How successful have the coalition forces been?

Although eight years have passed since the US/ISAF invasion, bin Laden is still alive and al-Qaeda are functioning to some extent in the tribal areas beyond the Pakistan border, where multiple Islamist groups have made their bases and training camps. Despite being ousted from power in 2001, the Taleban regrouped and fought back with a new insurgency from 2003-5 which was particularly prevalent in their heartland, namely the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar as well as central Oruzgan. Having emerged as a distinctly Afghan movement, the Taleban’s ranks have swelled in the last few years due to Pakistani recruits joining the cause in the name of jihad (see Islam). Although the Taleban forces are estimated at only 10,000, their guerrilla tactics (and terrorist methods including suicide bombing) are extremely hard for conventional armies to counter, and the coalition forces face similar difficulties to those experienced by the Soviet army in the 1980s. Their success will depend not on military victories but on winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the people, stamping out heroin production (the Taleban briefly banned poppy cultivation in 2000 but since the 2001 invasion it has been their main source of funding), and co-operating with Pakistan to rid its tribal areas of Taleban, al-Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups.

In March 2009 Barack Obama laid out his plans for a ‘comprehensive strategy’ for Afghanistan and Pakistan. This involved establishing a ‘trilateral dialogue’ between the US and these two countries, sending in more troops in the short term to root out ‘high-level terrorist targets’, and channelling financial and infrastructural resources to the area that had previously been going to Iraq. Obama’s policy is a hybrid of focused counter-terrorism and broader counter-insurgency, and some commentators doubt its ability to achieve both aims.

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