Washington: President Barack Obama has moved quickly to shift the US military’s focus to the Afghan war instead of Iraq, but the success of his new strategy could hinge on events beyond his control in volatile Pakistan.
In his first 100 days in office, Obama has announced plans to withdraw most US combat troops from Iraq before 2011 while ordering an escalation of the US commitment in Afghanistan, approving the deployment of 21,000 reinforcements.
His new strategy for the Afghan war places Pakistan at the center of efforts to turn the tide against emboldened Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants, whose advances on both sides of the Afghan border have raised global alarm.
Citing the spreading threat of Taliban militancy, Obama has called the region “the most dangerous place in the world.”
Pakistan already looked fragile before Obama took office but a ceasefire deal with the Taliban in the Swat Valley took Washington by surprise and raised grave questions about the strength of Islamic militancy in the nuclear-armed state.
Through diplomacy and offers of generous military and economic aid, Obama hopes to push Pakistan to confront Taliban hardliners who are challenging both the Kabul government and Islamabad’s authority.
But Obama’s top advisers acknowledge Washington holds only limited leverage over Pakistan, which has yet to carry out a decisive crackdown on the militants despite repeated pleas from US officials.
“Even if we get everything right in Afghanistan — if we have a corruption-free government, if we get counter-insurgency just right — we will not succeed if we do not fix Pakistan,” Obama’s special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, said earlier this month.
Pakistan’s military and political leaders have proved reluctant to shift their focus away from the country’s arch-foe, India, while the powerful intelligence service has been widely accused of collaborating with the Taliban.
Although sending US ground forces over the Afghan border has been ruled out, Obama has kept up air strikes against Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan using unmanned Predator drones.
Intelligence officials say the bombing campaign has damaged Al-Qaeda, but it has sparked public outrage in Pakistan and become a source of tension between the two countries.
In justifying his “Af-Pak” strategy, Obama made no mention of forging democracy and said he was targeting the threat posed by Al-Qaeda.
But the blueprint requires costly nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and counter-insurgency warfare on a large scale, over an indefinite time period.
The gap between how the strategy has been sold to the public and what it will entail could cause Obama problems later on among American voters as well as US allies, said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
“That confusion is likely to make a costly commitment to the region harder to justify and sustain over the long run,” Markey recently wrote.
A vocal opponent of the war in Iraq who was criticized for being slow to recognize the success of the US military “surge” in Iraq, Obama has adopted a plan for Afghanistan that draws heavily on lessons learned from fighting Iraqi insurgents.
The strategy envisages clearing insurgents in the south from main roads and villages, ferrying in aid, wooing moderate “foot soldiers” among the Taliban and training Afghan security forces who will one day take over from the Americans.
A recent rise in sectarian violence in Iraq also poses a threat to Obama’s Afghan mission.
His strategy assumes that forces can be drawn down in Iraq to free up manpower for the Afghan front. If gains in Iraq begin to unravel, however, Baghdad might ask Washington for help, and Obama would be faced with a difficult dilemma.
As he weighed reducing American forces in Iraq, the president heeded the advice of his defense secretary and top military officers, deciding to back off his initial plans for an earlier exit to give commanders more flexibility.
Obama was credited with taking a similarly pragmatic approach on deliberations over Afghanistan.
He reportedly struck a middle ground between commanders urging more boots on the ground and his vice president, Joseph Biden, who cautioned against committing too many troops to a possible quagmire.
By the fall, there will be about 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan. At that point, Obama will have to decide whether to send another 10,000 as requested by the US commander there, General David McKiernan.
The general has said a large US force will be needed for at least another four years to allow time to train Afghan security forces.
