U.S. forces are now winding up all their business in Afghanistan as the war is in its 12th year. The U.S. couldn’t leave a substantial impact, in fact it got hundreds of soldiers killed, despite having flawless technology and equipment. On the other hand, Afghan forces are showing very little interest in the peace talks, which is alarming the U.S. troops who have to shut down before 2014 approaches.
”We are probably headed for stalemate in 2014,” says Stephen Biddle, a George Washington University political science professor who has advised U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that is the case, the U.S. will have to pump billions of dollars a year into Afghanistan for decades to prevent its collapse, Biddle says.
In the year 2001,”Operation Enduring Freedom,” was begun to achieve its goals and free the people of the Taliban atrocities, but in reality, it has become an operation enduring exit.
The Afghan Taliban is very strong and also maintains their close ties with extremist groups in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, al-Qaida and the Pakistan-based Haqqani network.
U.S. commanders say with confidence that their war campaign is on track, and President Barack Obama seemed to agree in his debate last Monday with Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
”There’s no reason why Americans should die when Afghans are perfectly capable of defending their own country,” Obama said. Yet the path forward is dotted with question marks: Will Afghanistan’s security forces be capable of holding off the Taliban on their own? (Dawn, Afghan,30)
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who championed the additional American troops, remains optimistic.
”We’ve come too far, we’ve fought too many battles, we have spilled too much blood not to finish the job that we are all about,” Panetta said in Brussels this month after meeting with his counterparts from Nato nations. The “job” Panetta referenced is no longer to defeat the Taliban before 2015 or to eradicate al-Qaida in its Afghan redoubts, but to create an Afghan security force that can at least hold the substantial gains achieved by the US-led international alliance. (Dawn, Afghan,30)
Several things indicate that the U.S. may not really be into talking with the Taliban to sort out this issue, ”Our task is to put our first down the throat of the Taliban and squeeze his heart so that he will talk,” said Australian Maj. Gen. Stephen Day, the coalition’s chief of plans.
The U.S. now has 66,000 troops in Afghanistan, joined by about 37,000 from allied countries, and it’s still to be decided how many will be withdrawn by 2013, next year.
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