Afghanistan is a land mine. If not handled properly, it will
blow a hole in the Obama presidency before the midterm elections.
Peering down the barrel of the Afghan war, Yogi Berra would have
said, “Don’t make the wrong mistake.” With Iraq consuming 4,000
American lives, 33,000 wounded thus far, and costs estimated
between $1.5 and $3 trillion, U.S. taxpayers must ask precisely how
homeland security is linked to Afghanistan, and if, indeed, they
must gird themselves for another war of choice with more loss of
American life and fortune while the nation confronts such pressing
needs at home.
Barack Obama assumed office with 79 percent of Americans
optimistic about his administration, including 59 percent of those
who voted for John McCain. It was a moment like few others in
modern times: the nation’s nerve endings are raw after eight years
of hope and reversals on the bloody fields of Iraq and Afghanistan;
controversy surrounds Bush administration policies on civil
liberties, executive power and spending; we are shocked by the
sharp global disapproval of things American; and our economy is in
near freefall. To be fair, George W. Bush has seen us through seven
years without further terrorism at home—an important achievement.
But the price of suppressing risk at home and abroad is heavy, and
the picture for 2009 is not pretty.
Our hopes now rest with an untested president for the vision,
determination, and agility that will surely be needed going
forward. Analysts are correct when they say Obama has moved to the
“center”; one assumes he understands this is not the time for
adventure or risk or expenditure on anything but the critical need
to restart the economy and maintain the nation’s security. But does
he?
Last October Obama said, “The trends across the board are not
going in the right direction. Make no mistake: we are confronting
an urgent crisis in Afghanistan, and we have to act. It’s time to
heed the call from General McKiernan and others for more troops.
That’s why I’d send at least two or three additional combat
brigades to Afghanistan.”
Since the election Obama and his new choice for chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, have proposed to increase
U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan by 35,000. He would redeploy
soldiers being withdrawn from Iraq and hopes to persuade the
Europeans to provide additional NATO troops. Present plans also
call for discussions with the more approachable Taliban elements,
outreach programs that emphasize reconciliation and cooperation
with tribal elders, and providing local leaders funds to help
protect roads, bridges, cell phone towers. And food shipments.
Yet U.S. and British NATO officers returning from their tours of
duty are nearly unanimous in saying the Taliban have consolidated
their position, that they have the momentum, that things are going
in the wrong direction. Troop shortages and a failure to find
common ground with local leaders have brought little progress.
Despite promises, we have rarely followed up to provide water and
electricity to battle-scarred villages, leaving tribesmen alienated
and reliant on the Taliban. This has been made worse by our opium
eradication program that destroys the cash crop most farmers rely
upon to survive.
How Did We Get Here?
Taliban rule in Kabul was broken seven years ago in a lightning
22-day U.S. strike whose ferocity and effectiveness stunned
military staffs from Moscow to Beijing to Tehran. Today, however,
the Taliban controls all but the capital in this “graveyard of
empires” nearly the size of Texas. It’s a violent tribal society
rooted in Islamic fundamentalism, with 27 percent literacy, 40
percent unemployment, and 80 political parties. Founded in 1747
when Ahmad Shah Durrani unified the Pashtun tribes, this land of
the Khyber Pass, celebrated by Rudyard Kipling, has not been
conquered since Alexander the Great. Hoping to maintain a buffer
between British India and Russia, Afghan tribesmen held their
ground in 1842 to slaughter a British expeditionary force of some
15,000 men— leaving one man to escape and relate the grotesque
horrors of the battle.
Then 147 years later, the USSR, bled white over 10 years, was
defeated by the mujahideen with help from CIA-supplied
Stinger missiles. And today the story remains the same: determined
Islamist fighters with al Qaeda assistance, based in the border
tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, have fought the NATO
coalition to a standstill. Hamid Karzai, known in-country, as the
“President of Kabul,” has made little progress in democratizing the
country, while U.S. and UK casualties in 2008 were the highest
since the 2001 invasion.
Some Hard Questions
As the new administration urges its reluctant British, Canadian,
Dutch, and German allies to commit additional troops to the Afghan
effort, the time has come for a few hard questions. First, what,
exactly, is the U.S. national interest in Afghanistan?
Second, what, exactly, is the objective in Afghanistan: Is it to
bring democratic governance to this vast, disconnected tribal
system? Is it to pacify one province after another in hopes of
bringing stability?
Is it, as analyst Andrew Bacevich says, simply to assure that
terrorist forces intent on attacking the U.S. do not assemble
there?
Third, is there any example in history of an outside power
either subduing Afghanistan or modifying its tribal structure or
values?
Fourth, can the American people be persuaded that stabilizing or
transforming Afghanistan is worth the price in blood and
fortune?
Fifth, what is the exit strategy? What constitutes success?
There are no agreed answers to these questions within the U.S.
government or among the NATO partners. In my conversations with
Admiral Mullen, the head of the Afghan program at Voice of America,
and a recent assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs,
I found no agreement on the objective of our Afghan policy, no
agreement on what we can or should spend or on an exit strategy.
Nor is there agreement on whether Afghanistan is a stand-alone
problem. It may be that the Afghan situation cannot be addressed
without addressing an increasingly dysfunctional government in
Pakistan. There is no mystery as to what is at stake here. Simple
math indicates the administration’s commitment to restarting the
U.S. economy means we cannot undertake another war costing
billions, if not trillions of dollars. Moreover, the military is
overstretched, which means we lack the manpower to apply
overwhelming force at critical times and places.
Nor would we have the manpower to respond to emergencies in
other parts of the world were we heavily committed in Afghanistan.
But most of all, there is no public desire, no stomach, among the
American people for another war of choice. Twice in the past
half-century we have undertaken substantial military efforts abroad
without sufficient public support and both, Vietnam and Iraq, have,
in effect distorted and then destroyed the presidencies at the
time.
The vast majority of Americans believe it is time to heal
ourselves. Curiously, one asks why Barack Obama, given his public
commitment to job creation, health care, and education, regulatory,
and financial reform—is not among them.
The Way Forward
First, we must determine if Afghanistan
is a stand-alone problem, then define our objectives and gain broad
public support for whatever approach we take both in the U.S. and
among our NATO allies. Failure to achieve this will bring political
disaster to the Obama administration, compromise NATO, and continue
the stalemate in Afghanistan.
Second, accept the lessons of history. Afghanistan is known as
the “graveyard of empires” for a reason. Conquest has been
attempted through the ages but has not succeeded in the Christian
era.
Today limited funds and an overstretched military impose
choices. We are not able to mount a sustained military effort in
Afghanistan unless we choose to neglect today’s pressing domestic
economic requirements, or intend to assume heavy additional tax
burdens or place additional crushing debt on future
generations.
Given these conditions, a two-dimensional approach may make
sense: first, accept that the objective is to deny the Taliban and
al Qaeda a base in Afghanistan from which to strike the U.S. or its
interests. Second, accept that separating the Taliban from opium
revenues strikes at its ability to obtain weaponry. Then combine
“soft” and “hard power” to use what Harvard professor Joseph Nye
calls “smart power” to achieve this by addressing the opium issue
and the Taliban/al Qaeda threat together.
Progress on the opium issue was made last June when the Group of
Eight foreign ministers met in Japan and created a coordinating
body to oversee the provision of some $4 billion in aid to the
tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their purpose is to
improve police and military training and anti-drug trafficking
programs. The anti-drug trafficking program is modeled on the
Nixon-Kissinger program in Turkey that used product licensing to
encourage Turkish farmers to sell their illegal opium crops to
pharmaceutical companies to make legal medicine. This program would
encourage Afghan farmers to sell their opium produce to an NGO that
would pay them the same or more than they would get from the
Taliban. The NGO would then sell it to hospitals worldwide to help
address the global shortage in morphine. Clearly, this would cost
less than fighting the Taliban and it would have the effect of
cutting off the revenue the Taliban use to purchase weapons.
(Moreover, there is some indication Tehran would be sympathetic to
such an initiative that might provide the platform for expanded
discussions to, eventually, include nuclear issues.)
Secondly, the Taliban and al Qaeda could be denied bases and
training facilities by fully deploying the highly mobile strike
capacity created by the U.S. military over the past decade.
Continuing, and unpredictable, strikes by these forces would make
Taliban/al Qaeda attack planning difficult if not impossible. Such
U.S./NATO units would be deployed with the acknowledgment of Kabul
and Pakistani authorities where necessary, and would avoid: (1) the
greater cost of deploying large number of troops to permanent bases
in-country, (2) tensions with our allies over troop commitments,
(3) the need to generate broad public support for yet another
“war.”
Suppressing the Taliban and separating it from its main source
of financial support would render tribal authorities more
approachable by the Karzai government. Finally, this approach
accepts that neither we nor our allies fully understand the
technology of nation building—and that this is not a
nation-building effort—but we are prepared to join the
international community in providing humanitarian assistance and
stabilization measures at the request of the Kabul government.
