No Sanctuary and No State Support

Steven Metz questions our strategy in Afghanistan, asserting that terrorists do not require a physical sanctuary to plot against us and that terrorists do not need a state sponsor to plot against us. The September 11th attacks could have been achieved without sanctuary or Taliban regime support, he claims, so why bleed to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan?

After all, he argues, it is false that lack of our troops fighting on a large scale will just let the Taliban march on Kabul and take over the Afghanistan state.

I do agree with Metz that lack of our direct troop support doesn't mean the Taliban will march on Kabul. But if we can't defeat the Taliban and leave Afghan security forces at national, regional, and local level able to fend off the Taliban, it does mean that the Taliban will get a sanctuary in southern Afghanistan even if they never take Kabul and become the nominal national government.

And while a sanctuary is not required to attack us, it sure does help a lot. So there is value in denying al Qaeda a sanctuary to complicate their efforts to plot new 9/11-scale attacks. Just slowing them down buys us time to discover the plot and stop it before they strike.

As to state sponsorship, while a Taliban regional victory would deny al Qaeda a formal UN-recognized state sponsor based in Kabul, al Qaeda would have a pseudo-state sponsor in the region. Plus, with a regional sub-stae base, they could get a sub-state sponsor from Pakistan, as elements within the Pakistan government use their UN-recognized state privileges and resources to support the regional Taliban government in southern Afghanistan.

Metz seems to forget one of the reasons we don't want al Qaeda to have state sponsorship is that we fear an escalation from 9/11-scale attacks to those that use chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons to attack us. Remember, that is one of the reasons we destroyed the Saddam regime--we couldn't afford to risk that such a terror-sponsoring enemy of ours might help terrorists attack us with weapons that a state has access to making.

Further, Metz ignores that giving the Taliban a sanctuary in Afghanistan could allow Pakistani Taliban to draw support from Afghanistan to threaten Pakistan's central government--already a nuclear power. This is a single campaign being fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we'd have little comfort from suffering a nuclear attack from Pakistan-based al Qaeda if we can say at least the plot did not originate in Afghanistan. Giving up defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan just shifts the major theater to Pakistan. And given how tough it has been to get Pakistan to fight this war with our troops doing a lot of fighting, too, how hard will Pakistan fight if we essentially pull out of the fight?

Finally, I firmly disagree with his assumptions that the Taliban would not be so foolish as to allow an al Qaeda sanctuary and that if they did that we could easily crush an al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan if we detect it forming after we leave. On the former, the Taliban would see us retreat from Afghanistan and count it a glorious Allah-provided victory. How would that convince the Taliban that we'd return to defeat them?

On the latter statement, how well did our no-fly zone attacks work in Iraq in the 1990s? How has Israel done with Gaza and Hezbollah in sotuhern Lebanon? The fact is, Moslem world opinion will not tolerate attacks on Moslems for long even if they are terrorist targets. Al Qaeda and the Taliban will make sure that plenty of children, puppies, and women die in our attacks, and that baby milk and medicine factory signs appear in the rubble of what we destroy.

If you accept Metz's first two assumptions without examining them, his condemnation of our military campaign make sense. I can understand why one would question our strategy if you believe the first two assumptions, since his third assumption that the Taliban couldn't easily reconquer Afghanistan if we were not there fighting is accurate, I think. But examining the two assumptions about the value of sanctuaries and state support, what al Qaeda could get from them, and then looking at the fights in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single Taliban Campaign make that final accurate assessment rather pointless from the point of view of deciding on our strategy.

We can argue about what we need to achieve our goals, but I have no doubt that we need to deny al Qaeda a sanctuary and state support in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. And right now, beating down the Taliban in Afghanistan with our forces while supporting Pakistan's efforts on their side is needed to allow a decentralized Afghan government and local allies to hold the ground we clear.

Metz is right to question our assumptions nearly 9 years into the fight in Afghanistan. We should never fear to do that. But this effort falls short of providing a reason to follow his advice.