Strategic Panorama 2009 - 2010 - IEEE

The AF PAK scenario
and end up becoming an arbitrary deadline more than a realistic and reasonable
commitment.
The aim is to do at once two things that are hardly compatible: significantly
increase foreign military forces and encourage the Kabul authorities
and Afghan security forces to take on their responsibility in a war which,
after all, is theirs.
The old Afghan saying that «you may have the watches but we have
the time» could unfortunately prove true. To expect too much in such a
short space of time could be the definitive error in this terrible land which
is experiencing a different historical moment and in which life and death
do not have the same worth as in the West. The huge amount of resources
employed, the narrowness of the timeframe established and the impatience
of governments and public opinions, beginning with those of the US,
could become a simply deadly combination that causes terminal weariness
in the US and the rest of the coalition.
Even so, the success of this counterinsurgency effort will largely
depend on the result of the overall regional strategy set in motion. This
strategy springs from the recognition that we are dealing with a scenario
that has two sides, with their differences—the Afghan side and the
Pakistani side, and both need to be dealt with in order to deprive the insurgency
and Jihadist terrorists of their main bases in the tribal territories at
the border and at the same time defend Pakistan from the attacks of the
Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda. Although improving the security situation
in Afghanistan and stemming the advance of the insurgency does not
depend solely on what happens in the FATA in Pakistan, hindering or destroying
their operations at border areas or those of their allies based there
would amount to eliminating a considerable tactical advantage which has
enabled the Afghan Taliban first to survive following their expulsion from
Kabul in 2002 and subsequently to regroup and reorganise themselves,
with the invaluable collaboration of their Pakistani contacts in a tolerated
exercise in duplicity which has proved devastating in the long run.
In Afghanistan we should not forget that we are up against a shrewd
and tenacious enemy who is capable of holding out and resisting. But
complacency can be as perilous as self-deceit or lack of rigour. The Kabul
government and Karzai himself will survive if they are capable of changing
and taking note of the huge effort the international community is preparing
to make. They cannot survive without it and although there are currently
no alternatives to the discredited president and his coalition partners, nor
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