Shock and Awe

Few events in the Middle East still elicit shock and awe, but the August 21 airstrike on the Afghani village of Azizabad was an exception. Working under the information that a Taliban commander was in the area, bombs were dropped in the village as a large crowd milled the streets mourning the death of a local leader. Devastation resulted—though an initial U.S. investigation reported five to seven civilian casualties, a later U.N. probe revealed that the number was closer to 92, a number that included the mutilated remains of many women and children.

As this sobering report makes clear, the United States still has much work to do in Afghanistan, where the number of terrorist attacks and support for the Taliban insurgency have been rising largely under the radar of a western media focused on elections and the war in Iraq. The U.S. response has been a sloppy counterinsurgency; according to a recent United Nations report, U.S. and NATO forces have been responsible for 577 Afghan civilian deaths this year, 395 of which were due to airstrikes. The immediate objective should thus be to prevent additional civilian deaths due to airstrikes and raids, of which Azizabad was a particularly horrific example.

The best way to do this is to get more boots on the ground. Air strikes are an inherently imprecise means of targeting suspects: too many innocent homes and lives are destroyed along the way, and seeds of ill-will are sown in the locals against a faceless and apparently malevolent enemy in the sky. More efficient and humane would be to deploy additional soldiers in areas where the Taliban is suspected to hide. President Bush has already promised one additional brigade, but more will be needed to help the 33,000 troops already spread thin across a country one and a half times as large as its westerly neighbor.

Adding more troops to Afghanistan may sound suspiciously like the Iraqi “surge”, but the primary aim in this case would be development rather than security. The focus in Afghanistan right now needs to be on building infrastructure. In a country riddled with poverty, landmines, and a thriving opium trade, a little carefully directed and managed funding goes a long way. More investment in agriculture, energy, roads, education, and health—in conjunction with forces deployed to uphold and enforce these developments on a community level—will do more to build the Afghani government and foster morale than bombs ever could.

While in this case an increased military presence may be the best solution possible, we must be careful not to leap to the conclusion that additional troops and war are always the answer. The current political climate seems to glorify military might and offer a pick of poisons: if not support for Iraq, then increased focus on Afghanistan. As voters in countries like Canada, Britain, and France have made clear, being against the war entirely can still be a viable alternative. It would be a grave error to mistake a laurel leaf for a white flag.

For the time being, however, any discussion at all would be preferable to the bizarre public neglect of a country with which we are still at war. U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has himself stated explicitly that it is not Afghanistan that takes priority. “In Afghanistan, we do what we can,” he said. “In Iraq, we do what we must.” This May, monthly foreign casualties in Afghanistan exceeded those in Iraq for the first time since 2003. We can no longer afford ignorance.