Where is Afghanistan headed?

By S P SETH

The question many people would ask: where is Afghanistan headed, now that the United States and its allies are already packing their bags with final departure by end-2014? Before we examine this question, it might be pertinent to ask where Afghanistan is today and might be over the next 2 years? The answer to the second question is that Afghanistan is in the same state of utmost misery as it has been during the decade-long war in that country. True, there have been some indicators of progress, like making a start with girls’ education. But in the absence of an environment of physical and economic security, even these small gains are easily and violently reversible. In other words, it is difficult to build on something with such shaky foundations.

Of course, those who are planning for Afghanistan’s future in the post-American phase will argue that, even though Afghanistan is one of the most unstable and poor societies in the world, it certainly is much better than it was under the Taliban that was hosting the al Qaida leadership leading to the 9/11 attacks in the US and the beginning of the war on terrorism. If not contained, al Qaeda-sponsored terrorism would have continued unabated. It is arguable if and how much terrorism has been contained during over a decade of US military operations in Afghanistan.  The country, though, remains in a precarious condition.

However, those wanting to see the US and its allies quit Afghanistan will be happy that the day is not far off.  The Taliban, for instance, believe that all Afghanistan’s problems stem from the US invasion of the country. They hope that, with the US withdrawal, the Karzai government will collapse and the Taliban will be back in power. But that might not happen so easily. True, the Taliban’s hold in eastern and southern parts of the Pashtun majority areas might be further strengthened where they already have a strong presence directly and indirectly. At places they are also in close contact with elements in the Afghan army, avoiding military encounters.

However, it is important to note that the Taliban is not a homogenous category. For instance, the Haqqanis are unlikely to submit easily to a centralized Taliban authority like Mullah  Mohammad Omar and his group. Pakistan’s ISI might play a bridging and mediating role, with its considerable patronage, to fight a common enemy, the Karzai government. But as the recent International Donors Conference in Japan has shown, the post-US Karzai government or its successor won’t be without friends willing to help, though avoiding troops’ involvement. Apart from pledging development aid of $16 billion over 4 years, US and its allies are also likely to commit about $4 billion a year to fund and support an estimated 352,000 Afghan army and police force over the next ten years.

It is true that because of the US’ and Europe’s fragile economic situation the promised economic and military aid might not be sustained. Even at the best of times pledges and estimates of aid are rarely met. With economies of pledging countries in all sorts of troubles, the post-American Afghanistan might be lucky to receive enough to keep going.  But even with scaled down pledges, an army and police force of around or less than 350,000 men will be pretty handy to face up to a Taliban offensive. Even though the Afghan army is unlikely to reach the standards of a professional army, and might not be as committed to their cause as the Taliban, it will have the advantage of employing a large number of young people in a country where poverty is rampant. They might not be so easily sabotaged if the alternative is to hit the road. Of course, some will desert and join the Taliban and be rewarded. But for many,  it might not be the option. What it means is that many in the military and police might develop a stake in what they already have--a regular slot in another otherwise fractured environment. In other words, the Taliban might not find it easy going and just walk into office.

This scenario, of course, presumes a regular and stable government and administration in the post-American period. Which is not guaranteed considering that even with the US troops around, the writ of the Karzai government doesn’t run all over the country. Indeed, they don’t seem to have any effective control beyond cities. Even in the cities, the insurgents are able to stage dramatic killings in the most secure areas of Kabul and Kandahar. They even managed to kill Karzai’s half brother, then governor of Kandahar, and Rabbani, Karzai’s peace council head and a former president of the country.

But the capacity of the insurgents to create mayhem will not necessarily work to their advantage, because Afghan people seem to crave for security and stability. Any advantage the Taliban might seek to wrest from this situation will simply push the country into a full scale civil war, pitting Pashtuns against Taziks, Uzbeks and other minorities.  And these minorities, particularly the Taziks, dominate the military, at least at the higher level. In a long piece on post-American Afghanistan in the New Yorker, reporter Dexter Filkins quotes an Afghan governor who says: “Mark my words, the moment the Americans leave, the civil war will begin. This country will be divided into twenty-five or thirty fiefdoms, each with its own government.”

Writing about the balance sheet of the US military intervention over a decade, Filkins comments, “…By the end of 2014, when the last Americans are due to stop fighting, the Taliban will not be defeated. A Western-style democracy will not be in place. The economy will not be self-sustaining…. And it’s a good bet, even Al Qaeda, which brought the United States into Afghanistan in the first place, will be carrying on.” As one former US counterinsurgency adviser to American forces in Afghanistan has been quoted to say, “ It appears we’re just trying to get out and avoid catastrophe.” It is a pretty depressing and disastrous situation for the Afghans to sort out between themselves. Which might take years to work out, if at all, with prolonged and protracted civil war.

In the midst of it all, Pakistan would like to play a determining role in the post-American Afghanistan, as it did before the US military invasion 11 years ago. Pakistan played a crucial role in putting the Taliban in power. But it hasn’t quite worked out in its favor. The Taliban went ahead hosting the al Qaeda that led to 9/11. That, in turn, brought in the US invasion of Afghanistan, putting Pakistan right in the middle of what is still unfolding and likely to continue in the post-American period as a prolonged civil war. Pakistan has been destabilized by the country’s own version of the Taliban. And things are likely to get worse, before they get any better at all, when Pakistan takes sides to determine the course of events to its advantage.

The overlap between the Taliban on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border is making Pakistan part of the Afghan imbroglio, further destabilizing the country. Therefore, in the post-American period, much will depend on how Pakistan is able to draw a line between its own polity/society and the goings on in Afghanistan. If not, Pakistan might swim or sink with Afghanistan.       

 Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Obama’s re-election?

By S P SETH

History was made in the United States when Barack Obama was elected as the country’s black President in 2008. At the time, the US was in the midst of its worst economic crisis since the 1930’s Depression. George Bush’s two-term presidency had been a disaster for US economy and its foreign and defense policies. Against this backdrop, Obama’s emergence on the electoral scene was electrifying, rallying around him minorities, independents plus the party’s traditional base of Democrats. Why? Because: during the gloom and doom of the time, he personified hope. His mantra of ‘yes, we can’ change and re-invent a new United States, energized the country. Of course, he didn’t win by a landslide. But considering the country’s deep racial divides, doubts about his birth (that he was not born in the US) and his religion (that he was a Muslim), his election as President was breathtaking. Obama not only promised to fix up the economy, he was also going to lift the United States’ image in the world, particularly in the Muslim world where it was almost rock bottom.

Looking back those times four years ago seemed surreal. What went wrong? First, Obama’s hopes of becoming a consensual President faded very early on after coming into office. As he said recently, “ My hope, when I came into office, was that we would have Republicans and Democrats coming together because the nation was facing extraordinary challenges.” But, he observed, “ It turns out that wasn’t their approach.” The rise of the Tea Party movement not only made Republicans more partisan and right wing but it also sought to play up the racist/Islamist card, though not directly. Doubts about Obama’s birth and religion tended to crop up here and there to remind people that Obama somehow was not a genuine American and the country was not safe and secure with him as President.  The Republicans were in no mood to legitimize him and his consensual platform.

In regard to the economy: they have even managed to somehow create the impression that all the United States’ economic woes are his doing as the country’s President; even though it was under George Bush’s watch that the economy went gangbuster, subsequently taking Europe with it too because of its exposure to the toxic US’ subprime housing mortgages. Obama would have won kudos if he had managed to turn around the economy but that was not to be. In other words, by not fulfilling popular expectations he raised during his election campaign, Obama’s shine has worn off. In the circumstances, the Republications have taken the axe to demolish him by creating a political gridlock in the country, thus making any forward movement a difficult, if not impossible, task.

Obama is now pitted against Mitt Romney in a very tight presidential race. He is trying to turn the heat on Romney and the Republicans  by painting them as the party of the rich, with their only solution to the country’s economic crisis being to cut taxes on the rich, while advocating spending cuts on programs that help the country’s middle and poor classes. The widening economic divide between the rich and poor and growing destitution in the country should perversely give Obama some edge over Romney, but it doesn’t seem to be working. In the United States, the politics of class divide/envy tends to consign its advocates into the fold of socialists, not a comfortable epithet to wear in the United States. Obama has to hear this charge thrown at him more frequently.

Americans pride themselves as entrepreneurial people committed to achieve the American Dream of becoming rich one day. With the country’s economic situation so fragile and about 13 million unemployed (many more if you include the under-employed), this fabled American Dream is becoming more like a nightmare for many people.  But it takes a long time for these myths to be recognized for what they really are. Therefore, Obama team’s political strategy of using the country’s class divide to its advantage might not work. In the absence of an appreciable improvement in country’s economy, and that doesn’t seem likely in the few months to the election, Obama is at a disadvantage.

Obama will have the advantage of minority votes, particularly from Afro-American and Latino communities. His deft use of his power to let many young people born of illegal Latino parents to live and work in the United States should help him to consolidate his electoral hold among Latino voters, particularly in swing states with a high concentration of such votes. He has also consolidated his support among the gays, having come out in favor of the same-sex marriage.

Obama’s problem this time is that he has lost his newness exuding hope and optimism for the country’s future. He comes out like any other politician, having made all sorts of compromises and evasions for his political career with an eye for his second term. That sort of charisma and chemistry, which energized so many independents, young and women, and mobilized many volunteers for his 2008 campaign, is missing. The economy is sluggish with not much hope of an appreciable improvement, if any. Mitt Romney’s message that he will fix up the economy because of his experience as a successful businessman, even if shoddy, might not be electrifying, but there is nothing else going around as people might perceive. The point to make is that even with so much in his favor in 2008, Obama won only by 7 point. And with so much now on the debit side in popular perception, he has reasons to worry. The election will be a cliffhanger.

In the area of national security and foreign policy, which is not an election clincher but very important for the world, Obama’s great message was to improve US image in the Islamic world. There were three concrete issues that mattered most. First, of course, was terrorism. As the country’s first black President, with lingering doubts about his credentials, Obama needed to show his toughness on the issue of terrorism. But putting more troops on the ground was not the right way to do so. This was reinforced with the failure of the one-off troops’ surge in Afghanistan. He therefore settled for the technology fix of target killings with the increasing use of drones, not only along the Pak-Afghan border but also in other terrorist suspect places in the world. The problem, though, is that it has also killed many innocent civilians, including women and children, thus further complicating US relations with Pakistan. But his tough policy has reinforced Obama’s security credentials against terrorism within the country. As David Cole writes in the New York Review of Books, “ One thing is certain: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will not be able to accuse Obama of being soft on security…”

The second issue, clouding US relations with the Islamic world, is Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory in flagrant violation of international law. In his Cairo speech, after he became President, Obama sought to reach out to the Islamic world, with a significant part of his address devoted to help resolve this intractable issue. But this was sabotaged by the intransigence of the Netanyahu government with the help of the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States. Obama has, therefore, retreated from this issue to assuage the Jewish lobby and financiers.

The third issue is the Iranian bomb, with Obama determined to pursue Iran on the question of its nuclear ambitions. While imposing comprehensive sanctions against Iran, Obama has also said that all US options are open (including bombing Iran, if necessary) to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Israeli tweaking has considerably shaped his tough anti-Iran policy.

 While all these issues of foreign policy and strategy are important for the world, Obama’s re-election will largely be decided by the state of the US economy. And being an incumbent President with not much to show by way of an appreciable turn for the better, he is at a disadvantage even though Mitt Romney as an alternative is hardly anything to crow about.  There are still a few months to go, and Obama might still come ahead by scoring well in the swing states.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Europe’s multi-dimensional crisis

By S P SETH

Europe is in a state of sclerosis. It is not responding to any treatment because the malady is far too advanced. But the hope remains because nobody wants to believe that the patient is beyond recovery as there is so much at stake. Therefore, even a whiff of any possible new treatment is treated with relief. This is what happened when the last summit of European leaders in Brussels unfolded a new plan for rescuing ailing countries that include Italy and Spain, its third and fourth largest economies. It is basically a conjurer’s trick under which Euro zone’s financial stability mechanism will provide bail out funds directly to the stricken banks without cluttering the affected countries’ sovereign balance sheets. And this will happen only after a single supervisory agency is established by the end of the year.

The idea is that that this way the markets will be tricked into lending at relatively lower rates to Spain and Italy where the borrowing costs were approaching close to 7 per cent, considered unsustainable for their economies. When the new plan was announced at Brussels, there was considerable jubilation over this supposed breakthrough to restore confidence, with stock markets staging impressive recovery. But that has been the nature of stock markets recently, looking for any positive news. Such recovery, however, is likely to be short-lived when the true nature of the ‘breakthrough’ is digested.

With economy in deep trouble, Europe is becoming a multi-dimensional crisis area. The  elected governments unable to translate austerity packages into action had to be replaced by technocrats as prime ministers, as in Greece and Italy. The elections in Greece didn’t produce a desired result.  A coalition government couldn’t be cobbled together because of irreconcilable differences on implementing the European austerity package for the country. The voters were then asked to have another go to return a friendly political outcome for the austerity package. Without that there would be no bail out.  This was duly done and the new coalition government is now expected to do the needful with some modification to the package to make it politically palatable. In other words, the Greek voters, and before that the Irish voters, were firmly told that they had to revise their “democratic” outcome because it was at odds with what Brussels wanted.

Which is an odd way of democratic practice in a region (Europe) where democratic ideals of people’s choice have been widely lauded and held up as an example for other countries. In other words, Europe is experiencing a crisis of democratic legitimacy though this might not seem so apparent now. But if this sort of political tinkering continues, it will become a serious problem. Writing in the London Review of Books, Slavoj Zizek, a philosopher and researcher at the University of London, points out: “Here is the paradox that sustains the ‘free vote’ in democratic societies: one is free to choose on condition that one makes the right choice. This is why, when the wrong choice is made (as it was when Ireland rejected the EU constitution), the choice is treated as a mistake, and the establishment immediately demands that the ‘democratic’ process be repeated in order that the mistake be corrected….” Greece is now another example of this distortion of democratic practice.

Another dimension of the European crisis is the exacerbation of the ugly face of racism, as extensively reported in the press after the Greek election. The fascist Golden Dawn party that won seven per cent of the vote went on a rampage beating up immigrants like Afghans, Pakistanis and Algerians. The sad fact is, as Zizek writes, these fascist thugs had the support “of 50 per cent of the Athenian police…” Europe has been experiencing racism for many years focused on immigrant communities, particularly after the 9/11 terrorist bombing in New York. It is likely to get worse with the deteriorating economic situation in these countries with immigrants becoming the scapegoat, of which violence in Greece is a forerunner.

Another dimension is the increasing social unrest in these countries. The employment situation in some of these countries might erupt into serious social disorder. Take the case of Spain and Greece where unemployment rate is 24.6 per cent and 21.9 per cent respectively. And more than half of young people under 25 in both countries are reportedly without a job. For Euro zone of 17 countries, nearly 18 million people are jobless, which works out a little over 11 per cent. With these kind of unemployment figures and the future looking not so good, the prospects of serious social unrest are increasing by the day.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has reportedly told a House of Commons committee that his ministers have drawn up contingency plans for “all sorts of different eventualities.” The worst-case scenario is the likely economic and social breakdown in Greece following its exit from Euro zone. In that situation, the Cameron government will take measures to prevent Greek citizens from entering Britain, notwithstanding its obligations under European Union treaties. Britain is even reconsidering its entire relationship with the European Union. In an article in The Sunday Telegraph, Prime Minister Cameron has suggested a possible referendum on the country’s relationship with the European Union. He wants to “spell out in more details the parts of our European engagement we want and those to end.” Britain is not part of the 17-member Euro zone monetary union, but it is a member of the larger 27-member European Union. These moves on Britain’s part are indicative of the very real possibility of the break up of the European project.

Europe is also experiencing a political and economic divide between its north/central and south. The relatively prosperous countries of north are resisting being drafted into underwriting the basket case economies of south, such as Greece, Spain and Italy. Which has made Germany, the strongest European economy, the favorite target of south for its niggardly and selfish approach. Mindful of the adverse economic impact on the United States of an imploding Europe, the US has been leaning on Germany to help stimulate European growth by less emphasis on austerity and more on growth.

Another much-heralded recent announcement is a marginal reduction in the European Central Bank’s benchmark interest rate from 1 per cent to 0.75 per cent, hoping it will help stimulate the Euro zone economies.  However, it is unlikely to shake up the economy. The entire thrust of these exercises is to convince investors that the tide is turning in Europe and they might as well partake of it. But in a climate where confidence is rock bottom, and for good reasons, these conjuring tricks have outlived their validity.

Basically, it is a crisis of the freewheeling, so called free market, capitalist system. Just look at the recent example of Britain’s Barclays Bank where they have been manipulating the inter-bank rate (called LIBOR for London Interbank Offered Rate) to make the bank look creditworthy. The bank has been fined a record 290 million pounds, though it is chickenfeed compared with their profits over the years through this mechanism.  And now it is coming out that the country’s central bank, Bank of England, and the British government were also involved at some levels.

From the eighties, the Reagan Administration in the US and Thatcher government in Britain went berserk with a deregulated economy where markets were supposed to be self-correcting. And it became the international mantra for all countries to follow these prescriptions, with disastrous results. Thatcher even debunked society as the primary concern of all governance by putting market economy at the top. Therefore, the basic problem is that the “free market” has run its course. What we need is to think outside the box and start experimenting with alternative strategies of reviving local and communal ways of sharing the resources of this planet to save it from sinking along with all of us at some, not too distant future. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times