Finish Off Al Qaeda. Stop Trying to Fix Afghanistan.
By ERIC GREITENS, NYT
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S death a year ago Wednesday, at the hands of a Navy SEAL team, revealed that America has been fighting two wars in Afghanistan. One is against Al Qaeda, and is clearly in America’s national interest; the other war, to fix Afghanistan, is much more questionable. We must take lessons from the way we fight terrorism in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere: Focus more on finishing the fight against Al Qaeda, and less on bringing good government to a failing state.
After 9/11, American special operations and intelligence personnel killed and captured Al Qaeda leaders, eliminated its bases of operation, restricted its financing, and disrupted its ability to launch international attacks. Relentless pressure has kept Al Qaeda’s ability to conduct attacks low.
But in Afghanistan, it’s hard to see whether American efforts are succeeding, and what we should do next. On 9/11 we were not attacked by a country. Yet because many Qaeda fighters were based and sheltered in Afghanistan in 2001, some Americans argued that to make victory permanent we had to not just oust the Taliban government, but also build a democracy, a modern economy and an effective national security apparatus for Afghanistan. It was like arguing that to put out a forest fire, we had to pave the forest.
Today, despite years of investment, the Taliban, associated fighters, criminal families and warlords still resist control from Kabul. President Hamid Karzai has been, at best, an unpredictable ally. Transparency International ranks Afghanistan as more corrupt than any country except Somalia and North Korea. Government security forces still cannot coordinate intelligence and operations across the country without our support.
(More here.)
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S death a year ago Wednesday, at the hands of a Navy SEAL team, revealed that America has been fighting two wars in Afghanistan. One is against Al Qaeda, and is clearly in America’s national interest; the other war, to fix Afghanistan, is much more questionable. We must take lessons from the way we fight terrorism in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere: Focus more on finishing the fight against Al Qaeda, and less on bringing good government to a failing state.
After 9/11, American special operations and intelligence personnel killed and captured Al Qaeda leaders, eliminated its bases of operation, restricted its financing, and disrupted its ability to launch international attacks. Relentless pressure has kept Al Qaeda’s ability to conduct attacks low.
But in Afghanistan, it’s hard to see whether American efforts are succeeding, and what we should do next. On 9/11 we were not attacked by a country. Yet because many Qaeda fighters were based and sheltered in Afghanistan in 2001, some Americans argued that to make victory permanent we had to not just oust the Taliban government, but also build a democracy, a modern economy and an effective national security apparatus for Afghanistan. It was like arguing that to put out a forest fire, we had to pave the forest.
Today, despite years of investment, the Taliban, associated fighters, criminal families and warlords still resist control from Kabul. President Hamid Karzai has been, at best, an unpredictable ally. Transparency International ranks Afghanistan as more corrupt than any country except Somalia and North Korea. Government security forces still cannot coordinate intelligence and operations across the country without our support.
(More here.)
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