The United States did not need to send the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, to Kabul to reassure President Hamid Karzai about the sustainment of the NATO strategy in the country. Had there been a change in this strategy, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, would not have said what he did, and President Barack Obama would not have punished him in this humiliating way because his statements “undermined the civilian control over the military forces, a control which is at the core” of the American democratic regime, as the president assured. In this context, the appointment of David Petraeus as McChrystal's successor was made to appease the storm raised by the statements of the ousted general, but more importantly, to reassure the Americans - before Karzai - that the situation in Afghanistan will be handled by an experienced military commander who has achieved many successes in Iraq and enjoys a high level of competence and know-how in dealing with the political civilian institutions, but also a wide knowledge in regard to the Afghan file and its domestic and regional ramifications. However, appeasing the storm is one thing while turning the page of the disputes and divisions between the civilians and the military over the new strategy in Afghanistan is another. Indeed, the dispute was not over the ousted field commander so that it ends with his sanctioning and dismissal, as much as it was over the strategy itself. McChrystal did not do well in expressing his stand, or maybe left early so that he would not be burdened with the outcome of a policy drawn by politicians who are thousands of miles away from the field of operations where he is witnessing the repercussions of war on a daily basis, as a senior command in the military institution. This raises a question regarding the method which will be adopted by the new commander to reconcile the civilian and military administrations of the situation in Afghanistan in a way that would increase his chances of success. In reality, McChrystal's objections and criticisms were not the first, seeing how the “rebellious” general opposed the strategy announced by President Obama in March 2009 since the beginning, thus forcing the administration to introduce key amendments which were announced by the president himself at the end of last year. Among its repercussions was the dispatch of around 30,000 US soldiers – raising their number to around 100,000 – which marked the implementation of the plan that was adopted by General Petraeus in Iraq and achieved some success in reducing the violence rate and sparing the country a wide-scale civil war. On the other hand, the London Conference, which was held early this year in the presence of the United States and around seventy countries, ratified the establishment of a “Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund,” i.e. a plan to hasten the enhancement of the capabilities and training of the Afghan army, reintegrate the citizens in the state and distance them from the Taliban by providing them with the necessary funds and helping them confront the economic hardships. For her part, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expected many supporters of the movement to help the government in exchange for salaries which they used to receive from the Taliban, just as it happened in Iraq with the Awakening Councils who fought Al-Qaeda organization. Moreover, the principle of engaging in dialogue with the Taliban was also ratified, but only after it is weakened and depleted on the military level. Nonetheless, the outcome that was sensed by the military following the launching of the new plan was that military power alone was not enough to settle the war, and that waving the stick to force the Taliban to negotiate with Kabul was also insufficient unless those responsible for the war, whether the military or the civilians, know about the operations arena - i.e. the human one and not just the field one - and know about the social environment, its culture and traditions that are completely different from Iraq's. In this context, General McChrystal himself wrote an article last April assuring that “the only way to achieve success would be by getting the Afghans' trust and support. We must conduct our operations in a way that respects and protects the population,” stressing the necessity to “build the Afghan army.” He also stated that the Taliban's strength stemmed from the “weakness of the Afghan government”, and did oppose the principle of reconciliation with the movement after providing the security conditions that would allow the politicians to adopt the decisions, considering that “the end of the conflict is political, as it is the case with all wars.” The ousted General was bluntly expressing the opinion of the military men in saying that the elements of the new strategy for this “necessary war” to which Obama is holding on suffers great flaws, while the record losses in the ranks of the international forces this month confirmed that the Taliban was still present in force, not only in its areas of influence but also in Kabul and the regions controlled by the NATO troops. In reality, several factors carried negative repercussions on the course of the strategy. President Obama defined an early deadline for the pullout from Afghanistan – July 2011 – which did not match the size of the war according to military men who estimated it will take much longer than that. Even his Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, stated a while ago that the NATO still needed around 450 trainers to finish building the Afghan army, “without which there will be no pullout strategy to begin with.” Moreover, this early deadline encouraged President Karzai to start setting up an administration that is loyal to him and that will maintain his grip over power along with his family that is accused of corruption – as he did not forget the campaign that was launched against him during the last presidential elections that witnessed talk about their falsification and the corruption of his family and entourage. Also, this early deadline seemed to be a clear invitation to the Taliban to discontinue dialogue or at least show more stringency in its demands, at the head of which is the pullout of the “invading” forces since the higher commander of the latter forces is rushing the withdrawal! For his part, McChrystal discovered that the campaign on Kandahar will be delayed or will proceed slowly due to what he referred to as being “the difficulties facing the process to earn support from the locals.” He had expressed his discontent toward the slowness or even the absence of a plan to fill the vacuum in Marja after the ousting of the Taliban and expected the civilian American officials in Kabul and Washington to hasten the embracing of the population in a country where the fighters do not mind switching sides overnight. He also criticized the way some officials were forced to favor the corrupt in power in Kabul and Kandahar, while it is known how Washington reconciled with Karzai despite all that was said about him and his family. What was noticeable however was that after his meeting with McChrystal, Obama said he will do all that is in his power to secure success in Afghanistan and achieve the goal of hindering or dismantling Al-Qaeda organization to defeat it, at a time when the ousted general had written two months ago: “We detected the arrival of ammunition from Iran and are in possession of documents regarding Iran's training of fighters. We are not facing Al-Qaeda fighters and never encountered them on the battlefields!” Who are the Americans fighting then? The politicians are fighting Al-Qaeda and the military are fighting the Taliban whose leaders attribute the failure of the NATO troops and governmental forces to achieve a decisive victory to the fact that the population supported them in the face of the “invading strangers.” What remains to be said is that the United States, which encouraged President Karzai to allow the participation of the influential regional powers, i.e. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even Iran, in his efforts to reconcile with the Taliban, is aware of the difficulty of the task assigned to him as long as the Afghan crisis is still an inherent part of the package of intertwined regional crises from Palestine to Iraq and at the level of the open confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the West over the Iranian nuclear file. So, will Petraeus succeed where McChrystal has failed in Kabul and in Washington? Nonetheless, all these developments carried negative repercussions on the new plan in Afghanistan. In McChrystal's opinion, the military and civilian political situation in Afghanistan should have been left to the forces fighting on the ground, and it was as though he was expecting failure and preferred to withdraw early on and let the politicians in Obama's administration assume the responsibility. This is why the movement hastily commented on his ousting by saying it conveyed a clear defeat for the American project.
