The latest assessments by United States experts on the diminished strength of Al Qaida puts the terrorist organization’s manpower at around 300 leaders and fighters in Pakistan’s border tribal territories and possibly 50 to 100 in Afghanistan. Those figures, to be sure, do not include Al Qaida’s ties and crucial synergies with the Taliban in both countries, nor with affiliated terrorist organizations across the Middle East and Asia. Still, they sharpen the focus on the U.S. war in Afghanistan, raising the question of whether mission creep has embroiled America in a war that began with a different goal and now shows no signs of an end.
That’s a critical issue. The war in Afghanistan now puts the lives of around 100,000 American troops at risk, and bleeds the U.S. treasury. It also breeds dangerous discontent against America among Muslims who are influenced by the extremist jihadist culture and the violence it legitimates.
The estimate of around 300 Al Qaida leaders and fighters who are believed to use Pakistan’s tribal areas as a safe haven and staging area was disclosed by Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, at a national security conference in Aspen last week. Mr. Leiter said the estimate reflected the views of U.S. agents in the field and other indices. CIA director Leon Panetta made the estimate of 50-to-100 Al Qaida members in Afghanistan the Sunday before in a “Meet the Press” interview.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reasonably noted the “depth of synergies” among Al Qaida, whatever its size, and other groups, including the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. He might well have expanded the list to include professed Al Qaida affiliates in Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq and other parts of Asia.
Americans presumably are well aware of the threat of affiliate organizations. The man accused of trying to detonate a terrorist bomb in New York’s Time Square a few weeks ago was allegedly trained by Pakistan’s Taliban. The young Nigerian who tried to blow up an airliner en route to Detroit last Christmas Day has said he received training in Yemen from Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Some Somali-American Muslims have returned to Somalia for training.
Still, it’s reasonable to question whether the United States’ mission in Afghanistan is winnable, or even feasible, over the longer term. The United States initially invaded Afghanistan, in what is now the nation’s longest war, to deprive Al Qaida a safe haven there — and not to rout the Taliban, abhorrent as its repressive rule has been. It is also true that the Taliban was, and remains, an indigenous insurgency that has seemed to strengthen at least partly on the appeal of ejecting non-Muslim westerners — first from Russia and, now, the U.S. and NATO — which in their view defile their country and protect a corrupt government.
Americans have good reason to wonder if the war makes sense. The Taliban is centered in the Pashtun ethnic tribal lands on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In that broad area, which the Pashtun essentially consider borderless, they account for a combined population of around 35 million people. They are distinguishable, as well, for their ethnic and social standards, and renowned for their warrior mentality, which has made them the bane of interlopers for centuries.
Among their own people, the Taliban rule by terror. Those who reject their religious or social extremism are often murdered — witness the recent reversal in Marja following the initial and costly victory by U.S. forces, and the assassinations in Pakistan’s tribal lands of Pashtun who resist the Taliban philosophy.
In any case, the test of wills between the United States and NATO forces versus the Taliban is inevitably leading to the end game — one in which a clear-cut American/NATO victory seems implausible. There is a more sensible option: withdraw the bulk of the troops, and leave a contingent focused on strikes against anti-western terrorist groups, not the stewardship of Pashtun lands. That will likely be the conclusion, whether or not it is immediately embraced in Washington and NATO’s Brussels headquarters.