By Paolo von Schirach
January 22, 2012
WASHINGTON – What Imran Khan, former cricket star and now Pakistani would-be national politician and Jon Huntsman have in common is that they have not done well in their respective quests for political influence. Khan founded a new Pakistani party with no followers, Huntsman could not get any attention in the Republican primaries.
Fight against Islamic insurgents not working
That said, both men have made sensible points about the never ending struggle against militants, (some of them Islamic, others with different shades of motivations), be it the Taliban in Afghanistan or other radicals in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. Simply put, the current strategy based on counter force: i.e. trying to kill all of them, is not working. The militants/radicals cannot be subdued with a policy relying primarily on military power. Whatever the tactical successes, including the massive use of unmanned US drone attacks, the ranks of the insurgents are easily replenished, and there is no end in sight to this conflict.
Military means do not produce the victory we want
While intelligence analysts may have a much more comprehensive and nuanced picture, the reality that anyone can grasp is that, 10 years plus after the invasion, Afghanistan is still a mess, while Pakistan’s tribal areas are in perennial turmoil. As Khan put it in a January 22 interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN, you go and kill militants. In the process you kill some innocent bystanders. This sparks more resentment which results in more people joining the militants’ ranks, in a never ending spiral.
In Afghanistan mission creep, without a rationale
Regarding Afghanistan, as Huntsman noted while he was still trying to persuade US voters, in 2001 the US started with a limited counter terror goal: go after al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters. But this quickly morphed into a nation building effort aimed at modernizing Afghanistan, (new constitution, new government, massive amounts of foreign aid, technical assistance), while fighting a reborn general insurgency with very tenuous connections with al Qaeda. So, now we are fighting insurgents, many of them in truth motivated by the fact that we are there, while the US strategic goal should be to disrupt and degrade terror networks. Extending the mission has been both costly and useless, because Afghanistan is a true bottomless pit that will absorb huge resources without tangible results. And here is why:
“….Despite the progress of the past few years, Afghanistan is extremely poor, landlocked, and highly dependent on foreign aid, agriculture, and trade with neighboring countries. Much of the population continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs. Criminality, insecurity, weak governance, and the Afghan Government’s inability to extend rule of law to all parts of the country pose challenges to future economic growth. Afghanistan’s living standards are among the lowest in the world. While the international community remains committed to Afghanistan’s development, pledging over $67 billion at four donors’ conferences since 2002, the Government of Afghanistan will need to overcome a number of challenges, including low revenue collection, anemic job creation, high levels of corruption, weak government capacity, and poor public infrastructure.” (Bold added).
The CIA calls it an almost hopeless country
Got that? Extremely poor…Shortages of every kind…Inability to extend rule of law…Among the lowest living standards in the world…Corruption….And this unflattering analysis is not coming from an anti war group, advocating rapid US withdrawal. No. This is straight from the CIA Fact Book. Yes, our own Central Intelligence Agency published this terse picture. (And may be this is why this scary description charitably fails to mention the flourishing opium trade, probably the major impediment to the creation of a normal Afghan economy). I would imagine that the CIA reports not for public consumption are probably even more dramatic.
Results would require unlimited means
And we want to fix “this” country? Sure. Give me 50 years, unlimited man power, (provided that it is properly trained in the local languages, culture and customs), and unlimited budgets and I’ll show you progress. The fact is that we do not have any of this: time, money, manpower, or resources. (If anything, we are going to have fewer, as the US is planning drastic defense cuts). And therefore the question is: “What on earth are we doing there with a force large enough to make us unwanted occupiers thus inviting resentment and armed resistance, but not large enough to turn things around?”
Refocus on counter terror
As a presidential contender, Huntsman proposed a drastic scaling down of US military involvement in Afghanistan, limiting American presence to units specialized in counter terror operations. (The special ops types who killed bin Laden in Pakistan). For his part, Khan is advocating the end of military campaigns against Pakistani militants in the Tribal Areas. Needless to say, no one knows whether or not any proposed “political solution” can actually work and lead to peace in such a messy region with so many difficult customers.
But one thing is for sure: whatever the US tried to do for over a decade in Afghanistan has not worked. The cost has been immense, the results puny. This realization alone should invite a serious reappraisal about linking appropriate means with realistic policy ends.
Extravagant goals cannot be achieved
As I said, this whole endeavor started with the appropriate goal of degrading and dismantling terror networks. And, going back to 2001, the Afghan operation was led by the CIA, with a very small US troops contingent. And it worked. But then we had “mission creep”. While there is some logical connection between terror networks, formal and informal support systems, and a political culture that may be friendly to the notion of political violence, the notion that the US has to take care of all that in order to “drain the swamp” in which the terrorists or would-be terrorists live, (as George W. Bush used to say), is incredibly ambitious. In the case of Afghanistan, this would entail a total make over of a primitive, tribal society that is about 200 years behind the rest of the world. America has neither the stomach nor the resources to carry on such a massive undertaking.
“Exit strategy” worked only for David Petraeus who moved to the CIA
That said, it seems that, so far, the only serious Afghanistan “Exit Strategy” has been engineered by General David Petraeus, NATO-ISAF Commander –for himself, that is. Petraeus quietly left Afghanistan and the Army altogether in July 2011, moving laterally to become CIA Director in September 2011, after Leon Panetta vacated the post to become Secretary of Defense. While Petraeus as head of Central Intelligence is still involved in matters pertaining to the Region, at least he is no longer in charge of the war effort. Too bad that president Obama cannot do the same disappearing act, even though probably he would like to.
Print This Post
Posted in Afghanistan Barack Obama CNN Counter Insurgency Featured General David Petraeus Jon Huntsman NATO Pakistan Terrorism United States US Budget US Foreign Aid US Foreign Policy US Security Policies
Posted by Paolo von Schirach