Will There Be an Afghan Tet-à-Tête?

In Vietnam, the Chinese or Lunar New Year – Tet – is a time of festivities and celebration. But it is also famous for a change in military tactics by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) during the Vietnam War four and a half decades ago. In 1968, a cease-fire had been declared by both sides, in anticipation of the New Year (although the North and South actually had different days for the actual main day of celebration), but a massive attack by communist NVA regulars and the guerrilla locals, the Viet Cong, was pressed against U.S. and South Vietnamese forces in violation of that accord.

“[T]he offensive was countrywide in scope and well coordinated, with more than 80,000 communist troops striking more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the southern capital. The offensive was the largest military operation yet conducted by either side up to that point in the war… The initial attacks stunned the US and South Vietnamese armies and took them by surprise, but most were quickly contained and beaten back, inflicting massive casualties on communist forces.” Wikipedia.

We won that moment and a few more, but in retrospect, it was the beginning of the end for our cause in the South. It signaled a willingness from the North to mount stronger and sustained military efforts against the South (and the American troops), escalating the conflict and putting a whole lot more chips on the table. To continue to play in Vietnam would require a significant increase in the American commitment, at a time when support for the war was waning in the U.S. Talks with the North began in Paris then. President Lyndon Johnson didn’t have the stomach for this continued involvement and announced that he would not seek the presidential nomination that year. We stayed a few years beyond, withdrawing in 1973, but the South fell completely; the North endured another triumph against a Western incursion, having pushed the French out of Indochina in the mid-1950s, much like the Afghans later shoved the Soviet Union out of their lands in 1988/89.

Is Afghanistan our “next gen” Vietnam? There’s a big difference, of course. It was a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan the allowed the 9/11 al Qaeda perpetrators to base operations and train their murderous assassins under sovereign protection. Effectively, they supported a massive terrorist attack on the United States. We retaliated, deposed the Taliban, attempted to occupy the country, and installed what became one of the most corrupt “democratic” regimes on earth under President Hamid Karzai – one that never consolidated its control beyond the national capital and the immediately surround region. More than a decade later, we’re still there, and planning to leave… slowly it seems… over the next several years.

Like the infamous Paris negotiations with the North Vietnamese in the late 1960s and early 1970s, American negotiators are now in hot discussions with the Taliban, whose power has steadily increased since they lost control of Afghanistan in 2001. Today, with the exception of Kabul and environs and a few regions where local war lords still prevail, the Taliban effectively control the vast majority of Afghanistan. When heavy concentrations of NATO (mostly US) forces enter a region, the Taliban either withdraw and return when those troops inevitably leave or remain and mount stealthy attacks, especially against any locals who cooperate with American forces, at night. Publicly, NATO tells the world that they have the Taliban back on their heels, but privately, they know better and openly express that concern during internal strategy sessions. France, which had announced that they were going to remain for the duration of the NATO involvement, reversed direction last month when four of their training officers were killed (trainers are hot targets) and announced that they would pull out fully in 2013.

Captured Taliban confirm the general local sentiment that the Taliban are winning the war with, they claim, lots of financial and other support from Pakistani sources, and that local Afghan politicians and even military personnel, bracing for the departure of NATO forces by 2014, are already cozying up to the Taliban. “A spokesman for the NATO-led coalition on [February 1^st] confirmed the existence of a report that summarizes the views of Taliban detainees, who claim that they are winning the war thanks to cooperation from some Afghan government officials and soldiers and who say their movement is controlled by Pakistan’s intelligence service.” New York Times, February 1^st.

Do the Taliban mount a major offensive across the country – like the Tet offensive – before the Americans wind down? Do they attack when the U.S. forces have contracted to a manageable size just to make the humiliation of a U.S. defeat (or at least the appearance to the Muslim world of a U.S. defeat) seem obvious and to reinforce their own power? Or do they simply wait until the U.S. leaves and take over? Do we really believe that they will do what they might pledge to do in those peace talks? And if we already know that we cannot add sufficient troops for an indefinite period of time to implement our desire to crush the Taliban, why are we still there?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the longer we remain in Afghanistan, the greater the wasteful drain on our sapped economy and the greater the probability of an escalated and humiliating Taliban attack on U.S. forces.