Leaked EU Document Backs Afghan Timetable For Drawdown

By Steve Hynd

The Kabul Conference, follow up to the London Conference in January, is due to kick off on Tuesday and the Independent has a leaked document on how that wind will blow.

A leaked communiqu� a copy of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday � reveals how President Hamid Karzai will announce the timetable for a "conditions-based and phased transition" at the International Conference on Afghanistan to be held in Kabul on Tuesday.

... An agreed version of the document, marked "not for circulation", was sent to senior diplomats yesterday by Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations Special Representative in Afghanistan.

It states: "The international community expressed its support for the President of Afghanistan's objective that the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) should lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014."

...The communiqu�oes on to pledge that the international community will continue to "provide the support necessary to increase security during this time, and the continued support in training, equipping and providing interim financing to the ANSF at every level to take on the task of securing their country". It adds: "The government of Afghanistan and the international community agreed to jointly assess provinces, with the aim of announcing by the end of 2010 that the process of transition is under way."

The announcement is one of many issues surrounding development and governance that will be addressed at the conference, as well as an $800m (�523m) five-year Afghan peace and reintegration programme that "aims to reintegrate in five years up to 36,000 ex-combatants and to reach 4,000 communities in 220 districts of 22 provinces". The document also outlines short-term goals for coalition troops. These include combating the opium trade by maintaining the provinces that are currently free of drug cultivation, and increasing the number of poppy-free provinces in Afghanistan to 24 within 12 months. It also describes transparent elections in future as a matter of paramount importance.

President Karzai will tell delegates that the conference represents "a turning point" in Afghanistan's "transition to an era of Afghan-led peace, justice and more equitable development". He will also pledge that "expanding the day-to-day choices and capabilities of the Afghan people and ensuring their fundamental rights" will "remain the cornerstones of my government's approach to peace-building and comprehensive recovery".

A senior source in the British military confirmed yesterday that the blueprint was "a significant map laying out the stages on the way to withdrawal". He said: "The British government has been talking in terms of a 2014 withdrawal, but nobody has been able to produce a timetable identifying how and when things would happen. This document demonstrates that there is a will in the international community to have it done by then.

As I wrote in January:

The aim is still to begin papering over the cracks and head for the exits, with a drawdown beginning next year so that Obama can point to actual troops leaving and all "combat troops" probably out in 3 years. A "non-combat" residual force will stay for some indeterminate time to train Afghan security forces they'll never be able to afford at those levels and Western money will be pouring in for a decade and more.

If this sounds a lot like Iraq to you, well you'd be right. Apparently there is a lesson which can be taken from one misadventure and be applied wholesale to the other.

The truth is that Afghanistan is going to be no more stable in four years time than it is now - thus "papering over the cracks". Just as in Iraq, even after the COINdinistas have announced the success of their surge and the neocons have talked up their victory, violence will be causing large scale casualties and a carefully-constructed facade of progress will begin breaking down anew into another set of civil wars between factions.

Meanwhile, the West will have spent another $trillion or so and another 1,000 or more soldiers on what is essentially a face-saving exercise. We could pack up and leave right now and nothing essential would change in Afghanistan. What would change would be the careers of COIN-loving generals, interventionist pundits and politicians who more afraid of being seen to "cut and run" than they are of the ghosts of young Americans.