"86 Months Into Afghan Conflict..."

A thoughtful post by Rafael Alexander, reflecting on a Maclean's blog post (links in original):

Michael Petrou has a good article in Macleans Magazine blog central, explaining the problems that remain in the Afghan mission from the greater perspective of NATO as well as the role that Canada is playing. While Mr.Petrou says he cannot name his sources, it's rather common knowledge the problems that remain as a barrier to victory over the Taliban:

The security situation is a mess and is getting worse[...]

The Afghan government and army will not be able to secure the country on their own by 2011[...]

There is too little coordination among the multitude of Western actors in Afghanistan[...]

Dozens of countries have sent troops to be part of the ISAF mission, but deployments consisting of a few hundred soldiers, or fewer, are more trouble than they’re worth[...]

Too much of the money that Western nations ostensibly spend on Afghanistan never makes it to Central Asia.[...]

A successful counter-insurgency involves clearing territory, holding that territory by establishing a presence on it, and then building infrastructure and bringing assistance to the area with the goal of winning over the local population[...]

Western soldiers were once seen as liberators by most Afghans. Now, they’re regarded as a necessary evil[...]

The Taliban’s strategy is to wait us out.

That is not to say that the mission is a write-off. But there are some important things that need to be admitted about the mission in Afghanistan if we want to have an honest assessment of the country. Mr.Petrou quite concisely has created a list of the most important ones. While the situation in Iraq improves, there are regions of Afghanistan that continue to fall to Taliban control.

The ugly truth is that we don't have enough soldiers on the ground to make a difference in the short-term, and while the Canadian military has made some excellent progress, it has been agonizingly slow. As one reader commented, we already have soldiers that are on multiple tours in Afghanistan, and Canada has already pulled more than their fair share of the workload. But what Canada needed from day one was perhaps ten times the commitment we have deployed, upwards of 20,000 soldiers, like the 26,000 we deployed to assist in the Korean war.

Added to this is a lack of coordination among participating nations, lacklustre involvement of NATO member governments, and anti-war problems among western nations on the home front, and this all means that the mission has squandered the important years in which it had to earn good will and confidence of the Afghan people. That doesn't even discuss the aid problems, mass corruption, and successful Taliban propaganda. As Mr.Petrou says, the Taliban are patient. We are not.

And yet, as Terry Glavin reports on the road, the fragile infancy of Afghanistan's democracy continues to struggle through war weariness, corruption, and terrorism. Though many in the west may be tempted by so much bad news to "break faith", one must remember the tale of the building of Rome : "Democracy is not something that happens overnight.

Update: A similar but not so pessimistic analysis in the Montreal Gazette:

Afghanistan's road ahead

A decisive military victory in Afghanistan is not going to happen under the current International Security Assistance Force led by NATO.