Obama Turns Focus to War in Afghanistan

There is a popular proverb that has been making the rounds in Kabul involving the inadvisability of juggling two watermelons with one hand. It is used to suggest the peril—some say folly—of taking on large tasks with too few resources. Lately, it has been cropping up as Afghans struggle to describe the enormity of the task that confronts President Obama in their country, where conditions have deteriorated dramatically over the past year. Deaths among both Afghan and U.S. troops are on the rise, confidence in the Kabul government is falling, and the ability of America to turn things around remains an open question. "There's no shortage of problems," says Michele Flournoy, Obama's Pentagon policy chief. "And we can't afford to solve them all."

This blunt assessment portends some tough choices for the president. As part of his new strategy for Afghanistan, Obama is dispatching 21,000 additional U.S. soldiers and marines to the increasingly violent country, where monthly troop casualties now surpass those in Iraq. In so doing, he fulfilled a long-standing request for reinforcements by Gen. David McKiernan, the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Obama also called for a surge of civilian development experts, long at the top of wish lists of overwhelmed U.S. military officials on the ground.

With these steps, Obama moved into the ring for what will be one of the toughest fights of his presidency. Indeed, if Iraq was decidedly George W. Bush's war, then Afghanistan firmly belongs to Obama. Now begins the daunting task of changing the dynamic in Afghanistan. Up to this point, U.S. troops "have done a fabulous job making a little go a long way," says Flournoy. "They haven't had a choice in the matter."

Bolstered by higher force levels on the ground, this week marines launched the largest U.S. offensive yet in the country. Some 4,000 troops streamed into the Helmand River Valley, an area of mud huts and lush poppy fields that has served as a key transit point for weapons, drugs, and Islamist fighters coming across the border from Pakistan.

It is not the first time the U.S. military has tried to clear the area of insurgents. In May 2008, commanders sent 1,000 marines to Garmsir, 75 miles north of the Pakistan border, where they faced fierce firefights and discovered hidden and reinforced bunkers among the compounds and networks of canals.

After clearing the town, they built relationships with local Afghans and reopened markets.

But in October 2008 they had to leave; the Pentagon simply didn't have the force levels to allow them to stay. The 8,000 British troops who were there at the time were unable to gain control of the region, and Afghan forces put in place in the aftermath of the marine offensive could not hold the territory alone.

As marines flooded into the south in the early morning hours Thursday, they were backed by helicopters and armored convoys. One marine was killed and several injured in the first hours of the operation, which marines dubbed Khanjar, or Strike of the Sword.

In the midst of the fighting, however, U.S. forces were careful to make it clear that civilian casualties, which have plagued U.S. forces and alienated Afghans, were a top concern. Even as the operation was underway, the U.S. military issued a press release noting that "forces have not used artillery or other indirect fire weapons, and no bombs have been dropped from aircraft."

The offensive in what had been an area of British responsibility makes another point clear as well: that large-scale operations on the ground are becoming less and less of an international effort. With appeals to NATO allies for more combat troops going largely unheeded, U.S. officials appear increasingly resigned to bearing most of the burden of the war. "We're seeking to ask each of our partners to do what they can in turning this around," says Flournoy, reflecting the kind of scaled-back entreaty that has lately characterized America's expectations of its allies.

The allies' pullback is a problem, particularly with many major indicators on a downward trend in advance of Afghanistan's presidential elections in August. Though some NATO nations are sending more soldiers to help with security for the voting, the reinforcements are almost certain to be temporary. By summer's end, U.S. troop levels will approach 60,000. Whether Obama sends more, senior defense officials say, will depend on Afghanistan's success in meeting a series of yet-to-be-determined benchmarks.

The difficulty of figuring out how to measure progress points to how hard it is to define victory. While an al Qaeda-free Afghanistan is clearly an Obama goal, democracy as a policy priority is rarely mentioned. Flournoy says officials are mulling essential questions, including "Why are we fighting in Afghanistan?" and "What's at stake if we fail?" Finally, she adds, they are asking themselves, "What's working, and what's not?"