El columnista inglés Mathew Parris está en Afganistán. En su último artículo en el Times señala que la guerra de Afganistán, como la de Vietnam, no se ganará ni se perderá mientras el gobierno americano siga poniendo dinero y soldados.
“There’s no way,” a British colleague said to me at Camp Holland, “the Americans are going to lose this war.” Although I have seen no evidence of progress after a week’s return to a country I last visited five years ago, I guess he is right. I am more certain than ever that we cannot win in Afghanistan, but my conviction grows also that we cannot lose either.
We can lose interest and resolve, but if we want to keep pouring blood and money into the Afghan vortex, the vortex will maintain its answering thirst for both. And if the vortex wants to keep offering us a fight, we can hold our end up until the crack of doom. Advances and reverses will be many; none will be decisive, none a cause for exaltation, none for despair.
Robert McNamara, who died as, sweating in body armour, I flew back to Kabul, was US Defence Secretary during the Vietnam War. Today we forget that at most times during that conflict the data remained positive, the situation difficult but never hopeless. As a young hawk, I remember a media stream of encouraging stories. Until, that is, the inconclusive return on America’s huge investment became impossible to justify politically. McNamara, who started as a passionate advocate of the Vietnam War, said finally: “We were wrong, terribly wrong.” He was as mistaken at the end as he was at the beginning. You could always argue the toss.
Ditto in Afghanistan, where nothing is certain but the ebb and flow of effective stalemate. The only question is for how long and at what cost we underwrite it.
En su artículo anterior Parris divagaba en la misma línea:
The “news” from Afghanistan this month will be of the new US commander, General Stanley McChrystal, and the surge of dollars and enthusiasm he brings. We’re meeting him soon and have been told to expect infectious optimism and crisp command. Perhaps he will persuade me that the security situation here can be stabilised. Surprising if with more than 80,000 troops it couldn’t be.
But put your eye to the other end of the telescope, step 40 paces back from the kinetic situation, and ask what it’s for. It’s to support the building of a secure, freestanding state in Afghanistan. This is not happening. The elections this summer cannot but return President Karzai, an arch survivor focused only on survival, in whom the world has already lost confidence and can have little reason for future hope. Mr Karzai’s paralysing chess game of alliances, stand-offs, jobs and favours does not represent a regrettable failure to do anything with the power he has won. It is the way he won it and the only way he can keep it.
Meanwhile, brute force can almost always hold its ground, and an American surge should bring a little more security. But for what? The ground may be cleared by guns, but there is no viable politics here waiting to occupy it. And until what? Until the Americans try to leave.
