Afghanistan: Progress not Perfection

As a robust national debate over Afghanistan continues, a policy dilemma weighs upon President Obama. If allied forces depart from Afghanistan, Islamic jihadists will enjoy at least a propaganda victory with a sobering fall-out. If U.S. forces remain or increase in Afghanistan, indicators point toward an eventual stalemate and defeat of Western interests in any case. 

Should allied forces prevail and magically establish a nation state superseding an ancient culture of fierce local allegiances compounded by millions of refugees angered by depredations of tyrants-past, al Qaeda and other terror-gangs will simply move shop to some other failed or pseudo-state like Somalia, Yemen or the Sudan. 

So who wins? 

Yet much of this dilemma emerges from rigid yet competing doctrines of conventional warfare, labor-intensive counter-insurgency, etc. N.A.T.O. must confront certain facts of strife before the West blunders down the same path as did the erstwhile U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan. 

First, President Obama is not dithering. His momentous decision – with no clear path to a positive outcome – requires the prudence afforded by time, deliberation and debate. Deliberately confounding caution with cowardice comes across as a bald attempt to goad the President into taking aggressive actions when, time and again, such actions have proven unproductive. 

Second, General McChrystal’s sixty-six page proposed strategy was neither leaked nor mindlessly kinetic. This well thought out request, heavily redacted, does not represent a desperate call for more troops hoping that “this time, things will be different”. It argues instead for a post-kinetic partnership with an implied time-frame of 12-18 months. 

Third, the West has misplaced the Afghan conflict. This valley or that city is not the battlefield; the future is. There has been no lack of Western resolve in men or materiel. The failure in Afghanistan has been one of neglecting the hopes and aspirations that the people themselves hold for their families.

Fourth, people view Afghanistan as a nation-state. It is not. Afghanistan remains a cauldron of fractious tribes, disaffected refugees, Islamist gangs and local warlords circumscribed by centuries-old borders of the Russian, British and Persian empires. As such, any lasting change will have to work its way from the ground-up with a view toward local loyalties. 

Fifth, a hollowness of purpose, premised on the immediate advancement of U.S. interests as a measure of success, blights the righteousness of U.S. policy. Morally vacuous reasoning allows the ends to justify the means, encourages duplicity, discourages long-term advancement of liberty and promotes the seduction of the kinetic quick-fix. 

At the end of the day, however, our short-sighted and often venal policies dishonour our citizen-soldiers, blacken our name and lead to abuses of might making right...WRONG! That said, what can the U.S. government do, if anything, for NATO to succeed in Afghanistan? I would offer the following ideas: 

• grant General McChrystal’s request for more troops tied to a time-line for withdrawal to dispel the notion of permanent occupation; 
• draw-down in Iraq by year-end 2010 to reinforce the bona fides of U.S. intentions in Afghanistan
• support financially the Iraqi Sunnis paid off by the U.S. Army during the 2008 surge to demonstrate the effectiveness of community-based policing in reducing conflict; 
• disperse the military trainers to mentor local police forces in weeding out gangsters; 
• supplement the troop surge with as many civilian field workers as possible;
• dispense with convoys and body-armor for civilians and military trainers, in exchange for protection by local leaders, knowing that some, perhaps many, field workers will be murdered along the way;
• focus primarily on little, attainable gains that bring hope to Afghans and build their faith in capacity-building; 
• encourage a re-write of a flawed constitution along the lines of a Swiss confederation headed by a constitutional monarch;
• use tolls and other explicit fees financially to incent tribal chiefs and ‘warlords’ into supporting national infrastructure projects; as well as, 
• win the control of the country-side first and eventually to starve the Taliban out of the cities. 

Why must we fight? 

Should the U.S. and NATO fail to prevail against the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Pashtuns will rise against their government in pursuit of a Taliban caliphate. When Pakistan falls, more will be at stake than the frightful possibility of Taliban possession of 155 nuclear warheads. 

The expansionist ideology of the Taliban will either energize the Punjabis or intimidate them into acquiescence. Then will come an invasion of Kashmir. India will strike back forcefully, possibly activating Chinese intervention into the sub-continent and likely precipitating World War III. --Written September 2009.

UPDATE 2021: link to April 2009 proposal for integrating the Sons of Iraq added for explanatory purposes.