US exit strategy in Afghanistan takes shape

The next – and likely final – phase of the war in Afghanistan seems to be taking shape. The Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid optimistically calls it “fight and talk,” while India’s Brahma Chellaney pessimistically sees it as “surge, bribe, and run.” Both seem accurate, depending on your point of view.

The US media is reporting extensively on the upcoming US assault on Taliban in Helmand. The Asian press, by contrast, is focusing much more attention on Karzai’s outreach efforts to the Taliban, and the widening rift between Karzai and the Obama administration. Putting these pieces together allows us to make some predictions on the US’s exit strategy in Afghanistan: everyone gets something and no one gets everything.

• The US gets to claim that the surge has weakened the “bad” Taliban.
• The Karzai government gets to claim that it ended the war by negotiating with the “good” Taliban.
• The Taliban gets to say that it stood up to the US for 8 years and prevailed.

While this is clearly simplistic, I think this is how the narrative is likely to evolve. There are good and bad points to this “plan.”

Ending the war is clearly good. The US is never going to commit to the level of troops and resources required to defeat the Taliban. According to counter-insurgency experts, the US and its allies would need at least 500,000 troops to eliminate the Taliban, and I have seen no evidence that the US or anyone else is prepared for this level of commitment.

The bad – or should I say sad – point is that the exit strategy looks like theater: the US beats up the “bad” Taliban while the Afghan government negotiates with the “good” Taliban.” The whole effort seems like a largely a face-saving exercise for all parties. If the US government considered the Taliban an existential threat to US national security, it would not be considering an exit strategy that requires separating “good” from “bad” Taliban.

The war in Afghanistan has cost close to $750 billion and almost 40% of that expenditure was in the last year alone. It is sad that the end result of all of this is likely to be a negotiated settlement with the Taliban that the Obama administration might have been able to reach before spending all this money.