Why the US Presidential Candidates are Keeping Mum on Afghanistan

Violence is on the rise in Afghanistan just as American troops are pulling out. Analyst Joshua Foust examines the big picture in Afghanistan with Marco Werman, and explores why the US presidential candidates are keeping mum on Afghanistan.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Hi, I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. It’s been a violent day in Afghanistan. Multiple suicide bombers hit different locations in the north and southwest, parts of the country that have been relatively peaceful until today. At least 46 people are reportedly dead and more than 130 others wounded. Most of the victims were civilians including women and children who were shopping for the festival marking the end of Ramadan last week. Joshua Foust studies Afghanistan and national security issues for the American Security Project in Washington D.C. Joshua, what have you been hearing about today’s attacks? I mean neither of these places, Nimroz and Kunduz, are particularly Taliban hot spots.

Joshua Foust: That’s right; Nimroz in particular has never been known as a particularly insecure place. Part of the reasoning for this is that it’s nestled right against the border with Iran and the presence nearby of the Iranian military and the Iranian border guards has kept a damper on most of the violence. Reportedly, one of the bombs there went off just outside the hospital where there’s usually a large crowd of people waiting to receive treatment, and that’s contributing to a lot of the casualties.

In Kunduz, it’s a little bit different. They’ve been dealing with increasing insecurity over the last several years, but compared to normal hot spots like [inaudible] Province or Kandahar Province, it’s still been very quiet and in that sense, people are also expressing shock and outrage at what’s happened there.

Werman: I mean it’s always kind of hard to measure that kind of thing, but is it your sense that things are getting worse there?

Foust: Overall violence against civilians is down according to a report that was released, I think, last week by the U.N., but today also represents one of the single worst days for civilian violence in the country. The death toll is almost certainly going to go up above 46 from the initial reports, and that just doesn’t happen very often in Afghanistan, and I think it’s going to have some kind of effect on people’s perception.

Werman: So there’s a lot at stake in Afghanistan to put it mildly, and yet here in this Presidential election that’s coming up, the two candidates have barely mentioned Afghanistan. Contrast that with four years ago when the candidates positions on Iraq and Afghanistan were central to their campaigns. That was before the economy went into a tailspin for sure, but what will it take to get Afghanistan on the campaign radar this time?

Foust: I think over the last four years we saw this transition of people thinking that Afghanistan was the good war and Iraq was the bad war, but the candidates, in particular Barack Obama, I don’t think really understood the war that he was promoting when he was saying in 2008, 2007, that we had to go into Afghanistan because this was a good war. What’s happening now is both parties have sort of realized that Afghanistan is such a difficult, complex problem, that the best course of action is minimizing American involvement and American debts, and so there’s this kind of unspoken truce between both parties about what’s going to be happening, both over the next 18 months as official combat troops withdraw, and then also over the next 10 years as this training mission starts up. It’s supposed to continue to 2024. There’s just not a lot of debate in any of the parties, explicitly in public or privately, about actually changing these policies, because everyone just kind of wants it to go away.

Werman: I mean given the blood and treasure [??] that’s been invested in Afghanistan so far, more than 10 years, don’t the candidates have a certain responsibility to talk about it?

Foust: They most certainly do. The problem though is that most Americans don’t really like Afghanistan. They don’t like the fact that we’re there; the war itself is unpopular, and so talking about either maintaining the war, or in some other way slowing down the withdrawal is not going to be very popular and with the way the race is shaping up right now, both Romney and Obama are scrambling for every single little battleground voter that they can find, so I don’t think you’re going to see either one of them really going out on a limb to support the war.

Werman: Finally, Joshua, I mean make the case for us, why it’s crucial that Afghanistan get on the campaign agenda?

Foust: Right now the United States is pledging billions and billions of dollars each year, from now until 2024, to train and support the Afghan government and the Afghan army. I think it’s appropriate for the American people to be asking their candidates running for office exactly what we’re getting for all of that money and for all of those lives being put on the line.

Werman: Joshua Foust, author of Afghanistan Journal Selections from Registan.net. He’s a fellow with the American Security Project in Washington. Joshua, good to talk with you. Thank you.

Foust: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.