US security experts are debating how long Helmand will be able to resist an onslaught by Taliban. The real question is whether Afghanistan would know security and stability anytime soon even if Helmand, center of the country's heroin trade and a main source of funding for the Taliban, avoids the fate of Kunduz. Going by the assessment of the commander of US Forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, the answer will be in the negative. In the first week of October 2015, he testified in front of the US Senate Armed Services Committee on the Afghan situation. Campbell sounded more pessimistic than he was during a previous congressional testimony in March 2015.
US President Barack Obama was only acknowledging this truth in October 2015 when he admitted that American forces would remain in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. The current level of 9,800 American troops will be on the ground throughout most of 2016, while a presence of 5,500 will be maintained from next year.
According to a recent UN report, the Taliban is spread through more of Afghanistan than at any point since 2001 when they were toppled from power. UN estimates that nearly half of all districts across Afghanistan are at risk of falling. All but two of Helmand’s 14 districts are effectively controlled or heavily contested by Taliban. In September 2015, they achieved a dramatic victory, seizing the northern city of Kunduz and holding it for more than two weeks before making a tactical withdrawal.
By any reckoning, 2015 was a bloody year for Afghanistan, with Taliban killing or wounding an estimated 16,000 soldiers and policemen. Despite a decade and half of costly Western intervention, insurgents can act at will as last Wednesday's suicide attack on a minibus in Kabul transporting journalists affiliated with Tolo TV, a 24-hour news channel, showed. A suicide bomber killed 13 people in Jalalabad on Jan. 17 at the home of a tribal elder when people had gathered to celebrate his son's release from Taliban captivity.
There is disturbing evidence of local support for the Taliban. More worrying still, insurgents have been observed using official army issue weaponry. True, many areas of life in Afghanistan had improved significantly over the past few years such as life expectancy, clean water, roads and Internet use. Afghan forces have managed to hold the country’s major urban centers. But the Afghan political system is so weak that it cannot survive without the permanent presence and support of foreign military forces. Can around 10,000 troops accomplish what years of effort by a much larger US and international contingent could not?
This is not the outcome the world expected of this war. It was the “good war” as opposed to Anglo-American intervention in Iraq. In fact, in its earliest days, the American-led war in Afghanistan appeared to be a triumph in comparison to the Iraq debacle. After all, it has the support of the whole world shocked into numbness by the Sept. 11 attacks. It has since turned into one of the longest and most costly wars in US history. So every effort should be made to revive the peace process that came to an abrupt end in July 2015 when the news came out that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had died two years earlier
Although the Taliban had not yet shown any willingness to engage in direct talks, the news that activists, former Afghan officials and Taliban representatives met in Doha on Saturday encourages hope. This was at the initiative of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning crisis group. Taliban has made it clear that they could participate in peace talks if the UN Security Council canceled a resolution freezing assets and limiting travel of senior figures. With give and take on both sides, a way can be found out of this impasse.
