Picking Gen. David Petraeus to run the Afghanistan war in the wake of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s self-destruction gives President Obama his best chance to salvage a foundering counterinsurgency strategy, experts said.
But the change will not be a magic-bullet solution to the deepening problems facing the United States in Afghanistan, those analysts said.
Arturo Munoz, a senior political scientist at RAND and an expert on the security threat and tribal structure in Afghanistan, said of the Petraeus selection, “You need somebody of that status, somebody who is not weak, and he certainly is not weak.”
Munoz, a former CIA official who traveled with McChrystal in Afghanistan earlier this year, said “McChrystal was a great commander who understood Afghanistan but if you’re going to replace him, Petraeus is the right man for the job.”
The conflicts between McChrystal and Obama administration officials underpinned some of the corrosive remarks quoted in a Rolling Stone profile that led to the general’s demise. Those conflicts could well plague Petraeus, as well — especially if the administration sticks to a July 2011 timetable to begin an Afghanistan pullout, said military officials who asked not to be named.
Petraeus will have to quickly pick up the reins in Afghanistan. He must lead a critical offensive in Kandahar which was designed as a centerpiece to McChrystal’s counterinsurgency policy. He must also take over the close relationships that McChrystal had forged with Afghan President Hamid Karzai — who urged Obama not to fire the general — as well as key Pakistani leaders.
Retired U.S. Army Major Gen. Timothy Haake, who served with Special Forces and knows McChrystal, said he was saddened to see McChrystal leave.
“Petraeus has a big challenge ahead of him but he understands what it takes to win,” Gen. Haake said. “What is disheartening is what has happened to McChrystal — our troops and Afghanistan are losing a great man.”
McChrystal said in a statement Wednesday, “I strongly support the President’s strategy in Afghanistan and am deeply committed to our coalition forces, our partner nations, and the Afghan people. It was out of respect for this commitment — and a desire to see the mission succeed — that I tendered my resignation.”
A top military officer in Afghanistan said the critical disagreement in Afghanistan was between McChrystal and his staff and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. He said Eikenberry was opposed to McChrystal’s use of small village militias created to protect the populace from the Taliban.
The key to turning things around in Afghanistan will be for Petraeus to build a relationship with Eikenberry like the one he had with former Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Iraq, said analysts. That partnership of military and civilian efforts in Baghdad was a turning point in that war, the experts said.
McChrystal’s fate was sealed once the rift between military and civilian authority in Kabul surfaced so vividly in the Rolling Stone article, Munoz said. “When key subordinates have this open rivalry, how can you have a counterinsurgency strategy if not all the officials are on the same page?”
