THE dismissal of the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan General David McKiernan, which makes it the second removal from office of such a high ranking American military official after General Douglas MacArthur was forced out during the Korean War, could be viewed as a subtle admission of failure in a war that has lasted longer than either of the two World Wars. Putting the onus on General McKiernan of prosecuting the war against an elusive resistance in a conventional manner implies that the policymakers in the Pentagon also had no clue how to go about the task. After all, he had been there only for less than a year, and there has been a steady increase in the number of American as well as Afghan civilian casualties for a much longer period, which clearly suggested that the resistance had gradually become stronger and which, in turn, is evidence of the fact that the war had been badly conceived, haphazardly managed and poorly assisted by the allied NATO forces. Apparently, he disagreed about the grounds that Defence Secretary Robert Gates might have proffered him for removal from the post; otherwise his military career would not have ended in such a sudden manner. The dismissal is not warranted by Secretary Gates' observations, "a new approach was probably in our best interest... fresh eyes were needed". He has been made a scapegoat. The huge surge of troops, as envisaged in the AfPak review, which will be led by General McKiernan's replacement, Lt Gen Stanley McChrystal, is hardly a guarantee for reversing the fortunes of war. General McChrystal might be an expert in conducting an unconventional warfare, but he is up against a highly motivated resistance and would find himself placed in a highly complex scenario. The Afghans are a motivated resistance, who would not countenance foreign occupation and would rather sacrifice their lives than remain in bondage. They enjoy the support and sympathy of all freedom-loving people, most of all their co-ethnics across the border in Pakistan. And that brings us to another offshoot of the American invasion, the mess in the tribal areas where a situation has been forced upon Pakistan to fight an "existential threat". The US has to realise that the AfPak theatre of war is a sticky wicket; so the sooner it extricates itself the better for all involved. Hiding its failures by harping on Pakistan being the "most dangerous country" in the world would not help matters. It must give out a definite roadmap to placate the resistance, work out a plan to reconstruct the battered country and devise a way to install a government that takes care of ethnic sensitivities. A puppet and unpopular Pushtun in the person of President Hamid Karzai is likely to make Afghan sentiments flare, not calm down.