AFGHAN WAR COULD LAST DECADES

With Afghanistan’s presidential elections looming and the war widening, NATO has no exit strategy and some nations within the alliance are not pulling their weight.
Nevertheless, the Obama administration is committed to sending more troops and to carrying the bulk of the workload for a new counter insurgency policy, which has no guarantee of success. In Washington, gone are the goals of winning the war and making Afghanistan a model democracy, which were some of the aims of the Bush administration. Gone too is the Tony Blair promise of 2006 that Afghanistan would be a “quick in - quick out” affair. Instead, the latest policy is designed to enable troops to clear areas so they can be held while efforts are made through policing and economic programs to help communities rebuild.
It is a strategy that worked well in parts of Iraq but it faces serious obstacles in Afghanistan. For a start, while NATO may have the troops to clear areas of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants it does not have the manpower to continue to hold those same areas long after they have been liberated. It also lacks the policing elements communities will need for a peaceful rebuilding to lead to the creation of proper governance. Therefore, the holding and rebuilding elements of the counter insurgency strategy could prove to be its downfall because their success will depend on manpower being provided by the Afghan army and police. Unfortunately, the Afghan army has not shown that it can be trusted to independently keep areas safe from militants and policemen are not only renowned for being corrupt, they are feared by local people throughout the country. NATO also recognizes that the Afghan government may not be able to provide much needed support for the new plan since its authority rarely extends much beyond the capital, Kabul. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who is likely to be re-elected, has lost much of the support he received when first elected president in 2004. In the intervening years, he has brought corrupt officials and discredited warlords into his administration and, as a consequence, he has lost the confidence of the U.S. and many of its allies. Given that the Afghan army and police will be vital components in the counter insurgency strategy there is a growing worry among NATO top brass that Karzai is not the ideal partner.
British and U.S. generals are nonetheless agreed that failure in Afghanistan could lead to a resurgent Al Qaeda and more importantly the collapse of Pakistan. The prospect of Pakistan becoming an extreme Islamist state with its finger on the nuclear button is a nightmare scenario Western military planner have had to contemplate. Therefore, avoiding failure in Afghanistan will require the full and unqualified commitment of all NATO members to a unified Command - something that has been lacking for years. One British general is on record complaining that, until this year, the Command was in such a mess there was near anarchy at its highest levels. While major Command improvements have been made, there continues to be resentment in London and Washington that some NATO members are content to sit back and let the U.S. and British do the hard fighting. That has forced the British government to point out that burden sharing, which has always been a shared principle of NATO, must be “honored in practice and not just in theory.”
As more U.S. troops join the fight there is no indication the Obama administration has an exit strategy. The problem for Obama is that Afghanistan’s history of lawlessness, drugs cultivation, tribal disputes and lack of central governance will not be altered overnight. Lord Paddy Ashdown, a diplomat and former Royal Marines officer, has argued that even with the right troop levels, it could take 25 years. He accepts NATO alone cannot fundamentally reset Afghanistan and it will also be up to its disparate tribes to commit themselves to change. That is easier said than done when the Afghan government is discredited and powerless. For that reason, NATO is going ahead with its plans to energize politically and economically the areas it clears of militants. The British, who have a long history in counter-insurgency warfare, believe NATO must also reach out to Taliban members who are not driven by ideology. Those Taliban, they argue, should be encouraged to return to their homes and offered a role in the reconstruction process. They should even be given jobs in the Afghan army or police.
The counter insurgency strategy is a high risk one and it will come with increasing casualties, which may result in a weakening of public support among Europeans. In the meantime, the politics of the NATO role may require calibration if, as expected, Hamid Karzai is re-elected president. He has said he intends to seek a new “contract of partnership” with NATO in which Afghans are not, “losing their lives, their property, and their dignity as a consequence of the partnership." However, amidst all the recent chat in Washington and other NATO capitals about the war his name has rarely been spoken. The British Foreign Secretary, David Milibrand, made no reference to him when outlining the British proposal for dealing with non-ideological Taliban elements. It is therefore difficult to see how NATO can work effectively with him in the future. Earlier this year, the State Department had to pressure him to abandon a plan to allow a warlord, General Rashid Dostum, to return from exile in Turkey to join his administration. Dostum was a U.S. ally at the start of the Afghan invasion in 2001 but it was later alleged he killed close to 2,000 Taliban prisoners by locking them in metal containers and leaving them in the sun. Nicknamed “Heavy D” and “D-Diddy,” Dostum has a reputation for changing sides. During the Soviet occupation he fought against the Mujahideen before eventually joining them. In 2005, Karzai appointed him Chief of Staff to the Commander of the army but then ordered him into exile in Turkey in 2008 after he was involved in the kidnapping of a rival. The U.S. and Britain would prefer Dostum remained abroad because he could switch allegiances at any moment. The very fact that the State Department had to lean heavily on Karzai over the issue was an indication to some that Karzai’s judgment was seriously flawed and his continuing presence as president will not benefit NATO in the long term. On the vital question of how long NATO will remain in Afghanistan, well that is now anybody’s guess.