WASHINGTON - Sunday's well-orchestrated -
if unsuccessful - attacks by Taliban forces on
Kabul and three provincial capitals in eastern
Afghanistan could further shake ebbing public
confidence in the United States and its allies
that their strategy for securing Afghanistan is
working.
Billed as the opening of the
Taliban's spring offensive, the attacks also raise
new questions about the timing and pace of the
planned US withdrawal from the country, as well as
the fate of a longer-term strategic agreement that
is currently being negotiated between Kabul and
Washington.
Just a week before the
attacks, an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed
that public support for the war in Afghanistan had
plunged to an all-time low, with only 30% of
respondents saying that they believed the conflict
was worth fighting, this 11 years after the
Taliban were ousted by the US-led invasion of late
2001. It was the first poll in which a majority of
self-identified
Republicans agreed with
that proposition.
Moreover, 62% of
respondents said they believed that most Afghans
opposed what the US was trying to do there.
Tuesday's announcement by Australian Prime
Minister Julia Gillard that Australia would
accelerate its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan
strikes yet another blow at Washington's hopes of
retaining help from its Western allies through the
end of 2014, the deadline that the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) agreed last year for
the final departure of all NATO combat troops.
Citing improvements - despite Sunday's attacks
- in the security situation in Afghanistan,
Gillard pledged to have sent most of her country's
1,550 troops in Afghanistan home by the end of
2013.
That timetable was similar to the
one adopted in January by President Nicolas
Sarkozy for the withdrawal of almost 4,000 French
troops after four French soldiers were shot and
killed by an Afghan recruit in one of the worst of
a growing number of incidents of what has become
known as "Green on Blue" attacks. Until then,
Paris, along with the rest of NATO, had pledged to
stay through the end of 2014.
Whether
others will also speed up their own withdrawal
plans is likely to be the subject of much corridor
talk later this week when NATO defense ministers
meet in Brussels and again at next month's NATO
summit in Chicago where US President Barack Obama
is expected to press his fellow leaders to commit
as many troops as possible until the end of 2014
and as many advisers and as much money as possible
beyond that date.
Obama himself has
pledged to withdraw some 22,000 of the remaining
90,000 US combat troops in Afghanistan by the end
of September. But how quickly to withdraw the
remaining 68,000 troops between then and the end
of 2014 remains a source of heated debate both
within the administration and between Republicans
and Democrats in congress.
Backed by most
Democratic lawmakers, Vice President Joe Biden and
Obama's National Security Advisor Tom Donilon
reportedly favor a relatively quick pace that
would reduce US troop levels to about 40,000 by
mid-2013. But military commanders, supported by
most Republicans despite the new poll findings,
have pressed for a halt to further withdrawals
after this fall through the "fighting season" in
2013.
The US "will need significant combat
power through the end of 2013," said General John
Allen, the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan,
recently.
Sunday's attacks are certain to
feed this debate, as have other recent debacles,
including the accidental burning by US soldiers of
copies of the Koran outside Bagram air base and
the murderous nighttime rampage of one disturbed
US soldier who killed 16 civilians, including nine
children, near Kandahar.
The attacks,
which most analysts have said bore the hallmarks
of the Taliban's Pakistan-based Haqqani faction,
included three discrete assaults in Kabul, and two
in Jalalabad, one in Gardez, and another in
Pul-e-Alam in the eastern part of the country
where the US has tried to build up its forces over
the last several months.
Altogether, only
39 Taliban fighters - almost all of whom were
eventually killed - took part in the attacks, but,
as noted by officials here, each assault must have
required help from dozens of others who provided
intelligence, weapons and ammunition, logistics,
and other forms of support in order for such a
complex operation to be carried out.
In
Kabul, considered the safest city in the country,
the attacks brought normal life and commerce to a
halt for as much as 18 hours.
While the
Afghan army and police bore the brunt of the
fighting - 11 servicemen were killed - the battle
in Kabul was brought to an end only after several
US helicopter gunships repeatedly strafed
construction sites occupied by the insurgents.
It was the most fighting that has taken
place in the capital since 2001. The US Embassy
and a NATO base there came under attack last
September, but the fighting then was much less
protracted and intense.
While there is
little question that the size and scope of
Sunday's attacks caught Afghan government, US and
NATO officials by complete surprise, demonstrating
what Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office called
"an intelligence failure for us and especially for
NATO", officials and analysts were divided about
their implications for the debate in the US.
Allen and those who oppose a rapid
withdrawal expressed satisfaction with the
response and performance of the Afghan government
forces.
"No one is under-estimating the
seriousness of today's attacks," General John
Allen, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, said in
a statement. "Each attack was meant to send a
message: that legitimate governance and Afghan
sovereignty are in peril. The [Afghan security
forces] response itself is proof enough of that
folly."
Max Boot, a prominent
neo-conservative military analyst, argued in
Commentary's Contentions blog that the attack was
actually a sign of weakness on the part of the
Taliban, noting that "the insurgents had to stage
their attacks from abandoned buildings, which
suggests they do not have too much support in the
capital." But others said the attacks marked a
show of strength on the part of the insurgency and
pointed to the reliance by the Afghan security
forces on US and Western advisers who accompanied
them in the course of the day, as well as the
apparent necessity of engaging US gunships in the
battle, at least toward the end of the fighting.
"While this wasn't the [1968] Tet
offensive [by the Vietcong in Vietnam], if they
can pull off something like this in what is
supposed to be the safest part of Afghanistan -
and attack three other cities at the same time -
it's not very encouraging," one administration
official told Inter Press Service. "And it isn't
going to help boost public support for the war."
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign
policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.
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