Afghanistan unable to support itself

While Stephen Biddle, Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) senior fellow of defense policy, believes the situation in Afghanistan is better on the ground than it has been portrayed in the U.S., he holds concern over the country’s ability to achieve its long term goal of creating a large, sustainable Afghan security force capable of protecting the population and suffocating insurgency.

“That recipe would work if there was a plausible chance that the Afghan economy could support the kind of A security forces that will be necessary in order to secure the population and I can’t see how they will ever be able to do that,” said Biddle during a telephone CFR conference with Daniel Markey, senior fellow of India, Pakistan, and South Asia on the two senior fellows’ week-long visit to Afghanistan.

Biddle discussed the importance of maintaining peacekeeping forces in Iraq for a number of years, but also stated that in order to help Afghanistan there will need to be a future reallocation of resources

“In the long term, there’s going to have to be a resource swing from Iraq to Afghanistan in order to bring about success in Afghanistan given the limits that I see in the ability of the Afghan security forces to solve the problem themselves.”

According to Biddle, if the creation of the security force was funded by the international community during a war time scenario it would run the risk of establishing a half a million person security apparatus that could not be supported by Afghanistan or receive adequate international funding during peacetime, thus further threatening the stability of the country.

Biddle suggested using a large number of non Afghan troops to negotiate a long term power sharing strategy for the country that would eventually be enforced my smaller, local Afghan forces.

Markey discussed the influence of Pakistan in U.S. dealings in Iraq, claiming that relations between U.S. forces and Pakistan’s military was more positive than what has been reported recently. “In a number of important instances they have actually been able to coordinate fire with their Pakistani counterparts. They have essentially gotten calls from the Pakistani side identify militants that were getting ready to cross across the border,” said Markey.

Markey reported that recent discussion regarding a reconciliation between Moderate Taliban elements and the Afghan government is actually political maneuvering by Afghan President Hamid Karzai rather a realistic approach. “There was a desire by Karzai to push this in order to try and win greater unity within the Pashtun community to help him in his reelection bid,” said Markey.