Analysis

Can NATO win?

What the world is saying

Last Updated: Friday, August 14, 2009 | 4:52 PM ET

Daniel Lak, special to CBC News

Just what is going on in Afghanistan?

U.S. President Barack Obama must be asking himself that as he contemplates the soaring casualties among coalition troops, the expanding Taliban influence and the conflicting advice from allies and advisers on what needs to be done.

Canada's military and development strategists probably have similar questions as the February 2011 deadline approaches to withdraw this country's fighting forces from Taliban-infested Kandahar.

Since coming to office in January, Obama has put Afghanistan centre stage, ordering 21,000 extra U.S. soldiers and Marines there and naming new generals and diplomats. NATO allies were told to emulate Canada's example and let their troops fight more aggressively against insurgents and al-Qaeda.

Yet first assessments of the new strategy haven't been encouraging.

Obama's own military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, told the Wall Street Journal in August that the Taliban were gaining the upper hand.

"It's a very aggressive enemy right now," he said, "We've got to stop their momentum, stop their initiative. It's hard work."

A General's warning

McChrystal later denied he said the Taliban were winning, but the reason for his concern is clear: insurgents now dominate at least a third of the country's districts, and their bombs are killing more coalition soldiers than ever before — 72 in the month of July alone.

U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan, has commissioned a report, due in September, on steps to turn the war around. (Associated Press)

One of the general's advisers, the respected security analyst, Anthony Cordesman, says the U.S. is running out of time if it wants to stop Afghanistan from sliding into further anarchy.

Up to 45,000 more soldiers might be needed, he wrote recently in a report for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Along with countering the insurgency, Cordesman says the U.S. and its allies need to tackle drug trafficking, government corruption and endemic poverty if they are going to make a difference.

It's not going to be easy.

"NATO nations will need to be more honest with their peoples," Cordesman says. They will have to "explain the risks and reasons for fighting in more depth and show why they should have strategic patience and make a long-term commitment."

Surge 'too late?'

The Pakistan journalist and author, Ahmed Rashid, agrees. He's been covering Afghanistan for three decades, and thinks the country has reached a crucial turning point.

"We're on the right track right now," he told CBCNews.ca from his home in Lahore, "the surge in troops, improving governance, fighting drug mafias and taking a regional approach. But it may be too late.

"Let's not forget that it's year eight for this war and we've only just begun to emphasize counter-insurgency."

Rashid's point — that it's year eight for this war — has not gone unnoticed. Public opinion has noticeably soured on the war effort in many countries, Canada included, according to a recent Ekos Research poll.

As well, influential voices right around the world are already asking if there's any real point to an international military presence in Afghanistan.

Former British diplomat Rory Stewart, who has lived in Kabul and walked across Afghanistan for his book, The Places In Between, argues that Western governments just don't get it.

Afghanistan, he says, is not a democracy waiting to happen, or a place that takes easily to foreign influence.

"It is impossible for Britain or its allies to build an Afghan state," Stewart says, "They have no clear picture of this promised 'state' and such a thing could only come from an Afghan national movement, not as a gift from foreigners."

Visions of Vietnam

In the U.S., Boston University historian, Andrew Bacevich, a former military commander, goes even further.

He argues that American national security is actually harmed by the country's expanding military presence in Afghanistan.

In Washington, Bacevich says, it is simply assumed that Afghanistan is important, "much the way that 50 years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam.

A Canadian soldier, part of a so-called stabilization team, accompanies an Afghan National Police officer on a search for weapons near Kandahar City. (Canadian Press)

"Now, as then, that doesn't stand up to scrutiny."

Like Stewart, Bacevich urges policy makers to draw down military forces and ramp up development spending and diplomatic support to counter cross-border influence from Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia.

For now, though, that's not a viable option as far as Washington is concerned and it is making sure its NATO partners, Canada among them, hear that message.

What should Canada do?

Cordesman, in fact, may be one of the message carriers.

His warning, in a recent interview with the Canadian Press, that Canada's planned departure a little over a year from now could hurt the entire NATO mission, is quite possibly an indirect plea from the Obama administration for Canada to stay in Kandahar for the foreseeable future.

But this country's Afghan plans, whether military or development, might just depend as much on domestic politics as anything else, according to University of Toronto professor Wesley Wark.

"That withdrawal date [in 2011] was not chosen with Afghan security in mind."

"It'd be hard for a minority government to change that date," Wark says. "Perhaps this government is hoping it becomes a majority before then, which would make a parliamentary decision on changing the Afghan mission more likely.

University of Calgary political scientist Barry Cooper contends that Ottawa has yet to decide what to do about Afghanistan, for a variety of reasons.

"The best reason to be there is because our best friend, the United States, needs us. So do the Afghans," Cooper says, "We're a long way from a firm decision on this."

Back in Afghanistan, Canadian journalist Kathy Gannon feels there's a growing sense among Afghans that Western countries are more concerned with their local realities than the state of this beleaguered nation.

Speaking to the CBC from Kandahar, Gannon said life has grown much worse for ordinary Afghans in recent years, despite international military and development aid.

"People are losing hope in the future," she said. "Progress, if any, is slow, incremental.

"People who never became refugees before, during the Russian occupation, the civil war, the Taliban, now they want to go. That's bad."

Still, it's clear — at least at this particular junction — that President Obama, along with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other NATO leaders, is committed to a strategy that emphasizes counter-insurgency, through the (mostly U.S.) troop build-up and renewed efforts to entrench progress in education and infrastructure work.

What is unclear is whether that level of commitment can endure many more years.