Attempting the Iraq Blueprint in Afghanistan

I’ve been listening and reading about a new plan the Obama Administration is bringing to the Afghanistan table. In light of the progress that the US military has had in Iraq in the last couple of years, the administration is attempting to transfer much of that blueprint to the front against the Taliban.

President Obama expressed throughout his campaign that the US took its eyes off the war in Afghanistan too soon and gazed upon new possibilities in Iraq. He stated that we have lost much ground to the active and re-emerging Taliban, and reports show that violence against US-led coalition forces has steadily increased since focus has shifted towards the war front in Iraq.

Obama does not have much support for the war in Iraq and challenged it numerous times while in the Senate, but obviously supports the operations in Afghanistan that began after September 11. Despite his opposition to the war in Iraq, Obama has admitted that success has followed a couple main Bush strategies. One strategy that Obama believes can be credited for success is the US military negotiations and truces with some Sunni militant groups and tribes that had been part of the insurgency alongside Al Qaeda in Iraq (AIQ). The second successful strategy that the Obama administration is copying is the troop surge that so many democrats voted against, but have since then admitted to its success.

I commend the new administration for recognizing these successes in Iraq and now taking this blueprint to Afghanistan to see if it can work there. But, (of course there’s a “but”) many deep and essential differences may cause failure. First off, negotiating with moderate factions of the Taliban is not very comparable to the groups that we negotiated with in Iraq. The insurgents that we were able to bring to the side of Iraqi freedom and sovereignty were part of Al Qaeda and had not shown open aggression to the US prior to the Iraq invasion. The fact that they were AIQ sympathizers that occasionally partnered with them as opposed to loyal followers of a specific regime and network makes a significant difference to our ability to negotiate with them. In Afghanistan however, the fractions that the administration is considering for negotiations are active, albeit moderate, officers of the Taliban regime, which is a regime that we have been engaged with in war since 2001. This is a regime that by partnering with and supporting Al Qaeda openly attacked civilians on US soil and killed nearly 3,000 of them. Anyone that believes that Obama’s rhetoric of open talks with leaders of Syria and Iran is playing with fire should be far more alarmed by this. I am not familiar with any attack on US soil by either of these two countries or their supported Hizballah.

Our likelihood of successful negotiations capable of turning these moderate Taliban members against Mullah Omar and his Taliban fighters is more comparable to turning Al Qaeda against itself, than the insurgent groups in Iraq. In addition to this, we must consider where the upper hand was in Iraq during these negotiations and where it is in Afghanistan at the current time. He had not won the war in Iraq when we began seeking insurgents to join us and fight against the oppressive AIQ, but we were gain strong ground and had the upper hand. In Afghanistan the Taliban is spreading their influence, building their arsenal, and we do not have the upper hand against them as we did in the past. For this reason, our offer of negotiations may bear no weight in their eyes, but if we offer bargaining after the troop surge has put the Taliban on the run we may at least be taken seriously.

So, let’s take a look at that troop surge or “increase” that President Obama is planning. The most obvious and possibly important question is “will it work?” I can not think of any reason why not, after all as the administration has noted, it worked to reduce violence in Iraq. Though it’s likely to bring success, what’s the sacrifice?

Obama has pointed out that we were so close to completing our mission in Afghanistan and then walked away before the job was done. I wonder if the same mistake is going to be repeated with Iraq. Are we going to move the bulk of soldiers back to Afghanistan as we are seeing the tide turn in Iraq and watch in horror as the advancements in democracy are lost and Iraq falls back into peril? I don’t want this to become a cycle of sending troops back and forth between Afghanistan and Iraq because we can’t commit long enough in either country to witness lasting security and stability established.