MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin) - Afghanistan is becoming Barack Obama's war. President George W. Bush, who started the war in 2001, has been overshadowed by Obama's new surge-and-exit strategy, which he said must show progress within 18 months, the deadline for beginning to bring U.S. troops home.
The first new arrivals of the 30,000 reinforcements, which were promised in November, will join the fight in southern and central Afghanistan by Christmas, although Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is running the war in Afghanistan, said he would like Obama to send 40,000 troops.
But Obama has ordered only 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, which is a lot, and the decision is a heavy gamble that may stand in the way of his reelection.
Together with the 20,000 U.S. troops sent to Afghanistan in April 2009, the reinforcements approved by Obama will total 50,000, or half of the troops the United States will have in the country by the spring of 2010. This will make Obama and Bush equally responsible for the Afghan war.
The 44th U.S. president had to strengthen the American group in Afghanistan, a country where many other foreign armies failed before. Britain lost its Afghan war in the 19th century and the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It is difficult to say if the United States can win its Afghan war, but the current situation is catastrophic for the allied forces.
According to the British Ministry of Defense, the loss ratio in Afghanistan in the summer of 2009 was the worst ever - one coalition soldier to one Taliban. You do not win wars with such a loss ratio, especially when 100,000 coalition troops and Afghan army and police are fighting against 15,000-20,000 Taliban.
Military analysts cannot say why Obama approved a 30,000-troop reinforcement, but most agree that it will not help defeat the Taliban and that the mass withdrawal planned for July 2011 is not going to happen.
The Karzai government will not survive a month if the U.S. troops withdraw. However, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said since then that "July 2011 (...) will be the beginning of a process. But the pace and character of that drawdown (...) will be determined by conditions on the ground."
Obama's new Afghan strategy reminds me of Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985. A year later, the last Soviet leader built up the Soviet group of forces in Afghanistan to 140,000 troops (by a mere coincidence, after the reinforcement NATO will have the same number of servicemen) and ordered the generals to win the war within a year. However, that war claimed approximately 7,000 more Russian lives until the country started troop withdrawal in late 1988.
The U.S. president clearly chose the timeframe for troop withdrawal, July 2011, with a view to the November 2012 presidential election, because election campaigns begin in the United States earlier than a year before the election. This may mean that Obama has started preparing for his second term in the White House. He may get his wish, but only if he wins the Afghan war.
His administration has taken other steps toward this goal. For example, Washington has proposed to its European allies the idea of establishing the post of an "international adviser" on Afghanistan to President Karzai. But Europeans are wary of the idea, saying that such a "vice-regent" would completely destroy Karzai's shaky reputation.
Besides, $1.6 billion has been earmarked in the military budget for the 2009/2010 fiscal year, which began in October, for payments to the Taliban who agree to take the side of the "legitimate government."
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, has said about Obama's decision to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan: "Development aid directed to Afghanistan's communities, through the UN, could stabilize Afghanistan far more effectively at one-fifth to one-tenth the cost of the coming $100 billion or so per year that will be spent on this military debacle."
Indeed, promising security to one of the poorest countries on Earth that is "in urgent need of the basics for survival" is totally absurd, and has made Afghanistan Obama's war.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
