Obama's Afg-Pak Strategy

I am highly disappointed in President Obama. I, like many others had hoped that the winds of fresh change in Washington would be felt the world over. But the stale air has continued to linger. Obama’s Af-Pak strategy of deploying 17,000 additional combat troops to Afghanistan, harks back on the United.

States’ untiring imperialistic aspirations. This time the objectives hide behind the mask of diplomatic rhetoric. Perhaps we should really be convinced now that the American agenda of thrusting its values upon the world had been set in stone decades ago. These colonial objectives reflecting in Obama’s Af-Pak strategy, should finally persuade us that ‘change’ will never be possible. At least not in the Af-Pak region.

Gaining the fake consent of the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan in drawing-room meetings is being used as a facade to create a display of direct involvement of the countries. It should be clear by now that Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari who met with Obama yesterday in Washington have no concern for creating welfare in their respective countries. The corrupt leaders of the Af-Pak region probably see the mounting pressure for co-operation as another opportunity to continue to bill the United States for their so-called efforts to fight the Taliban and stuff their own pockets.

The U.S can no longer afford any such imperialistic ventures and provide funding to governments led by crooked and fraudulent leaders. How does the United States plan to guarantee that with billions of tax dollars and thousands of troops continuing to flow into the region, the benchmarks set this time will be met by the local governments? How will then they be measured without a proper evaluation mechanism that has still not been developed since the insurgency in 2001? Yet the U.S has continued its presence in the region and launched offensives in civilian residential areas.

Does not Obama understand that drone attacks that have resulted in at least a hundred civilian casualties inside Pakistan are enough to radicalize the local population? It is after all unnatural to not feel any sort of enmity against the U.S. after losing loved ones to those alien like drones. The sight of innocent blood and the debris of their own houses is sure to unleash the militant side of the population and sway them to join in the cause of the Taliban. Has Obama forgotten the old adage; ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’? Is it really that difficult to realize that sending in additional troops will further escalate the animosity felt towards the U.S? The population will likely make all efforts possible to sabotage the additional foreign army.

Even though the focus of an additional 4,000 American troops will be on training the Afghan and Pakistani security forces to create long-term stability after the Americans pull out, the success of such an undertaking will be limited. The Taliban have an upper hand in integrating with the people through shared sentiments against the U.S, language and religion in the Pashtun areas, than the trained army personnel. Moreover, the ideological divide that this endeavour will create in the Pakistani army will be beyond disastrous.

There is a need for an exit strategy not the further escalation of war. Nobody likes foreign occupation on their soil. The instant the American troops start pulling out, will mark the commencement of stability in the region. The absence of the threat posed by the U.S operations and its violation of the countries’ sovereignty will strip the local population of the motivation to join the fundamentalists. To secure itself against any potential attacks, the U.S. troops should pack-up and fly back home as soon as possible. The more damage they inflict and the more civilians that are killed, the more the chances of a reciprocated attack.

It is uncanny that with half the number of troops that the Soviets got defeated with in Afghanistan, the U.S considers it a possibility to succeed in a country known as the “graveyard of empires.” At a phase when the global recession is at its peak, the United States’ focus should rather be on creating jobs in its own country.

The developmental funds should instead be directed towards investing in the education of the Af-Pak population and giving its youth a chance at learning and employment. Sadly, this is not what is being done. Let us wait and see how the U.S will now have to deal with not two but three wars- Pakistan adding up with Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama’s strategy is a recipe for radicalizing the local populations further, and digging deeper into the almost empty vaults of the United States in this time of economic crisis.

Abia Zaidi