By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
On Aug. 21 U.S. President Donald Trump put
forward a plan for resolving the nearly 16-year-old conflict in
Afghanistan, but he declined to specify the conditions by which
he would judge the success of their mission there.
Trump declared that a rapid exit from the
war-torn nation would leave a major power vacuum that would
create a new safe haven for terrorists.
He is expected to send roughly 4,000
additional U.S. troops to the country, a recommendation made by
the Pentagon. The decision will add billions of dollars a year
to the already-towering war costs, which have topped $1 trillion
in Afghanistan alone over the past 16 years.
The U.S. Agency for International Development
has also spent tens of billions of dollars on projects in
Afghanistan, many of which have failed.
With this announcement, Trump deepened
American involvement in a military mission that has confounded
his predecessors and that he once called futile. Remember, Trump
campaigned for the presidency promising to extricate the United
States from foreign conflicts.
An estimated 8,400 American
troops remain stationed in Afghanistan, most assigned to an
approximately 13,000-strong international force that is training
and advising the Afghan military.
About 2,000 American troops are carrying out
counterterrorism missions along with Afghan forces against
groups like the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, the Islamic
State in Khorasan.
But the regular Afghan police and army have
been disappointing. The police are corrupt and ineffective,
while the army is intent on staying in fixed positions rather
than taking the fight to the Taliban. Trying to make soldiers
out of Afghan recruits hasn’t worked.
The Bush administration claimed to have
defeated the Taliban seven times from 2002 through 2005. So much
for that! The country’s combination of state collapse, civil
conflict, and ethnic disintegration has created a situation that
may be beyond outside resolution.
Afghanistan’s ethnic diversity, though once
stable, has provided another set of fault lines along which the
country has atomized. Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Baloch, and Hazara are among the 14
groups listed in the country’s constitution.
Amid collapse, communities have coalesced
around local ethnic groups. As they fight for control, their
divisions harden. This has deepened violence and created
barriers to peace.
The U.S. has tried everything since 2001.
Nation-building, large scale operations, troop surges,
diplomacy, requests for help from neighbouring Pakistan – you
name it. Yet the Taliban is stronger than ever, and Trump won’t
change that.
The new approach appears to be a victory for
Defence Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser
H.R. McMaster, who urged Trump to take a more aggressive effort
to fight terrorist groups in Afghanistan. Both are military men.
If war is too important to be left to the
generals, as the saying goes, obviously Trump hasn’t received
the memo. In fact, the military seems to be taking an
independent stance these days.
The top officers of the Navy, the Marines,
the Army, the Air Force, and the National Guard came out after
the violence in Charlottesville last month to say that racism,
hatred and extremism had no place in the military, and ran
counter to its most important values.
Though they did not refer specifically to
Trump, the sharp contrast with some of the president’s comments
was unusual.
They were reinforced by General Joseph F.
Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said
it had been crucial that they speak out.
“They were speaking directly to the force and
to the American people,” he said, “to remind them of the values
for which we stand in the U.S. military.”
Peter Feaver, a Duke University political
scientist who was a national security official in the George W.
Bush White House, said Trump was wise to take the hint,
especially as he made a difficult case for increased involvement
in Afghanistan.
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