Brian M Downing
Following the announcement on Wednesday by United States President Barack Obama, the US will have 10,000 fewer troops in Afghanistan by the end of the year, from a total of over 100,000, with another 23,000 to depart by the middle of 2012.
With the reduction, the US and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will concentrate on several districts where insurgents have been largely driven out or where Pashtun tribes have long opposed the Taliban and are reasonably supportive of the ISAF.
This will entail leaving parts of the south and east – discordant in America’s unyielding victory culture. But withdrawal has been underway for over a year now, most notably from the Korengal Valley in April 2010.
Within these limited “enclaves” in the south and east, the ISAF can better allocate resources to building roads and schools, providing medical and veterinary services and completing irrigation and electrification programs. The ISAF will also be able to concentrate on training local militia forces and establishing intelligence networks. Counter-insurgency programs may well work out better in more limited areas of the contested south and east.
In time – a commodity admittedly not well stockpiled in Western publics – the enclaves will contrast sharply with the areas left to insurgent forces. Afghans will come to see where their children receive better schooling and health care, where their crops and herds fare better, and where jobs are more plentiful. Insurgents may lose their popular appeal as bringers of liberation and prosperity.
Insurgent forces will almost certainly face desertions from their ranks. Most insurgents are uninterested in the lofty goals of insurgent groups; they seek mainly to rid their valley of foreigners. With the latter chiefly in enclaves, many fighters will see their goal accomplished and return to their villages.
This was the case in the late 1980s when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, province by province. Mujahideen commanders found their rank and file leaving their units by the thousand. Many commanders began fighting each other and some allied with the Kabul government for protection.
Reform in Kabul
The withdrawal of US and other troops will put a great deal of pressure on the Kabul government to reform itself. Indeed, Obama made that point rather forcefully on Wednesday. Kabul must build a fair and effective government or face an inevitable victory by insurgent forces.
Further, it must build an effective army and police force to take the place of departing ISAF troops. Few in Afghanistan are unaware of the hideous fate that befell president Mohammad Najibullah and other officials when the Taliban took Kabul in the mid-1990s. Even fewer will be confidant that a US helicopter will take them to safety after a decade of corruption, intransigence, and misrule and so many US casualties.
Vietnam might provide a useful case history of withdrawal and reform. South Vietnamese presidents stubbornly resisted US pressure to reform the land tenure system, army, and state. The governmental officials, safe in their Saigon villas, persisted in their ways as American troops fought the war. Landlords retained the best land; generals were promoted due to connections rather than performance; and officialdom took its percentages.
When president Richard Nixon began to withdraw troops in 1969, however, South Vietnam adopted widespread if belated reforms. Land was redistributed to the tillers and professionalization of army and state finally took place. It was too little, too late. South Vietnam fell just two years after the last GIs departed from Tan Son Nhut air base.
While this should be instructive to Kabul officialdom, it might also advise them to continue grabbing while they can – and to keep a jet fueled at Bagram.
Regional powers
Reduced Western forces will also encourage regional powers to assume a larger role in Afghanistan. India, Iran, Russia and China have all been involved in development and training programs, but they must be more forceful with the government in Kabul and the ones in Islamabad and Rawalpindi as well.
Regional powers have far more to lose from a Taliban Afghanistan than does the literally distant and figuratively receding US. They face the spread of insurgent movements into other parts of Central Asia, including into their own lands.
The regional powers must reinforce Western pressure on Karzai to build a fair and competent government, though another option might be more promising – allying with leaders of the non-Pashtun north. They oppose the Taliban but also oppose Karzai as just another grasping and blundering Pashtun ruler. The prospect of a restored Northern Alliance would serve the dual purposes of warning Karzai and preparing the north for civil war in the event of a Taliban victory.
It is increasingly clear that the problem of terrorism and militancy in the region lies not with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but with Pakistan – more precisely, with the Pakistani army and its intelligence service. It is they who built training bases in Afghanistan for the Lashkar-i-Taiba, the Jaish-i-Mohammed and a slew of other militant groups operating along the AfPak line and in Kashmir. It is they who give sanctuary to Taliban fighters and leaders. And it was near one of their compounds where Osama bin Laden was found to be operating and then killed by US special forces.
If there is a solution to the region’s insurgency and terrorism problems, it will come through concerted diplomatic and economic pressure on Pakistan to become a responsible member of the world community or degenerate into the North Korea of the region, if not the largest failed state in history.
The importance of regional powers in solving international crises may well be the United States’ emerging strategy as its public is finding the global mission it eagerly assumed in the heady days after World War II as far too costly. US assistance in world affairs will be there, but at levels that are reduced – perhaps greatly so. North Atlantic Treaty Organization powers must take up more of the burden of European security. Libya is to be solved by powers just to the north. Chinese navalism is a matter for the nations of East and Southeast Asia. And so it is with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.