Afghanistan RealPolitik

The real world never conforms to what we wish it to be. Here is a bit from an interesting post on The Best Defense blog summarizing a talk given by Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid:

Taliban influence is expanding, he said, and it has come to control a wide swath of the country, including provinces near Kabul. Last year's election fraud undermined the credibility of President Karzai for taking part and of the West for not noticing sooner and fixing it. Afghanistan and Pakistan have become training grounds for other regional Taliban-type groups, mainly fighters from other Central Asian countries, China, Russia, and Europe. The Afghan economy is still primarily donor-driven, not a true national economy, and so it furnishes few lasting job opportunities for Afghan citizens. And though the Pakistani army has started to take on the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda still find refuge in that country. (Rashid said last week's arrests of top Taliban leaders by Pakistani forces were more due to chance than to a major shift in Pakistani policy). Still, he says the presence of Western forces offers at least the hope of rebuilding the country with continued international interest -- infinitely more appealing than the fear that he sees as still the main currency of the Taliban.

How do Obama and his administration measure up? Rashid said that for the most part, they have the right ideas: building a regional strategy that includes key players from Pakistan to Iran to Saudi Arabia; investing in the Afghan economy, especially in agriculture; improving governance; and using troops to secure population centers. But because Indo-Pakistani relations fell apart after the Mumbai bombings in 2008 and the situation in Iran has deteriorated, the regional strategy piece is falling through. Rashid said the biggest mistake the administration has made, on a foreign policy level, was to set a timetable for withdrawal. Right now the draw down of American forces is set to start in July, 2011. That leaves very little time to build up the Afghan economy and promote good governance. Worse, Rashid argued, it will promote panic in the Afghan government, encourage a wait-it-out mentality among the Taliban, and prompt neighboring countries to send in the proxies and begin sorting out potential lines of influence in a post-war Afghanistan. Still, Rashid recognized that domestic politics in the West make ending the war as soon as possible a political imperative, citing the collapse of the Dutch government earlier this week.

I'm willing to give Obama an A for effort, but I just don't feel that Obama "gets it". There needs to be a new strategy for dealing with the Middle East, with the puppet regimes the US has now created, and Al Qaeda. The Obama administration shows no interest in explaining itself to the American people or motivating the public to support its policies. Sure, Obama is many times better than the idiot Bush, but still, Obama is not living up to the promise that most people in 2008 put into him and his run for the presidency.