WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama’s decision to send more US troops to Afghanistan may not be enough to halt the momentum of a violent insurgency that dominates large swathes of the impoverished country, experts said yesterday.
Obama approved the deployment of 17,000 troops for the coming months even as his administration scrambles to craft a new strategy to tackle a rejuvenated insurgency led by Taleban and Al-Qaeda.
The new US president has signaled his approach will be less ambitious than his predecessor’s, relying on diplomacy and economic aid as well as military might.
But he has inherited a grim landscape in which a stretched NATO force and a weak Kabul government have been unable to keep pace with an emboldened insurgency financed in part by a vast opium trade.
The outlook in Afghanistan is dismal partly because President George W. Bush “allowed a bad situation to get worse” by diverting resources to a controversial war in Iraq, allowing the Taleban to rebound after its ouster in 2001, said Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress. “And that is the key issue: Has it gotten so far down hill that you can’t get it?” Korb said.
The extra troops, a Marine Expeditionary Brigade and an Army Stryker Brigade, are expected to step up patrols in the volatile south and bolster security along main roads, which have become an easy target for the Taleban.
By safeguarding main roadways, US officials hope the reinforcements will allow a resumption in civilian traffic and open the way for more rural development projects that have been crippled by roadside bombs.
“The idea is that with those extra troops you can provide security and send a signal to the Afghan people that they don’t have to fear the Taleban because we have enough troops to clear an area and leave some behind to protect the people,” Korb said.
But more troops may still be needed to shore up security, and a larger foreign force in turn runs the risk of alienating the Afghan population.
Although Afghans initially embraced the US-led troops that toppled the Taleban regime, that support has declined, a recent poll showed, with civilian casualties from airstrikes sowing increasing resentment.
The Kabul government and its police force, meanwhile, are riddled with corruption, a Defense Department report said earlier this month. And US military officers describe a vacuum of authority in the provinces amid a thriving opium trade.
Obama has made clear that US goals in Afghanistan will be more narrowly focused on defusing the terrorist threat posed by Al-Qaeda and its Taleban allies, while downplaying a bid to transform the country.
