Marjah - Strategic Success or Useful Distraction?

In statistics, you need at least three data points to find the line of best fit. At the risk of future ridicule, I proclaim that with my third blog entry in March, my output is once a month. Which is not prolific by any standards, but is at least a benchmark which creates expectations for you and me!

Anyhow, on March 9th, I tore myself from the prep for a Political Economy final to check out a talk by Gilles Dorronsoro on the recent escalation of the War in Afghanistan, as part of UChicago's excellent "World Beyond the Headlines" series. The video from his lecture is not up yet, but keep a lookout for it (older ones include Stiglitz and Thurrow).

Preemptory conflict of interest note here: I worked with Gilles last year at the Carnegie Endowment. Which in this case was one of the reasons I have immense respect for his analyses -I know for a fact that he is one of the few scholars/commentators who travels frequently to Afghanistan (and not on govt/army orchestrated trips) and has spent significant chunks of time there since the 1980s.

In any case, Gilles' talk was insightful in that it challenged a lot of what has been written about the recent US offensive in Marjah and supposed turning of the tide in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some of his key myth-busters were:

The lack of strategic importance of Marjah - Marjah is not a city (as is often reported) but a collection of towns. It is neither close to the border nor linked to Afghanistan's main highway, Ring Road, making it irrelevant from the point of securing US supply lines. It is also not a Taliban stronghold like the city of Kandahar, which is not being targeted. Lastly, while it is located in Helmand, where the majority of Afghanistan's poppy is grown, opium is just one among the Taliban's many sources of income. Taking Marjah does not weaken the Taliban's finances significantly.

The Pakistan Army has not changed its priorities - Much has been made of Pakistan's capture of Taliban's second-in-command Mullah Ghani Baradar, with Fareed Zakaria even arguing that Pakistan's new cooperation represents a foreign policy victory for President Obama. Gilles claimed, and next week a Karzai advisor confirmed, that the Afghanistan government was in negotiations with Baradar. In essence, Baradar's capture was not a changing of Pakistan Army and ISI's basic strategy, but a reminder that they would prefer a future Afghan dispensation which includes the Taliban members they control, rather than those of the Karzai government's choosing.

Negotiations, not escalation is the way forward - An argument that has been the theme of much of Gilles' writings is that the US and its allies simply do not have the resources (165,000 troops are nowhere close to enough) and time (decreasing public support) to pursue an escalation in Afghanistan. Given this tough context, the way forward are negotiations with the Taliban. Getting the timing right is important though - if a talismanic figure like Mullah Omar survives, he will acquire the same legendary status that Ahmed Shah Massoud, who helped drive out the Soviets in the 1980s, did. And that will decrease his, and in turn, the Taliban's incentives to negotiate. While this adds unpredictability to negotiation, in Gilles opinion, it was still a better option than escalation.

While there is room for disagreement with Gilles' policy recommendation, his analysis is useful in that it presents a cogent explanation of recent events apart from the easiest one - that the international coalition is now winning in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The next few months would provide more clues about whether the tide has indeed turned in AfPak.