Robin Wright, dell’Istituto USA per la pace, autrice di "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East. (Sogni ed ombre: il future del Medio Oriente)"; dagli anni 1980 reporter sull’Afghanistan
– Tre le questioni principali in gioco nella valutazione della strategia USA per Afghanistan e Pakistan:
● 1. la posizione internazionale degli USA nel XXI sec.: le relazioni con gli USA delle potenze e dei vari paesi (da Russia a Cina, da Iran a pirati somali) dipenderanno da come funzionano le scelte di Obama.
o In caso di fallimento della maggiore potenza militare del mondo, appoggiata dalla più ampia alleanza militare per sconfiggere i talebani – forza priva di aeronautica, di corpi blindati, di artiglieria a lungo raggio, di spionaggio satellitare e di appoggio da parte di potenze straniere
o emergerebbe molto chiaramente i limiti della potenza americana,
o le conseguenze del suo fallimento farebbero sembrare insignificanti quelle che derivarono dalla sconfitta in Vietnam.
● È di fatto terminata l’era di un mondo unipolare o con una sola grande potenza, ma il fallimento americano in Afgh-Pak. ne sancirebbe formalmente la fine
o come accadde per il mondo bipolare quando l’Urss si ritirò dall’Afghanistan;
o il periodo tra Vietnam ed Afghanistan, con ritiro sotto pressione degli Hezbollah in Libano e i signori della guerra in Somalia, potrebbe venire ad essere considerato il periodo che ha segnato l’eclisse della potenza americana, non solo militare.
● 2. In gioco è anche la posizione USA nel mondo islamico, il risultato dello scontro USA con i vari rami di al-Qaeda e talebani determinerà chi avrà la maggiore influenza sui 1,3 miliardi di islamici.
● 3. In gioco gli interessi USA nella intera regione;
o le scelte di Obama avranno un forte impatto sull’India e sulle relazioni India-Pakistan;
o importanti gli interessi in gioco con l’Iran, confinante con India ed Afghanistan, che è divenuto per l’Iran quello che era l’Irak, un campo di battaglia con gli USA per procura.
o L’Iran sciita, un tempo rivale dell’Afghanistan, ha fornito armi ed esplosivi ai talebani sunniti, come li fornì alle milizie sciite irachene, secondo il principio che il nemico del mio nemico è mio amico, almeno per il momento.
o L’Iran – manipolando e spesso alimentando i problemi derivanti dalle invasioni USA di Afghanistan ed Irak, è divenuta una superpotenza regionale,on cui solo Israele è in grado di competere.
o Se gli USA falliscono in Afghanistan e Irak, rafforzano la posizione dell’Iran, il cui regime reprime sempre più il movimento di opposizione.
– Assunta la posizione di Robert Gates, segretario alla Difesa con Bush, durante l’escalation militare in Irak che con Obama, in vista dell’escalation in Afghanistan, posizione ritenuta “oggettiva”.
● Gates: la situazione della sicurezza in Afghanistan, benché seria, non è neppure paragonabile alla violenza che imperversava in Irak tre anni fa.
● L’Irak dimostra che un intervento energico e dal carattere strategico può modificare il corso degli eventi e rimettere in discussione quanto ritenuto ineluttabile.
– Le similitudini tra le dichiarazioni di Bush in occasione dell’aumento delle truppe per la guerra in Irak nel 2007(+24 000), e quelle attuali di Obama per l’Afghanistan (+30 000):
o Entrambi hanno dovuto dare messaggi diversi, persino contraddittori per ascoltatori diversi.
o l’annuncio dell’aumento dei militari viene dato assieme ad un calendario per il ritiro (entro 18 mesi, per Obama, furono 14 per l’Irak con Bush),
o la minaccia di porre termine alla missione se il governo locale non fa il proprio dovere;
o Bush: l’incremento delle forze non inizierà se l’Irak non dispiegherà un maggior numero di soldati.
o Nell’aprile 2007 molti rappresentanti politici, anche della maggioranza, ritenevano persa la guerra in Irak,
o oggi molti democratici, compresi alcuni nell’Amministrazione, vedono peggiore la situazione in Afghanistan di quanto fosse quella dell’Irak, che definiscono ora un paese unificato, contro un Afghanistan diviso tra numerose tribù, più povero, privo di petrolio, strade, infrastrutture e classe media.
– Con l’Amministrazione Bush la situazione in Irak era valutata diversamente da diversi esperti:
o un paese costruito ad arte dai colonialisti, una non nazione, per la quale non era ritenuto possibile creare una forza armata nazionale; sunniti e sciiti arabi destinati ad essere nemici per sempre, entrambi avversari dei curdi.
o La migliore ipotesi realista era ritenuta la divisione in tre stati semi-indipendenti,
altra ipotesi il ritiro degli USA, e lasciare che la guerra civile facesse il suo gioco.
The real stakes in Afghanistan
By Robin Wright, is a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the author of "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East." A former diplomatic correspondent for The Post, she has reported on Afghanistan since the 1980s.
– Oddly, President Obama’s West Point speech never probed the critical long-term stakes for the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three issues central to the outcome should enter the public debate as his strategy is launched.
– The first is America’s place in the world in the 21st century. Officials from Moscow to Beijing, from Iran’s revolutionaries to Somalia’s pirates, will scrutinize this last-ditch U.S. effort — and weigh their actions, reactions and interactions with the United States on how Obama’s effort fares.
– Failure by the world’s mightiest military power, backed by the largest military alliance, to uproot the Taliban — a force without an air force, armored corps, long-range artillery, satellite intelligence or powerful foreign backer — would vividly illustrate the limits of U.S. power. The consequences could dwarf those of the defeat in Vietnam, even if the loss of life was smaller.
– The era of a unipolar or uni-power world is effectively over, but a U.S. failure in Afghanistan and Pakistan could mark its formal end,
– just as it did for the bipolar world when the Soviet Union[e] withdrew from Afghanistan. Indeed, the period from Vietnam to Afghanistan — with withdrawals under pressure from Hezbollah extremists in Lebanon and warlords in Somalia along the way — could come to be seen as the period marking the demise of American power.
– And not just "gun" power. At its core, American power is also supposed to be about moral power — using might to confront, contain or prevent fascist, totalitarian or unjust regimes from unacceptable aggression, repression or injustice. American power has been abused. Neither party has clean hands. But few other nations have been willing or able to assume that role.
– U.S. standing in the Islamic world is also at stake. The historic rule of thumb is that winners have influence; losers don’t. Winners get to set standards. Their ideas get more attention. Their leaders gain greater authority.
– And the outcome of the U.S. confrontation with various branches of al-Qaeda and the Taliban is pivotal to the future of the Islamic world. Almost a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Muslim world is at a crossroads. Polls show key Muslim societies are increasingly rejecting extremism — even if respondents are still not enamored of the United States. Vast numbers of Muslims now recognize that Bin Ladenism can’t provide answers to everyday challenges such as education, housing, jobs and health care. There’s an air of fatigue about al-Qaeda; it’s becoming somewhat passé. The search is on for something better.
– U.S. strategy in South Asia is now based not only on defeat of the forces behind the Sept. 11 attacks; it’s also designed to help build credible alternatives to extremist ideologies and governance. Winning on this front in Pakistan and Afghanistan is as important — and potentially harder — than the military campaign. The winner is likely to have greater sway among the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. And "winner" means not so much the United States as the principles, such as more accountable government, modern education and economic opportunity from legitimate trades.
– Finally, U.S. interests in the wider region are also at stake, notably on two fronts.
– Obama’s strategy will deeply affect India, the world’s largest democracy. Long-standing tensions between Pakistan and India have taken the world closer to the brink of nuclear war than any conflict has since World War II — and still could, since Pakistan has failed to contain extremists responsible for terrorist atrocities in India, including the Mumbai attacks last year. U.S. failure to help nuclear Pakistan expand or shift its military focus from India to the more immediate threat from its internal extremists risks allowing those tensions to deepen.
– Just as worrisome are the stakes with Iran, which borders both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghanistan has become for Iran what Iraq once was: a surrogate battlefield with the United States.
o Once Afghanistan’s rival, Shiite-dominated Iran has reportedly supplied the same weapons and explosives to Sunni Taliban fighters that it provided Shiite militias in Iraq, on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend — at least for now.
– Iran manipulated (and often fueled) the problems that ensued after the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In the process, it has become a regional superpower rivalled only by Israel.
– U.S. failures in Afghanistan and Pakistan would further strengthen Iran’s position as its increasingly authoritarian government cracks down on a legitimate opposition movement and threatens to expand its nuclear program.
– Many Americans are tired of the war in Afghanistan. We’re alarmed at the cost in human life to all sides, the drain on our national treasury and armed forces — not to mention on the Afghan people — and the length of this conflict. We have doubts that the fast-paced initiative Obama has proposed will work. But as U.S. actions are evaluated over the next 18 months, we should remember that the outcome will determine America’s goals and standing far beyond the South Asian theater for years to come.
In Afghan troop surge, shades of Iraq
– No wonder conservatives are unhappy with the president. Imagine undermining an announced escalation of troops by simultaneously laying out a schedule for them to step back — and suggesting that the mission will end if the government that America is trying to help doesn’t shape up.
– But wait — it wasn’t only President Obama who did those things but also President George W. Bush, in announcing his Iraq surge in January 2007. Those who say that Obama doomed his Afghan strategy with his promise to begin withdrawing in 18 months — and who remember Bush’s strategy as nothing but a clarion call for unambiguous victory — should go back and read the speech.
– No, Bush did not specify a date for beginning to pull out, as did Obama at West Point. And unlike Obama, Bush did talk about "victory."
– But he warned that victory "will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony." More to the point, his announced surge — of 24,000 troops, smaller than Obama’s pledge to Afghanistan — was hedged with benchmarks and conditions.
– "I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended," Bush warned in his televised address from the White House Library. "If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people. . . . America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced."
– Bush declared that U.S. forces would cede primary responsibility for security in every Iraqi province by November — a mere 10 months after his speech. The surge would not even begin, administration officials made clear, until Iraq fulfilled a commitment to deploy more troops to Baghdad.
– Robert Gates, then as now defense secretary, was even more circumscribing when he testified before the House Armed Services Committee a day after Bush’s speech. Asked how long the surge would last, Gates replied, "We’re thinking of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or two years." In the end, as Gates pointed out in testimony last week, the Iraq surge lasted 14 months.
– Like Obama last week, Bush had to deliver different, even contradictory, messages to multiple audiences. He wanted both to assure Iraq’s leaders of U.S. steadfastness and prod them to actions that were politically painful. He sought to reassure U.S. troops of his commitment and warn America’s enemies of his steadfastness. Yet he also had to convince a skeptical domestic audience that the U.S. mission would be limited in scope and duration.
– It’s easy to forget, in fact, how many leaders in Washington had concluded that the Iraq war was, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in April 2007, "lost." Today it’s common to hear Democrats, including members of the Obama administration, talk about what a piece of cake Iraq was compared with Afghanistan.
– Iraq was a unified nation, they say, while Afghanistan is a ragged collection of tribes. Afghanistan is poorer, without oil and without the roads or infrastructure or middle class Iraq enjoyed.
– Yet when Bush spoke, Washington was full of experts explaining that Iraq was a false construct, cobbled together by clueless British colonialists, and that Iraqis shared no sense of nationhood. The Sunni and Shiite Arabs were predestined to eternal enmity, and both would always hate the Kurds.
– You couldn’t build a national army for a nation that didn’t exist. The best hope was to divide Iraq into three quasi-independent states — and that was the optimistic view. Others said America’s only choice was to get out of the way and let a civil war play out, for however many years and lives it took.
– As recent as it is, the history of the Iraq surge is remembered selectively by liberals and conservatives alike. And Obama himself is not eager to cite the parallels. That’s why it is useful to have a defense secretary who can do so, as he pointed out last week on Capitol Hill, "since this is the second surge I’ve been up here defending."
– "It is worth remembering that the security situation in Afghanistan, though serious, does not begin to approach the scale of violence that consumed Iraq and confronted our forces there when I was confirmed as secretary of defense three years ago this week," Gates said.
Of course, you can’t assume that what worked in Iraq will work in Afghanistan. But there is reason to recall how the explanations of experts tend to trail the facts, rather than the reverse. When things are going badly, it seems obvious that they will go badly forever. Iraq shows that forceful, strategic intervention can shape events and redefine inevitability.