Taking the shape of Vietnam

Recent history is haunting America as it tries to find success in Afghanistan, writes Anne Davies.

Eight US soldiers dead and 30 Afghan police captured. The Taliban raid on an isolated US outpost in Nuristan a week ago seemed to represent all that is wrong with America's conduct of war in Afghanistan. It could not have come at a worse time for President Barack Obama.

Here was an under-resourced US army effort, a wily and brazen Taliban and a local population willing to conceal 300 insurgents until they were ready to charge. The planned closure of the base was delayed because the US army could not provide the transport needed to shift it.

All this week The Washington Post unpicked in detail a similar catastrophe that was excruciating to the government. The newspaper put a face to the human toll by exploring the life and death of Lieutenant Jonathan Brostrom, 24, in a similar Taliban raid in Wanat last year.

Brostrom's father, himself a military man, moved from sorrow to anger as he learnt his son might have died for nothing; a soldier in a poorly fortified outpost whose strategic purpose was unclear. Eight years into the Afghan war Obama faces a decision that could mark his presidency in the same way Vietnam defined Lyndon Johnson's.

Obama held long sessions in the past two weeks with civilian and military advisers to recalibrate tactics in a war he himself identified as "a war of necessity" in defence of US security. In late March he announced a new direction. "We have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future."

Obama said he would treat Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single theatre of war, a recognition that the al-Qaeda leadership had crossed into Pakistan's tribal areas and was fomenting the Taliban's rise in an unstable Pakistan. The emphasis would be on counter-insurgency, so Obama installed as commander General Stanley McChrystal, a specialist in the field.

The results have been disappointing. Taliban attacks have become ever more audacious. The coalition death toll this year has reached 400, compared with 131 in 2005. Air strikes using unmanned drones killed many civilians and outraged local populations.

In Iraq, Sunni tribesmen were bribed with money, aid and power to evict al-Qaeda from their midst. Political reconciliation has been slow, but Iraq has a functioning central government, with a degree of legitimacy.

It was hoped the Afghanistan Taliban, not a homogenous group, could be similarly induced to break with al-Qaeda. But no-one seems to have thought through how counter insurgency would fit in a country that has never known effective central government and which has an economy about the size of Hobart's.

When Obama told his military audience in August that Afghanistan was a ''war of necessity'', he told them the war would not be won with military power alone, but would require "diplomacy and development and good governance''.

Obama faces two new factors demanding a rethink of strategy and resources. The first is McChrystal's assessment that the US will probably fail unless there are more troops - 40,000 is talked about - and more effort at promoting good government. The second point involves claims of widespread fraud in the Afghan election in August. Jonathan Stevenson, a professor of strategic studies at the US Naval War College, says: "Counter-insurgency generally works only when the domestic government resisting the insurgents enjoys the respect and support of most of the domestic population."

George Will, a conservative columnist, warned of the difficulty of creating a stable state. Quoting a military historian, Max Hastings, he warned a month ago that ''our'' Afghans may prove no more legitimate than ''our'' Vietnamese.

Peter Galbraith, the UN envoy and election watcher, was sacked last week because he blew the whistle on rorting. The independent election commission is yet to rule on the allegations, but if the election stands, or even if a second round of voting is permitted, the legitimacy of the Government of Hamid Karzai is in tatters. Disillusionment with Karzai is perhaps one reason why the US Vice-President, Joe Biden, is loudly advocating a narrow counter-terrorism mission rather than McChrystal's broad counter-insurgency.

Biden, once a leading proponent of an expanded war effort in Afghanistan, now argues it may not be possible to defeat the Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan at a reasonable cost and leave a credible local government. For months he has argued that the US should narrow its military action to drone strikes and special forces strikes against al-Qaeda leaders.

Stevenson agrees with him. The Naval War College professor says the US has two strategic imperatives in the region. ''One is to contain and ultimately debilitate al-Qaeda; the other is to limit radicalisation in Pakistan … and [ensure] the country's nuclear arsenal stays out of jihadist hands.'' A broad counter-insurgency effort, Stevenson says, could undermine Pakistan. Obama spent Wednesday on this very issue.

Pakistan has had allegiances with the Taliban, even though it now appears to be co-operating with US efforts to drive the Taliban from its tribal border areas. Stevenson says Pakistan could again decide to support the Taliban as a counterweight to its perceived greater threat, India. And increased US presence in the region inflames Islamic tensions.

"A larger American footprint might have collateral damage by fuelling anti-American sentiment.''

If Pakistan is more important strategically, does it make sense that it gets about 3 per cent of the aid poured into Afghanistan?

The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, support McChrystal's push for a robust counter-insurgency strategy as the best means of ensuring Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for al-Qaeda.

But with US polls showing 57 per cent of Americans now oppose the war, there is strong domestic pressure to quickly and ably train an Afghan army and police force. The current plan funds a security force of 82,000. The vice-president of the International Crisis Group, Mark Schneider, says local security forces number about 56,000. Numbers must double to have any chance of a peaceful Afghanistan, he says.

So what is the Taliban objective?

A Carnegie Endowment for Peace visiting scholar, Gilles Dorronsoro, says the separation of the insurgency from population needs rethinking. The Taliban, after all, are Afghan natives and, unlike the insurgent fighters in Iraq, show some respect for locals, who then protect them.

Dorronsoro argues the Taliban cannot be defeated and that the US needs an Afghan partner that can fight for itself. "The Taliban do not threaten transnational attacks against Western countries and al-Qaeda is based in Pakistan," Dorronsoro says.

Others argue against any accommodation of the Taliban. The good news for the Obama Administration is that the Taliban do not yet control Afghanistan, although they are ascendant in areas. Schneider says the US holds about 60 per cent of the country. But he warns Coalition troops "are on a cusp" and that the next phase of war will determine whether Afghanistan can be secured.