Foreign Policy Association’s Water’s Edge series currently features an article by Daniel Widome analyzing President Obama’s surge strategy by taking a closer look into the Marja offensive and recent arrests of high ranking Taliban members inside of Pakistan.
Here’s an excerpt:
Taken together, the operation in Marja and the arrests in Pakistan could signal an important shift of momentum in the Afghan war, away from a resurgent Taliban and toward U.S. and Afghan government forces. This would be a significant fulfillment of Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, pieces of which have been developed and revealed over the past year. Richard Holbrooke, the person credited by many as the source for the “AfPak” term, was appointed by Obama as his special representative in the region early in his presidency. Months of diplomacy by him, Stanley McChrystal, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and General David Petraeus (commander of the U.S. Central Command) may have helped convince Pakistan to cooperate more fully in fighting the Afghan Taliban. Last December, Obama announced the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to bolster McChrystal’s new counter-insurgency strategy. The Marja operation is an important test of that strategy, which requires more soldiers to defend the civilian population from Taliban influence and to give the Afghan government a chance to reassert control.
Read the whole thing here.
