Crowned with success in Iraq, US Army General David Petraeus, who took command yesterday of US military forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, inherited the next big challenge: devising a winning strategy in Afghanistan.
Responsible for a volatile theater of operations that extends from Kenya to Kazakhstan, the high profile general must also keep an eye on extremism in Pakistan and Iranian influence in the region, all under the orders of a new US president.
Sent to Iraq last year to salvage the explosive situation there, Petraeus has been credited with turning around a Sunni insurgency in the west and using a 30,000 troop “surge” to secure Baghdad and its environs.
Many hope that Petraeus will bring his counter-insurgency expertise to bear in Afghanistan as he did in Iraq, where levels of violence have dropped sharply and combat deaths are now at the lowest point since 2003.
The intensifying violence in Afghanistan has put the “forgotten war” on the front burner and has pushed the White House, the Joint Staff and Petraeus to launch strategic reviews of what the general has called the “longest campaign of the long war.”
The reviews extend to the extremism in Pakistan and the sanctuaries in its northwestern tribal areas from which the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been launching attacks into neighboring Afghanistan.
As it waits for these reports, Washington has already committed to send reinforcements to Afghanistan as US force levels decline in Iraq, to bolster the 70,000 NATO and US troops there.
Both presidential candidates, Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Senator John McCain, have advocated sending more troops to Afghanistan, which they promised to make a priority.
At the same time, calls have been made from a variety of sources in favor of a dialogue with the Taliban insurgents, following the Iraq model.
Petraeus, who emphasized the importance of political and economic efforts in defeating an insurgency, has publicly said the US should “talk to enemies,” as has US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“There is talk, not surprisingly, of a ‘surge’ for Afghanistan, and hope that we can soon accomplish there what has begun to take root in Iraq,” wrote Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, and Andrew Shearer of the Lowy Institute.
But they warned that conditions are different in Afghanistan. There were fewer troops, the country was poorer and had less resources, and the insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan were destabilizing.
Relying on local tribal militias was also risky in a country that historically had been ruled by warlords beyond the control of the central government, some experts said.
Added to the long list of challenges that awaited General Petreaus was Iran, which the US accused of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and of trying to keep the pot boiling in Iraq by supporting insurgents.
“In Iran, we face a tremendous threat to regional security, and also the country most likely to test the next US president,” Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said.
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