Location: Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
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Event Summary
Presidential Advisor Assesses Afghanistan Strategy
Although putting forth a summary lacks delicacy and nuance, it underscores the fundamental truth, Bruce Riedel ‘75 said last night to preface his talk on “Obama's War: Finding the Right Strategy.” That truth, in the case of the war on terror, is that after eight years, the core leadership of Al Qaeda has merely moved 100 miles away somewhere in Pakistan, said Riedel, a senior Middle East foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former CIA officer.
Such a finding is one of the three basic aspects in the strategic review that Riedel produced earlier this year at the request of President Barack Obama, who is to announce his Afghanistan strategy tonight. Riedel co-chaired an interagency review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan for the White House that was completed in March 2009.
In Obama's speech tonight, Riedel also told the Providence Journal, “The president has to convince the American people that he has a strategy that offers the promise of success and that he is fully committed to that strategy. If he can convince Americans that he believes he has a workable way forward, they will accept the idea of sending more troops. He will have a narrow window of one to two years to demonstrate that it’s working. If it’s not working in 18 to 24 months, support for this war, which is already weak, will be anemic.”
The inability so far to do more than move Al Qaeda 100 miles is alarming in light of the fact that there are 70,000 American soldiers on the ground in addition to 30,000 soldiers from 40 other countries.
This is not to underplay the contributions of diplomats and soldiers, but one must not ignore the relative damage inflicted upon the US by Al Qaeda and vice versa. Reports stating the abolition of Al Qaeda should be read with skepticism, said Riedel. At the same time, one should not overestimate the power and danger of Al Qaeda – it is not Hitler’s Germany, it is not Mussolini’s Italy, it is not the Soviet Union, said Riedel.
The second point of the strategic review is that Al Qaeda is a syndicate of much bigger terrorist groups. Such groups do not have a single ideology or a monolithic philosophy; rather, they work together as members “seamlessly move back and forth from one group to another … Al Qaeda is a subsidiary of the Taliban by its own admission,” said Riedel. Global Islamic jihad, exemplified by terrorist acts such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks, poses the greatest threat.
Although the Taliban presents itself as an anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, Islamist jihad organization, it is, in fact, a Pashtun organization since it aspires to impose its version of Pashtun norms on Afghan people. Very few Afghan people want the return of the “medieval hell” that the Taliban created in the 1990s, added Riedel.
The third aspect of the review is that although Pakistan will be one of the prizes of the war, nobody wants it as it is the most dangerous country in the world. It is the second largest Muslim country with the fastest growing nuclear arsenal. It has more terrorists per square mile than any other country, according to Riedel.
Pakistan is undergoing a transition from a military dictatorship to a civilian democratic country for the fourth time. If one is to believe in the success of such transition, one would have to look at hope as triumphing the expectations built on historical precedents, said Riedel.
If a jihadist group is to win in such transition, which is not the most likely outcome, although a possible one, the world will witness a “global game change.” It will be the first time in history that a jihadist state is armed with nuclear weapons, according to Riedel.
Statistics show that such outcome is indeed possible: Pakistani people believe that the US is the number one threat to their country – followed on the list by jihadists, then India. The Pakistani police, on the other hand, believe that both the US and India are number one, followed by the jihadists.
The proposed strategy is a resource-intensive plan to stabilize the region “to the degree that the US can,” though the costs will be immense. Studies show that for every thousand new troops, the cost is $1 billion. The hope, ultimately, is to help build an Afghani police force that would take on the mission. But in the midst of US military training, new social services, and nation-building, Riedel pointed out that: “Afghans know how to fight ... [They] don’t need to be literate to fight.”
The implications of the war and its outcomes for the Obama administration are massive as the situation is delicate. Americans would not be willing to forgive a second president for failure, he said. Obama “inherited a disaster from his predecessor … [it is] the most difficult decision he will probably face in his administration.” said Riedel.
Riedel is a trusted advisor for the Obama administration on Afghanistan, the most imperative current foreign policy issue, and has been advisor to three US presidents on Middle Eastern and South Asian issues. He is the co-author of Which Path to Persia: Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran (Brookings Institution Press, 2009), and The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future (Brookings Institution Press, 2008).
By Watson Institute Student Rapporteur Samura Atallah '11