June 22, 2011 | Time: 4:34pm

USIP’s Andrew Wilder previews the president’s speech and how it is likely to play out in Afghanistan.

• What is at stake with President Barack Obama’s speech tonight? What are the pros and cons of the expected troop draw down?
• How do you expect this will play out in Afghanistan? How closely will people there be listening to what the president has to say?
• How is USIP working to supplement U.S. efforts in Afghanistan? And, how is USIP working to help create a sustainable peace in Afghanistan?

What is at stake with President Barack Obama’s speech tonight? What are the pros and cons of the expected troop draw down?

President Obama’s prime time speech tonight provides him with an opportunity to tell the American people that he is fulfilling his promise to start drawing down in July 2011 the 33,000 troops that were “surged” to Afghanistan in 2010.

The message that this is not a war without an end is an important one for a domestic audience that has grown increasingly skeptical of both the cost and the likelihood of success of the war in Afghanistan. But a promise of drawing down 5,000-10,000 troops in 2011, and the remaining 23,000-28,000 by the end of 2012, with the likelihood of little or nothing being said about the timeframe for withdrawing the approximately 65,000 U.S. troops that were in Afghanistan pre-surge, may not be enough to assuage the concerns of a majority of Americans who, according to public opinion polls, would like to see a more rapid troop drawdown.

In my view, the key issue that the president needs to communicate in his speech tonight is not how many troops will be withdrawn and when, but to clarify to a war-weary domestic audience what the overall U.S. objective is in Afghanistan, and the role of our troops in achieving that objective.

In 2009, the president stated that the objective of U.S. forces in Afghanistan was “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.” With the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and little evidence that al-Qaida has much of a presence in Afghanistan today, the president needs to make a compelling case for why troops need to remain in Afghanistan.

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How do you expect this will play out in Afghanistan? How closely will people there be listening to what the president has to say?

Tonight’s speech is primarily for a domestic audience in the U.S., but it will also be listened to closely by Afghans. Many Afghans are conflicted in their views regarding foreign troop presence in their country. The vast majority welcomed the U.S.-led intervention in the fall of 2001 that led to the ouster of the Taliban regime.

But in recent years growing numbers are questioning the value of a large foreign troop presence that seems unable to defeat the Taliban-led insurgency or significantly improve the security and law and order situation for the Afghan public.

In other words, it’s not the presence of foreign troops that most Afghans (other than the Taliban and their sympathizers) object to, but their perceived ineffectiveness at improving the security situation.

While the popularity of foreign troops has definitely waned, at the same time many Afghans still fear that the rapid withdrawal of these troops will lead to the collapse of the central government, increased factional fighting, and growing anarchy reminiscent of the early 1990s. I therefore suspect that most Afghans will listen to the president’s speech with mixed emotions, and ultimately be more interested in hearing about the U.S.’s commitment to supporting a politically negotiated end to the conflict in Afghanistan, along with a long-term commitment to remain engaged and not abandon Afghanistan, rather than the specific numbers of troops that will be withdrawn in 2011 and 2012.

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How is USIP working to supplement U.S. efforts in Afghanistan? And, how is USIP working to help create a sustainable peace in Afghanistan?

For the past several years USIP has been leading efforts to better understand the nature of conflict and traditional dispute resolution at the local level in Afghanistan. Recent data suggests that more than 80 percent of Taliban fighters who are killed or captured are locals fighting within their own district, which suggests that local grievances are an important factor fueling the insurgency.

This finding highlights the importance of USIP’s fieldwork to analyze how local disputes are resolved, pilot innovative approaches to resolving these dispute, and develop and share practical policy recommendations based on these findings with the Afghan government, international military forces, and international development agencies.

For the past two years USIP has also been leading efforts to analyze key challenges and opportunities to promoting a politically negotiated end to the conflict. Currently USIP, the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), and the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) are jointly implementing an important project to identify the perceptions of key Afghan stakeholders regarding key challenges and opportunities for achieving a durable peace settlement in Afghanistan. Interviews have been conducted with 122 Afghan leaders and opinion-formers in political, military, economic and social arenas about their views on the conflict and the issues a peace process will have to address. The initial findings from this project were published in a paper entitled “Achieving Durable Peace: Afghan Perspectives on a Peace Process,” available on the USIP website and being widely circulated in policy circles.

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Full Coverage of President's Obama's Speech:

• President Obama Calls for Troop Drawdown
  News Feature by Gordon Lubold | June 23, 2011
• Military Strategy Alone Cannot Lead to Durable Peace in Afghanistan
  News Feature by Andrew Wilder | June 22, 2011
• USIP Reports from Afghanistan
  On the Issues by Shahmahmood Miakhel | June 22, 2011

Explore Further

• Eye on Afghanistan-Pakistan
  News Feature | June 2011
• Achieving Durable Peace in Afghanistan
  Peace Brief by Hamish Nixon | June 2011