Strategic Panorama 2009 - 2010 - IEEE

Florentino Portero Rodríguez
Obama arrived at the White House after making the commitment to
increase the number of troops deployed and carry out a thorough review
of the strategy to be followed. At the request of the White House, generals
Petraeus and McChrystal reviewed the situation and proposed an alternative
to the current strategy, which had been determined by the limitation
of available resources and the need to stabilise the situation in Iraq
first. Although well known, General McChrystal’s acknowledgement that
the Taliban were present throughout nearly the whole of Afghan territory
and could win back power nevertheless had a major impact on both the
members of the Atlantic Alliance and Islam as a whole. The leaking of the
McChrystal report to The Washington Post did much for the image of the
Taliban forces and for international Jihadism in general. Unlike in the early
years of the Iraq War, the US forces already had an updated counterinsurgency
strategy—devised under the direction of General Petraeus and
implemented successfully in that war. It was now necessary to adapt it
again to new, specific geographical and social situations but maintaining
the basis concepts. In McChrystal’s view the key to victory lay in isolating
the Taliban insurgency by winning the civilian population over to our side.
This was something that could only occur if their security was guaranteed,
releasing them from the blackmail of the Islamist guerrillas; if they could be
convinced that we would stay with them until victory was achieved; and if
they perceived that the new state erected after so many sacrifices would
be useful to their wellbeing by building roads, making education widely
available and improving healthcare, among other things. A strategy based
exclusively on military considerations was insufficient, but a forceful military
action to contain and restrict the area of action of the insurgency was
essential. The time had come to increase the military contingent, taking
advantage of the reduction in the number of brigades deployed in Iraq,
and to turn around the course of the conflict.
Whereas the question of what strategy to follow in the Iraqi theatre had
triggered a major debate among military themselves, the success of the
Surge implemented by Petraeus had secured a broad consensus on the
essentials of the counterinsurgency strategy to be followed in Afghanistan.
However, from the outset the new strategy did not go down at all well, particularly
with the congressmen closest to the president, who feared that
their voters would neither understand nor share the new goals. Obama’s
defence of the Afghan campaign during the election period had been interpreted
by many as an argument used to delegitimize the intervention in
Iraq but not as a commitment to do in Afghanistan what had been done in
Iraq. What generals Petraeus and McChrystal were proposing was a cam-
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