The plot thickens in Afghanistan and Pakistan

With President Barack Obama's change in strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan — which includes a significant influx of new U.S. troops for Afghanistan — the fight against the Taliban is increasingly becoming his war, rather than just a conflict this president inherited from his predecessor. Having assumed ownership of a central and uncertain fight in the war against terrorism, Obama moved this week to further put his individual stamp on how it will be fought.

In comes Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, out goes Gen. David McKiernan, who has been the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan since June. Eleven months is well short of a full tour of duty for McKiernan and this kind of move is anything but business as usual in a time of war. As has been widely noted, this appears to be the first time a top general has been removed midtour from a theater of war since President Harry S. Truman yanked Gen. Douglas MacArthur from Korea in 1951.

The drastic measure shows the seriousness with which the Obama administration is greeting a security picture in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan that grows more alarming by the day. The battle against the Taliban and al- Qaida is one in which every official pronouncement made in Washington seems to be punctuated by new violence in the region, as was the case earlier this month when the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan met with Obama as combat erupted in Pakistan's Swat Valley; this latest official development was followed a day later by a series of coordinated al- Qaida attacks in Afghanistan that left at least nine people dead.

The hope is that McChrystal, apparently recommended to Obama by Defense Secretary Robert Gates (who also recommended McKiernan to President George W. Bush), will bring a more innovative approach to counterinsurgency measures in Afghanistan, reflective of McChrystal's expertise in special operations. The move seems part of the reshuffling at the top that began with Gen. David Petraeus' ascension last year to the leadership of U.S. Central Command, after his success in quelling violence in Iraq.

Bringing on McChrystal accentuates a new willingness (which dates back to the last days of the Bush administration) to bring unconventional thinking to the war against terrorism. It is a change in approach that seems warranted, but which comes with no guarantees. As always in counterinsurgency campaigns, the wild card remains the sympathies of the civilian populace; as insurgent activity intensifies, the challenge will lie in striking back without killing and disrupting the lives of innocents — that is to say, without creating additional sympathy for al-Qaida and the Taliban.

It is a task complicated by an even bigger wild card, which is Pakistan itself. Obama can change commanders and military strategies in Afghanistan to his heart's content, but — so far at least — the U.S. military's reach into Pakistan is limited to drone attacks and the most clandestine of raids by special operations forces. So the U.S. can only watch anxiously as Pakistan's government strikes back at Taliban forces in the western part of the country with a primarily air-based assault — one that may have limited success against insurgents but which causes maximum threat to and displacement of civilians, who have been fleeing the region by the hundreds of thousands.

A new military commander heads to Afghanistan, but it is nuclear-armed Pakistan, birthplace of the Taliban, that is starting to look more and more like the central front in the battle against Islamic extremists. And once again it cannot be emphasized strongly enough that military measures alone won't bring victory.