Monday, November 13, 2006

Dream On

Over the weekend there were several dispiriting articles on Afghanistan published in papers around the world. These accounts were pretty much updates on the usual themes: Karzai loses grip, Taliban resurgent, Afghans losing faith in Kabul government, corruption endemic in Afghan police, etc., etc. It's like watching a leaky boat settle ever so slowly in the water.

One report, however, detailed a 21-step programme to actually 'win' in Afghanistan. They call themselves the International Crisis Group, a bipartisan gaggle of luminaries, whose ranks include former Hong Kong governor and Oxford chancellor, Chris Patten; George Soros; Wesley Clark; and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The ICG proposals are logical, often obvious. They're just as obviously unachievable given the lack of will demonstrated by the parties including NATO, the White House, Kabul and Pakistan. Here's the ICG's take on the current state of Afghanistan:

"The intervention in Afghanistan has been done on the cheap. Compared even to many recent post-conflict situations (Bosnia, Kosovo) it was given proportionately many fewer peacekeepers and less resources – and Afghanistan has never been a post-conflict situation. Even the numbers do not tell the full story since force protection, rather than the creation of durable security, remains the first priority for some NATO members. Those prepared to go south and east to confront the Taliban – mainly the U.S., UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Romania, Australia and Denmark – are to be congratulated. Others, such as Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Turkey, must be persuaded to be more flexible and remove restrictions that impede true interoperability of the international forces.

"Wrong-headed choices of allies within Afghanistan and across the border have contributed greatly to the current crisis. Pakistan has been at best a most grudging ally. The Taliban and al-Qaeda found refuge there and regrouped. Actions against them by the Pakistani military government have been non-existent or ineffectual. President Musharraf has devoted more effort to consolidating alliances of convenience with Islamist parties than fighting the jihadis. International efforts to stabilise Afghanistan will be about containment at best until the international community puts real, sustained diplomatic pressure on Pakistan to tackle militant leaderships and reverse policies that feed extremism, including reform of the extremist madrasas.

"Internal reform is equally essential to end nearly five years of misrule by predatory leaders and a culture of impunity. The exploding drugs trade is both a symptom and a source of instability and corruption. This state of affairs has particular implications in the south, where many of the worst provincial and district leaders have close links to the central administration. As a result, the disillusioned, the disenfranchised and the economically desperate are responding again to the call of extremists in a region radicalised through decades of conflict. Self-interested spoilers, particularly those in the narcotics trade, which has exploded in the last five years, further fuel the violence. The traffickers and facilitators – often corrupt government officials – have no desire to see their trade threatened and hence forge alliances of convenience with anti-government elements.

"The police and judiciary have been woefully neglected in reconstruction efforts. The former are mostly a source of fear rather than security for citizens and are often little more than local militias. The latter is corrupt or non-existent in many parts of the country, although the new Supreme Court appointees offer a glimmer of hope. In the absence of visible justice and security, people may hark back to the Taliban’s harsh rule but they are not rejecting alternative models based on a rule of law – none have been offered to them. Democracy has not failed but representative institutions have not been given a chance to function."

Of course, restating problematic conditions and trends is far easier than conjuring up realistic solutions, something obvious in some of the ICG recommendations. The group's first proposal illustrates the problem. This calls on Hamid Karzai to launch a drive to wipe out corruption. Good idea but how in the world is he supposed to manage that? Karzai has already had to cut political deals with thugs and criminals, even to the point of giving them key posts in the police and judicial apparatus. He didn't do that because he wanted to but because he's needed the support of these types to hold on to power.

Here's another way to look at it: who can Karzai rely upon for the necessary muscle that hasn't already been shot through with corruption? That rules out the police service and the army and the warlords who control the north. The only outfit that could fit that bill would be the NATO/ISAF force and they're already too few in numbers to beat back the Taliban.

Yes, ending corruption is the first and key reform that's needed in Afghanistan but the whole system has fallen to corruption and there's no remotely suitable apparatus to put an end to it.

Another recommendation of the ICG was for the creation of a military, Tripartite Commission bringing together Afghanistan, NATO, and Pakistan with branches in such places as Peshawar and Quetta, presumably to sort out the problem of the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan's hill country, Pashtun and Baluch provinces. This ignores the fact that these provinces are already in a state of near-insurrection and the notion of some outfit represeting NATO in these regions would really set the cat among the pigeons.

The International Crisis Group's 21-recommendations do make sense. These are things that need to be done, a recipe for the very survival of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, as one goes through the list it merely shows the lack of political will on the part of NATO and the degree to which the Karzai government has already been mortally wounded.

There are not enough troops in Afghanistan to begin to pull this off. NATO needs to triple, even quadruple its existing force just to pacify the countryside sufficiently to permit the essential reconstruction effort to succeed. To tackle the ICG recommendations would require that force to be doubled again.

There are enough troops in the region to make these policies worth a shot - but they're in Iraq. The ICG needs to consider how to get those forces from Baghdad to Kabul. I guess we need to decide which of these wars we're willing to lose or whether we're content to lose both by default.

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