Pull our troops from Afghanistan Research Paper

Pull our troops from Afghanistan - Research Paper Example The American people are very much concerned about the war in Afghanistan because of the large cost of war and economic destabilization, the deaths of a considerably large number of American soldiers in Afghanistan, and the exact number was never told to us and also the deteriorating image of the US as a country and Americans as a nation in the global scenario because of the killings of innocent civilians during various operations and strikes against the terrorists. But the most important of all the questions is ‘what exactly is our target and mission over there?’, ‘is there actually any way of winning the war?’ and ‘how exactly do we define a win in Afghanistan, in those conditions?’ So the government, the security agencies and the think tanks should first define the goals in Afghanistan and whether it is feasible to achieve those goals under present circumstances without any further damage to the economy and the country’s image. The defi nition of win should incorporate a number of factors in itself and a win should be a condition in which: a. The top leadership of Al Qaeda including Osama bin Laden and Aimen al-Zawahiri is either killed or captured ensuring that Al Qaeda is no longer stable enough to conduct such deadly attacks and terrorist activities again b. The threat of Taliban and other tribal terrorist organizations in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan is eradicated to an extent that it will not rise again and become a threat to the global peace and security c. The institutional setup, the government, the infrastructure, the police and other security agencies in Afghanistan are strong enough to ensure sustainable stability in the country which can ensure provision of basic services to the people of the country and can defend the country against all kinds of internal and external threats without any foreign involvement or assistance. Whenever we talk about pulling our troops from Afghanistan we start analyzing the situation by considering goals and targets of the war but then we realize the fact that the governmental institutions and the authorities have not clearly defined the goals of the war and we have noticed them to shift a little from time to time with regards to our mission in Afghanistan. Recently President Obama issued a statement in which he clearly established that our goal in Afghanistan ‘is to reverse the momentum of Taliban’ and he did not mention anything about Al Qaeda or its leaders. Considering President Obama’s statement as the goal of Afghanistan war and considering it a win, an analysis should be done whether we have achieved that win or not or whether it is possible to effectively achieve that win in the first place (Tystad). Considering the fact that some of the regions in Afghanistan including a large portion of Qandahar are being controlled by Taliban, we cannot consider our mission in Afghanistan a win and in fact completely eliminating the t hreat of Taliban in that region is also not possible because of a number of factors which are related to the government in Afghanistan and the security agencies in Pakistan. Some of the members in the current Afghani cabinet and some tribal chiefs have shown distrust towards the American forces and are not cooperating with them and have