Is the intervention in Afghanistan screwed up?…

(B2) Would the intervention in Afghanistan - at least in its current format - be finished? Some strategic specialists, and not the least, believe so... Some parliamentarians returning from mission too...

It's lost ?

I would particularly like to mention Yves Boyer, the deputy director of Strategic Research Foundation. During a meeting of the defense sub-committee in the European Parliament, in Brussels, on November 5, 2007, it was very clear: " It's lost ! Either we put 500 men, billions of euros to completely build a country, and we may have some chance of winning, in... five or ten years. But, today with 000 men, and only 40 operational, I say “good luck! ". And that's all I would say. ".

A few days later, still before this same commission, he clarified his remarks criticizing the lack of a precise goal for the operation: "Is it really the fight against terrorism? But the terrorists are also at home. Is it the hunt for bin Laden? If proven that he is still alive, when we find him, would that be the end of the international presence then?" Is it a reconstruction objective? "For the French, it reminds us a bit of Algeria. We know about the reconstruction teams, and above all we have seen the results. In Algeria, France won militarily but lost politically. And that above all led to a huge crisis. ( In fact) It also has the scent of a humanitarian-colonial operation: we are going to help them to rebuild themselves, to do as it should. “There are underlying debates that we have never had on this question” He added.

The military solution is no longer enough

As for the American experts, from the Center for International Strategic Studies (CSIS), specializing in military matters, they are not really more optimistic. This war cannot be won with military means alone. explains Anthony H. Cordesman, in two documents he has just published, on July 24 and 29, 2008, it is not winnable, he says, either, without a change in the role of Pakistani government forces in the "tribal" and Baluchi regions (closest to Afghanistan) (2). Lire: Analyzing the Afghan-Pakistan War ; Afghanistan: The Problem is Far More than Troop Levels.

"What's really going on?

This is the question of Giulietto Chiesa (PES, Italy) and most of the parliamentarians who returned from a mission there in early May. During a debate held in the European Parliament in June, he explained his position: "When you see the local newspapers, you see battles and deaths. Battles that involve movements that we hear little about, such as Hekmatyar's Hezbi Islami (1), more numerous and present on the ground (than the Taliban). There is a real war there between the Afghan army and the Pakistani army." As for the role of Europe. He thinks she "is not as influential as it could be". "Europe is involved - militarily, politically - in a war whose decisions are taken elsewhere. Our diplomats, our soldiers have repeated it to us: it is the United States which decides." And to conclude: "We must re-examine the political strategy in Afghanistan: many years of presence there have made matters worse. We have never admitted that it was a major political and military mistake."

A failure also according to Ana Maria Gomes (PES, Portugal): "The strengthening of (Afghan) institutions is a failure. We have not tackled the crucial elements: the judicial element has been totally neglected. There is a recipe for corruption and impunity there. Organized impunity of power , drug lords or organized crime bosses. President Karzai's right-hand man is involved in drug trafficking, but we prefer to ignore him." For her, it takes "rethinking the question of strategy". "The solution is above all political and not military. (...) We need a huge effort of civil reconstruction, of putting state institutions back in place. (...) We have to talk to the Taliban, it's essential, there is no possible solution without it, because they are part of the Pashtuns - the largest tribe in the country."

(NGV)

(1) Born at the end of the 1970s and based in Nangarhar, this movement had also carried out numerous actions against the Soviet army, near the Pakistani borders. It was then financed by the Americans.

(2) "Finally, virtually every military officer, civilian official, and intelligence officer who deals with Afghanistan realizes that the war not only is unwinnable on a purely military basis, it is probably unwinnable without basic changes in the role that the Pakistani government its forces play in the FATA and Baluchi areas of Pakistan. This is not an Afghan war, it is an Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict"