By Steve Hynd
In a major change of editorial direction after eight years of support for the Labour government's policy, the UK's Guardian newspaper today became the first British newspaper to forthrightly call allied plans for the continued occupation of Afghanistan "Dangerous Illusions" (H/t Kat.)
...examine the blithe assumptions Barack Obama's commanders are making. Rory Stewart demolished them in the London Review of Books, but others just as knowledgable of the terrain, such as the CIA former station chief in Kabul, have as well. Assumption number one: that coalition forces can build an effective, centralised Afghan state in the space liberated by their troops. Such a state has never existed in recent memory. Assumption number two: that the counter-insurgency tactics that worked in Iraq will work again in Afghanistan. Why so? Afghan tribal chiefs bear little relation to the Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders who turned against al-Qaida. They lack coherence or any political programme. Assumption number three: that south Helmand is the frontline of a global war. The masterminds of the 7 July attacks on London in 2005 and the leaders of the plot a year later to use liquid explosives to bring down seven passenger jets were all trained in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, not Afghanistan. And if every failed state has to be occupied to prevent squatters, is this not a recipe for invading Yemen, Somalia, or anywhere along the conveniently named crescent of crisis?
The empty rhetoric has to stop. State-building from the ramp of a Chinook is a fantasy, a folie de grandeur. The war against militants will not be won by expanding the battle-space. The resolution to this "good war'' will not come from Kabul alone, but will be dependent on every neighbouring country with a stake in the conflict. The directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence made a telling point to the New York Times yesterday when it warned that a push by US marines in southern Afghanistan would force militants into Baluchistan. We have to stop thinking of Helmand as the frontline in a war that ends on the streets of London or Manhattan, and start thinking of what the growing conflagration is doing to Afghanistan's immediate neighbourhood. There are no good options after eight years of warfare, only least worst ones. We should stop pouring more oil on to this fire and start thinking of realistic outcomes. And we should be doing this now.
The Guardian's Road To Damascus Kabul conversion mirrors mine from around the beginning of the year, as Obama unfolded his Af/Pak plan and I thought "this doesn't make any more sense than it did when Bush proposed it". It made even less sense in the following months as the COINdinista interventionists co-opted that plan and made it over into an endlessly expansionist plan for a COIN occupation.
The Guardian endorses Rory Stewart's alternative strategy. Stewart is Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights and Director of the Carr Center on Human Rights Policy at Harvard. From 2000 to 2002 he walked solo across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey of 6000 miles, staying in villagers houses, and he has been the UK's Coalition Deputy Governor for two Iraqi provinces. I've linked and quoted his July 4th op-ed that the Guardian editorial refers to several times already and I'm going to again.
The best Afghan policy would be to reduce the number of foreign troops from the current level of 90,000 to far fewer � perhaps 20,000. In that case, two distinct objectives would remain for the international community: development and counter-terrorism. Neither would amount to the building of an Afghan state. If the West believed it essential to exclude al-Qaida from Afghanistan, then they could do it with special forces. (They have done it successfully since 2001 and could continue indefinitely, though the result has only been to move bin Laden across the border.) At the same time the West should provide generous development assistance � not only to keep consent for the counter-terrorism operations, but as an end in itself.
A reduction in troop numbers and a turn away from state-building should not mean total withdrawal: good projects could continue to be undertaken in electricity, water, irrigation, health, education, agriculture, rural development and in other areas favoured by development agencies. We should not control and cannot predict the future of Afghanistan. It may in the future become more violent, or find a decentralised equilibrium or a new national unity, but if its communities continue to want to work with us, we can, over 30 years, encourage the more positive trends in Afghan society and help to contain the more negative.
What Stewart is suggesting is still a long presence, although one far less costly in blood and treasure and one far more highly directed towards attainable ends and an exit. It is no longer an occupation. The Guardian is to be congratulated for seeing that, and for having the courage to break with the party it has supported on Afghanistan policy for so long.
In another less serious context this would be amusing:
ReplyDeleteThe directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence made a telling point to the New York Times yesterday when it warned that a push by US marines in southern Afghanistan would force militants into Baluchistan.
The point's telling, yes, but more for the way in which it's uncritically received than delivered. If the ISI are so concerned about Taliban forces being pushed back into Baluchistan, why is the Quetta Shura a few short steps from being wholly owned ISI subsidiary?
Two other points regarding Stewart's views (which I [very broadly] tend to agree with over the medium- to long-term):
1) The 64,000 euro question is whether development agencies are going to be willing / able to work in the context of the security environment engendered from a much reduced military presence. The jury is very, very much out on this one. My view, something will have to fundamentally change before that becomes viable - by extension, producing that fundamental change has to be a key aspect of strategy.
2) The [correct] observation as to the locale where the July 7th bombers and decision making leadership are located supports the notion that one should be concerned more with terrorists who receive some form of organized training and indoctrination based in ungoverned spaces than with self-starters. The specific nature of that basing (particularly the low signature) pretty much guarantee that AfPak policy predicated to a large extent on periodic Predator raids isn't going to work.