Reasons to be anxious about Afghanistan

Ignatius/ here

" ... The much-touted offensive in Marja in Helmand province in February succeeded in clearing that rural area temporarily of Taliban insurgents, at least by day. But plans for the Afghans to provide more security and better governance there are off to a shaky start, officials at the State Department and Pentagon say.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal's boast in February that "We've got a government in a box, ready to roll in" to Marja now sounds wildly over-optimistic. A senior military official concedes that this phrase "created an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now."....... the senior military official cautions that 90 days after the offensive, "Marja is a mixed bag," with parts of the area still controlled by the Taliban and Afghan government performance spotty. A top State Department official agrees: "Transfer is not happening" in Marja.

Kandahar, the next big test of the U.S. strategy, will be even harder...........

But Karzai himself is a symbol of U.S. worries about the feasibility of transferring governance and security to the Afghans.... If Afghanistan's strategy for reconciliation is fuzzy, the Obama administration's is nonexistent, at least publicly. "We don't have a plan yet," worries the senior military official.... One big problem with framing a reconciliation strategy now is that U.S. officials want to bargain from a position of strength. "We aren't there yet," the senior military official says bluntly.....

The Obama administration has just over a year to make the kind of progress in Afghanistan that would provide a political rationale for staying awhile longer. The public will hear upbeat talk this week from Karzai and President Obama, but it shouldn't disguise the underlying anxiety on both sides that the feasibility of the U.S. strategy for this war has yet to be proved."