War in Afghanistan Could Be More of a Quagmire Than Iraq

The United States will possibly add more troops to the war effort in Afghanistan soon. It seemed as though the Taliban had been crushed and sent home with its tail between its legs in 2001. However, it has become apparent that the Taliban has regrouped, and this time they are stronger and far more fiercely dedicated to the fight. This regrouping is believed to have taken place in neighboring Pakistan and the Pakistani bases are believed to have been the Taliban’s launching point into Afghanistan. Slowly but surely, and with some local resistance, the Taliban has swept across Afghanistan to now control a large portion of the country. Along the way they have picked up some valuable tribal allies. Important talks in Afghanistan have begun with U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke having been sent in for the discussions. The focus of the discussions will be to determine what level of increased involvement for the U.S. is necessary to establish security in Afghanistan. It is believed that the U.S. will add more troops to the effort in Afghanistan but exactly how many is still undetermined. With the fighting in Afghanistan intensifying it is believed that more troops are necessary in order to establish security for the Afghan presidential elections on August 20. However, will more troops truly solve the problem in Afghanistan, or merely create another quagmire such as the one in Iraq? We have seen that heavily splintered nation-states are extremely difficult to bring together through the example in Iraq. When a battle between peoples has been raging for thousands of years, it is difficult to believe that those from the outside could step in and solve the problem in a far shorter period of time. If we have learned anything from the Iraq war it is that throwing more troops into the fray is, if anything, only a quick fix. There comes a point in which one must concede that some battles are unwinnable, some problems unsolvable. The Middle East is the perfect example of such a problem. The wars and fighting that takes place in this area of the world are not merely over land or resources, but religious doctrines and beliefs. It is difficult to believe that sending our troops into the area will do much to help such a deep seeded and long lasting struggle. How can you bring together a country which has never really been unified before? Unification is something that must happen from within a country, through the means of that country’s people. Not from the efforts of an outside force. Such a unification as this will be weak and brief. If the United States is to assist in unifying the country, however, it will need to be able to trust its connections within the country. This is something that the United States has not been able to do.

Take for example the missing weapons in Afghanistan. The United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars on obtaining and shipping around 242, 000 weapons to help equip the Afghan National Security Forces. However, 87, 000 of those weapons are now missing and unaccounted for within Afghanistan. The missing weapons are blamed on mistakes made throughout the supply chain. Still, it is easy to believe that some, if not most, of those mistakes were intentional. This puts the U.S. in the position of possibly battling weapons that were paid for by the U.S. and shipped over by the U.S., a scenario which should never occur.

"What if we had to tell families [of U.S. soldiers] not only why we are in Afghanistan but why their son or daughter died at the hands of an insurgent using a weapon purchased by the United States taxpayers? But that's what we risk if we were to have tens of thousands of weapons we provided washing around Afghanistan, off the books," Rep. John Tierney, D-Massachusetts

Even many of the experts are not sold on America’s ability to succeed in Afghanistan. Without the ability to trust the connections within the country how can any headway in the battle for unification be expected to take place? After all the foundation of any unified state is trust. Not only are the difficulty of unification of Afghanistan and the inability for U.S. forces to fully trust its contacts within Afghanistan serious impediments to success on the Afghan front, but also the history of Afghanistan with invaders and the layout of the country itself seem to be working against the United States.

Afghanistan has garnered the nickname “graveyard of empires” because it has crushed forces from many nations much stronger than itself. Afghanistan has never truly been a modernized, unified country. It has always operated as a tribal society. The Taliban forces that America is fighting are located in mostly rural areas and are well funded. Much of the Taliban forces are located in village areas that are scattered throughout a large area. This tribal, rural area operates under practically free reign due to the fact that there is a distinct separation between the rural areas and the cities. These rural areas are dominated by drug lords, most of which are involved in the drug trade and backing the Taliban. Therefore, the Taliban is currently in possession of the dominant location of the countryside, operating with practically free reign in this area of countryside, and being backed by drug money which runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars brought in annually. Such a combination is most certainly a recipe for failure, not success, in Afghanistan. Yet it seems as though President Obama is going to send a large number of more troops into the country to try and fix the deteriorating situation. The new administration was supposed to have a different and more effective strategy than the previous one? It seems as though the new administration is merely continuing the same tried and failed techniques as the last. Has nothing been learned from the conflict in Iraq? A full and unapologetic change is needed in the strategy for America’s Middle East involvement. Yet it seems little change is on the way from a President that ran on the platform of change.