After more than seven and a half years in Afghanistan, the United States is mired in a seemingly impossible war. The country has only seen more violence, the political will of American allies is weak, and the Afghan government has failed to gain widespread legitimacy. As disastrous as the outcome is so far, the government thinks staying the course makes sense.

Afghan men inspect the bodies of victims at the site of an explosion in Logar province south of Kabul, July 9, 2009. The explosion outside a school south of the Afghan capital on Thursday killed at least 25 people, including 12 students, officials said. REUTERS/ Omar Sobhani

Recent developments are not promising. Taliban fighters and their commanders ducked a huge offensive conducted by the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. They spread into areas to the west and north.
Last week, an explosion outside a school south of the Afghan capital killed at least 25 people, 15 of whom were students, officials said. Near the Pakistan border, Taliban fighters re-took a district and government buildings after heavy fighting.

The Logar province explosion and the Taliban victories in eastern Nuristan follow an alarming escalation of violence across Afghanistan since the U.S. Marines launched its new offensive in Helmand, a central Taliban area, two weeks ago.

The Helmand assault, named “Operation Khanjar”(Operation Strike of the Sword), is the first major operation under President Barack Obama’s new strategy to defeat the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan. The war-torn country is to hold a presidential election on Aug. 20. Such occasions usually bring about more violence, and will likely be a test of the country’s fragile security.

The Taliban have long been strong in the eastern and southern parts of Afghanistan. The insurgency has spread out of those parts in recent months and moved to the relatively safer north and even to Kabul.

There were an estimated 1500 Taliban in Helmand. They escaped the 4000 Marines and 750 Afghan soldiers with little fighting. Some of the Taliban melted into the local population, since they came from them, but the rest have gone elsewhere to fight another day. This is a force that will not and cannot be eradicated; they will merely shift among areas with varying degrees of lawlessness.

Afghan defense officials said they fear that the U.S. efforts in Helmand will only continue to move the Taliban fighters around to previously stabilized areas.

The American government remains committed to Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s plan to “clear, hold and build” in areas wrested from Taliban control. With the recent assault in Helmand, the military admits this operation is far from over as it is unclear where the Taliban went precisely.

This is the perpetual dynamic in Afghanistan it seems. Eliminating the Taliban is not only unlikely, but it would not end their movement. By now, there are many more Afghans with reasons to fight, such as years of displacement and vulnerability at the hands of global and regional powers. As much as many fear Taliban rule, the last time Afghanistan was secure and stable was under their rule.

Also, the Taliban could very easily wait out the building stage and then attack. It’s doubtful American-imposed building will suddenly bring about credible Afghan institutions.

I am of the mind that poorly run and even oppressive domestic, organic institutions will be more stable and thus prone to positive development than are foreign-imposed ones. This makes it hard to believe the American strategy will be effective.

There are other historical reasons. No invasion force in history has been able to subdue Afghanistan completely. While they have been able to prop puppet regimes in Kabul and overturn nascent governments, they can never erase a thoroughly grounded resistance.

The geographic, ideological, social and political conditions all add up to suggest that this war could be fought interminably, and taking the war to the refugees and their supporters in Pakistan’s non-governed provinces will only strengthen the resistance’s resolve as the massacre of civilians and people fighting for what they see as their self-determination will bring about only further impetus to fight for some modicum of self-defense.

The United States failed to eradicate all the enemies it designated after September 11 in its “war on terror.” For instance, one of the “axis of evil” countries, North Korea, went nuclear, and the other, Iran, is more influential in the region now. The United States really sought Al-Qaeda after September 11, and beat it from Afghanistan. That should be success enough. The Bush-era priorities, such as re-writing the political rules of Afghanistan, need to be abandoned. They have been pursued with too much death and destruction, and with too little probability of success.

The shame is that the momentum of nationalistic arrogance and natural inertia of wars have American policymakers thinking that the fight must go on because all else is failure. Perhaps we need to overturn the neo-conservative priorities set out by the previous administration.