The promises problem

Politicians the world over have a problem with promises, particularly those made either before they hold high office or early in their tenure. The problem is that not infrequently they break those promises. President Barack Obama has just broken one of the larger promises of his political life. He has extended the timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Alongside this, he has offered to take up the issue of the resumption of peace talks with the Afghan Taliban when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visits the US in the coming week.



The promise that he made at the beginning of his presidency has turned to ashes because the Western coalition, led by the Americans, failed to win the war against the Taliban that they started 14 years ago this week. Not only did they fail to win the war, they failed to win whatever peace could be wrung from the conflict and now, with the Taliban on a roll militarily, the chances of resuscitating the moribund peace process are faint at best. The Taliban in Afghanistan have little or no reason to come to the table. They are consistently challenging the Afghan National Army (ANA), taking — but not yet holding for very long — urban areas like Kunduz far from their traditional spheres of operation, and already are the defacto parallel government in large parts of south and eastern Afghanistan.

President Obama was left with little option. It was either abandon Afghanistan completely or try another stop-gap solution that will hold the line until it is necessary to create yet another stop-gap solution. The announcement has been welcomed by President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, who must have been wondering where the next blow was going to fall. So 9,800 American troops acting as ‘advisers’ are to stay beyond 2016. They are not combat troops — but they may need to be if the Taliban continue to push as they have in the current fighting season. They are also probably not sufficient to stop the degradation of the ANA and the Obama legacy in terms of foreign policy is looking like one of consummate failure, at least when it comes to the war in Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2015.

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