The U.S. should pursue more limited, less aspirational objectives in Afghanistan

So says Gilles Dorronsoro, a very sharp South Asia scholar down the hall:

Afghanistan may be the right war, but the United States could very well fight it in the wrong place. Present plans call for most of the new troops to be deployed to the southern and eastern regions of the country, where they could win every battle and still fail to hold the ground. In a land already notoriously averse to foreign invaders, the southern province of Kandahar is particularly hostile to outsiders. In the 1980s, when the Soviets or the Afghan government wanted to punish one of their soldiers, they sent him there. Helmand, the other hot spot in the south, has no cities and few towns—very little of strategic value, except the road to Herat.

In the eastern provinces, it’s important for Obama and his team to recognize that regardless of how the United States revises its strategy, American troops and their NATO allies will still face “hit and run” attacks from across the Pakistani border to the east. There is no quick fix to this situation: even with the full support of the Pakistani government and military (a very optimistic hypothesis) the border will stay out of control for years.

And even if Kandahar and Helmand could be secured, U.S. troops would be stuck there, unable to prevent a stubborn Taliban infiltration and progression in the north. And when U.S. troops inevitably withdraw, what little order had previously existed would dissolve overnight. Regardless of how well U.S. troops there fare, the Afghan National Army forces that eventually replace them will be simply unable to ward off the Taliban. This is the Taliban’s historical base and they understand the political dynamics of these regions better than any foreign forces ever could.

Instead, the United States should concentrate its efforts in and around Kabul, where it can provide security for the people and win a peace it can pass on to the Afghan National Army (ANA).