Obama puts Kabul on notice

Many decades ago, as a fledgling CIA officer in the field, I was naively convinced that if the facts were reported back to Washington correctly, everything else would take care of itself in policymaking.

The first loss of innocence comes with the harsh recognition that "all politics are local" and that overseas realities bear only a partial relationship to foreign-policy formulation back home.

So in President Obama's new policy directions for Afghanistan, what goes down in Washington politics far outweighs analyses of conditions in Afghanistan. I had hoped that Obama would level with the American people that the war in Afghanistan is not being won, indeed is not winnable within any practicable framework.

Obama possesses the intelligence and insight to grasp these realities. But such an admission — however accurate — would sign the political death warrant of a president to be portrayed as having snatched defeat out of the jaws of "victory."

The "objective" situation in Afghanistan remains a mess. The details are well known. Senior commanders acknowledge that they are not winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan; indeed, we never can and certainly not at gunpoint.

Most Pashtuns will never accept a US plan for Afghanistan's future. The non-Pashtuns — Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, etc. — naturally welcome any outside support in what is a virtual civil war. America has inadvertently ended up choosing sides. US forces are perceived by large numbers of Afghans as an occupying army. The struggle has now leaked into Pakistan — with even higher stakes.

Obama's policies would seem an unsatisfying compromise among contending arguments. Thirty thousand more troops will not turn the tide; arguably they present more American targets for attack. It is a fool's errand to persuade the locals in Pashtun territory that the Taliban are the enemy and US is their friend.

The Pashtuns know the Taliban remain the single most important element of Pashtun political life; the Taliban will be among them long after Washington tires of this mission.

The Taliban will inevitably figure significantly in the governance of almost any future Afghanistan, like it or not. Future Taliban leaders, once rid of foreign occupation, will have little incentive to support global jihadi schemes — they never really have by choice. The Taliban inherited Osama Bin Laden as a poison pill from the past and have learned a bitter lesson about what it means to lend state support to a prominent terrorist group.

An austere Islamic regime is not the ideal outcome for Afghanistan, but it is by far the most realistic. To reverse ground realities and achieve a markedly different outcome is not on the cards and will pose the same dilemma to Obama next year.

Meanwhile, Pakistan will never be willing or able to solve Washington's Afghanistan dilemma. Pakistan will eventually be forced to resolve Afghanistan itself — but only after the US has gone and only by making a pact with Taliban forces both inside Afghanistan and in Pakistan itself. Washington will not accept that for now, but it will ultimately be forced to fairly soon. Maybe the Pakistanis can root out Bin Laden, but meanwhile, Al Qaida has extended its autonomous franchises around the world and terrorists can train and plan almost anywhere in the world, they do not need Afghanistan.

By now, the US has become more part of the problem than part of the solution. We are sending troops to defend troops that themselves constitute an affront to Afghan nationalism. Only expeditious American withdrawal from Afghanistan will prevent exacerbation of the problem.

In a crucial counterbalance to the mini-surge, Obama wisely establishes a date for genuine withdrawal in 2011 — thereby putting Kabul on notice to start solving its own problems. The "surge" may just be worth it if it enables Obama to put the US military and Kabul on notice that time is quickly running out to demonstrate genuine political and military progress.

Obama has only kicked the can down the road to a possibly even more difficult place both at home and abroad next year. Only with immense luck will his real goal — creation of the minimally acceptable terms for an American withdrawal — come into sight, providing a tiny fig leaf to mask what will essentially constitute a strategic American failure that was inherent in this situation nearly from the beginning in America's global military response to the challenge of 9/11.

— The Christian Science Monitor

Graham E. Fuller is a former CIA station chief in Kabul and a former vice-chair of the CIA's National Intelligence Council. He is author of numerous books on the Middle East, including The Future of Political Islam.