Washington – The president of the United States, Barack Obama, announced on Wednesday the role played by the U.S. Military in the Afghan war against terrorism would continue until the situation is under complete control. Back in October, the president said that only 5,500 troops would remain in the country to train the Afghan forces and help them organize a counter-terrorism unit. However, after a meeting with the experts at the Pentagon, Barack Obama told that the number of troops that would stay in the Middle East country would raise to 8,400.
Back in 2008, a then candidate, Barack Obama, openly expressed his intentions of stopping the war efforts involving American soldiers in the Middle East, but a chain of events have made impossible for him to fulfill his promise.
When he arrived in the office, he even established dates of return for North American soldiers in the Middle East, but after the troops actually retired from Iraq, the situation got immediately worst and the Islamic State raised from the chaos gaining a lot of popularity and power in the region. As a result, local authorities saw as the terrorists occupied cities and killed by the thousands with nothing they could do about it.
In response to this situation, President Obama greatly increased the number of troops, in 2011 there were as many as 100,000 American operatives in the area, with a single goal, end the Taliban threat. To do so, the government decided to hit the terrorist hard, as hard as they could, and then, help the local law enforcers to build an infrastructure that they could use to fight terrorism by themselves.
“By and large, even though it’s quoted again and again and again, there’s almost nothing more meaningless than the total number of people in uniform, unless you know exactly what they’re doing,” said Tony Cordesman, an expert on national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.C.
The plan was good on paper, but time proved it to be a little unrealistic
Using terrorism as a strategy for war is only effective against untrained populations, however, it has been proven extremely difficult to entirely eradicate. Since day one, people have heard about the conflict as the “war on terror”. Yes, it is inspiring, but it is also a little misleading. In a war, there is usually established objectives, and the opposing parties use everything to achieve them. It does not matter if its territory, the control of resources or other things, there is usually something soldiers are fighting for, and more importantly, there is closure.
Whether is Al-Qaeda or ISIL, these groups do not have such thing, their motives are entirely religious or cultural which give them a powerful recruitment tool, and an excuse to carry out actions of inhuman nature without losing followers. Some reports say they have declared a world caliphate, but that is never going to happen. But as long as they keep bombing, killing and spreading terror, money, resources and men will continue flowing to these organizations.
As good as North American experts are, it is now difficult to see how they were going to arrive the location, wipe the bad guys out, and then teach local governments on how to deal with problems that have existed in the region for literally thousands of years. That is why in January, when Obama leaves the White House, there are going to be 8,400 confirmed troops in Afghanistan, and then, it is going to be the new president’s problem.
In the end, it is not a decision a single man can take
The real victims of terrorism are, and will continue to be innocent bystanders. These people have no military training and are not ready to deal with an armed invasion. In fact, the escalating conflict gave only two options to millions of individuals, stay and bear the occupation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or leave their homes behind to become a refugee which has created a whole new problem that broke the geographical barriers of countries.
The success of the extremist’s advance forced a lot of people to move to neighbor cities, but as the conflict grew in size, there were less and less safe places every day. That is why millions of civilians mobilized to other countries resulting in the refugee crisis which has been the main topic in Europe for a whole lot of wrong reasons. As a group of military veterans from both the United States and Afghanistan have said, if the U.S. Military ultimately leaves the country, local authorities will probably get overrun by terrorist. If that happens, ISIL occupation would increase and therefore, the number of people fleeing would immediately increase.
“If Afghanistan were to revert to the chaos of the 1990s, millions of refugees would again seek shelter in neighboring countries and overseas, dramatically intensifying the severe challenges already faced in Europe and beyond,” Afghan ambassadors and commanders wrote in a letter addressed to the president of the United States.
Barack Hussein Obama is the man in the spotlight, but after taking a glance at what could happen if the United States retires its troops, it is easy to realize it wasn’t a simple call anyone can take on his own, not even the president.
Source: NPR