Babel of voices

Barack Obama with General Stanley McChrystal, the Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, aboard Air Force One in Copenhagen. The military leadership wants 45,000 more troops on the ground in Afghanistan.-AFP

When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went. W.H. Auden.

TRAGEDY is so near. The whistles of the MQ9-Reaper, the drone, are heard on the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the much benighted Durand Line of 1893. In early November, as the Pakistani military went into South Waziristan, a drone bombed a compound in Norak village in North Waziristan, killing four people. In Khyber district in Pakistan, militants destroyed a girls school.

Inside Afghanistan, in Helmand province, during the same hours, an air strike killed nine civilians. This just after an Afghan policeman turned his gun on his British comrades-in-arms, killing five. A few weeks ago, militants attacked a United Nations compound, leaving five U.N. workers dead. As the blood flew from Norak in Tajikistan to Kabul, the U.N. decided to relocate its staff, some within the country, some outside. These are the events that cover President Barack Obamas daily briefing. Nothing good here.

Meanwhile, the discussion continues in another part of the White House. It is plain that the United States commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)-run war in Afghanistan is unflagging. Obama ran for office arguing that the Afghan sector was the good war in the global war on terror. George W. Bush erred by taking the troops to Iraq, the bad war, and thereby decreasing the footprint of U.S. military power in the areas where the Taliban have regrouped, and where Al Qaeda might someday carve out its haven.

None in Obamas team wants to reduce the troop size. The team is huddled together to consider available strategies. The Bush team began the war in October 2001 with a singular aim, to disrupt Al Qaeda, which would include killing its leadership. That the Taliban was removed from Kabul was a collateral reward. Very quickly the Taliban and its various allies regrouped and began to assert themselves. The war aim had to switch, now to the destruction of the Taliban and the creation of a stable Afghanistan ruled by a pro-U.S. government.

The Bush team went from a war of retribution to nation-building. The military never had the chance to produce a strategy worthy of either war aim. It floundered. Bush lost interest. He wanted to move his chess pieces to the other end of the board. Now the Obama team has returned to the game with seriousness of purpose. They want to be sure of their war aim, and to construct a strategy worthy of it.

Such an exercise is not easy. There are too many factions at work inside Washington pushing for their own version of the final result. Some want the U.S. to concentrate only on Al Qaeda, which would mean a police-type action on the borderlands. The U.S. would then make deals with the Taliban moderates on both sides of the Durand Line. It appears that the Pakistani military had to do such a deal with the Haqqanis to get clear access to South Waziristan; the useful warlord is the moderate, the useless one is the extremist.

Others want something firmer, a commitment to the creation of a liberal democracy in Kabul and in Islamabad, and a joint push by both capitals to take on the various toxic extremists who exert themselves with a great sense of entitlement. Between the minimalist (go after Al Qaeda) and the maximalist (build liberal democracies) approaches lies a vast terrain occupied by think tanks and by government (intelligence and policy) officials. It is these people who are trying to get Obamas ear. Sphinx-like he listens, and seems unwilling to do more than nod and wink towards this or that strategy.

Obamas Vice-President has made his views known. Joe Biden would like to see the attention focussed on Al Qaeda, and keep the troop levels low. More drone attacks on Al Qaeda leaders would be in the offing. Biden has also suggested through his advisers that the U.S. should extend its drone attacks into Balochistan, where the Talibans Mullah Omar is said to have taken up residence. It is unlikely that the Pakistani government would allow such a violation of its sovereignty.

The flap over the Kerry-Lugar Bill, which provided an aid package to Pakistan, is evidence of some backbone in Islamabad. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Pakistani media that she could not understand the ruckus. After all, none of the restrictions to be imposed on Pakistan are any different from the ones that Washington imposes on Israel and Egypt, two other states that are well-lubricated with U.S. money.

The military leaders are keener on more boots on the ground. One has to feel for them, given the mixed messages they get from their political overseers. General Stanley McChrystal, who was a commander of a covert unit and who now runs the Afghan operation, produced a report that offered a scathing denunciation of U.S. policy. The main issue McChrystal ends with is the need for more troops, with the extra number at 45,000 taking the total U.S. troop commitment to around 120,000.

The U.S. operations in Helmand function as a test case to see if an addition of troops in a dangerous province can bring down the levels of violence and lead to an opening for development. But it is in Helmand that the Afghan policeman turned on the British, and it is also in Helmand that a rocket attack intended for insurgents killed nine civilians, including three children (on November 5). The Helmand litmus test is not giving the White House the right signals. Equally, the expenses of an expansion are worrisome. The National Priorities Project calculates that the war in Afghanistan will have cost $228.2 billion by the end of this year, with a steep rise between 2006 ($19 billion) and 2009 ($60.2 billion). The graph only travels upwards if the surge is to be executed.

To expend money and lives for an uncertain war aim is bad enough. If the war aim seems unattainable, the matters are worse. The Obama team seems to have indicated that its war aim is a liberal democracy in Kabul. Obamas Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recently pointed out that the White House needed a credible Afghan partner to produce a stable country. The question of electoral fraud dogged the search for such a partner.

Dr Abdullah Abdullah dropped out of the race mid-stride. His emotional press conference was an indicator that he did not want to leave freely. The New York Times reported, Mr. Abdullah has been under intense pressure from Western officials to avoid confrontation and end a two-month dispute over the election results. With Abdullah out of the way, the focus was back on the hastily re-inaugurated Karzai. The media had just reported that Karzais brother Ahmed Wali Karzai not only was on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) payroll, but is a considerable drug lord. Almost half of Afghanistans gross domestic product comes from the opium trade, so this should be no surprise.

Wali Karzai is also an important member of the Kandahar Provincial Development Council. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner very honestly told a clutch of reporters that even though Hamid Karzai is tainted by his brother, and even though Karzai is corrupt, ok... he is our guy, and the West will have to legitimise him. Admiral Mike Mullen, who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the U.S., recognised that Karzais legitimacy is at best, in question right now, and at worst, doesnt exist. All this is not propitious.

Senator John Kerry, who chairs the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has staked a middle ground. No more nation-building, he suggested in early November. The U.S. must work to empower and transfer responsibility to Afghans as rapidly as possible and achieve a sufficient level of stability to ensure that we can leave behind an Afghanistan that is not controlled by Al Qaeda or the Taliban. There is no mention here of annihilating the Taliban, or even of leaving behind a liberal democracy or its trapping. The main goal for Kerry is minimal, to ensure that the Taliban is hemmed in, and for this he wants smart counter-insurgency. No to McChrystals 45,000 troops from this influential Senator.

The confusion is no less in the anti-war movement. In an engaging essay, journalist Sonali Kolhatkar points out that as Obama waffles on how to continue the war in Afghanistan, progressives are waffling on how to end the war.

Drawing from Afghan surveys, Sonali Kolhatkar (co-director of Afghan Womens Mission) argues that the U.S. needs to disarm the warlords, send the war criminals to a U.N.-type court, and draw down U.S. troops. With weapons, warlords and U.S. troops gone, she writes, real democracy could potentially take root and pro-democracy forces could someday operate freely.

As Sonali Kolhatkar made her case, a small voice of history went on tour in the U.S. Malalai Joya, a member of the Afghan Parliament who was expelled for her forthrightness in 2007 (she was only 27 at the time), came to promote her book, A Woman Among the Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared Raise Her Voice.

Malalai Joya put forward a message that echoed Sonali Kolhatkars, telling the U.S. to withdraw its support for the warlords, and to withdraw its forces. You can never make silent this voice, she said, the voice of democracy that struggles to make itself heard in both the White House and in the redoubts of the Taliban.