A Tale of Two Wars: Afghanistan

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Mourners gather at a funeral for suicide-bombing victims in Kabul.

Massoud Hossaini / AFP / Getty

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So what is to be done? For most Afghans, the right road starts with better security. Eating pomegranates in a tea shop in Sarobi district, just east of Kabul, Saeed Shah says he was not fond of the Taliban when it was in power. But his once peaceful district has witnessed a wave of criminality and violence--10 French soldiers were slaughtered by insurgents in August--that has him longing for the old regime and its harsh but effective justice. "Yes, there was hardship, but there was also peace," he says. "You could leave your shop open all night, and no one would steal a thing." In the south and east, where the insurgency is at its strongest, there are simply not enough troops. Soldiers can clear ground, but when they return to their barracks at night, insurgents terrorize the locals for assisting the foreign and government forces. If Afghans fear that they will be killed for cooperating with the government, they won't do it. "We've got to provide enough security so that the people can feel that they have a future that has some stability and peace to it," says Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The most obvious solution--an Iraq-style surge--is unlikely to succeed. President Bush has promised to begin sending 8,000 more troops before he leaves office, and both presidential candidates have pledged at least an additional two brigades. But any troops are unlikely to arrive fast enough or in sufficient numbers. Afghanistan is a third larger than Iraq in size, and its terrain is a lot more difficult. Counterinsurgency expert John Nagl has estimated that there should be 600,000 troops--including Afghan ones--inside the country to quell the Taliban and al-Qaeda threat. Currently there are only about 65,000 coalition forces (including 33,000 U.S. troops) on the ground, in addition to some 70,000 Afghan army personnel--of whom fewer than half can fully function on their own--plus an ineffective police force. Iraq, by contrast, has some 160,000 coalition troops and a nearly 600,000-strong professional national-security force. If there is to be a surge at all, it will most likely be an Afghan one. The U.S. has pledged $20 billion to nearly double the Afghan army's strength by 2012, but it is still short more than half the necessary military trainers to do the job. "The sheer business of training the army, equipping them, deploying them and creating the infrastructure takes time," says the NATO commander. "And the only way to buy time is to bring in more alliance or coalition troops."

But most NATO nations either can't or won't send more troops, and the U.S. armed forces are spread thin between two wars. So the next U.S. Administration may perforce have to abandon the big stick in favor of speaking more softly. Army General David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has made it clear that there is no purely military solution. "It's not just a question about more soldiers," he has said. "It's a question about more governance, about more economic aid, about more political assistance for the government of Afghanistan."