Yet this neglect of the “challenge of a generation”—or rather, this constant redefining of what that challenge is—has come at a price. While it is true that there has been an absence of any new terror-driven attacks in the US since 9/11, as the Obama administration takes office amidst these myriad crises, the situation in Afghanistan is the worse it has ever been since 2001. The Taliban resurgence has reached the point where they easily operate in three-quarters of the country, halting what little reconstruction was going on in many of those areas and stifling any newly established economic life as well. Karzai’s government has largely lost the confidence of the Afghan population, is condemned for being unable to deliver on security or reconstruction, and is widely viewed as being corrupt and linked to narcotraffickers. The international military forces led by the United States are not only derided for being unable to control the rising violence, but resented for having contributed to the death toll with repeated deadly airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians. And all the while, the prime driver of the suspended challenge, Osama bin Laden, continues in his elusiveness, maintaining silence or issuing new calls for jihad, as he sees fit.
President Obama, who opposed the war in Iraq, has called Afghanistan “the central front in the war on terror,” a fight “which never should have been abandoned,” and has vowed to pull the country and the international mission there out of its downward spiral. To address the immediate, critical question of deteriorating security, he has resolved to send in up to 30,000 more American troops, doubling the American military presence there. The introduction of the troops is already the focus of heavy criticism in both Congress and the press, and the strategy they will implement remains nebulous.
THE GREAT BLACK HOPE
Against this backdrop, many in the international relations community have begun to wonder if the situation in Afghanistan is even salvageable at this late date. While the incoming Obama administration brings with it an aura of hope—almost unrealistically so—to a world impatient with the “no negotiation with terrorists” dogma of the unpopular Bush administration (despite its admitted success in preventing further attacks upon American soil), questions arise: Does the Obama team indeed have a comprehensive strategy for turning things around that goes beyond the introduction of more firepower? What should that strategy be, and how much of it should depend on dealing with the south-central Asian region as a whole? With eight years now passed since 9/11, is Afghanistan still a matter of vital concern to America and the West? And even if it is, can Obama succeed in rallying support for continued American involvement there when the war-weary public has other matters on its mind?
Indispensible to answering these questions is a critical look at what went wrong in the first place, captured in the work of Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist whose books Taliban and Descent into Chaos are some of the most widely read accounts of the country and its region. “The Bush administration never had a comprehensive strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan beyond capturing Al Qaeda militants,” Rashid said. “The Taliban resurgence was ignored for too long, the safe havens for the Taliban leadership in the Tribal Areas and the city of Quetta in Pakistan were not properly addressed, and there was too much mollycoddling of General Musharraf, the Pakistani military ruler at the time. There was a lack of a common regional strategy. Also ignored was the rebuilding of the infrastructure to allow the Afghan economy to stand on its own two feet, economic development, and a regional agreement involving all of Afghanistan’s neighbors to stabilize the country. As a result, today the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their allies such as the Kashmiri militant groups present a dire threat to the United States, Europe, and, of course, South and Central Asia directly, as seen recently by the massacre in Mumbai.”