The game is afoot Sherlock Holmes used to say to Dr. Watson when great things were about be expected and the great game of Rudyard Kipling, which has been played across the centuries in one of the most least understood places on the earth, is once more stirring with possibilities. The end of the year is approaching and today, November 11, marked the end of the fighting in the Great War in 1918 four years after it was promised that the boys would be home before Christmas. So many wars were promised would end before the first leafs fell from the trees and so many soldiers never came home. With the recent announcement by Canada that it might "reconsider" its committment to Afghanistan and might have to stay beyond July 2011 deadline, and with the United States also peddling the idea that its withdrawal date of July 2011 is not exactly gospel, the war in Afghanistan seems destined to fester like a sore wound.
The very idea of affixing a deadline to the war in Afghanistan and declaring when it is over, would be a laughable proposition had not so many people suffered and died. The idea that wars can be fought as some sort of a well choreographed event must be the most sublime limits of banality known in exsistence and only novices, who have no clue as to what wars entail, could have made such a declaration of intent. The end of a war is determined by the clarity of its political goals and how successfully those goals have been achieved by the application of a military power. The origins of a military strategy in a war resides in the political reasons for fighting a war and if the politics of the war, themselves, appear fuddled and muddled then war, which is nothing less than an application of violence for intended reasons, loses its coherence of purpose.
The politics of the Afghan War need to be articulated, because if the aims of the war itself are not clear to those who are fighting it, then the nagging question becomes "what are we fighting for?" This is the reason why the deadlines for withdrawal from Afghanistan are being blurred, because while everyone agrees on the need to defeat the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda, there appears to be no consensus on how to actualize this intention in a tangible sense. Between the ideas of winning the hearts and minds to military operations to doctrines of counter-insurgency and to debates of nation-building, the aims of the Afghan war emerge as confused, filled with self-doubts and self-defeating.
Defeating the enemy, in this case the Taliban and Al Qaeda axis of Islamic militancy, and stating so is only a declaration of intent. The problem is how to realize this goal. The irony of this war is that while technology provides the United States and its allies with the capacity to kill, the religion of the Taliban and Al Qaeda gives them the capacity to die. In a sense, this war as it is being fought presently, is a stalemate and United States has to develop a political rationale, which breaks this statemate; between technology and religion as the enabling factors, which are sustaining and prolonging this war and mutating it into a 21st century version of the Great War.
If the First World War proved anything it was that killing the enemy does not end a war, but breaking his will to resist is the most expedient avenue towards ending a war. Therefore, the salient caveat is how to break the political will of the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Afghanistan and the answer is not a simple case of putting limitations on political Islam, but exploring the possibilities of how to separate the nuances, which exist in the intentions, capabilities, and rationales of political Islam and to understand Islam, itself, as an idea and as a way of life for the Muslims in order counter the arguments of Islamic militancy. Political Islam and Islamic militancy are a closely inter-related phenomena in the sense that Islamic militancy derives its reasons not necessarily from Islam per se, but from the politics practiced in the name of Islam and to understand that, the United States would have to understand the causes, which propell political Islam.
One of the causes, which has offered more legitimacy than others to the cause of a politically militant Islam has been the faliure of the governments, in the Muslim world, to address the needs of its people and offer them better goverance and a more secure way of life, which ensures their future happiness and prosperty. This is where a sense of rage against the United States finds its reasons in the Muslim world and though the outward manifestation of this rage appears directed at the United States, it is really a sign of political frustration by the people at their own governments, which deny them the venues of expressing political opinions and dissent. The fact that the government in Afghanistan and for that matter in Pakistan are allied with the United States further creates the impression of their political impotence in the face of United States' pursuit of its interests, which are invaribly seen as being attained at the costs of political freedoms of the people of these countries. It is this sense of a political grievence, which is really fueling the political militancy against the United States in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan as well.
Therefore, for the United States to win the war inside Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgency and its support from across the border in Pakistan, is to admit to itself that its chosen partners in this war are not entirely popular in their own political constituencies in AF-PAK. The idea of the Obama administration to designate the area of combat as AF-PAK was correct, but the political capital which the United States is investing in the region should not be directed towards the political leadership of AF-PAK, but towards removing the popular dissatisfaction that exists in that part of the world against its own government by exploring the idea of public diplomacy; interactive political approaches, which allows the United States to directly reach the people with its political message instead of going through the intermediaries, the political leadership of AF-PAK, who are more atuned to their own self-interests than to the interests of their country or its fellow citizens.
This is the political reason for which this war is being fought and for the United States to "bring back the troops" has to decide on a political policy that forces the political leadership of AF-PAK to provide the very basic needs which their people are clamouring for and for the United States to disassociate itself from a tainted political leadership, which is more of the enemy than it is an ally of the United States in this war. The Taliban and Al Qaeda can never politically or military defeat the United States, but the policies of its allies in AF-PAK, unless addressed, will continue to offer themselves as the best recruiting poster for the Taliban and Al Qaeda and thus, the question begs an answer whether the United States is capable of understanding the political nature of this war and what continually keeps it enflamed and can it end it by amending its present policies or by refusing to acknowledge the reasons of this war, wishes for a war without an end?
This was the reason, why this blog was titled as "Rememberance Day". November 11, is marked as Veterans Day in the United States and in the United Kingdom and its former colonies, it is called as Rememberance Day and there is a very subtle difference in the meaning of what this day implies in the United States from the rest of the world. A "veteran" is someone who has survived and returned from war and when the United States celebrates Veteran's Days, it pays tributes to those that that fought its wars, and in the rest of the world, rememberance day means to remember those that died in the wars. Some times, how we approach and understand the idea of a war, as a nation and a people, can make all the difference in the manner of how and why we fight wars and how we remember our past wars and what lessons we learn from them.
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