Afghan-Pakistan Threat Worse for Next US President
Author(s): David Morgan
Original Post: Afghan-Pakistan Threat Worse for Next US President
Type: News Article
Date: 10/28/2008
WASHINGTON: The next United States president stands to inherit a potentially more dangerous challenge in Afghanistan and Pakistan than the situation that led to the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The situation is so serious that analysts say the incoming administration will need to move quickly on a broad new initiative to address the Pashtun region, which both countries share, with a mix of military pressure and economic aid.
“It will be extremely important to have an effective new strategy right out of the box. They cannot wait for a lengthy transition,” said J Alexander Thier of the US Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded Washington thinktank.
The two US presidential nominees, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, have pledged to make Afghanistan a top priority if elected to the White House on November 4.
Whoever enters the Oval Office will have to find more than 10,000 additional troops requested by commanders in Afghanistan even as military officials say more units will become available only if Washington cuts forces in Iraq or breaks its rules on how long troops should spend at home between deployments.
The next president will also face the prospect of a wavering commitment to Afghanistan by some NATO allies. “There is concern that some of our allies and partners may be looking for an exit,” Defence Secretary Robert Gates said recently.
The region is far more complex than in January 2001, when President George W Bush first entered office and Afghanistan’s Taliban regime was giving haven to Al Qaeda, which was behind the attacks on New York and Washington eight months later.
“The next president is going to have to understand that this conflict does not exist within the geographical contours of Afghanistan. It exists within the mental contours of the Pashtun nation, which straddles the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,” said Nathaniel Fick, a former US Marine Corps officer who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Existential threat: More disturbing still, analysts say, Pakistan is now facing an existential threat from militants at a time when the nuclear-armed nation and its new civilian government are engulfed in extraordinarily difficult economic problems.
“It is more dangerous now than it was back then,” said Fick, who is now at the Centre for a New American Security.
Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said, “The scorecard is scarcely reassuring. Al Qaeda is stronger and has more influence, a nuclear Pakistan is far less stable (and) Iran has gained in regional influence and poses more of a potential threat than Saddam’s Iraq.”
Others disagree about the threat of Al Qaeda, which cannot operate openly in established camps as it did in 2001, and say the Afghan insurgency is far less sophisticated than the threat US forces faced in Iraq a few years ago.
“Al Qaeda’s senior leadership is on its heels,” said Michael Vickers, assistant secretary of defence for special operations and low-intensity warfare. “The Afghanistan insurgency has gotten significantly more intense over the past two years. I would add: from a very, very low base.”
Topic(s): National Security Governance for the 21st Century
Project(s): Afghanistan: Setting a New Course
Expert(s): Nathaniel C. Fick
