The first act of the 2009 Nobel Peace winner may be to wage war, writes Graham Usher in New York For two weeks President Barack Obama has been holding "war councils" with generals, aides, Congress representatives and senators on whether to approve a request for up to 40,000 or more extra US troops in Afghanistan. The decision is arduous because it begs a deeper one. After eight years, what is the US mission in Kabul? Is it to roll-back an indigenous Taliban- led insurgency, defeat a global Al-Qaeda or rebuild a broken country? Are all three related or can one be accomplished without the others? On 9 October the White House said the president was still "several weeks away" from making his call. The reassessment comes eight months after Obama's first "strategic review" of the war in Afghanistan. It follows a 66-page memorandum submitted last month by General Stanley McChrystal, Obama's recently appointed commander of all US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The memo makes grim reading. McChrystal describes a Taliban insurgency controlling nearly half of Afghanistan not only through warlords and militia but via shadow courts, tax collectors and "governors" that in many areas command greater fealty than the US and NATO-backed government of Hamid Karzai. The general's cure is a massive influx of US and other foreign soldiers to wrest Afghan villages from Taliban control, mentor and train Afghan security forces, and create the conditions for a functional, legitimate Afghan government, reversing a civilian slide that is as precipitous as the military one. McChrystal's remedy was once Obama's. It formed the basis of his decision in March to send 17,000 soldiers and 1,000 aid workers to Afghanistan, the so-called "civilian surge". But eight months is an age in presidential politics. After 862 military deaths the American public is starting to sicken of what Obama called the "good war" (as opposed to the "dumb war" in Iraq). However, the main reason for the rethink is that Obama's entire strategy was predicated on there being a legitimate, credible government in Kabul. And that "was very much keyed to having a successful (presidential) election (on 20 August)", said Bruce Riedel, who coordinated Obama's initial Afghan review. "Instead we had a fiasco." On 30 September the United Nations fired Peter Galbraith, the top US diplomat at the UN Mission in Kabul. His fault was to draw robust attention to the "massive electoral fraud" that enabled Karzai's re-election as president. Of results from 6,500 polling stations, Galbraith said 1,000 should be annulled and 5,000 recounted. "The Afghan people deserve to have their votes honestly counted," he said in September. He also said the UN Mission -- and particularly its head Kai Eide -- had been complicit in a cover up of bogus votes to ensure a Karzai win. Eide and the UN vigorously deny the charge. But on 11 October he admitted there had been "widespread fraud" on 20 August. The fraud was in fact so wide sources say there is now little chance Karzai will pass the 50 per cent threshold to avoid a run-off with his nearest challenger, former Afghan foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. There's even less chance a runoff can be organised before the winter, they add. This means either no Afghan government for six months or a Karzai-led regime that commands no legitimacy in the eyes of most Afghans. It leaves Obama's scenarios ranging from bad to worse. He could take McChrystal's counterinsurgency advocacy full-on, hoping that massive military force might check the Taliban's spread and prevent it from again delivering a haven for Al-Qaeda. But such a decision would be costly in soldiers' lives, unpopular at home and carry no guarantee or definition of success. Alternatively Obama could listen to his Vice- President Joe Biden. Biden says the main threat facing the US is not the native Taliban but the transnational Al-Qaeda. He argues for a stepping up of special operations and drone attacks on suspected Al-Qaeda fugitives inside Pakistan, while maintaining current troop levels in Afghanistan to contain the Taliban. Containment is risky, however. So frail is the Kabul government that it could yet be overrun by the Taliban, bequeathing a foreign policy debacle as fatal to Obama's presidency as Iraq was to George W Bush. And covert US operations inside Pakistan are deeply opposed by its people, if not its government. There is a third scenario, aired so far only by think tanks and a few Afghan analysts. This urges a "grand bargain", where the US and NATO commit to a withdrawal of forces in exchange for a genuinely representative Kabul government ensuring that Afghanistan will never again be used as a haven for groups like Al-Qaeda to launch attacks on other countries. Would the Taliban agree to such a trade? On 7 October it released a rare communiqué: "We did not have any agenda to harm other countries, including Europe, nor do we have such an agenda today. Still if you want to turn the country of the proud and pious Afghans into a colony, then know we have an unwavering determination and are braced for prolonged war." On 19 September Taliban leader Mullah Omar was even sharper in drawing the line between his movement and Al-Qaeda. "We assure all countries the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others." Obama has said his government would "not tolerate a return to power for the Taliban." He has ruled out a reduction of troops in Afghanistan, still less a timeline for withdrawal. But these pledges may prove as ephemeral as the ideas of a credible Afghan government being forged from the 20 August election or a "civilian surge" ending a guerrilla war.
