An Exit Policy from Afghanistan

Mr.Zalmay Khalilzad, former US Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, appeared on the BBC's HardTalk to talk about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said the US and Pakistan are in a crisis situation, as it is difficult to believe that Pakistan did not provide support system to Osama bin-Laden while he was hiding in Pakistan. Discussing how the Pakistan government was covering the terrorists he said that when he brought up the problem of Pakistan Taliban with the former President of Pakistan, the President said, "Pakistan Taliban? Give me their names, give me their phone-numbers".
Mr.Obama, after a prolonged discussion with his National Security Council, gave his decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in addition to the 68,000 already deployed there. The US goal in Afghanistan was redefined as 'to deny safe haven to al Qaeda and to deny the Taliban the ability to overthrow the Afghan government'. This was on 29 November 2009. The process that he arrived at the decision has been vividly described in Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars, 2010. I hope to come back to this book in these columns sometime soon.
The decision is essentially that of an US exit policy from Afghanistan. But it does not take into account a situation created by Osama's death, in a sense a US victory. Granting that the US Afghan war was based on her right of self defense after 9/11, although this writer is of the opinion that there must have been other alternatives for the US, and if so all the more as the al Qaeda should be their principal target, this is the moment the US could terminate the war in Afghanistan. What about the Taliban, Pakistan, and the Afghan government, then?
On the same day that Mr.Khalilzad appeared on the TV, the Prime Minister of India visited Afghanistan, for the first time in six years. This is in accordance with a traditional thinking of regarding Afghanistan as India's strategic depth, and as such must have been terribly irritating to Pakistan which also looks at Afghanistan in the same way.
Both India and Pakistan should discard the old way, because it is the way of their perennial collision. They are thus divided and ruled by, shall I say, an invisible hand. The crucial question in Afghanistan is how to raise the standard of living for the masses. For this the funds should be diverted from aiding the government notorious for its corruption to the non-governmental works of the type people like Dr.Nakamura Tetsu are doing(see column for 28 January 2011). I believe Mahatma Gandhi was probably at his best when he wrote at the beginning of a short note entitled "Work instead of Alms" in 1939 that 'To those who are hungry and unemployed God can dare reveal Himself only as work and wages as the assurance of food'. This must be the surest way of fighting terrorism.