Two sides of the COIN

Al-Jazeera has estimated that about 500 civilians have been killed in the first half of 2009. In the recent elections the Taliban has targeted people with “inked” fingers (a sign of having voted) and punished them by relieving them of the offending digits. There has however been a distinct lack of local rioting, as well as women voters turning out in larger numbers than ever before, according to the New York Times. Thus, although polls show that, as of July 2009, only 17 per cent of Americans supported a complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, Biddle admits that:

... as the US Troop count increases, so will the violence ... expect the calls for withdrawal to grow apace with the body count.

Obama came to power after an eight-year administration, which were certainly some of the most conflicting and confronting years in the long sweep of American foreign relations. Characterised by a Christian-like “mission” of bringing a semblance of “civilisation” to a world in dire need of democracy's discipline, Bush's neo-conservative mantras of pre-emptive self-protection and the refusal to co-operate with those who harboured terrorists saw Operation Enduring Freedom (the first strike in Afghanistan) start a conflict which would last many more years than he would have cared to originally admit, or even envisage.

Obama's challenge is now not whether or not to engage, but how to make the engagement palatable to the American public as casualties increase. That difficulty is in itself a decisively hard hill to surmount and seize.