Axel Magnuson

The tide of American public opinion and Afghan military increases

The tide of public opinion is apparently turning against the war in Afghanistan, threatening to carry off the U.S. presence there with a vigor that has only been seen at the height of the anti-Vietnam campaigns of the late sixties and early seventies. The Obama Administration seems unable to mitigate the strength of that storm swell.

The Wall Street Journal says that Americans see Afghanistan with a combination of weariness and wariness: Weary because it’s gone on for so long, wary “…because of a growing sense that the longstanding American goal of constructing a stable and effective Afghan central government that can keep Islamic militants in check is simply not achievable.”

They continue: “To battle those problems, the Obama administration will have to foster the sense that what is evolving isn’t another turn of the screw but a wholly fresh start.” (”Clock Ticks for White House to Show Gains in Afghanistan”, Gerald F. Seib, Capital Journal, Wall Street Journal, Friday September 4, 2009, page 2.)

Has Obama introduced a game-change into the Afghan conflict?

Since major policy statements in March and April and the postings of a special advisor on Afghanistan and General McChrystal as US/NATO Afghanistan commander, the publicly projected strategy has continued to be one of a military response to the gradual resurgence of the Taliban. This, despite a huge increase in development assistance to the country, has contributed to the perception that the increased effort was indeed nothing but another turn of the (military) screw, a continuation of the Bush approach to the war, albeit with higher levels of resources.

And now – in September – the public awaits yet another new strategic assessment that is predicted to be yet another uptick of troop levels -hardly a “…wholly fresh start” but a continuation of the representation of the strategy as being essentially of the military variety.

Is there already a “wholly fresh start”?

One can argue that the US has already been engaged in a wholly different strategy for some time now, beginning with the changed doctrine of protecting the Afghan population from the predations of the various Taliban groups so it could get on with “normal” living, moving away from the primacy of the search and destroy doctrine aimed at the Taliban and a huge ramp-up of development aid as part of the changes instituted since March.

Is this a “wholly fresh start”? If it is, then most haven’t recognized it as such.

Some have argued that the American public has failed to see that there is a change because the President has failed to explain the strategy. As The Wall Street Journal reported it: “Asked recently on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ whether the President had sufficiently explained U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.) said, ‘No.’” (”Obama Urged to Rally Support for War”, Yochi J. Dreazen and Peter Spiegel, Wall Street Journal, Friday September 4, 2009, p. 2)

The policy statement itself and the wider explication of the strategy is there for all to see, and it reflects at least some of the thinking of a huge array of contributors, including advocates for a less grand, more measured approach like Rory Stewart. A look at the scope and volume of US development assistance contracts recently awarded or in the pipeline will illustrate that the there is a development surge that is as much a part of the change in strategy as the military surge in Afghanistan. An interesting cable from the State Department, Number 1776 “New Approach to the Delivery of U.S. Assistance to Afghanistan in Support of the President’s Strategy” touches on the integration of the military, diplomatic and development efforts of the U.S. Government and of creating a more solid base for development efforts within the Afghan Government.

11.  At the regional level, there is an explicit recognition that the USG is pursuing development within the context of a broader U.S. counter-insurgency strategy.  One of our primary objectives is consolidation of a government and society that are stable, secure and confident enough to be an effective partner of the U.S.  Essential initiatives are in the East and South where we will target areas (e.g. Nangarhar, bordering Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas) in coordination with the U.S. interagency, the U.S. Forces – Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA), and donors.

12.  GIRoA national programs such as the National Solidarity Program (NSP), which is funded through the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, have full cooperation at all levels, including at the village, community, district, provincial and national levels as NSP is a bottom-up approach to development, where communities identify, develop and implement their own projects; thus, more buy-in and Afghan ownership on the ground.

State Department, Cable Number 1776 “New Approach to the Delivery of U.S. Assistance to Afghanistan in Support of the President’s Strategy”

So – assuming that American opinion would be changed by a fresh approach – why haven’t these changes registered? U.S. Lawmakers and analysts persist in seeing Afghanistan in military terms alone. Afghanistan is most frequently framed as a military operation against a fanatic, misogyinistic enemy in a drug-infused country with a corrupt government. There’s a stuck-in-a-paradigm issue here, reflecting either an ignorance of non-military efforts or a wariness of the prospective capacity of development efforts to actually move Afghanistan toward the more prosperous, less-volatile place that the Administrations promises. After all, what have development efforts done to contribute to world peace in general? And many older Americans remember purported development efforts to win hearts and minds in Vietnam.

But I think that the framing of Afghanistan as a military “condition” that can only be dealt with by military means is the more distorting of the factors. It’s leading to distorted thinking and a skewed policy dialogue.

A shift in the nature of the debate: development through security.

While the combined defense and development approach is vulnerable on a number of fronts – we can’t build an Afghan government, development shouldn’t be seen as simply an instrumental value towards counter-terrorism – introducing the fact that development is an important aspect of U.S. activity in Afghanistan changes the nature of the debate about further involvement in Afghanistan, even if it might not be a game-changer.

This isn’t a national debate that ought to be considered only in terms of a military question. It is much more than that. We need to escape from this paradigm trap, one that keeps us from considering our options and contributes to the panicky feeling that we are in a corner and need to fight our way out, or jump out of the ring, a set of choices which contributes to polarizing political fights, not well reasoned policy. Without the public recognizing the wider scope of present efforts, and future options, the danger is that all involvement, military and development, will be retracted, leaving us further away from the more balanced, alternative approach to working with Afghanistan that analysts have called for and that Afghanistan’s people need.