Leaders of the NATO nations will meet in Chicago on Sunday to set in motion the massive machinery necessary to wind down the war in Afghanistan.
But even as American officials prepare a list of benchmarks they can cite as achieved in the war effort — expect to hear much about strategic partnership agreements and assurances that the Afghan people have not been abandoned — they acknowledge privately that the bar has been significantly lowered on how success in Afghanistan is defined after 11 years of combat.
“Look, this is Afghanistan,” one administration official said in an interview. “Is it going to be Switzerland? No. But is good enough for Afghanistan? That’s where we need to get to.”
In fact, the phrase “Afghan good enough” has been making the rounds at the White House, State Department, the Pentagon and inside the many research organizations scattered around Washington. Gone is the much greater expectation that NATO will leave behind a cohesive central government with real influence beyond Kabul and a handful of other population centers. Gone is the assumption that Helmand Province, Kandahar and the rest of the heavily contested south — where the bulk of the 2010 influx of troops was sent — will remain entirely in the control of the central government once that area is transferred to Afghanistan’s fledgling national security forces.
In previewing the meeting for reporters on Thursday, President Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, described a hoped-for outcome in Afghanistan that was far less ambitious than what American officials once envisioned.
“The goal is to have an Afghanistan again that has a degree of stability such that forces like Al Qaeda and associated groups cannot have safe haven unimpeded, which could threaten the region and threaten U.S. and other interests in the world,” Mr. Donilon said.
With Afghan forces assuming the lead role in 2013 for protecting the country and its government, Mr. Donilon said the NATO allies hoped to leave behind “a set of security assets that allow it to provide for that modicum of stability” that will allow Afghanistan to protect itself against Al Qaeda and ensure that the United States’ core goal — making sure that Al Qaeda cannot again use Afghanistan as a base from which to target the West — is met.
While Kandahar and other population centers in the south have seen a decrease in Taliban attacks since the surge forces arrived, insurgent attacks have increased in less populated southern areas, military officials report. The heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” program two weeks ago, and reporting on a recent trip to Afghanistan, said the Taliban were gaining ground, something that is bound to accelerate once the NATO troops give way to Afghan-led forces.
“I think we’d both say that what we found is that the Taliban is stronger,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said, seated next to Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan.
Anthony H. Cordesman, a longtime military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote a paper three weeks ago called “Time to Focus on ‘Afghan Good Enough.’ ”
“Is progress sustainable?” Mr. Cordesman wrote. “Almost certainly no.
“The real question for everybody now is, can you hold this thing together to the point where, yes, the Pakistanis will have some influence, and Iran will have major influence in the northwest, and we’ll lose influence in the south and the east but we might be able to hold onto Kandahar.”
Mr. Cordesman added: “That would be Afghan good enough.”
Senior NATO military commanders in Afghanistan say they are well aware of the narrowing goals for their effort in Afghanistan. “We trained for a number of lines of operation in addition to the security line, whether education, civil society, economic development, you know, the whole government-in-a-box thing,” said one NATO military commander in Afghanistan. “Now, it’s only security. How much security can we bring before we go home? And how quickly we can train up Afghan forces to take over the security mission?”
And, for their part, senior Afghan government officials are aware that the ambitions of the Obama administration — and, in fact, the agenda for the NATO summit — are narrowly focused on security.
Eklil Hakimi, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States, said in an interview that President Hamid Karzai and the presidents and prime ministers of NATO countries will arrive in Chicago not to discuss nation-building in Afghanistan, but only securing the nation of Afghanistan.
“This particular summit, the Chicago summit, within the context of NATO, is focusing on the Afghan security forces and their support for the years to come,” Mr. Hakimi said.
In his official remarks to the summit leaders, Mr. Karzai will describe the increasing competence of Afghan security forces and the need for the international community to provide long-term support, both with personnel for training and advising, but also with money for equipping and logistical needs, the ambassador said.
There will be little if any discussion in Chicago of governance or financial development, he said. Those themes of development and economic strategy will await an international conference in Tokyo in July.
Pressed to describe the view of Afghan officials of the American phrase “Afghan good enough,” Mr. Hakimi cited advances made in women’s rights and education in the decade since American forces and Afghan fighters toppled the Taliban government and drove Al Qaeda from the country. Afghan women have leading roles in Parliament, in business and in medicine. Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, only 900,000 Afghan boys were in school. Today, the number is eight million, and 40 percent of the students are female.
Asked whether that was sustainable with the lowered expectations of the United States and NATO for Afghanistan, the ambassador spoke forcefully.
“I leave that question to our partners,” Mr. Hakimi said. “That much we have achieved up to now — with you, together.”
“So it’s up to you,” he added. “Do you want to leave all this behind, or do you want to continue with us the journey that we have started together? With the support of our own people and also with the support of our international partners, we have laid a strong foundation for Afghanistan’s future. So, politically, we are moving in the right direction. In order to further strengthen that, we need support from our international partners for years to come.”
