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'We Need to Change'

America's Last Big Effort to Turn the Tide in Afghanistan

By Susanne Koelbl

Public support for the war in Afghanistan is being undermined by incidents such as Friday's air strike, in which many civilians are reported to have died. US President Barack Obama and the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, want to try a new approach.

The images are shaky, but you can see things well enough to recognize that something is not right. And then it happens: An armored car belonging to Western forces races through the streets of an Afghan city. Panicked civilians scramble to get out of the way. A civilian car moves into the lane ahead of the military vehicle. The machine gunner aims, fires and scores a hit.

The military vehicle then races away while a number of Afghans run over to the attacked car, which is now in flames. They can be seen yelling and waving their arms frantically. Some of them try to help injured passengers out of the car.

"How many new insurgents is this patrol likely to have produced today?" a quiet voice asks in the darkened screening room. It belongs to Stanley McChrystal, 55, the new commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. They call him "McThree" -- his predecessors' names were McNeill and McKiernan.

The four-star general is tall and lean. He is said to need only a few hours sleep and to skip breakfast and lunch, eating only once a day, always in the evening. He does this in order to be wide awake at all times during the day.

Born into a military family, McChrystal chose to serve with the US special forces and commanded their secret operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for several years. It was his men who found Saddam Hussein and killed Abu Mussab Al-Sarkawi, a key Al-Qaida operative in Iraq. His track record lends him authority.

Unsparing Self-Criticism

McChrystal is seated in a conference room at the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) with the force commanders responsible for the western, eastern, southern, and northern sectors, as well as for Kabul province. He shows them half a dozen film clips like the one in which a patrol vehicle machine-gunned a civilian car. Some of the videos were downloaded from YouTube. They are embarrassing, painful scenes documenting the fact that Western soldiers actually do insult, wound and kill Afghan civilians. This is why the West is not having any success in Afghanistan, McChrystal says. "We need to change."

Slightly less than eight years after the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, the time has come for unsparing self-criticism. America has gone the furthest in this. No wonder: This war has now become Barack Obama's war. He has put additional troops on the ground. The military has changed its strategy and is attempting to be more careful about calling in air strikes when there is a chance that civilians could be affected as well.

Tragically, information came in from Afghanistan last Friday indicating that, once again, civilians had been killed in a NATO air strike. As it turned out, a German army officer called in a US air strike on finding out that two fuel tankers had been stolen by the Taliban near Kunduz. The reasoning given for ordering an aerial attack was that the Taliban could potentially use the fuel trucks to attack the German camp in Kunduz. However German Chancellor Angela Merkel hit back on Tuesday at NATO allies that have criticized the air strike, saying Germany would not tolerate accusations before a full investigation had been conducted.

Because of incidents like this, among other factors, public support for the mission -- which received broad international backing when it began -- is gradually being undermined. According to recent polls, more than half of all Americans are now against the war in Afghanistan, and only 25 percent support President Obama's plan to send more soldiers into the area.

Increasing Doubts

In Western countries, doubts about the point of the mission have been increasing. Promoting democracy? The results of the recent presidential election aren't scheduled to be announced until September 17, but it is already clear that they are going to be distorted by the ballot-box stuffing, false vote counts, and vote buying that went on on a massive scale. The incumbent, Hamid Karzai, is in the lead. He was the candidate favored by the West, a hope for progress in the country, a man who had a good relationship with America and a support base in Afghanistan. This is pretty much gone now. Karzai has lost much of the confidence the West had in him.

More than 100,000 foreign troops are currently stationed in Afghanistan, nearly 62,000 from the United States and the remaining 40,000 from the other NATO countries. The German contingent numbers around 4,000. The US forces have shouldered a large part of the burden with regard to combat operations.

In a secret strategy paper, General McChrystal has laid out for President Obama and NATO some of the things that, in his view, need to be changed so that Afghanistan, like Iraq, can become at least a partial success for the West. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told him he can ask for anything he feels is necessary to get the job done, even including more soldiers if necessary. McChrystal apparently only wants to modify force structures for the time being, sending some noncombatant personnel home and replacing them with combat troops.

A controversy has broken out in the Obama administration over priorities in the region. Hillary Clinton has pleaded in favor of sending in more soldiers and strengthening the focus on Afghanistan, while Vice President Joseph Biden has warned against losing sight of the importance of Pakistan, an unstable nuclear power that serves as a safe haven for the Taliban and Al-Qaida.