BriefingFeb 21st 2009 edition

Afghanistan and Pakistan
Boots on the ground

America is sending more troops and helping build a bigger Afghan army, but will still struggle to defeat the Taliban

THE big Antonov aircraft lumbered over the snow-clad mountains, landed at Kabul airport and, like a mythological whale, opened its great jaws to disgorge a consignment of Russian-designed attack helicopters. It might have been a scene from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, except that nowadays it is America that is providing the refurbished Mi-35 Hind helicopters that once terrorised the Afghan countryside, and training (or retraining) their Afghan crews. Many are veterans of the Soviet-backed forces; the commander of Afghanistan's air corps is a former MiG-21 pilot.

Such ironies will give ammunition to the many doubters who say that America is repeating the errors of the Soviet Union. Like the Soviet empire (and the British one before it), it has failed to understand that controlling Afghanistan is much harder than invading it. And like Soviet leaders, critics say, President Barack Obama is now reinforcing failure by sending thousands more troops to confront an insurgency organised from across the border in Pakistan. The White House on February 17th announced that 17,000 more troops would join the existing 65,000 Western troops “to stabilise a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires.”

Despite the weight of history and the yearly deterioration in security, American commanders remain convinced that the war is “winnable”. Unlike the anti-Soviet mujahideen, they argue, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and their allies do not have the support of a superpower. America has broad international backing for its actions, and still enjoys a good measure of support among ordinary Afghans. So for now American pilots and their Afghan charges dominate the air, with little fear of being shot at with anti-aircraft missiles of the kind America once gave the mujahideen.

Helicopters are the workhorses of the Afghan campaign, allowing troops to move with less risk of ambush or bombs; insurgents tend to scatter at the sight of attack helicopters. Under American tutelage the Afghan air corps has grown from four aircraft that had somehow survived the civil war of the 1990s and American air strikes in 2001 into a modest fleet of 32 aircraft—propeller-driven Antonov transport planes, Mi-17 transport helicopters and, more recently, the Mi-35 attack helicopters. Afghan pilots cannot yet fly by instruments at night or in bad weather; a helicopter crash in January killed one Afghan army commander and several others. But the air corps has been busy moving Afghan troops into battle zones. By 2016 it is expected to grow to more than 120 aircraft, perhaps including some light attack jets, at a total cost of about $5 billion. “Building an air corps in the middle of a war is like building an aircraft in mid-flight,” says Brigadier-General Walter Givhan, commander of the American training team.

The Afghan army is also being built in mid-battle, expanding from the current 80,000 troops to 134,000 (plus embedded Western troops) by 2011. Afghan soldiers are respected by Western commanders as tough fighters, and are well-liked by most Afghans as members of one of the few functioning national institutions.

A wholesale review of America's policy in Afghanistan, and across the border in Pakistan, is due to be completed in the coming weeks. In the short term, NATO hopes that with more Afghan units and extra American troops, perhaps helped by the possible short-term deployment of up to 10,000 more European forces, it will be able to secure enough of the populated areas in the restive Pushtun belt to ensure a credible presidential election in August. Commanders say the American reinforcements will be used to improve security in provinces surrounding Kabul, protect the ring road that connects Afghanistan's cities and, above all, to reinforce NATO's faltering effort in the south of the country. British and Canadian forces in Helmand and Kandahar provinces respectively have been hard-pressed since 2006. The extra troops will also establish greater control of the open desert border with Pakistan in the south; they will seek to interdict fighters and weapons being smuggled into Afghanistan and drugs being taken out of it.

This may lead to a rise in violence, at least in the short term. But commanders argue that, with more boots on the ground, they will have less reason to use the air power which has contributed to a sharp rise in civilian casualties (see chart) and has raised tensions with the Afghan government. The United Nations recorded the deaths of 2,118 civilians in the conflict last year, 39% higher than in 2007 and the highest yearly toll since the fall of the Taliban. Of these, 55% were attributed to the Taliban and other “anti-government elements”, and 39% to Western and Afghan forces.

Few are predicting an Iraq-style improvement in security. The sanctuary enjoyed by insurgents in Pakistan gives them the ability to fight more or less indefinitely. Indeed, there is much debate over the extent of Pakistan's co-operation with NATO (or, in the view of sceptics, of its double game). Senior Americans say cross-border communication has improved, particularly in the east (eg, along the border with Kunar province), but some senior Afghans think this is a sham. They note that the most important havens—in Waziristan and in Baluchistan—are untroubled by Pakistani forces; Taliban leaders allegedly meet freely in Karachi. For one well-placed Afghan, “Pakistan is the political wing of the Taliban.”

Fighting Afghan with Afghan

As insurgents come under pressure from NATO in the south, they may shift their attacks to areas that are less defended; the Dutch in Uruzgan, a relative success story of late, worry that the Taliban will move into their area as the Americans push into Helmand and Kandahar. Counter-insurgency requires large numbers of troops and policemen (which in Afghanistan are weak, corrupt and often drug-addled). Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan's defence minister, says his army needs to be much bigger than the planned 134,000. Almost everybody would agree with him. Iraq, smaller than Afghanistan in terms of land area and population, has over 267,000 troops.

One problem, though, is that the Afghan army cannot grow any faster because of a shortage of literate recruits for the officer corps. Another problem is money; Afghanistan is too poor to afford even the forces it now has. But Mr Wardak says that is the wrong way to look at the problem. As thousands more Western soldiers prepare to move into his country, he says: “Building, equipping and training the Afghan army is much more economical than the deployment of foreign troops.”

This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Boots on the ground"

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