The unending war

THE attack on a hospital in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, by an American AC-130 gunship in the early hours of October 3rd was not a case of a bomb gone astray. The hospital, which may have been treating Taliban wounded in an ongoing battle for the city, was hit at 15-minute intervals for over an hour. At least 22 people were killed, including 12 medical staff working for Medécins Sans Frontières (MSF), a Nobel-prize-winning NGO. At first a military spokesman acknowledged that there might have been “collateral damage” to the hospital. Barack Obama later called the head of MSF to apologise; the organisation says the attack was a war crime and is calling for an independent investigation.

The incident is yet another illustration of the perils of matching first-world firepower with third-world decision-making. Since Mr Obama formally declared an end to America’s 13-year war in Afghanistan last December, the 9,800 US troops there have been mainly restricted to training and supporting Afghan forces. It was they who called in the hospital attack, said General John Campbell, America’s top general in Afghanistan, in testimony to the Senate on October 6th. He has promised an investigation, though it will not be carried out, as MSF wants, by an independent commission appointed under the Geneva Conventions, which neither America nor Afghanistan has fully ratified.

Yet mainly the tragedy underlines the extent to which America’s longest war is not over, nor America’s part in it. Over 5,000 Afghan troops have been killed this year in fighting across the country—including in Kunduz, one of Afghanistan’s biggest cities. In remoter places, such as southern Helmand province, which nearly a thousand American and British soldiers died fighting to pacify, the militants hold terrain. The Taliban’s new commander, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, has ended nascent peace talks with the Afghan government—which is now urging Mr Obama not to withdraw America’s remaining troops by the end of next year, as he has pledged to do.

The withdrawal plan looks senseless, as General Campbell also suggested in his testimony. “Based on conditions on the ground, I do believe we have to provide our senior leadership options different than the current plan we are going with,” he said, struggling not to trespass on politics. A decision to extend America’s mission in Afghanistan, even if awkward for Mr Obama, should not be too controversial. America’s presence in Afghanistan—down from over 100,000 in 2011—is already too reduced to get much notice, especially now that its foot-soldiers are rarely in the front line; just five have died fighting this year. Among the leading contenders for the Republican and Democratic primaries, only Bernie Sanders, a populist Democrat, wants an immediate end to the mission; his Republican counterpart, Donald Trump, suggests the troops should stay.

Even before the Kunduz attack, Mr Obama was considering various options to extend the 2016 deadline; a proposal to maintain up to 5,000 American troops in Afghanistan is thought likeliest to gain his approval. The idea would be for them to focus on counter-terrorism, which sounds sensible, since Islamic State is gaining influence among the Taliban. Yet it would contain little or no provision for training Afghanistan’s security forces. That is odd, considering that America will continue to fund them at a cost of $4 billion a year; and given also the adequacies so painfully evident in Kunduz.