US President Barack Obama declared in an interview that the US was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the US military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq.
Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of US forces with turning the war around in the last two years.
The strategy in Iraq was developed by General David Petraeus, then commander of US forces in the country.
“There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,” he said, while cautioning that solutions in Afghanistan will be complicated.
In a conversation with the New York Times aboard Air Force One on Friday, the president reviewed the challenges to his administration.
ECONOMY
Obama said he could not assure Americans that the economy would begin growing again this year, but he pledged that he would “get all the pillars in place for recovery this year” and urged Americans not to “stuff money in their mattresses.”
“I don’t think that people should be fearful about our future,” he said. “I don’t think that people should suddenly mistrust all of our financial institutions.”
As he pressed forward with ambitious plans at home to rewrite the tax code, expand health care coverage and curb climate change, Obama dismissed criticism from conservatives that he was driving the country toward socialism.
After the interview, which took place as the president was flying home from Ohio, he called reporters from the Oval Office to assert that his actions have been “entirely consistent with free-market principles.”
Obama said that large-scale government intervention in the markets and expansion of social welfare programs had begun under former US president George W. Bush.
Obama struck a reassuring tone, saying Americans should not be frightened of the future, and said he had no trouble sleeping at night.
“Look, I wish I had the luxury of just dealing with a modest recession or just dealing with health care or just dealing with energy or just dealing with Iraq or just dealing with Afghanistan,” Obama said. “I don’t have that luxury, and I don’t think the American people do, either.”
IRAQ COMPARISON
“If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq,” Obama said in the interview.
But Obama also said Afghanistan was not Iraq and reconciliation efforts could face difficulties.
“The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex. You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, so figuring all that out is going to be a much more of a challenge,” he said.
During his presidential campaign last year, Obama told Time magazine that opportunities to negotiate with some Taliban elements “should be explored.”
Asked by the Times whether the US was winning the war in Afghanistan, which he has called the “central front in the war on terror,” Obama simply replied: “No.”
“You’ve seen conditions deteriorate over the last couple of years. The Taliban is bolder than it was. I think in the southern regions of the country, you’re seeing them attack in ways that we have not seen previously,” he said. “The national government still has not gained the confidence of the Afghan people.”
US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks in the US, but Islamist militants regrouped in recent years and are waging an intensifying and spreading Taliban-led insurgency.
ALIGNING GOALS
“We’ve got to recast our policy so that our military, diplomatic and development goals are all aligned to ensure that al-Qaeda and extremists that would do us harm don’t have the kinds of safe havens that allow them to operate,” Obama said.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is widely believed to be hiding in the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a known haven for Taliban extremists.
“At the heart of a new Afghanistan policy is going to be a smarter Pakistan policy. As long as you’ve got safe havens in these border regions that the Pakistani government can’t control or reach, in effective ways, we’re going to continue to see vulnerability on the Afghan side of the border,” Obama said.
Also See: ANALYSIS: Obama’s ambitious strategy raises many questions
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including