Similarities to Iraq Surge Plan Mask Risks in Afghanistan

From The New York Times:

The Iraq surge worked in large part because there was powerful support in Anbar Province from the so-called Awakening, the movement by local Sunni tribes who rose up against extremists who were killing people, forcibly marrying local women and cutting off the hands of men who smoked in public. In Iraq, American officials believed that most leaders of a vigorous opposition, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, were foreigners.

The United States remains hopeful that it can capitalize on Afghan militias that have taken up arms against the Taliban in local areas, but a series of intelligence reports supplied to Mr. Obama since September found no evidence in Afghanistan of anything on the scale of the Iraqi Awakening movement. What’s more, in Afghanistan the extremists, the Taliban, are natives.

“They are part of the furniture in Afghanistan; they have always been there,” one of Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism experts said, explaining why Mr. Obama’s goal is simply to degrade the Taliban’s power, not to defeat the group. In Iraq, the aim was to defeat the insurgents, a goal that has been largely achieved.