US President Barack Obama declared in an interview that the US was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the US military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq.
Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of US forces with turning the war around in the last two years.
The strategy in Iraq was developed by General David Petraeus, then commander of US forces in the country.
“There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,” he said, while cautioning that solutions in Afghanistan will be complicated.
In a conversation with the New York Times aboard Air Force One on Friday, the president reviewed the challenges to his administration.
ECONOMY
Obama said he could not assure Americans that the economy would begin growing again this year, but he pledged that he would “get all the pillars in place for recovery this year” and urged Americans not to “stuff money in their mattresses.”
“I don’t think that people should be fearful about our future,” he said. “I don’t think that people should suddenly mistrust all of our financial institutions.”
As he pressed forward with ambitious plans at home to rewrite the tax code, expand health care coverage and curb climate change, Obama dismissed criticism from conservatives that he was driving the country toward socialism.
After the interview, which took place as the president was flying home from Ohio, he called reporters from the Oval Office to assert that his actions have been “entirely consistent with free-market principles.”
Obama said that large-scale government intervention in the markets and expansion of social welfare programs had begun under former US president George W. Bush.
Obama struck a reassuring tone, saying Americans should not be frightened of the future, and said he had no trouble sleeping at night.
“Look, I wish I had the luxury of just dealing with a modest recession or just dealing with health care or just dealing with energy or just dealing with Iraq or just dealing with Afghanistan,” Obama said. “I don’t have that luxury, and I don’t think the American people do, either.”
IRAQ COMPARISON
“If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq,” Obama said in the interview.
But Obama also said Afghanistan was not Iraq and reconciliation efforts could face difficulties.
“The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex. You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, so figuring all that out is going to be a much more of a challenge,” he said.
During his presidential campaign last year, Obama told Time magazine that opportunities to negotiate with some Taliban elements “should be explored.”
Asked by the Times whether the US was winning the war in Afghanistan, which he has called the “central front in the war on terror,” Obama simply replied: “No.”
“You’ve seen conditions deteriorate over the last couple of years. The Taliban is bolder than it was. I think in the southern regions of the country, you’re seeing them attack in ways that we have not seen previously,” he said. “The national government still has not gained the confidence of the Afghan people.”
US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks in the US, but Islamist militants regrouped in recent years and are waging an intensifying and spreading Taliban-led insurgency.
ALIGNING GOALS
“We’ve got to recast our policy so that our military, diplomatic and development goals are all aligned to ensure that al-Qaeda and extremists that would do us harm don’t have the kinds of safe havens that allow them to operate,” Obama said.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is widely believed to be hiding in the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a known haven for Taliban extremists.
“At the heart of a new Afghanistan policy is going to be a smarter Pakistan policy. As long as you’ve got safe havens in these border regions that the Pakistani government can’t control or reach, in effective ways, we’re going to continue to see vulnerability on the Afghan side of the border,” Obama said.
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