Strategic Panorama 2009 - 2010 - IEEE

The AF PAK scenario
The new US Administration has made Afghanistan its chief foreignpolicy
priority and one of its main concerns. This «necessary war» is furthermore
the major foreign-policy risk that the Democrats must address
and has all the ingredients for poisoning Obama’s presidency throughout
this first term in office and, accordingly, for making his entire political and
personal project and even his possible re-election conditional upon its
outcome. The spectre of Vietnam and the failure of the political agenda
of the Democrat Johnson owing to an endless war in a faraway land will
continue to hover menacingly over this incoming administration and over
public debate in the US for the next few years.
In addition to Secretary of State Clinton, another heavyweight of the
foreign policy establishment, Holbrooke, as special envoy for Afghanistan
and Pakistan, is in charge of directing and coordinating political efforts in
the region and of addressing them in conjunction with the other countries
involved.
The aim is not only to use the most appropriate tactics in this irregular
war and to coordinate the diplomatic/political and military effort more
effectively. It also extends to addressing the deeper causes and political
and diplomatic conflicts which ravage the region and prevent the countries
in the region from doing their utmost to stem a danger that also affects
them but to which they have so far reacted in a manner that is not always
consistent and positive.
2011 will be year zero for the international coalition in which the stability
not just of Afghanistan but of the entire region could be at stake, as
well as the credibility of NATO and US leadership itself.
With their brutality and simplicity the Taliban and affiliated groups are
a formidable enemy. As practitioners of a very simple and effective version
of fighting the West, they have made holy war the centrepiece of the
Islamic religion and a focus of attraction for the dissatisfaction and radicalism
of Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia and the whole
world, coupled with an even more primitive Pashtu tribal nationalism. This
combination is an extraordinarily appealing cause that draws recruits and
aspiring martyrs from all over the world, who have espoused this image
of an Islam under attack which must be defended with martyrdom. This
Jihadism, fuelled and disseminated by the internet, has a simply devastating
propagandistic force.
The destabilising potential of the Taliban model as an explosive combination
of holy war and insurgency tactics is huge and more powerful and
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