Brian M Downing
Statements coming from the London summit on Afghanistan recognize the need for a negotiated settlement to the wars that have raged there for most of the last thirty-two years. The statements are surprisingly candid; diplomatic language is usually less direct than what the NATO chieftains and Kabul politicians are using. The war is stalemated and negotiations present the only alternative to a lengthy and perhaps inconclusive war.
Insurgent Limitations
Since being expelled from power in 2001, the Taliban has been able to reconstitute itself. In the last three years they have been built an impressive insurgency based on opposition to foreign occupation, corrupt and incompetent government, and perceived non-Pashtun danger. Missteps by the West and Karzai government have been as important in the rise of the insurgency as the adeptness of the Taliban has been.
Tribal customs prepare the Pashtun to be warriors This has been known at least since a British force crossed the Khyber Pass in 1838 but did not return. Knowledge of local terrain, kinship ties, and a heritage of fierce resistance to outsiders make for formidable guerrilla bands, as British and Russian forces have painfully learned, as NATO forces are now learning. But the same tribal customs limit the military efficacy of Pashtun insurgents. Fire discipline is not good; infiltration routes and ambush sites are often predictable; kinship and zealotry are key attributes of command; and tactical advantages during engagements are not carried through.
Insurgent leadership has suffered many casualties over the years, sometimes in engagements but more often from Predator and Reaper drone attacks. In recent years, Dadullah Akhund and Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, two valued regional commanders, have been killed in security sweeps or by drone strikes. Some reports indicate that members of the Quetta shura, which directs the war, have fled the Af-Pak line for fear of drones.
Taliban forces cannot engage western forces without suffering fearsome and likely problematic casualties. Occasionally, insurgent bands mass and attack in force (as in Kunar) and though the engagements make headlines, they are of little military significance. Attacking disciplined troops in fortified positions almost certainly results in egregious casualties for the attackers.
They are unable to deliver a decisive military blow that will elevate the insurgency to a force that can oust the government in Kabul or completely undermine support in the American public. Insurgents have come to rely increasingly on IEDs and suicide bombings of western targets in Kabul and other cities.
Western Limitations and the Appeal of Counter-Insurgency
Neither can western forces deliver decisive blows against insurgent forces. And thus far efforts to get insurgent commanders to switch sides have not been effective. The Afghan army remains largely on the sidelines, preferring positions in relatively secure areas and negotiating local truces with insurgents – hardly a stalwart ally that will buoy support in western publics. Western forces have insufficient intelligence on insurgent forces, an American general has recently admitted, making most operations pointless exercises that display considerable organizational and logistical skill but result in little attrition of the enemy.
In the last year the US has placed a great deal of hope in counter-insurgency warfare – this from its apparent success in squelching the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. But two critical differences between Iraq and Afghanistan stand out. First, Sunni insurgents in Iraq faced a dismal strategic position in fighting the quantitatively superior Shia militias supplied by Iran and the qualitatively superior American troops backed by almost limitless resources. Second, al Qaeda forces, by their haughtiness and disrespect for locals, alienated local Sunni tribes, encouraging them to turn on the foreign fighters. Sunni insurgents won US protection and money.
It is difficult to discern relevant parallels in Afghanistan. Pashtun insurgents do not as yet face large numbers of domestic enemies, as did the Iraqi Sunnis. They have long-standing enemies in northern provinces, but their militias are now held in reserve by local warlords. Haughtiness and disrespect for locals has been in evidence of al Qaeda fighters and their mujahidin forerunners in the eighties. But their numbers inside Afghanistan are negligible, as is their impact on the war and Pashtun sensibilities.
The US military has long eschewed developing counter-insurgency doctrines and training programs. That type of warfare was seen as a diversion of resources from a conventional warfare orientation, which was seen as the likely form of conflict from World War Two through the Cold War and the First Gulf War. The recent discovery of counter-insurgency’s usefulness has led to a veritable pentecostalist movement in the US military. But the reorientation of outlooks from reliance on conventional means and massive firepower will not come quickly. Further, many US troops are on their fifth or more deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. Exhaustion is setting in, and many find it hard to conceal their disdain for locals, whom they see, regardless of any evidence, as insurgents or sympathizers.
Though the almost limitless resources of western powers could make for an effective counter-insurgency, as previous wars in Malaysia and Algeria suggest, there are distinctive aspects of the Afghan insurgency (as there are in any such conflict) that must be taken into account. Afghans are historically suspicious of outsiders. Much of their history concerns repelling invading force, from Antiquity to the present. After so much fighting against the Soviet Union and in the aftermath of its withdrawal (1989), many Afghans looked to the outside world for help in political stabilization and reconstruction. But eight years into a foreign presence, with little to show for it, many locals view westerners with disdain, as just another occupying force. Winning hearts and minds now will be far more difficult than several years ago.
Whatever hope is placed on counter-insurgency programs, it would be best to remember that successful ones take well over a decade to achieve results, and of course many others have been unsuccessful.
International Context
There are many useful comparisons between the insurgency today and the one that fought the Soviet Union, but the international context isn’t one of them. When the mujahadin fought the Soviet Union, they had considerable support from the outside world. The US and Saudi Arabia sent billions, most of the Islamic world supported the mujahidin with funds and jihadists, and the Pakistani military directed men and materiel across the frontier.
Today, many of those forces oppose the Taliban. The US and NATO concerns are clear. Russia does not want to see an Islamist movement on its periphery, and neither do the former Soviet republics in the region, some of whom had to fight Taliban-supported insurgencies in the nineties. India wants to counter any group tied even indirectly to Kashmir guerrillas and other terrorist groups. Iran loathes the Taliban for their massacre of Iranian envoys and mistreatment of the (Shia) Hazara people of central Afghanistan.
Though there is some international Islamist concern with western forces, much of it is directed toward the Arabian peninsula, Somalia, Southeast Asia, and the Maghreb. Only the Pakistani military and intelligence services support the Taliban. It is difficult to find any successful insurgency with so few supporters and so many powerful opponents.
Taliban control of most of Afghanistan would not be acceptable to regional powers. The Taliban keep watch on the international scene and know that they can never rule Afghanistan as they once did. Indeed, they well remember that even at their zenith they never truly controlled the country; they faced tenacious, foreign-supported insurgencies and redoubts in the west (Khan) and north (Massoud).
Even in the unlikely event of a US/NATO withdrawal, regional powers would support Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara peoples with money and equipment, transforming the conflict from an insurgency into a civil war. Again, foreign support will greatly favor any enemy of the Taliban. The war would be protracted and pitiless, as outside powers are willing to fight to the last Afghan.
Furthermore, should the Taliban control the Pashtun south and east, it would have to defend territory and fight in a more or less conventional manner – a form of warfare in which it proved utterly incompetent in 2001. The Northern Alliance, with only a modicum of US firepower, rolled up Taliban positions and drove them out of the country in short order. Paradoxically, defeating the West would bring about a conventional war with a fiercer, more tenacious coalition.
Contours of a Negotiated Settlement
The principal points of a settlement are not long to seek. Dialog among the West, the Karzai government, and the Taliban could give each side much of what it seeks, without one side overtly winning, without a decade or more of fighting.
The West gets:
–The Taliban restrict their ambitions to provinces in the South and East and to a handful of cabinet posts.
–The Taliban break with if not help kill al Qaeda leadership, and never allow it in its areas of control.
–The Taliban agrees never to support, directly or indirectly, the Kashmir conflict in India.
The Taliban get:
–The West withdraws all military forces from the country.
–The West guarantees that drone aircraft and other weapon systems will not target the Taliban leaders as long as they abide by the agreement.
–The West funds reconstruction programs in Afghanistan, including Taliban-controlled areas, channeled through the government in Kabul. This will help restore a balance between Kabul and various regions of the country – a balance upon which periods of tranquility and prosperity have rested.
It is unlikely that an agreement can be reached soon. The Taliban have been winning over tribe after tribe and attaching their young men to their bands. The heady experience of success is not always conducive to sound judgment. Another season of fighting may be in the offing. Negotiations today, however, can impress upon the Taliban the foreboding international context it faces.
No agreement can be imposed upon the country regardless of the amicability and magnanimity of the West, Mr Karzai, regional powers, and the Taliban. Any settlement will have to be arrived at in conjunction with and ratified by a loya jirga – the venerable general assembly of Afghan tribes and peoples. It will be the loya jirga, not the government in Kabul or Quetta shura or foreign powers that will solidify any agreement and impose the likely sanctions that will hold it together.