In an interview on Saturday, U.S. President Barack Obama praised British military efforts in Afghanistan. Obama’s praise came a day after the United Kingdom lost eight soldiers within 24 hours — reportedly the deadliest day for British frontline ground combat troops since the Falkland Islands War in 1982. Obama also suggested that the Taliban had been “pushed back” in recent fighting even as he warned of tough fighting to come. Indeed, the past week was a difficult one for U.S. troops as well; seven lost their lives in a single day last Monday.

The United Kingdom is one of the few NATO allies to contribute forces to the Afghan campaign without national caveat (limitations on how or where troops can be deployed). Thus, London’s contribution to the NATO International Security Assistance Force is particularly important for Washington. British forces have been engaged in some of the toughest fighting in Afghanistan, in the country’s southwest, for years.

These British troops have been reinforced by the 8,000-strong U.S. 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. Both groups of troops are engaged in a new offensive in Helmand Province that began in early July. Helmand is a Taliban stronghold and the center of Afghanistan’s opium trade — a key source of funding for the group. A rise in casualties is to be expected with a new offensive such as this, and the new influx of troops may well show some degree of tactical success.

But tactical success is not to be confused with operational and strategic success. British and U.S. forces may be regaining the initiative on the ground in Helmand, but a guerrilla force can be expected to disperse in the face of such concerted offensives only to pop up elsewhere (where security is lighter) and later (after forces are dispersed or concentrated elsewhere). And strategic objectives — winning support from the locals, building effective domestic security forces and establishing the writ of the central government in Kabul across the country — can only be accomplished over a much longer timeline, in the best of cases. And unlike in Iraq, these things have never been done in Afghanistan. Because of the realities of Afghanistan, the “surge” there simply cannot accomplish the same one-year turnaround as the surge in Iraq. The tribes and ethnicities populating modern-day Afghanistan have been repelling invaders and foreign occupiers for centuries. Even U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has admitted that even moderate successes in Afghanistan are potentially obtainable only on a five- to 10-year horizon.

This is the fundamental problem for counterinsurgency efforts: they require enormous time and effort. For the insurgent, time is on his side. Because his stake in the struggle is so much more personal and closer to home, his commitment to his cause is almost inevitably stronger and for the long term. For the occupying power, the campaign is remote and far from home. And as counterinsurgency can be a painstaking, slow and costly process, popular support has a tendency to erode.

For the moment, the U.S. and British publics appear to support the mission in Afghanistan. However, as the past week has so clearly demonstrated, the cost of sustaining the campaign in Afghanistan — particularly in terms of lives, though the fiscal cost is no small matter either — continues to mount. The Taliban’s war of attrition — against U.S., British and NATO lives as well as their domestic constituencies’ public opinion — has very real consequences.

The current level and tempo of U.S. and NATO efforts in Afghanistan are probably unsustainable on a five- to 10-year timeline. Doubts about the feasibility of strategic objectives, the cost of attempting to obtain those objectives and the benefit of their pursuit will only grow stronger. The Taliban’s ability to continue inflicting heavier losses in terms of the lives of U.S., British and other NATO soldiers will only hasten that. And as popular opinion shifts, the politically expedient course will begin to diverge from the imperatives of counterinsurgency. Either course — much less an attempt to balance the two — will have profound consequences for both the campaign in Afghanistan and wider U.S., British and NATO foreign policies.

This article is published at Lebanonwire by agreement with www.stratfor.com, the world's leading private intelligence provider.

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