Rory Stewart is a former British Foreign Service officer and currently the Ryan Professor of Human Rights at Harvard University and the Director of the Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. In the New York Times, he has written an op-ed that bears directly on the conversation Ian and I were having a few posts back.
Stewart writes the following:
President-elect Obama’s emphasis on Afghanistan and his desire to send more troops and money there is misguided.
…
We invaded intending to attack Al Qaeda and provide development assistance. We succeeded. By 2004, Afghanistan had a stable currency, millions more children in school, a better health system, an elected Parliament, no Al Qaeda and almost no Taliban. All this was achieved with only 20,000 troops and a relatively small international aid budget.
When the decision was made to increase troops in 2005, there was no insurgency. But as NATO became increasingly obsessed with transforming the country and brought in more money and troops to deal with corruption and the judiciary, warlords and criminals, insecurity in rural areas and narcotics, it failed. In fact, things got worse. These new NATO troops encountered a fresh problem — local Taliban resistance — which has drawn them into a counterinsurgency campaign.
More troops have brought military victories but they have not been able to eliminate the Taliban. They have also had a negative political impact in the conservative and nationalistic communities of the Pashtun south and allowed Taliban propaganda to portray us as a foreign military occupation. In Helmand Province, troop numbers have increased to nearly 10,000 today from just 2,000 in 2004. But no inhabitant of Helmand would say things have improved in the last four years.
If what Stewart writes is a correct characterization of the situation in Afghanistan, then the continued presence of the U.S. (and NATO) in that country is not improving security — for either us or them — but is actually making things worse. Our presence is not only not improving the national security of the U.S. but may actually be working against our long-term strategic interests — however you might want to define those — by using resources wastefully and without a clearly defined (achievable) objective. Which is to completely ignore the moral case, either for or against the war.
Our presence in Afghanistan is, by this account, only increasing human suffering in the region and doing little to nothing to eliminate the Taliban. Of course, Stewart’s characterization of the situation in Afghanistan may be completely incorrect. Is there some other alternative narrative that better accounts for why we’re in that part of the world? Is Stewart obviously incorrect about any of his facts or judgments? It seems to me the burden of proof rests with those who argue for remaining, given the human misery war always necessarily unleashes, and not with those who argue for stopping what may well be a counterproductive war.
Which isn’t to say that those who argue against continuing the Afghan war can’t make a compelling case.