Afghanistan (60 page)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a May 2009 interview that public support for the Afghan war will dissipate in less than a year unless the Obama administration achieves “a perceptible shift in momentum.”
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In Afghanistan, the increased troop presence, prior to the 2009 election, intended to prevent
insurgent control of a sizable percentage of the Pushtun population, led to increased casualties by US and coalition forces. This, along with widespread accusations of fraud in Afghanistan’s August 2009 presidential elections, contributed to a widespread deterioration of support for US presence in Afghanistan by the electorate in September 2009.
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Within nine months, the previous consensus view on Afghanistan had collapsed and Obama faced strong opposition over Afghanistan even within his own party, leaving him with the necessity of working with a Republican opposition that neither likes nor trusts him. In many other coalition countries, Afghanistan was already deeply unpopular, and the events of 2009 only heightened the dissatisfaction. When GEN McChrystal completed his strategic review in September 2009, it was widely felt that the political consensus was rapidly eroding.

In October 2009, the Obama administration agonized over GEN McChrystal’s request for additional troops, conscious of the considerable political and financial costs. By autumn 2009, estimated US costs in Afghanistan totaled 227 billion dollars, including nearly 16 billion dollars in foreign aid and diplomatic operations, with an additional 73 billion dollars projected to be spent during fiscal year 2010 alone.
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In October 2009, there were press reports that “White House officials . . . have concluded that McChrystal’s approach could be doomed by election fraud, corruption and other problems in Afghanistan, by continued Pakistani covert support for the insurgency, by the strains on the Army, Marine Corps and the federal budget; and by a lack of political and public support at home, which they fear could also undermine the president’s domestic priorities.”
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If these reports prove to be correct, they have the potential to undercut any US policies in Afghanistan and send that country back into more decades of conflict. If an effective Afghanistan policy is precluded by a preoccupation with the US domestic policy concerns of the administration, it may prove to be even more counterproductive to national security than did the US disengagement from Afghanistan that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

When Afghanistan rose to the top of the US national agenda in 2009, it brought with it the attention of official Washington and the mainstream media that saw it as reflecting polarized US politics and priorities, rather
than reflecting an understanding of Afghan realities, much as Pakistan has seen its own Afghanistan policy as an extension of domestic politics for decades. Those in Washington remember that no one lost their jobs when the US disengaged from Afghanistan and distanced itself from newly nuclear Pakistan. The US seemed to care little about Afghanistan after that until Al Qaeda served notice with their attacks on US embassies in 1998. To many Americans, Afghanistan is seen through the prism of Vietnam, another unpopular and costly war that threatens to devour an ambitious domestic political agenda.
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This is likely to be as misguided as seeing Vietnam through the prism of the 1930s and Munich was in the 1960s. Afghanistan is not about the unsolvable problems of political and cultural divisions in America but rather those of Afghanistan, which are highly disparate but largely solvable. Afghanistan’s conflicts are all winnable. The US concern for an “exit strategy” rather than a unitary strategy to prevail in each of Afghanistan’s five conflicts and playing out US politics in Afghanistan has the potential to prove disastrous for the Afghans. The emergence of the perception in the region, however inaccurate, that the US is more concerned with limiting its liability in Afghanistan rather than achieving success has the potential to undercut all that has been achieved by American action there since 2001.

The Obama administration aimed to address these concerns with the president’s 1 December 2009 speech, announcing the deployment of additional US troops. The Obama speech emphasized the need for additional manpower—some 30,000 additional military personnel—as well as setting out what they are needed to achieve once deployed.
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Coalition members are expected to provide a further 7,000 personnel. These reinforcements cannot change the situation in Afghanistan; what they
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do is provide time and a suitable level of security for the US, coalition allies, and the Afghans to make these needed changes, in the Afghan governance and in diplomatic relations with Pakistan.

This Obama speech laid out three elements for an effective strategy: “a military effort to create the conditions for a transition [exit],” a civilian surge, and effective partnership with Pakistan. Within these constraints, GEN McChrystal’s efforts were given a green light to create the effective integrated strategy that the coalition and Kabul has lacked up to this
point, and although his authority only extends over the first of the three elements Obama identified, it can provide the security for the other two steps to consolidate. McChrystal said “Success is achievable but it will not be attained simply by trying harder or ‘doubling down’ on the previous strategy. Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely.”
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This reflects that while these resources, in troops and dollars, are needed in the short-term future to prevent disaster, only the long-term strategy of rebuilding Afghanistan, physically and politically, with responsibility for its own security enabled and underlined by a security commitment from the US, is likely to lead to success in all five of Afghanistan’s conflicts.

Obama placed great emphasis on an exit strategy and a date set for the start of withdrawal of US forces from a combat role, and so the speech unfortunately had the impact of undercutting what Afghanistan needs most, a sense of long-term commitment to enable it to rebuild itself and prevail against internal enemies and neighbors alike. In the past, no exit date was set for other security relationships where the US support for a local partner has been important to deter adversaries, such as with Germany, the Republic of Korea, or Israel. Supporting these countries has cost the US lives and money over the years, but it has been critical in creating international stability. With these countries, the US commitment is that strong and believable that
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, rather than the number of US troops or the dollar amount of US aid, is important. A commitment of foreign troops to Afghanistan is less important, or desirable, than the knowledge by the Afghans that they can count on US support. The speech did not provide assurance that Afghanistan has a long-term relationship with the US. Rather, it reinforced the perception that, at the end of the day, the US is going home and the Afghans will have to deal on their own. The message the speech sent to Afghan insurgents and Pakistani generals alike was that the US was going to disengage, starting with the 30,000 reinforcements that would withdraw in 2011, and was starting to limit its liability, and those adversaries that had the time and the patience to wait them out would be in a good position to prevail in the end, especially if many of the Afghans the US had relied on decide to disengage along with them. What Afghanistan really needed from the US, and has not
received, was the knowledge that the insurgents and the ISI will not be able to wait out the US commitment.

Nor will these US and coalition troops implement an integrated strategy in Afghanistan. While GEN McChrystal may be clear as to how these resources will be effectively used, the same cannot be said about the other two elements of Obama’s strategy, the surge of US civilian personnel (including those that will help train Afghans for more effective governance) and better cooperation with Pakistan. Effective plans to achieve both goals are not evident.

The focus of friends and adversaries alike has been shifted to the 30,000 troops that will withdraw in 2011, not to the US relationship with Afghanistan that needs to remain even if troop numbers or aid dollars are reduced. “We’re not interested in staying in Afghanistan. We have no long-term stake there. We want that to be made very clear,” Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, had previously said on 15 November 2009.
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Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, while stating that the US aim is to “signal resolve,” also cautioned “this is not an open-ended commitment.”
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While these statements themselves are true, and apparently intended to counter the local perception that the US interest in Afghanistan is to have a base for its “global war on Islam,” their effect has been to underline the limitations in the US commitment.

The Obama approach is likely to dispirit the remainder of the Afghans, clinging to the remains of the hope created in 2001, afraid that once again the US will disengage with even more disastrous results than in the 1990s. Addressing corruption will become more difficult as Afghans have a motivation to earn enough to allow them to go into exile if things fall apart. Others may look to deal with the enemy, looking toward a settlement that cuts out other Afghans. Disengagement is more likely to create collapse than a responsible Afghanistan standing united against a Pakistan-supported insurgency.

What the US can do for Afghanistan, in the final analysis, is limited. The most important changes needed in Afghanistan can only be carried out by the Afghans themselves. This includes turning away from the culture of corruption and polarizing politics and taking responsibility for their own future. This will likely take a generation to accomplish, and the West
may not like how the Afghans end up doing this or approve of some of the people that will take part in this process, but the alternative is disengagement and more decades of conflict. The US commitment gives time, among other things, for Pakistan to change its strategy and the Afghans to change their politics. But this is going to require a perception that the US commitment, regardless of troop levels and aid payments, will remain, just as the commitment has remained to the Republic of Korea. Demanding an exit strategy from Afghanistan in 2010 may be as counterproductive as insisting on an exit strategy from Korea would have been in 1952, or making disengagement a priority in other US security relationships.

Afghans can and will work and fight for themselves, even if some will gladly evade responsibility and let outsiders shoulder these burdens in their stead or will accept their aid money when this is offered. A few will even pocket this money if they see others getting rich. The pro-Soviet Kabul regime endured successfully in 1989–92 after Moscow had withdrawn its combat forces but kept up a strong commitment in the form of money, support, and advisors. They were able to survive an offensive by the Afghan resistance forces based in Pakistan, well armed by the US and other donors. The 1989–92 Kabul regime could survive the withdrawal of Soviet troops; what it could not survive was the end of the Soviet Union, which removed the source of committed outside support that had enabled them to hold things together. But if the Afghans must fight for themselves, they will do it their way, and outsiders may not like what happens.

Afghanistan needs security for any progress in its conflicts. Long-term commitments from the US are important for that security. Foreign troops in the field and foreign aid programs and advisors are short-term tools needed to turn around trend lines and rebuild confidence. Troops and aid are important both for what they do and, perhaps more important, because they are evidence of this commitment. Troops and aid can be reduced, if the situation on the ground permits, if there is a perception that the commitment remains. The long-term solutions will require the Afghans to rebuild security and resolve conflicts for themselves, which will take a generation. But without the short-term actions by the US and coalition, requiring troops and aid, Afghanistan’s long term may belong not to the Afghans, but to the terrorists, insurgents, and narcotics
traffickers. In the longer term, restoring the consensus for a US commitment will be difficult, but showing the importance of Afghanistan’s conflicts on a global basis, while not whitewashing its limitations and problems, is a necessary first step. Efforts to bring the voice of the Afghan people to Western audiences, as took place during the conflict with the Soviet Union, would also help remind them of the lives and futures that are at stake there.

Last Chance for Afghanistan?

“They are not doing what it takes to win,” one long-time observer of Afghanistan said in Kabul in October 2008. The “they” in the statement refers to Afghans and their US and coalition supporters alike. This situation has not been turned around by actions by the Obama administration, nor have Kabul and the larger but divided Afghan population changed their ways that have contributed to the crisis. Afghanistan needs to change before it becomes likely that, rather than gradual disintegration, some unforeseen event, even a relatively minor one, may lead to a widespread collapse.

Providing Afghanistan with just the minimum resources it needs to stay afloat when it needs to achieve stability to enable development sets it up for eventual disaster from terrorist attacks, insurgent success, or natural causes such as drought, the population growing faster than employment, or even simple entropy. By 2013, or at least 2018, if significant advances in stabilizing the country are not made, Afghanistan as a nation could be so incapacitated that any gains since 2001 will be at risk and Pakistan-backed insurgents could conceivably be back in power in Kabul while waging a civil war against non-Pushtun Afghans. It took mistakes and failures by all the participants, Western, Pakistani, and Afghan, to create the troubled Afghanistan that replaced the hopeful one of 2001.

Even if success is achieved in Afghanistan, transnational terrorism is likely to continue to be a threat worldwide, with Al Qaeda as a participant or an inspiration. In the event of a foreign disengagement from Afghanistan, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said “Al Qaeda would be back in a flash,”
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and yet the threat is not so much from an Al Qaeda able to operate freely in Afghanistan as it is to the encouragement
and example its success would provide to other groups and individuals that share its fundamentalist goals and destructive methods. Al Qaeda, for all its protean resilience, has limited appeal, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as worldwide. Al Qaeda has worked around this through links with groups that had their origins in the Pakistan-supported conflicts in Kashmir and Afghanistan that have made them transnational threats as well; the next follow-on to the Mumbai terror attack may be further abroad than India. Al Qaeda operates from Pakistan and could feasibly operate from other bases, in places such as Yemen or Somalia. But the cachet of returning to Afghanistan, a liberated part of the
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, would be irresistible as a major theme foreshadowing eventual success in the global battle of ideas. It would light the beacon of Al Qaeda as the leader of transnational terrorism.