British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond said on Wednesday that there is a “”growing realisation on both sides of” the conflict in Afghanistan “that neither side can win outright.”
The Obama administration is in the process of beginning to draw down US troop levels in Afghanistan, but will continue to occupy the country, conduct operations, and train meager Afghan security forces beyond 2014.
The transition to “Afghan security” is supposed to be taking place, but the war is increasingly seen as a failure.
“A decisive end seems nowhere in sight,” The Associated Press reported in October, noting the enduring Taliban insurgency, the failure of a negotiated settlement, and the weakness of the US-backed Kabul government.
“We are probably headed for stalemate in 2014,” says Stephen Biddle, a George Washington University professor who has advised US commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. Biddle warns that the US will probably be pumping billions of dollars a year into Afghanistan for decades to come in an attempt to prevent collapse and civil war.
The Taliban actually control entire parts of the country, where they “collect taxes, maintain law and order, and adjudicate disputes,” Dexter Filkins reported in the New Yorker in July. An Afghan told Filkins, the “country will be divided into twenty-five or thirty fiefdoms, each with its own government,” as soon as they Americans leave.
I take it that 'both sides" mean the US and Little England because the Islamists most certainly do not consider this debacle a draw or loss in any way shape or form.
No outright winner, for sure. But the U.S and the U.N. were certainly losers in this fiasco. Military intervention ALWAYS has unintended consequences, We never seem to learn that.
The British DM is wrong. And he, of all people should know better since his empire has been twice…ney, thrice defeated there.
This isn't surprising. What IS surprising is that the guys who were supposed to win are now admitting they can't. So while Adele's still singing the guys who were supposed to lose theoretically won't win. When she stops however ….. that remains to be seen. But the Brits and Americans won't be there.
The british got their asses broke in the 1840s as history showed that Afganistan is named the graveyard of empires and so it did to the grandfathers and burying the same invaders next to them.They have forgotten the ill fated march from Karbul to Jalalabad where 20.000 died only the army`s surgeon survived to tell the tale of the epic slaughter.
The game ain't over yet.
The game was lost the minute the US put boots on the ground in Afghanistan.
As for any end-game that includes 'enduring bases' (or whatever the term du jour is for US installations that will be in-country) all one needs to do is read up on a little place in Vietnam called Dien Bien Phu. There are probably a few French veterans still out out there who can tell you all about 'enduring bases' in enemy territory.
The game is over when the Taliban says it's over, and not one second sooner.
Win what?
The big problem here is that whatever is going on in Afghanistan is not a war in any conventional sense. The Taliban has no air force, no armor, no artillery, no navy; they don't even have uniforms and standardized weapons. Nor do they have a headquarters or a geographically defined area of control, with recongnized boundaries. They aren't even like the American Indians, who at least lined up in cavalry formations and fought the US Army. If it is not a war, then it can't be won in any meaningful sense. We could stay there forever if we wanted, but we could never "win."
Shall planet earth be a one-world Empire?
That is the issue.
Much like the Viet Minh- and later the Viet Cong- in Indochina, and the more recent Afghan Mujahideen, the Taliban don't have to 'win'- all they have to do is 'not lose'. Eventually, as did the French and Americans in Indochina and later the Soviets in Afghanistan, the invaders realize it's too costly to stay and they leave.