Short Shrift for the Long War

Abstract

BARACK OBAMA'S PRESENT TENSEToward end of President Barack Obama's first year in office it had become a commonplace of commentary in Europe and North America that NATO's nation-building mission in Afghanistan had entered a critical phase. Indeed, informed observers on mission agreed that almost nothing in 2009 was going particularly well. They disagreed, to pick two most divergent nodes of opinion, over whether president should radically increase number of American combat troops dedicated to mission or set a timetable for graduated withdrawal and concede that United States and its NATO allies had no hope of prevailing against an insurgency operating from mountains in east and south ofthe country and increasingly capable of contesting territory assumed hitherto to be under control. On face of it, it seems absurd that NATO could lose a war with mujahid fighters spawned by madrasahs along Afghan- Pakistan frontier, purporting to bring Islamic rule to Afghanistan's people yet contemptuous of a millennium of Muslim spiritual and intellectual achievement. This was nonetheless a valid concern on day Obama was sworn into office, and policy choice before him ever since has been either to salvage mission or to fashion a plan for dignified withdrawal.There is nothing fair about burdens that newly elected leaders inherit from their predecessors. The Afghan circumstance of January 2009 was not of Obama's making, yet he more than anyone will bear responsibility for its rectification. As a candidate for presidency in August 2007 Obama actually embraced that challenge, deriding Bush administration's invasion of Iraq in March 2003 as a rash misadventure in contrast to the war that has to be won on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.1 The inclusion of Pakistan testified to an awareness of Afghanistan's regional and strategic significance and simultaneously ratcheted up expectation that Obama would, if elected, attempt a decisive turnaround. Since assuming office he has discovered how difficult such an attempt will be. His predecessor bears a large portion of responsibility for state of affairs, whether or not one agrees that commitment to Iraq was directly responsible for neglect of Afghanistan. A review of mission's origin, however, reveals that this is somewhat beside point. From outset, Afghan mission has enjoyed an political legitimacy that should have ensured robust support not only from United States but more importantly from what we now strain to call international community. This support has gone missing. This article will argue that Afghan mission has been victim of a failure of multilateralism, specifically inability of NATO alliance to evolve beyond strategic debates of early post-Cold War into a community of democratic states prepared to defend democratic way of life on its violent periphery.NATO FROM KOSOVO TO KABULThe opening phase of Afghan mission, operation Enduring Freedom, was immediate response to terrorist attacks in Washington, DC and lower Manhattan on n September 2001 carried out by al Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden, to whom Taliban regime in Afghanistan had afforded territorial sanctuary. Those attacks prompted NATO to invoke article V of North Atlantic Treaty for first time in alliance's history and United Nations security council to adopt resolution 1368, recognizing the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in accordance with article 51 of UN charter. Not only were there no legal controversies surrounding American-led action that followed, but it enjoyed blessing of multinational organizations most pertinent to it and met exacting standards of a just war.2 Enduring Freedom was initially a proxy war to topple Taliban regime, combining application of air power with deployment of both limited conventional and special operations forces by United States and United Kingdom, in support of Northern Alliance and anti-Taliban tribal forces. …