Galbraith: Hey USMC, here’s how to get out of the stalemate in Afghanistan

My CNAS colleague Catherine Cloud hustled down to Quantico the other day to see what the Marines were thinking. Here is her report.

By Catherine Cloud
Best Defense military stalemates correspondent

In Afghanistan we are in a war we cannot win, but also one that we cannot lose, Amb. Peter Galbraith said in a talk at the Marine Corps University on Thursday.

We can’t win, he said, because we have no credible local partner. Galbraith, who recently served as the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to Afghanistan, argued that General McChrystal was tasked with coming up with the best possible strategy to win a war in Afghanistan, not to determine whether or not that best strategy would actually work. The kind of counterinsurgency campaign McChrystal recommended requires an Afghan national army to provide security, a police force to provide order, and a government to provide services and win the loyalty of the people. Of these, we are closest to having a passable Afghan Army. The Afghan police force is far from competent, and — most importantly — the Afghan government is widely viewed as illegitimate. Karzai’s eight years in office have been marked by inefficiency and corruption.  Galbraith believes the next five won’t be any better.

Galbraith’s silver lining is that our unwinnable war is equally difficult to lose. Were ISAF forces to withdraw, we wouldn’t see a dramatic, Vietnam-style defeat, he said. The Taliban would not knock down the Presidential Palace gates in Kabul. Essentially, he thinks things would stay about the same without US and international troops. The Taliban is not popular in much of the country. They would likely solidify control of neighborhoods in Kandahar and the surrounding countryside, but would be unable to take Kabul. These are bold claims to make, especially since Galbraith also pointed out that, in the months following the fraudulent August elections, which undercut support in troop-supplying countries, the Taliban made their greatest advances since 2002.

What then, according to Galbraith, can we hope to glean from this apparent stalemate?

• We can prevent infiltration of Taliban in non-Pashtun areas and facilitate development there.
• We can secure Kabul.
• We can continue pursuing counterterrorism measures in Pashtun areas.
• Although the government can’t control Kandahar, it can prevent it from being overrun.

The result? Maybe not what we expected upon entering the war, but perhaps the most manageable option for securing Afghanistan under the circumstances outlined by Galbraith.

Galbraith also suggested that we drop our inclination to prop up a central government. Strong central government in Afghanistan doesn’t exist, isn’t achievable, and isn’t desirable, he said. So, he said, we instead should look for structure closer to that of Iraq — a power sharing parliamentary system based on supermajority coalitions of various factions and a federal system with a higher degree of self-governance.

Galbraith also split with former UN teammates on the question of whether the arrests of high-ranking Taliban figures by Pakistani authorities have impaired possible peace negotiations. He rejected this argument, calling the arrests "a U.S. foreign policy triumph." According to Galbraith, there had been no contact made with senior Taliban figures, and the meetings taking place in Kabul and Dubai were with individuals whose influence and connections to the Taliban were vastly overstated. As he put it (claiming to leave all personal feelings aside), Kai Eide is a "serial exaggerator."