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Ex-President Brack Obama’s 8-Years Policy Toward Afghanistan
The New York Times in an article evaluates President Obama’s eight-years war strategy and policy toward Afghanistan.
The American Newspaper, New York Times writes the strategy that went from a “good war” to the shorthand “Afghan good enough” reflects the president’s coming to terms with what was possible in Afghanistan.
What Mr. Obama meant was that no one in the Situation Room that day, himself included, thought that the United States — after 14 years of war, billions of dollars spent and more than 2,000 American lives lost — would ever transform Afghanistan into a semblance of a democracy able to defend itself.
“The struggle against violence and extremism, will not be finished quickly and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Barack Obama said.
“We have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war, yet here, in the darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon,” he added.
More than any other conflict, Afghanistan shaped Mr. Obama’s thinking on the basic questions of war, peace and the use of military power.
It is where he discovered his affinity for drones, sharpened his belief in the limits of American intervention, battled his generals and hardened his disdain for unreliable foreign leaders.
It reaffirmed his suspicions about sending American troops into foreign conflicts and made him reluctant to use more force in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other war zones.
When Mr. Obama took office in January 2009, he ordered a quick policy review on Afghanistan by a former intelligence analyst, Bruce Riedel.
But even before it was completed, he accepted a Pentagon recommendation to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total to nearly 70,000 American troops on the ground.
“That is true that we still have several thousand troops in Afghanistan and it is true that is always dangerous and always tough. Occasionally there have been significant causalities associated with that for the most part, this is now an Afghan fight.”
Now, as Mr. Obama prepares to turn the war over to Donald J. Trump, a leader even more skeptical than he is about the value of American engagement in foreign conflicts.
However, the Afghan parliament evaluates Obama’s policy that US did not want to end war and suppress terrorism in Afghanistan.
“The United States did not want to end war and suppress terrorism in Afghanistan. Since Bush administration till Obama’s governance even now for the Trump, this “Mouse and Cat” policy will continue and it is a policy that will not allow the Afghan government collapse, nor the Taliban gain the victory,” said Aref Rahmani, representative of Ghazni in Parliament.
Dawood Kalakani, representative of Kabul also said, “Barack Obama has not had a successful policy and the war did not end in Afghanistan.”
Mr. Obama was a state senator from Illinois in October 2002 when he famously condemned Iraq as a “dumb war.”
But in the same speech he also said, “I don’t oppose all wars.” He was referring to Afghanistan, which he viewed as a just war to hunt down the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
A tripartite meeting between the delegations of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was held in Kabul with the aim of connecting North Asia to South Asia and reducing transit and transportation costs among these three countries, the Ministry of Trade and Commerce said in a statement.
In this meeting, an agreement was reached on the creation of a joint technical committee to continue the talks.
This tripartite meeting was held under the leadership of Nooruddin Azizi, the Acting Minister of Industry and Commerce, Vice President of Turkmenistan and Srik Zhumangarin, the Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan.
Earlier, a bilateral meeting was held between the delegation of the Islamic Emirate and Turkmenistan. The ministry of commerce said the participants of the meeting discussed the construction of a large joint logistics center in Torghondi, the trilateral transit agreement between the IEA, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, the expansion of Afghanistan’s railway, solving issues related to Afghan transit and export goods, and a number of other commercial issues.
Acting Minister of National Defense Mohammad Yaqub Mujahid has said that no destructive groups including Daesh have physical presence in Afghanistan, adding the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) will not allow anyone to pose threat to any country in the region from the Afghan soil.
Mujahid made the remarks in a meeting with a delegation from Malaysia in Kabul on Thursday.
According to a statement released by the Ministry of Defense, Mujahid highlighted Malaysia’s “good treatment” of Afghan refugees and its long-standing relations with Afghanistan, and said that Malaysia is a powerful Islamic country and visits should increase.
He added that with the establishment of the Islamic Emirate, occupation and war ended in Afghanistan, and the country is fully secure.
Based on the statement, the Malaysian delegation called Afghanistan a friendly country and while emphasizing on comprehensive cooperation, it assured that what they have seen in Afghanistan will be shared with the authorities of their country.
The European Union signed an agreement worth 17 million euros with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to improve access to basic services, increased economic opportunities and protection for Afghans on the move and their host communities in Afghanistan.
The needs of women and girls are a particular focus of the programme, EU said in a statement released on Thursday.
The statement noted that from January 2023 until April 2024, over 1.5 million Afghans returned from Pakistan and Iran.
“I am deeply moved by the hardship returnees face when being deported to Afghanistan. In a country suffering from poverty and climate change, and in a city that just saw devastating earthquakes, this truly is a crisis within a crisis.”, said Peteris Ustubs, Director for the Middle East, Asia and Pacific of the European Commission’s Department for International Partnerships during the signing ceremony at the IOM transit centre in Herat.
Raffaella Iodice, EU Chargée d’Affaires a.i. to Afghanistan, added “The solidarity of the Afghan people towards their brothers and sisters is an inspiration. We must assure that communities hosting and helping new arrivals are supported. The partnership with IOM ensures access to essential services and provides protection for Afghan returnees and their host communities. As women and girls can be particularly affected, we make sure that all members of society can benefit”.
“IOM’s continued partnership with the EU has been critical in enabling our teams to reach hundreds of thousands of Afghan returnees and other vulnerable communities in the country”, said IOM Afghanistan Chief of Mission, Maria Moita. “Thanks to this renewed commitment, we will be able to focus on addressing the immense challenges in the areas of return and contribute to reintegration, social cohesion, and longer-term solutions for those communities.”
This additional contribution is part of a 5-year programme that is being implemented across Afghanistan and in four countries in the region. It builds on the EU’s previous support to IOM to improve the wellbeing of Afghans forced to return to the country, EU said.
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