Is Obama front loading a withdrawal from Afghanistan?

Analysis: Barack Obama's moment of truth in Afghanistan

The thunderous rumble of American armoured personnel carriers storming the Taliban's Helmand citadel, and the whir of its largest helicopter deployment since the Vietnam war - these are the backing tracks as President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy arrives at its moment of truth.

By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor. Telegraph
Published: 9:59AM BST 03 Jul 2009

Operation Khanjar or "sword strike" was launched in the early hours of yesterday morning with two immediate aims: to break the militants' grip over "Taliban central" so free presidential elections can be held, and to clear enough space to introduce the benefits of the good governance Afghans have not known for 30 years, if ever.
Brigadier-General Larry Nicholson flagged off more than 4,000 US marines with a Churchillian statement of intent. "Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," he said.

That's the plan in a nutshell. The marines go in, Terry Taliban retreats to his mountain lair, the good governance folk come in, the people vote, and suddenly life is better: civilian police, improved schools and clinics. Finally, the more rational militants see they cannot win.

From this new reality, a negotiation is possible. There may be some unreconcilables, but it will be manageable. So the theory goes, and most hope and pray it's one which holds true, because this is President Obama's much-vaunted "surge" and there does not appear to be a plan B.

The omens look better than they have some time. The Americans have withdrawn from Iraq's cities, which means Afghanistan will have its full focus in a way it hasn't had since the initial invasion in 2001. Pakistan appears to have finally realised the Taliban and al-Qaeda threaten its existence as a state and no longer feels so passionately that it's "America's war." More importantly, Pakistan's armed forces appear to have reached the same conclusion after a series of bloody attacks on its major cities. Yesterday, it moved its forces up to the Afghan border to capture Taliban militants fleeing the American advance. Finally there appears to be evidence of the joined up thinking President Obama's new "Af-Pak" policy promised.

But both Western critics and those who oppose America's presence and influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan say it's the wishful thinking of a man looking for a way out. "It's front-loaded withdrawal," as one retired Pakistani general described it last night.

There are two major weaknesses: The Karzai government is riddled with corruption which has alienated many Afghans from both his administration and his NATO allies.
Official figures show that despite hundreds of millions of pounds in foreign aid for raising and training Afghanistan's national police, there are many areas which still have no functioning police force at all. The Western benchmarks of good governance – access to decent education and services - are in many parts of Afghanistan hard to make out from the rubble.

One diplomat in Kabul last night said he believed the new strategy has a year or two to deliver before Afghans decisively turn against them, but a former head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, General Hamid Gul, said he believes Obama's surge will have foundered by October.

The Taliban will fight a two-pronged strategy, he said: retreat to the hills where America's air power will not be so effective, while the remainder will disappear and wage a guerilla resistance campaign.

He believes the Taliban will learn more about American weaknesses from this new battle, as he says they did in Operation Anaconda in 2002. Then, several thousand American special forces with air support failed to deliver the knock-out blow they had expected.

The truth behind operation Operation Khanjar is that the Taliban has fought the western allies to a stale-mate in Helmand, and now the only hope lies in a devastating display of overwhelming force, the rapid delivery of good services, and the remotely possibility that it will be enough to impress senior Taliban commanders.

"In other words," as one leading Afghanistan expert said last night, "the US has to show its ability to inflict some serious damage on the Taliban before any real political talks with the Taliban, to reach agreement with at least some significant factions, so maybe it ends up as scoring a few points before the last round when the ref will decide." That appears to be the best victory in prospect