by Susenjit Guha

To win the war in Afghanistan, the United States will have to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans as well as the Pakistani people. And at the same time the Afghan leadership should tamp down on corruption and ensure that foreign aid goes to the right places while Pakistan has to take on the Taliban head-on.

But the ground reality is different and there is nothing to trigger optimism even after 8 years.

Top military officer Admiral Mike Mullen, in one of the most scathing criticisms of the war so far….in an article written for a US military publication, Joint Force Quarterly…. felt that instead of sending a positive message about US military action and development in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the efforts are hurting credibility as they do not coincide with what the populace sees on the ground.

Arrogance has made communication falter in key areas as he wrote, “We’ve come to believe that messages are something we can launch downrange like a rocket……good communication runs both ways. It's not about telling our story. We must also be better listeners." To him, the most credible approach would be replicating something like the post WWII Marshall Plan that resurrected a war ravaged Europe.

Are the Afghans or the Pakistani on the street willing to listen to the US side of the story? Pakistan was recently described by a foreign journalist as the most anti-American country on earth. Even a Barack Obama in the White House hasn’t been able to change the perception of the people and Pakistan’s armed forces are not willing to crush the Taliban as the US wants it should. When they come too close for comfort, they are beaten back to the caves, but not hounded out. And a Taliban presence in Afghanistan is Pakistan’s best bet as it would provide them the leverage in the region they enjoyed earlier. While they are supposed to be allies of the US in the war, their courts don’t regard al Qaeda as a terrorist organization.

Sending positive messages about US military action and development got to have takers, but there are none in the region. And if the US wants to listen to the truth, a vast majority would prefer them to leave.

That brings us to Admiral Mullen’s Marshall Plan idea. It worked in Europe after WWII as the people had looked up to the US to defeat Nazism and Fascism. Germans and Italians briefly flirted with the philosophy during the war years, but quickly realized their folly soon after. Shared culture and religion made the Marshall Plan work, but even building credibility in Afghanistan could take 50 to 60 years…as the outgoing and outspoken British general put it… that neither the US nor the NATO partners can afford.

In a startling column, conservative George Will deviated from conventional GOP thinking when he wrote, “America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.”

Already drone attacks have taken many civilian lives, while ‘potent special forces’ have to depend on inputs from Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) known to be full of moles in cahoots with the Taliban. Primarily, the concern for Pakistan’s nukes falling into the hands of a mad mullah is baseless as the armed forces already displayed their capability to act when terror scalds their neck. Their priority is to match ‘arch enemy’ India nuke by nuke and modify arms received from the US to target India as they have done recently by nuclear powering the Harpoon missile.

As polls show Americans are re-thinking the war and wondering whether the effort is worth it, the Afghan election has exposed US ally, president Hamid Karzai to be a ballot stuffer as alleged by his opponent Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. Rampant corruption in global aid distribution and Karzai’s enactment of a law using a constitutional loophole to make it legal for Afghan husbands to starve their wives if they refused sex, make American and British---they have more troops than any other country---taxpayer’s money indirectly responsible for worst injustices on women.

Concern is growing as Obama believes the war more of a necessity than a choice and wants more boots on the ground than over 62,000 that are already battling in Afghanistan. Last August was the deadliest month since 8 years and more troops would make the battle bloodier. Large portions are under Taliban control even after all these years of ramping up Afghan forces.

Can more troops encourage Taliban to speak and the US to listen as Admiral Mullen envisaged?

As war and development options lead to a dead end, withdrawal and remote control can get hairier.

US withdrawal would provide the moral victory Taliban and al Qaeda is looking for and infiltrate neighboring Central Asian countries. Pakistani armed forces and intelligence services would be secretly chuffed. As the US would have to outsource the war to them, the Pakistani armed forces---the real weight behind the sham of a democracy--- would let the Taliban play hide and seek while they train guns and advanced weaponry on India. Any criticism would be silenced as counterweight China would be arming them instead.

With huge investment stakes in Pakistan like the Gwadar port near Karachi and a direct road link to the impoverished Xingjian region where the recent riots broke out, China is an old ally and would step in to satiate their hunger for arms. US would be left with little leverage as China holds billions of dollars worth US treasury bonds. .

But would that endanger Americans in mainland US? Not likely, as there has not been a single terror attack after 9/11. Gradual troop draw down can save American lives and not taint the taxpayer’s money for supporting the Afghan cause in the hope democracy would prevail when medieval culture is fostered by the very ally they are banking on.

Would the US risk losing power?

It has to come to terms with more pressing issues back home and gracefully adjust to the reality that democracy cannot be speeded up in every corner of the earth where they are in danger. It could take decades or even centuries to evolve in some nations.

And if Americans can inculcate patience as a virtue, control consumption for a decade and come up with mass scale alternative energy fast to shrug off reliance on countries where they are despised, the terror funding banks will go broke.

At the moment there is no winning the hearts and minds of the Af-Pak border people as aid would be polished off by a corrupt Afghan administration. It is also not in Pakistan’s DNA to aid such an effort as the real power, the armed forces, never allowed democracy a free run in their own country.

Obama may have to wind up before he morphs into a LBJ who ratcheted up the Vietnam War with no end in sight. It is also hard not to replicate Vietnam if too much hope without substance was the lodestar of the last presidential campaign.

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© Copyright 06 by Susenjit Guha