[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]
The good news for President Barack Obama on his Afghan decision is that, along with those predictable Americans who routinely favor military solutions to foreign policy problems, a solid number of Americans are prepared to wait and see if his plan will work.
The bad news is that there is a vocal group of Americans who are terribly disappointed, even angry, that the president has decided to up the ante in Afghanistan, committing tens of thousands of additional troops and treasure to what they think is a conflict that cannot be “won.”
So, you’re either with him or against him. The problem is that there is hardly any discussion going on about the plan and its viability, or of any alternate plans. One would think that for an administration that prides itself on its deliberative processes, both of those issues are worth public examination.
The best we can hope for is that we can get out of Afghanistan at minimum cost, without making the situation worse than it now is. In order to do that, we will have to do two things. We will have to weaken the Taliban to the point where they are amenable to the table and we will have to negotiate the conditions of our departure with them.
The Obama administration has decided that intensifying the struggle with the Taliban by raising troop levels is the answer. Unfortunately, that may be the worst approach to the problem. Raising troop levels, irrespective of whether we use them in combat against the Taliban or to build infrastructure, will simply turn more and more Afghans against us. And you can bet that there will be more combat between us and the Taliban, because the Taliban knows that such combat will primarily benefit them, not us.
Additionally and unfortunately and despite our constant protestations, the Afghans people know a invader/conqueror when they see one and we fit the bill.
So, how do we weaken the Taliban without ramping up counterproductive military operations against them? One way is to do the exact same thing that we did when we went into Afghanistan after 9/11. We buy them off.
The Taliban, after 5 years in power and another 8 in their current comeback, is not beloved by the Afghan people. Their brand of radical, repressive Islam is not benign and in the process of denying girls education, blowing up historic Buddhist statues and generally behaving like tyrants, they have alienated masses of their countrymen. We are not talking here about an insurgency that is beloved by its people. Feared perhaps, but not beloved.
That gives us wiggle room. We need to create something for Taliban fighters that is more attractive than the Taliban. The simple act of raising Afghan National Army salaries to the point where they are competitive or even superior to Taliban salaries is a good starting point.
The Taliban is really only a problem in the south of the country. The northern tribes, ethnically different from the Taliban Pashtuns, are not arrayed with the Taliban against us. That allows us to concentrate on the Pashtuns and the south, where broad support of the Taliban, even without our involvement, is already problematical at best.
Afghanistan will not evolve without the Taliban. It will be part of the coming management of any unified country. Thinking they can be eliminated is simply absurd. They want power and they do not seek a further relationship with Al Qaida. To portray the Taliban as waiting eagerly to welcome back Al Qaida is delusional and self-serving for those who want to step up our military involvement there.
Many Taliban fighters are reluctant at best. By actively working to wean them away from their organization, as we have done successfully elsewhere in the region and know how to do, we should be able to weaken their organization and encourage them to negotiate.
By attacking the problem this way, we avoid an augmented military presence and the concomitant combat, which will only exacerbate our problems and help Taliban recruitment and indigenous support. Actively seeking to weaken the Taliban buy buying them off is the only approach that accomplishes our goal of bringing a weakened Taliban to the table.
As it is now, having made this war his own by taking the military option, President Obama has set himself up for total blame for the virtually inevitable ultimate failure of his policy. And you can bet that the party that created the situation that got him into that mess will be the first and most vociferous in laying that blame on him.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston.
