Afghanistan Archive

After nine years of war in Afghanistan and seven more in Iraq, Americans are understandably weary of military interventions designed to remake or rebuild failed or fragile states. Nevertheless, many countries are still falling apart, or worse, falling into the hands of fundamentalists, terrorists, and other militants who disregard popular will and care little for human suffering. As a result, such nation-building interventions will remain necessary for the foreseeable future, as the U.S. involvement in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan demonstrates. So instead of renouncing these missions, the U.S. must better define why and how it will carry them out, to […]

There are two ways of reading the publicly released summary of the Obama administration’s Afghanistan Strategic Review. The first, admittedly my initial reaction, is as a politically driven document designed to gloss over the reality of the war in order to reconcile the administration’s promise to begin a drawdown in July 2011 with the need for a continued military commitment to sustain any gains that have been made in the past year. The second, admittedly my subsequent reaction, is as a reality-driven document that reflects the mixed and sometimes contradictory outcomes since the administration’s last policy review, and that correctly […]

The publicly released overview document summarizing President Barack Obama’s review of U.S. strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan touts a number of successes over the last year but concludes that “the challenge remains to make our gains durable and sustainable.” In language very similar to the assessments made for Iraq after the “surge” had begun there in 2007, the report points to positive trends but warns that “these gains remain fragile and reversible.” Over the last few weeks, administration officials had already signaled that there will be no change to U.S. strategy in the immediate future. And while Obama remains committed […]

Leaders of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are currently gathered in Astana, Kazakhstan, for the group’s first summit in more than a decade. The OSCE has many responsibilities due to its comprehensive agenda, but its most urgent task is to help mobilize greater support for Afghanistan. Although Afghanistan does not belong to the OSCE, several member states border the war-torn country, while many more have sent military forces to help combat the Taliban insurgents threatening the internationally recognized Afghan government. The challenges facing the OSCE in Afghanistan derive mainly from the porous borders between northern Afghanistan […]