US on Pace to Win War on Taliban

This article first appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser on June 21, 2009


Despite the grim news out of Pakistan, I assert that the United States and its allies are winning the War against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The American people support the war, which means we’re winning on the home front. Washington, under Obama, Gates and Patraeus, is finally employing a winning strategy on the war front, and the Taliban’s brutality is costing them the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people.

Americans support the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we know we cannot afford to lose. If we depart from Afghanistan or abandon Pakistan, the Taliban will reconstitute itself. That will give Al Qaeda a safe haven from which to attack us, which is exactly where we started on September 11, 2001. The political establishment in Washington also benefits from the war. Obama's uses his commitment to Afghanistan to bolster his hawk credentials in the face of the Right’s opposition to his Iraq withdrawal; the Republicans support the war because they started it. We also have NATO allies and a UN mandate because the world sees our invasion of Afghanistan as defensive. There is no one out there capable or willing to hurt us the way we hurt the Russians, so we will not take the casualties necessary to turn the American people against the war. There is no domestic political pressure to end the war in Afghanistan or abandon Pakistan. We are winning on the home front.

The new winning strategy we are employing involves looking at the war in Afghanistan as a regional issue rather than just a counter-terrorism issue. This shift began to occur with Gates’ and Patraeus’ arrival and it was cemented as US foreign policy when Candidate Obama said that to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan we had to defeat them in Pakistan. The Taliban's existence is a consequence of tensions between India and Pakistan. These tensions began when Pakistan split from India in 1946 after both gained independence from Britain. Since then, Pakistan and India have fought three major wars, all of which Pakistan lost. These defeats convinced elements in the Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) that Pakistan needed a new strategy. They decided to encourage the creation of terrorist groups to bog down Indian troops in the disputed border regions, especially Kashmir. The ISI and the military then supported the Taliban in its bid to take over Afghanistan in the 1990s so as to create "Strategic Depth." This meant they planned to retreat into the arms of Islamist allies in Afghanistan if the Indians took over Pakistan.

The Pakistani army is proving in the Swat Valley that they can defeat the Taliban, but they need more troops to keep the peace. The recognition in Washington of Pakistan's security concerns vis-à-vis India allows us to address this problem directly. Instead of bombing the Taliban in Pakistan ourselves, our policy makers now look at how to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan so Pakistan can move troops from the Indian border to the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and deal with the Taliban themselves. Coupled with the 21,000 more troops Obama pledged to Afghanistan and Patraeus (of Surge fame in Iraq) at the helm at CENTCOM, we are winning on the war front.

The Taliban have committed a series of public relations mistakes which is costing them the battle for the hearts and minds of the Pakistanis. First, they assassinated Benazir Bhutto, an extremely popular former Prime Minister. The Pakistanis reacted by voting in her Pakistani Peoples' Party and its anti-Radical platform. Then they broke a peace deal with the Pakistani government in the Swat valley in the NWFP by invading the neighboring province of Buner. This prompted the people to support a swift military retaliation, which they had previously opposed for fear of civilian casualties. The recent bombing of a mosque in the NWFP has turned the tribesmen in the area against the Taliban. Most critically, the Taliban circulated a video of their whipping of a young girl, who is begging for mercy. All these events exposed the Taliban as brutal warmongers, as opposed to righteous Jihadists, in the eyes of the Pakistanis. Despite the Pakistanis history of despotism, Islamic extremism and military coups, the Pakistani people still believe in Democracy, freedom, liberalism and the rule of law. We saw this when the lawyers of Pakistan rioted against Musharraf’s attempt to stack the Supreme Court with cronies. And we saw this when the Pakistanis voted Islamic Extremist parties out of office in the NWFP in 2008.

We are winning the war on the home front, we are implementing the right strategy and the Taliban are losing the hearts and minds of the Pakistanis and the Afghanis. But we have not won the war yet. To finish off the Taliban we must continue to support the tribesmen in NWFP who want throw off the Taliban’s oppression with intelligence, guns and money. We must continue to press India and Pakistan on resolving their disputes in order to free the Pakistani army from defending the Indian border. And most urgently, we must continue to give aid to the Pakistanis displaced by the army assault on the Swat valley (we have already pledged $1.6 billion). We are on the right track, we just need to hold the course

Sam King