More than a century ago, famed British author and adventurer Rudyard Kipling observed the difficulties of understanding and dealing with an important, distant part of the world when he wrote, “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”
This week at the Chattanooga Rotary Club, former Chattanoogan and McCallie School graduate Andrew Exum, a veteran of Army service in Afghanistan and Iraq, explained some of the current and enduring challenges and complexities that have confronted Americans in that part of the world for nearly the last decade.
Afghanistan is a place of rough terrain and tribal differences, where about 68,000 American troops are engaged against Taliban fighters, and sometimes also across the border in Pakistan.
Mr. Exum, currently a fellow with the Center for a New American Security in Washington, served as an Army platoon commander and an Army Ranger in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003 and 2004. He has also been an adviser to a Central Command (CENTCOM) assessment team, and a civilian adviser to U.S. Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, whose late mother attended the University of Chattanooga and was a member of the Free Press editing staff during that time.
Mr. Exum noted that there has been much U.S. aid to Afghan schools and other social development work for the Afghan people, but observed that “Development is not the same thing as stabilization.”
Mr. Exum said “the Taliban has a losing hand.” He believes “They’ll never be able to reinstate authority the way they did” before Americans were struck by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
American troops have suffered roughly a thousand deaths and many more wounds in Afghanistan. U.S. policy-makers recently have indicated plans for a gradual drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan. But conflict continues and a solution to the very difficult challenge unfortunately is not in sight.