Dispatch: U.S. Allies and the Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Video Transcript:
Analyst Nathan Hughes examines differing pressures on U.S. allies in Afghanistan following U.S. President Barack Obama's speech on June 22.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
U.S. President Barack Obama announced June 22 his plan to withdraw the "surge" troops deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. Five thousand will come out this summer, another 5,000 before the end of the year, and a total of 33,000 by next summer. While there has been some discussion about what exactly the military wanted and what his advisers wanted, this is not inconsistent with the timetable that was to be expected under the counterinsurgency-focused strategy that Gen. David Petraeus had been overseeing as commander of all forces in Afghanistan. While there's been some rhetorical maneuvering, America's allies are more than happy to be leaving sooner rather than later.
There has been no indication so far that there's going to be a rapid shift in strategy or operations on the ground and with the limited initial reductions there are not necessarily going to be any major operational or tactical shifts. While President Barack Obama has been defining the war in Afghanistan since before his presidency in terms of al Qaeda, the 30,000 troops he sent to the country in 2009 joined nearly 70,000 U.S. troops already in place waging a protracted counterinsurgency not against al Qaeda but against the Taliban and the ongoing insurgency being waged by the Taliban remains as unsettled as it was two years ago. So while the United States is preparing the political ground for a drawdown and the idea of the war being won against al Qaeda, it still remains to be seen how the United States wants to pull back in the midst of insurgency that remains unsettled.
But while the war in Taliban remains unsettled, America's allies are more than happy to be making withdrawal from the country. For the most part, these countries are primarily there at America's allies and because of the importance of their alliance with the United States, not because of any deep-seated interest in what happens in Afghanistan specifically, especially as the al Qaeda phenomenon that is a transnational threat to more than just United States has really dispersed and devolved around the world. For the Europeans in particular there is a great deal of focus on the campaign in Libya, which isn't going perfectly well which is also becoming more and more expensive, there is a focus on fiscal austerity and looming budget cuts including defense cuts, and so the expense of Afghanistan not just in terms of blood but treasure is on European minds in particular. But for allies in the region like Pakistan, the real question is what happens when United States is gone.
There will continue to be some sort of training, advising and probably special operations presence perhaps well beyond 2014, but the way the war has been fought for 10 years, particularly the last several years where there's a large foreign force both attracting the attention of Taliban, absorbing the Taliban and continued the pressure upon them, that force goes away and however capable the Afghan forces are, they are not to be capable at the same degree in the same way. So there's an enormous question for everywhere from Islamabad to Moscow about what sort of shape Afghanistan is left in as the U.S. and its allies pull back. The United States can go home, most of its allies can go home, but Pakistan cannot leave the Afghan border and so what happens there will be of essential importance for the countries that have to continue to live with whatever is left behind Afghanistan.
