Obama and Petraeus - the "Comprehensive Surge"??

I attended the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan’s (SCA) annual conference over the last couple of days – conveniently (certainly for me) held in the centre of Stockholm.  One of the many benefits for a NGO organisation with a well-respected and a multi-decade track record of work in Afghanistan is that they can call upon a very credible array of speakers almost routinely.  Last year, Rubin and Rashid held forth impressively, this year, Ahmed Rashid was there again, with Carlotta Gall, Jawed Ludin, Sima Samar, Barbara Stapleton and good representation from key members of the Afghan political and NGO community. A few snippets of some of the debate…

There was undoubtedly a very negative outlook on future prospects from some quarters, particularly credibly from Carlotta Gall ("in the south, government is collapsing") and Anders Fänge ("International Community incompetence and mistakes") of the Swedish Afghan Committee.  There was a readiness to accept that the next year or two was going to see a significant increase in fighting.  There seemed to be a lot of faith and optimism now being placed in these next couple of years with the advent of new US President, Barack Obama and a new CENTCOM commander, David Petraeus – specifically because of Petraeus’ knowledge of counter-insurgency and Obama’s apparent understanding of the wider regional context affecting Afghanistan.  This very possibly because it was stated that Barnett Rubin was on Obama’s advisory team...  

The next two years was summarised, I think by accident, as a “Comprehensive Surge” by Ahmed Rashid.

There was some suggestion that arming Afghan militias would form a significant part of the new efforts.  There was corresponding concern that this would fall the way of previous efforts (most recently in 2006) in that the forces would be poorly trained, unaccountable and barely controllable.

Ironically, it seems that, at a time when US troops, efforts and resources seem set to pour in over the next two years, they may be meeting European and Canadian troops on the way out…

The prize for the boldest and most optimistic statement went to Afghan ambassador Ludin, who stated that 2009 would be a better year than 2008…

But the warnings we also need to heed came from Carlotta Gall - concern that the Afghan population may suddenly get fed up with the international community and turn against us - and Ahmed Rashid - if we don't get it right, Afghanistan will not survive this time...