Afghan awakening.

• Author: West, Bing

In September of 2008, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a remarkable statement. He said, "I'm not convinced we're winning in Afghanistan. I am convinced we can. That is why I intend to commission and ... am looking at a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region." Considering that the United States has been at war in Afghanistan for seven years now, clearly whatever our strategy is, it has not worked.

There has developed an unquestioning consensus that we need to do more. The Democratic Party, united in demanding a swift withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, supports expanding the war in Afghanistan. The same is true of the Republican Party and the Pentagon. The mainstream press, while savaging the White House for lacking a sensible plan and sufficient troops in Iraq, accepted without question sending more troops to Afghanistan. And now that the surge in Iraq is winding down, a surge for Afghanistan is in the cards.

While U.S. troop numbers will increase, we don't know whether other NATO countries will provide willing and able boots on the ground. Regardless of NATO Europe, America must deal with Pakistan and the sanctuary for al-Qaeda and the Taliban that has festered there like a infectious wound. The corruption attendant to opium continues to tear apart the fabric of trust in Afghan society. Local military and police forces must be trained. Above all, we need to define our goals and acknowledge our limitations on this vital front.

Washington is going to have to finally take into account the country's myriad intractable problems. As the United States is about to enter a larger war, it remains unclear where we are going, or why. How did we arrive at this point? What is the problem? And what are the alternative courses of action?

Afghanistan is essential to the war on terror. And because of this it is crucial that we get it right--but we cannot until we know just how we got it wrong. Mistakes were made from day one. A massive strategic revamping must come.

As we all know, sheltered by Taliban forces that controlled most of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda planned the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City that murdered two thousand nine hundred civilians on September 11, 2001. About a month later, the United States launched strikes on key targets in Afghanistan that were followed by a small number of American special forces calling in massive air strikes against the exposed Taliban and al-Qaeda positions, while the CIA funded various warlords loosely aligned with what was called the Northern Alliance, a collection of tribes opposed to the Taliban. Without cover, the Taliban forces were pummeled and the Northern Alliance swiftly seized city after city. Victory looked assured. Yet fundamental strategic and tactical errors soon followed.

The first set of American missteps resulted from Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban and in turn the United States' relationship with Pakistan. Since the mid-1990s, Taliban fundamentalists were supported by a Pakistani high command intent on preventing Indian geopolitical inroads into Afghanistan. The Taliban was a useful cat's paw for the Pakistani army. But post-9/11, fearing American wrath, then--Pakistani Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf and his military ostensibly withdrew their support for the Taliban.

After the initial invasion, the United States allowed Pakistan to pull out its advisers embedded with the Taliban, but at the same time, Pakistan also airlifted out several Taliban leaders, indicative of the two-sided game the Pakistani military was playing. Making matters worse, a much larger force of retreating Taliban and al-Qaeda members was located in the Tora Bora mountains near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Ignoring advice from CIA and army officers on the front lines, General Tommy Franks, the overall commander of U.S. forces, refused to deploy available marine and army-ranger task forces to seal the routes into Pakistan. Instead, he relied upon an untrustworthy amalgam of Afghani warlords to block off the area. Consequently, the core leadership of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, escaped into the tribal frontier lands of western Pakistan.

Nonetheless, on the home front, General Franks and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were feted as brilliant strategists. The unspoken but widely held assumption was that the Taliban and al-Qaeda had been shattered as cohesive fighting forces. Although their remnants remained dangerous terrorist cells, the mopping-up phase would not require a major infusion of U.S. conventional forces. Roughly one division of twenty thousand soldiers and a like number from the other twenty-five members of NATO combined seemed like more than enough to provide security across Afghanistan. Meanwhile, special covert teams would track down what was left of al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders inside Pakistan.

It was as if the war was won, the Taliban routed, and the United States able to move on to fight (and win) another war with our vastly superior military. And thus the administration turned to Iraq. But as the Iraq War escalated and turned south, it demanded more money and attention. Afghanistan became a strategic afterthought.

So, while our attention was focused on the disintegrating situation in Baghdad, violence in Afghanistan was on the rise. Dire warnings began to appear in the press. Suicide-bomb attacks had increased from eighteen in 2005 to 116 in 2006, while direct-fire attacks grew from three per day in 2005 to more than ten per day in 2006. Violence forced many schools in southeastern Afghanistan to close. Several provinces teetered on the brink of collapse.

Coalition forces currently in Afghanistan have been unable to effectively redress the situation. For this, there are three...