Afghanistan: the nightmare continues

S P SETH

Things are becoming murkier than usual as the US and its allies are in the process withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan by end of next year. The proposed US-Taliban talks in Qatar collapsed even before they started because President Hamid Karzai objected to the look of the Taliban office there with its official flag. In its bid for direct talks with the Taliban in Qatar, the US appeared to be bypassing the Afghan government. President Karzai wanted talks to be held in Afghanistan, with his government the centerpiece of negotiations. He, therefore, opposed the talks and the format adopted, and threatened to abort the negotiations with the US about a bilateral security pact post-2014.

According to media reports, a subsequent video-conference between Karzai and Obama didn’t go well, causing a serious dent in their personal chemistry. The US is, therefore, said to be considering an early and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is not quite clear if this is a serious proposition or a political ploy on the part of the Obama administration to put pressure on Karzai. Whatever the case, the Obama administration appears quite annoyed with Karzai.

With Afghan elections due next year, and Karzai constitutionally barred from running for a third term, he should essentially be lame duck. But it is difficult to visualize a post-Karzai Afghanistan, as the Americans invested so much of their strategy and hope in him and the people around him.  And now that they seem so keen to get out of Afghanistan they are no longer squeamish about dealing directly with the Taliban, without the usual pre-conditions of renunciation of violence, acceptance of the Afghan constitution and severing links with the al Qaeda.

Not surprisingly, Karzai is feeling abandoned in some ways. In its bid to hold talks with the Taliban, the US hopes to ease the process of its troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. Gone are the days, it would appear, when the Karzai administration was   the front and centre of any US strategy to deal with Afghanistan. For the time being, though, President Karzai has thrown a spanner into the works, so to say, to become the focus of US attention. But indications so far are that it has further annoyed the US. Frankly, the US is in a hurry as its withdrawal schedule is approaching and they have to work out some arrangement with the Taliban to avoid a disaster like that faced by the retreating British troops in the 19^th century.

At this point, it might be worthwhile to consider why things have gone so badly for the US Afghan policy? A recent book, “The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat” by Vali Nasr, throws some light on it. Nasr was a US state department insider at one time as senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He examines this in a chapter entitled, “Who Lost Pakistan?” In reviewing Nasr’s book in the New York Review of Books, Steve Coll says that Holbrooke, who died in December 2010, had a different approach on the Pakistan/Afghan issue to the mainstream view in the State Department. He was for bolstering up Pakistan through a large and ambitious aid program, like Marshall Plan, and change its “strategic calculus” of covertly supporting and sheltering Taliban as an instrument of political influence in Afghanistan, partly to thwart India. Holbrooke and Nasr felt that this was a better bet than the surge into Afghanistan. In other words, the solution to Afghanistan lay through Pakistan and investment in its prosperity.

Whether or not Holbrook was right or wrong is beside the point. The US went for the surge and it failed. The idea behind the surge was to put the US in a position of strength through some military gains on the ground to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. As this didn’t happen  there is now an element of hurry in the US to negotiate with the Taliban. to facilitate a relatively peaceful withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the Karzai government is worried about being sidelined.

The real problem with the US foreign policy, in Afghanistan as elsewhere, has been to see issues through black or white lens of a US-defined strategic/moral imperative. George Bush’s categorization of Iran, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) and North Korea as an “axis of evil”, is a case in point. It was the same with the threat from communism throughout the Cold War period. Such simplified categorization makes it easier to sell even a dubious policy domestically and with allied countries. And when that country is a superpower, as the US has been for much of the post-war period, chances of having much of the world on its side and having its way are pretty good; though there are exceptions as in the case of the Vietnam war where even total weapons’ superiority didn’t work.

However, if the American power is in retreat, as the title of Vali Nasr’s book suggests, it can create serious problems as it is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Take, for instance, the Middle East. According to Nasr, “If there is any American strategy at play in the Middle East these days it can be summed up as follows: Keep Egypt from getting worse, contain Iran, rely on Turkey, and build up the diplomatic and military capabilities of the Persian Gulf monarchies…” In other words, ad hocism is the order of the day.

But in the case of military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US is keen to see it happen in an orderly way. And for that to happen, some sort of cooperation with the Taliban will be necessary. But the Taliban are unlikely to oblige if they will be treated as a sideshow. On the other hand, if they come to occupy the centre stage, the Karzai government will create difficulties as they did with the planned US-Taliban talks in Qatar. And having invested so much in the Karzai government, including raising a large Afghan army, the US is in a terrible quandary. Which is: how to get out of Afghanistan in a relatively orderly fashion while still bequeathing a working political system for the post-American phase. Pakistan could be helpful in this with their patronage of the Taliban leadership sheltering there. But it is not as easy as that.

If the past is any guide, despite their dependence on Pakistan in so many ways, the Taliban leaders have generally managed to go their own way. It was certainly not in Pakistan’s strategic interest for the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to get involved with the al Qaeda leadership, and the latter’s sponsorship of the 9/11 attack. Pakistan is still reeling from it, being part of the George Bush’s war on terrorism. In other words, Afghanistan is going to haunt the US as much as it did the British in the 19^th century and the Soviet Union in the eighties of the last century, contributing in some ways to its collapse. And will continue to haunt Pakistan, as its involvement with the Taliban and their politics will tend to overwhelm its resources and further skew its domestic priorities.

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

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au