The countless red carpets rolled out for Hamid Karzai in Washington this week could not disguise an ugly emerging reality: So far, Barack Obama's surge in Afghanistan isn't working.
Yes, it's early. As the president pointed out at his White House news conference with Karzai, only slightly more than half of the reinforcements he ordered to the country last December have arrived. They still have 14 months to make a difference before withdrawals are due to begin. But five months into the surge in Iraq in 2007, the evidence that it would succeed was already visible: Sectarian violence was dropping, Sunni tribes were turning against al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government was delivering on its promises.
In May 2010, it's already pretty clear what will doom the Afghanistan campaign if nothing changes. Areas cleared by U.S. troops, such as Marja in Helmand province, are still not free of the Taliban -- because no effective Afghan authority has emerged to take its place. In Kandahar, where a make-or-break offensive is getting underway, the chances of effective non-Taliban governance are being systematically undermined by assassinations as well as by Karzai's refusal to remove his corrupt brother from his perch as a local power broker. At the moment, there appears to be no coherent political plan for the city.
Perhaps most disturbing, there is obvious discord among the U.S. and allied generals and diplomats who are supposed to be implementing Obama's strategy. None of the multiple American civilians charged with doing business with Karzai appears to have his trust. Nor are they in sync with the top American military commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
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