On December 15, the U.S. officially declared victory in the war in Iraq and symbolically handed the country over to the Iraqis. But in Afghanistan, the war continues to drag on, a war without end.
Ten years after the "shock and awe" offensive that unseated the Taliban government, and even after the promised phased military withdrawal, neither side has managed to obtain the upper hand. The insurgents have been hammered by two years of troop surges that have driven them back to the outskirts of remote villages. The danger is so great that upper-level commanders rarely work from within Afghanistan’s borders anymore, preferring to hide in plain sight across the border in Pakistan. But as Ron Moreau writes in this week’s Newsweek, the Afghan government’s allies, the Taliban insurgents, and even the Americans all have weaknesses.
Meanwhile peace talks have also so far floundered in the absence of strong support from Taliban higher-ups. They are a divided guerrilla force. “The Taliban's prime weakness is that it is not a political movement," one Taliban official told Moreau. “They just love to fight, even if the fight is endless and meaningless."
Pakistan is looking more and more like the key to this puzzle—as long as it provides safe haven, defeat may be impossible. This American ally, of course, denies it provides any assistance to Afghan insurgents. The Pakistanis may be playing a double game, Moreau writes, but what can Americans, with more than 100,000 troops still on the ground in Afghanistan, do about it?
