from using its territory as a safe haven and the government in Kabul remained as corrupt as it has been, it wouldn’t matter if President Trump sent two hundred thousand troops to Afghanistan. The US, frozen by its dependency on Pakistan, could never bring itself to push that country far enough on this. The issue is that given the usual ratio between terrorists and counter terrorist forces, US would need upwards of 500,000 troops in Afghanistan to control the 50,000 Taliban. There just are not that many troops available nor the funds.
(
)