We'll Be Done Any Decade Now

We're going to have to get really busy this winter but, if everything goes right, we could be out of Afghanistan in just 20-years. That upbeat assessment came from Lt. Gen. David Richards, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

General Richards said our side, the good guys, have about six months to win the 'hearts and minds' of the Afghan people by proving that long-promised (five years and running - tick, tick, tick) reconstruction and security can be accomplished. He also warned about the danger of losing their support: "If you do not have the consent of the people in a counterinsurgency, at the end of the day, you're probably going to lose."

If we can just win the people over, however, Richards figures 20-more years and we'll be done.

I don't know how good he is as a general but David Richards is a terrific politician. One of the big problems that he must surmount is the damage caused by the five wasted years when America neglected Afghanistan to pursue its lark in Iraq. These five years allowed the warlords to cement their control over the north of the country, enabled opium production to flourish again and let the Taliban regroup and re-establish themselves among their fellow Pashtun in the south. Richards called this enormous and painful blunder, a matter of "adopting a peactime approach" too early.

The General blends wishful thinking and whistling past the graveyard seamlessly into an inspirational pitch. Referring to last month's battle at Panjwai, he proclaimed "we established we could fight." Pardon me? Modern, mechanised, professional western armies with artillery, attack helicopters and strike fighters needed to establish they could fight? Did he not think they could?

Richards said we established we could fight and we also, "...forced them to revert to asymmetric tactics; suicide bombings and that sort of thing." That doesn't explain why, last week, British paras had to negotiate a truce with Taliban fighters in Helmand province and withdraw to their garrison. Nor is it much of a victory to note that insurgents have gone back to insurgency. But if that's all you've got, I guess you make the best of it.

So, what is General Richards' formula for taking advantage of this six month window of opportunity? Well, first we have to secure the countryside, then we have to get Karzai to clean out the corruption in his police, and then we have to do all the reconstruction stuff. Simple as A,B,C, isn't it?

What the General is not directly saying is that he's counting on the Taliban reverting to their traditional practice of withdrawing to their mountain retreats for the winter. He's counting on getting all his targets accomplished while the Taliban is giving him his six month window of opportunity.

I think David Richards is a terrific optimist. There have been reports that the Taliban aren't going to ground this winter but will be staying to continue their insurgency. They don't have to do much fighting, just enough to keep critical areas dangerous enough, from time to time, to prevent reconstruction. As for Karzai's corrupt police problem, even the General isn't pretending there's anything he can do about that.

What's the best chance for peace in Afghanistan? The U.S. needs to get out of Iraq and send a substantial part of that force to Afghanistan. NATO can concentrate on holding the Taliban at bay while the U.S. intervenes on behalf of Karzai to cleanse his goverment of the control of warlords and, in turn, clean out corruption in the judicial and police systems. Karzai needs muscle and NATO hasn't got any to spare.

TheTaliban need to be shown that their only way ahead lies in participating in a truly national government, not trying to bring it down to takeover once again.

Finally, the west has to establish an alternative, agrarian economy for the Afghan peasants. They need to be given a viable option to poppy cultivation. That, however, is going to have to be supported by their government and that, in turn, means ridding the Afghan government of the rot - the warlords, the drug lords and the corrupt functionaries in the bureaucracy, police and army. If that sounds like tearing it all up and starting again - it is.

The Karzai government is hopelessly compromised. To restore its legitimacy, we have to start from scratch, perhaps even with a new leader. We also have to tailor our expectations of what that government can and should be. We can't fight insurgents, warlords, the drug lords and tribalism and hope to win. We have to pick our fights and accept that, even if we win, we may not be happy with the result but we have to accept it and move on.