Afghanistan's Most Elusive Moving Target

NATO leaders can't seem to fix their sights on a definitive end-date to the Afghan mission.

Reacting to a report that Stephen Harper informed NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rassmusen that there is absolutely no flexibility to Canada’s 2014 Afghan pull-out date, the Globe and Mail’s Norman Spector is highly skeptical due to Harper’s repeated flip-flops on the issue. “In light of Mr. Harper’s past statements – from the election campaign of 2008 right up to a couple of weeks ago – why would a single Canadian, whatever their political allegiance, believe a single word of this report[?]” he asks. Harper’s claims are only further thrown into doubt by statements from Barack Obama that indicate U.S. troops could remain past 2014.

A Toronto Star editorial agrees that NATO is sending mixed messages about the mission’s end-date, but that doing so is necessary to avoid encouraging the Taliban to simply hold on until the alliance withdraws. “The uncertainty about what, exactly, 2014 will bring is bound to frustrate those who want a hard date,” writes the Star. “But it is also designed to thwart the Taliban, and persuade jihadist foot-soldiers that they can’t win, and should give up the fight.” The Star says that in a recent Taliban press release, the militants sound increasingly desperate and weary. The release’s pessimistic tone may have simply been the fault of an unskilled Taliban copy editor, but perhaps the Star is right.

Given Afghanistan’s reputation as "the graveyard of empires," “things do not bode well for the United States, which already exhibits symptoms of imperial decline: economic turbulence, growing deficits … as well as an overstretched military,” writes the Telegraph Journal's Hassan Arif. Despite a perpetually flexible end-date to the war, NATO is doing its best to assure the public that the conflict is not another intractable Vietnam-style war. Arif reminds us, though, that the thousands of U.S. troops that began the escalation of that conflict were originally known as "advisers," which sounds ominously close to the "trainers" we’re leaving in Kabul. Given the many signs that things aren’t going to turn out well, Arif wishes Harper’s decision to re-up had undergone more debate before we hitched our wagon to Washington’s star.