Afghanistan

The Guardian’s Jason Burke considers today’s attack in Kabul:

Fourth, the Taliban are not working with the same worldview as the west. The elections are not, to them, a potential turning point nor a litmus test of the success of the Afghanistan project. Nor is something as short-term as a single poll of great significance given the length of time they have allowed for their strategy to succeed. That strategy is two-fold: establish a parallel administration in enough of Afghanistan for the central administration to be fatally weakened and to progressively destroy all support for the presence of western troops in Afghanistan in the USA and Europe.

This is one of the problems with setting benchmarks, I think. A single election is a blip on the radar. Karzai’s reelection (presumably) has little immediate impact on the Taliban’s insurgent efforts. It’s not as if a democratic (presumably) exercise will prove to the Taliban that significant progress is taking place in the country, unless that democratic exercise is also accompanied by the type of American/European follow through that improves lives for people in the region. To this end, occupying forces have to win hearts and minds, and this is a harder thing to measure.

Increasing U.S. forces in Afghanistan is going to be a good thing if Afghans see that the U.S. actually wants to and truly can help the people. But the Taliban isn’t going away any time soon (see Gelb, March 2009), and the thorniest issues that the U.S. will have to address reside across the border in Pakistan. In addition, increasing U.S. forces in Afghanistan is also bound to lead to increased incidents between U.S. forces and Afghan civilians. It’s almost too obvious to state out loud, but collateral damage weakens U.S. efforts to win hearts and minds.

It’ll be a tough sell to convince Afghans broadly that the United States is in their country to help them. And as Burke points out, the Taliban are also stepping up efforts to win hearts and minds while still waging a guerrilla war. It’s knotty, knotty, knotty, and we’re not all looking at it the same way. Elections won’t indicate whether the U.S. is winning in Afghanistan. The Taliban know this, and the Afghan people likely do also. So the question remains, do we?