TOWARDS A NATO DEBACLE IN AFGHANISTAN

SUMMARY

Important recent events have pushed Afghanistan away from the limelight and the headlines, but the problems there are intense and growing. The NATO leadership is wrong if it believes that a purely military solution is possible, and it is also wrong in wanting, at all costs, to exclude an important player like Iran from any international discussion on the subject.

TEXT


In the past weeks the world has been dealing with events – Gaza and the inauguration of the U.S. President - weighty enough to push Afghanistan out of the limelight. This does not mean, however, that the Afghan situation has calmed down or improved, and, indeed, a recent attack in the very centre of Kabul shows a growing build-up of Taliban confidence and efficiency. Another attack in the Heart area, which up to some months ago was relatively secure shows that this surge in Taliban confidence and efficiency is not limited to the Capital but is spreading over the entire nation.

A fundamental refocusing of ideas therefore seems long overdue, and fresh thought has to be dedicated to unsolved problems which have long been maturing, and which will have to be tackled with cool, rational thinking to prevent a major Western debacle in Afghanistan. This new approach can only be achieved at the cost of showing sufficient courage to admit previous errors and radically to change political and military strategy.

It would be useful, in the first place, carefully to analyze the generally accepted opinion on what is seen as the “original” error, that is to have left the Afghan mission unaccomplished in order to invade Iraq, thus leaving the Al Qaeda command structure basically intact. This is only partially true: the failure to pursue the Al Qaeda command across the mountain passes and into Pakistani territory did indeed create basic political problems causing the West to lose momentum, and therefore credibility, in the so ineptly named “War on Terror”. It is, however open to question whether the Taliban, as a basically native party, could ever have been militarily defeated or neutralized. It is evident that this goal is impossible to accomplish now, but it probably would not have been possible to accomplish even then, given the historically and traditionally resilient character of Afghan resistance movements.

Instead of proceeding exclusively along the lines of a replication of the Iraqi “surge”, and asking all the NATO partners not only to increase their participation numerically, but also to send contingents with more unified, and, in any case more aggressive and combative rules of engagement, serious collective thought should be given to alternatives to military action which, in its present nature, is doomed to failure no matter how large or efficient the reinforcements.

There is no doubt that one of the main causes of the current institutional weakness in Afghanistan, and the subsequent rise of insurgency, can be found in the growing, and largely unpunished, corruption in all levels of Government (National, Provincial or Municipal), and of course in the entire Police and Justice system, with some notable, very brave, exceptions. Collective human memory tends to be selective and, within a growing sector of Afghan Civil Society memories of the harshness of the Taliban regime recede, substituted by those which enhance the unquestionable basic honesty and incorruptibility of the Taliban leadership.

If the expression “Hearts and Minds” is to make any sense at all, this is an issue which should be tackled with the greatest urgency and as ruthlessly as possible, at the risk of offending some of the Afghan leaders.

The International operators in Afghanistan should also pay closer attention to the complex web of geographic-ethnic-tribal relationships and undertake a serious attempt to understand Afghan realities, at the cost of having to jettison well meant but highly impractical preconceived ideas on the country’s democratic aspirations.

It would be a hopeless task to attempt to tackle Afghanistan’s problems without involving other Countries in the area. It is of course of paramount importance to reach some form of regional security, but also in this some basic rethinking is indispensable. It is received wisdom that Afghanistan’s security depends greatly on political stability in Pakistan. This is undoubtedly true, but so is the reverse: due to the complex ethnic and tribal nature of its frontier province, Pakistan cannot hope to achieve political harmony or stability if its Afghan neighbour is in turmoil. The time has certainly come to tackle the famous border issues squarely, seriously and with the greatest possible energy, to the point of considering the question as to whether Pakistan as a unified State with its present borders, is still a viable proposition without a strong military government.

These are serious and far reaching issues which cannot be solved by NATO with the cooperation of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sooner or later an International Conference will have to be convened, bringing together all the interested parties: it is amazing that, at present, whenever the need of international intervention is mentioned the one most interested and most influential party is never taken into consideration. While the names of India, Iraq, the Emirates, Turkey and others are freely offered, any mention of Iran is studiously avoided and this gives a measure of how unprepared the International Community is on this issue.

Iran is a neighbour whose historical, political and cultural influence should not be underestimated: it should be enough to remember that Persian, in a slight variant known as “Dari”, is one of Afghanistan’s two national languages. There are, furthermore, strong and credible indications that Afghanistan is one of the issues which could be used to come to more general agreements with Iran allowing it to fulfil its natural regional role, and finally putting to rest the shameful, ridiculous “Axis of Evil” epithet.