Winning Afghanistan

The British, who have a rather long record of failure in Afghanistan, actually have a chance at being on the winning side there for a change. The Times of London examines how to win in Afghanistan. The answer is in that very trite and overused phrase, winning hearts and minds.

 The British knew that the Taleban were a self-generating ball that would always bounce back, regardless of short-term defeat, unless the majority of Pashtuns in the south rejected the insurgents from within their own communities. To win the counter-insurgency campaign, the British aimed to cleave the Taleban from the local population through hearts and minds, as well as fighting operations.

Yet, as last summer dragged into autumn, the mission’s language was only that of the gun: reconstruction efforts in central Helmand, so crucial to winning over Afghan civilians with the promise of a better life, remained stymied amid heavy fighting.

However, the Taleban suffered a similar failure in their intent. The insurgents’ mistaken efforts last summer to concentrate their forces around Kandahar, the centre of gravity for southern Afghanistan — where in 1994 they had been well received by a population exhausted by civil war — were smashed by Nato attacks. More importantly, this time there was no groundswell uprising of locals in support of the Talebs.

There were a number of reasons for the Talebs’ inability to regenerate a popular jihad. The Pashtuns well remember the Soviet occupation, and most so far remain canny enough to realise that Nato’s presence and behaviour is totally dissimilar. The Soviets were an occupying force that alienated the entire country through their barbaric behaviour. By contrast, Nato was invited into Afghanistan to establish security by a president elected by the Afghan people. Though many of his former supporters are now sick of President Hamid Karzai’s ineffectual and remote leadership, Afghans have yet to lend their backing to the Talebs, whose tenure they recall as much for its feudal inefficiency as its austere disciplinarianism.

NATO forces have a chance to win the war there by using more than just force. This is the same recipe for success that the US commander in Iraq is calling for there, incidentally. The Afghan people are not looking back fondly at the rule of the Taliban. At least not yet.