Painful but Winable

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Rajiv Chandrasekaran writes in the Washington Post about the Marines’ success in pacifying Nawa in southern Afghanistan — the same story I mentioned in my New York Times op-ed. Chandrasekaran’s article is excellent and adds more details than I could include in a brief opinion piece. He suggests, as did I, that the relative success in Nawa — admittedly fragile and limited — indicates “that after eight years of war the United States still may be able to regain momentum in some areas that had long been written off to the Taliban.”

To expand such successful efforts across southern and eastern Afghanistan will require more troops, more time, more money — and more casualties. It’s a painful process, but what choice do we have unless we want to risk Afghanistan reverting to its pre-9/11 state? Options such as “reintegration” — offering incentives to lure Taliban fighters to lay down their arms (described in this USA Today article) — are unlikely to work until foreign and Afghan troops have changed the facts on the ground to convince the Taliban they can’t win. Other shortcuts such as the counterterrorism option or training Afghan forces can complement a large ground-force commitment but can’t substitute for it.

For an explanation of why there is no credible Plan B in Afghanistan — any more than there was in Iraq when the surge was being debated — see this New Republic article by my Council on Foreign Relations colleague Stephen Biddle.

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