BRET STEPHENS: THE LAST MARINES LEAVE SANGIN VALLEY
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303647204579544111066185816?mod=hp_opinion&mg=reno64-wsj
For days I have been putting the same question to soldiers of the Afghan National Army: How do you feel about the imminent departure of Coalition forces? The answers are always variations on this one: “We are happy and sad,” they say. “The Americans are our friends and partners. They helped us tremendously. We are sad to see them go. But we are happy that they can go back to their families. And we are happy that we can now defend our own country and defeat the enemy.”
It’s a heartening reply, accompanied by assurances that they have the military situation well in hand. They had better. The fighting season begins in a few days, once the poppy harvest is brought in. Few places in Afghanistan have seen as much bloodshed as this fertile belt running along the banks of the Helmand River. The British, who lost more than 100 of their troops here, found it impossible to control. The U.S. Marines took over in 2010, losing another 50 men.
The Marines won the fight. But now they are gone for good. Late Sunday night, I watched them depart from Forward Operating Base Nolay, the last of what were once 30 bases in the valley. As a final order of business they picked up the trash, turned over the garbage cans, and drove away, a long convoy of heavily armored vehicles slowly making their way to Camp Leatherneck in the desert, 60 miles away.
So are the Afghans ready?
The Marines who have been training and advising them for the past year are cautiously optimistic. The Afghans have been conducting security operations on their own for a year while the Marines have mostly stuck to their bases. They have shown initiative, adaptability, discipline, coordination and a fighting spirit. “At a time when nobody’s talking about winning,” one Marine officer tells me, “they are talking about winning.”
The best evidence was the peaceful April 5 national election, in which Afghan soldiers and police were able to maintain security—and ballot-box integrity—at more than 6,000 polling places. Nobody expected the Afghans to perform so well. In Sangin alone, some 5,000 people, or 58% of the electorate, turned out to vote; in the 2009 election, just 179 people did.
Nobody expected, either, that the Taliban would be unable to disrupt the vote. “The tables are turned now,” says Maj. Gen. Sayed Malouk, the top Afghan commander in Helmand province. “The enemy used to do the attacking. Now we are the ones attacking them.”
Whether the Afghans can sustain the momentum is another question. A few Afghan officers are willing to share their doubts. “Do you have the equipment and support you need to win the war?” I ask one mid-ranking officer.
“No sir,” he says. “These weapons we have are old. Once they’ve been broken we don’t have spare parts.”
Could his unit count on the central government in Kabul to make up the shortfalls?
“Unfortunately I’m not sure,” he admits. “In the past they’ve proven they can’t help. We should have air support, a good radar-control system, MRAPs”—the last of these being the heavily armored, IED-resistant vehicles that are to the Afghan Army’s Humvees roughly what a Humvee is to a Dodge Dart.
As evidence of what he means, the wreckage of a smashed Afghan Humvee sits in the yard of the base, the victim of the improvised explosive devices that are the Taliban’s weapon of choice. “We hope that when Coalition forces leave here we will end up with better vehicles,” says another senior Afghan officer. He all but implores me to make sure the point gets conveyed to the American public.
The officer isn’t likely to get his wish, nor is it clear that he should: An army that lacks the logistical ability to keep its Humvees on the road is unlikely to succeed with MRAPs. Afghanistan’s military “will continue to evolve to where it is ‘Afghan sustainable,’ ” says Brig. Gen. Daniel Yoo, the senior Coalition officer in the region. Every military wants better equipment. What the Afghans need, as opposed to what they want, is the ability to take good care of what they have.
For that they still need help. The NATO mission wraps up in December, and the size of the remaining U.S. force is up in the air. “Right now 10 to 12,000 [U.S. troops] is what we’re looking at,” says Brig. Gen. Yoo, adding that the larger the American force, the fewer the overall risks. The Obama administration is rumored to be contemplating a force of 5,000—too small to make a difference, large enough to make trouble. It’s the same mistake the president made in Iraq.
It’s fashionable to write off Afghanistan as another lost war. Anyone who spends time in Sangin today would know it isn’t. But whether our withdrawal from the Sangin Valley is remembered as a transition or a retreat depends on whether Mr. Obama wants to win a war he has spent his presidency fighting, or merely declare victory and go home.
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