I state in 3.2.3 Defending the Homeland that my other long-term proposals regarding the restructuring of the armed forces cannot be pursued until after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been brought to a conclusion. However, nowhere in the book do I propose a plan for bringing the Afghanistan conflict to a resolution.

Afghanistan is not one of the many rival countries and entities discussed under section 3.2.2. (Neither, I should note, is Iraq, which DID receive its own troop drawdown proposal.) Afghanistan was intentionally omitted from this list because under its present government the country itself poses no military threat to the United States homeland.  Subsequent to the ouster of the Taliban, Afghanistan is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism, and despite the lack of security there, the people of that country have shown great bravery in supporting democratic change.  (Neighboring Pakistan, on the other hand, does receive a section detailing the threats it poses to the security of the United States and some of the considerations which could mitigate those threats.)

In fact, other than noting the cost of the war, the text takes no position on the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. That is because the Afghan war is very different from the war in Iraq for a number of key reasons. In Afghanistan, the pursuit of Osama bin Laden was a clearly defined rational objective. Not only were the Taliban brutal human rights abusers; but in their refusal to turn over bin Laden, their government associated itself with the September 11 attacks and in a sense assumed responsibility, by extension, ex post facto. Thus, there was a legitimate purpose for the invasion.

Furthermore, in Afghanistan, ongoing security operations are under the control of NATO alliance forces. Granted that, as in Iraq, these forces are largely American and British, still this is an important difference in the chain of command: rather than being responsible to the heads of state of individual nations, NATO forces take their orders from an international organization. It is the position of the text that in dealing with problems of international conflict, solutions involving many nations working together will be required. (In contrast, the unilateral model can only increase international conflict, if the rationale behind it were to be widely adopted.)  In this sense, the concept of international peacekeeping forces should be considered a model for future world security crisis resolutions.

However there are many problems with the Afghanistan conflict. The most tragic of these is the excessive “collateral damage”: the people of Afghanistan have been repeatedly subjected to bombings that are misdirected, or based on faulty intelligence, or called in without consideration for civilian casualties. More than once a wedding was turned to a funeral by these bombing campaigns.

Updated 7-30-2008: It becomes increasingly difficult to defend the concept of the United States presence in Afghanistan as our forces continue to kill large numbers of civilians in airstrikes that turn out to be mistakes. As reported by the Associated Press, United States bombs killed 47 people in a wedding party on July 4, 2008. A commission led by Afghan Senate deputy chairman Burhanullah Shinwari was dispatched to the area by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate the incident. After extensive interviews, the commission concluded that not one single person who died in the attack had any connections with either the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Not one! Of the 47 people killed, 39 were women and children, including the bride. Such deadly carelessness on the part of our armed services is simply inexcusable.

Yet just two weeks later, on the night of July 19, US and NATO forces mistakenly killed 13 more Afghans in two separate incidents. At least four, possibly more, were killed by misdirected mortar fire, which is tragic although not necessarily criminal; but in the other incident, United States forces called in an airstrike on Afghan police officers, killing 9 and badly wounding the provincial police chief. If we are attempting to build up Afghanistan’s internal security apparatus, this seems like a really stupid way of going about it.

What’s problematic for the ongoing security situation is the resurgence of the Taliban and their increasing reliance on suicide bombers, as well as their apparently improving ability to launch large coordinated attacks sometimes employing hundreds of militants.

Updated 6-27-2008: The Pentagon released two reports today regarding the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. According to a statement by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, some of the more optimistic assessments made in the reports may have been written prior to incidents on the ground which have adversely affected the security situation in the past few months. Still, the report concludes that the Taliban have regrouped into a more effective insurgency, and that they are likely to at least maintain and probably increase both the number and scale of their attacks in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, according to the assessment, the Afghan Army and police forces are few in number and insufficiently trained. Finally, according to Gates’ statement, the negotiated truce between the new government of Pakistan and the tribal groups of the border region effectively guarantees Taliban fighters safe passage to wage a campaign of cross-border raids and violence against allied troops and Afghani civilians.

Updated 7-30-2008: In the predawn hours of July 13, 2008, some 200 militants from several different groups, including Pakistani extremists and Afghan rebels, launched a joint attack against a U.S. base just outside the village of Wanat, apparently with the foreknowledge and assistance of the locals, who were understandably upset about the 47 people killed in the US airstrike against the wedding party, described above, which had recently occurred in the same area. Are we winning their hearts and minds? I think not. Furthermore, during the sneak attack, militants armed with machine guns, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades were able to force their way into the base, killing more US soldiers than have died in any other single incident since 2005.

We invaded Afghanistan to pursue Osama bin Laden, and in so doing, ousted the Taliban. Both bin Laden and the Taliban fled across the border into the mountainous region of western Pakistan, and there they have remained, growing stronger, recruiting and training new members, planning and plotting and launching incursions into Afghanistan. The irony, as I mention in the book, is that the United States government has supplied the Pakistani government with more than $10 billion in mostly military aid since 2001; yet Pakistan views NATO incursions into its territory as a threat against its sovereignty, and refuses to allow operations targeting or pursuing Taliban or al-Qaeda members. Unofficially, NATO forces have been firing missiles across the border and from drones, targeting militant locations; officially, one of those missiles recently killed a number of Pakistani soldiers, an incident which raises a number of interesting questions. Some of those questions might be, Why did we invade Afghanistan to pursue bin Laden, yet we balk at invading Pakistan to pursue bin Laden? Is it because Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons? Is it because we really only invaded Afghanistan to secure a pipeline deal for Unocal? Or is it because our armed forces are overstretched fighting a two-front land war in Asia? Personally I blame the latter: we quickly toppled the Taliban, then promptly, with swaggering hubris, devoted the majority of our resources to an unrelated conflict. Later, with our forces bogged down by the war in Iraq dragging on and on, we were unable to rapidly deploy personnel or equipment to reinforce the border regions of Afghanistan when indications began to show that the Taliban were re-forming. Emboldened by our inability to stop them, Taliban forces are increasingly running amok all over the country and have even been able to capture and hold entire towns, including a district quite close to the capital city.

In Iraq we have as a policy, if imperfectly, attempted to help rebuild the army and police; yet in Afghanistan we do not seem to have pursued similar goals, with the predictable result that the still-fledgling government is ill-equipped to defend itself, much less assert its authority. Afghanistan will require a large armed service contingent to maintain its border and to deal with the ongoing instability. Additionally they will require the assistance of intelligence experts from developed nations as they attempt to prevent terrorist attacks by capturing or killing the individuals who are responsible for organizing and financing the Taliban. Under the auspices of NATO, I think it is reasonable for the United States to continue to maintain a presence in Afghanistan until perhaps 2012; but it is imperative that we use that time wisely.

To me, the most obvious solution follows from the policy advocated in the book: hand over security duties in Iraq to that country’s government and internal security apparatus. This would allow the United States armed services to transfer needed manpower and equipment to Afghanistan; and this would allow our service men and women who have already served several tours of duty to come home and move on with their lives. Withdrawing from Iraq is the imperative first step whose time has come.

In addition to the security considerations, Afghanistan will require a great deal of infrastructure investment on the part of donor nations to modernize its economy and improve the standard of living for its people. Making these improvements will be critical to the future stability of this war-torn region of so much historical and potential greatness.