The Way Forward in Afghanistan (UAE)

In its first weeks in office, the Obama administration has made two major decisions regarding Afghanistan.

American combat forces have been increased by 50 per cent, and a distinguished ambassador, Richard Holbrooke, has been appointed as presidential representative to what has been designated as the AFPAK region (implying that Afghanistan and Pakistan are being treated as a single geopolitical unit). But the outcome will depend on the strategy with which we will face the inevitable complexities. The central Islamist challenge has moved to the 
mountainous Pashtun tribal area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where sanctuaries on the Pakistan side of the border supply and train the assault on Afghanistan and the allied forces assisting it.

No guerrilla war has ever been won in the face of sanctuaries immune to attack. The administration is therefore right in dealing with it as a single problem. But it is also the case that the sanctuaries exist less by the design of the Pakistan government than by its political and military inability to control the territory along the Afghan border, which has never been under civil administration - even during British rule.

The Obama administration faces dilemmas familiar to several of its predecessors. America cannot withdraw now, but neither can it sustain the strategy that brought us to this point.

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