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Bush just
wants to get the boys home
By Ramtanu Maitra
The nirvana United States
President George W Bush and his re-election team are
desperately seeking is centered on bringing American
troops back home from Afghanistan. But the Bush team
realizes that the world's sole superpower cannot just
bring back troops without having achieved something.
Hence the elasticity of American objectives in
Afghanistan that has been increasingly apparent since
September 11, 2001.
Soon after a successful
joint US Special Ops and Northern Alliance-led military
operation in the winter of 2001, which melted away the
Taliban militia within weeks, Bush gave a soul-stirring
speech at the Virginia Military Academy indicating that
he wanted to rebuild Afghanistan and nothing less than a
"Marshall Plan" would be good enough for that country.
Without going into how ridiculous and simplistic this
view was, even then, it surely represents the "maximum"
of that elastic objectives spectrum. And it was
abandoned rather summarily, as Washington turned its
attention to lesser objectives, such as widening the
Kabul-Kandahar highway, setting up some girls' schools,
building some hospitals, reducing opium production and
building an Afghan army, among others. One objective on
the grander side of the spectrum did continue to feature
in the list: disarming the warlords.
However, as
time passed and new circumstances emerged, it became
clear to the talking-head policy makers and the
contract-based money spinners that it would require far
more engagement and commitment in Afghanistan on behalf
of the US to get to first base - even on the laundry
list of lesser objectives. Faced with this harsh
reality, the Bush re-election team took over the policy
driver's seat. They made it clear that they have nothing
to do with a timeframe, which remains vague and is
likely to be an impediment to Bush's re-election
campaign.
A new road map
So
Washington developed a new road map for Afghanistan. It
is essentially a short-cut - like going to a fast food
joint and ordering something to eat without getting too
involved in calculating nourishment and other such
abstract things. The difference is that while in a fast
food joint one usually gets what one orders, however
ridiculous the quality. In Afghanistan, by contrast,
every road map, however simple it may seem, tends to get
lost in the deep ravines and mountain passes that
embrace this land like a labyrinth.
The latest
road map, the one that Washington's brightest Pashtun,
Zalmay Khalilzad, worked out with his neo-conservative
friends, consists of three basic phases. First, an
Afghan constitution is to be drafted. The constitution
must not read too differently from its Taliban
predecessor. That way, some Taliban would be helped to
join the system, it was surmised. That constitution has
since been drafted, and it does take cognizance of the
reality spelled out by the road-map makers. It also
satisfies the Americans who like decentralization of
power and money. It provides for the delegation of power
to provinces and local bodies, though the details of the
devolution package have yet to be worked out. Various
factions in the complex Afghan society were given the
opportunity to contribute to the drafting exercise.
Copies of the draft have been sent to all parts of the
country so that the people can study it before the
constitution is finalized at a loya jirga, or
grand assembly. So far so good for the road map.
The plan's second objective was to hold the
loya jirga. This was scheduled for this past
summer. But it became evident that the defeated Taliban,
who have since risen from the ashes like the legendary
phoenix, allegedly with the help of the Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence agency and some US-friendly
drug warlords, might physically bar the ratification of
the constitution. Quickly, the loya jirga was
deferred to December, which could be right in the middle
of an expectedly harsh Afghan winter.
Simultaneously, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), which now oversees the
International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), went to
the United Nations Security Council to seek permission
to get the ISAF deployed to provincial towns. All this
time, one must know, the ISAF stayed put in Kabul. The
UN Security Council's nod means that the ISAF will be
able to deploy troops to provincial towns like Herat,
Jalalabad, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif etc. Considering the
worsening security situation in south, southeastern and
eastern Afghanistan since last September, the European
countries, which actively backed the US-led taming of
the Taliban show, have, however, remained long in
promises and short in keeping them.
According to
the road map, the Taliban threat can be short-circuited
with mini-loya jirgas held in tents in provincial
towns surrounded by the ISAF under NATO supervision. The
ratification of the constitution is key to this road map
because it automatically puts the plan's third phase in
motion - namely, the holding of nationwide general
elections in summer of 2004.
Why the summer of
2004? Because then Bush would be in a position to
declare the attainment of America's minimum objective in
Afghanistan - removal of the Taliban and the ushering in
of "democracy" in the form of a fair poll. Bush can then
bring back some of the 12,000 American troops now
risking their lives in Afghanistan every hour of the
day. That, says the re-election crowd and their
hangers-on, would push the president up a few notches in
opinion polls. Very neat. Very clever, perhaps too
clever.
The 'good Taliban' and the 'bad
Taliban'
The plan is now well under way.
Khalilzad, who was advising in another trouble spot,
Iraq, was named by Bush on September 23 as US ambassador
to Afghanistan. Khalilzad has served in Bush's special
envoy to Afghanistan since the toppling of the Taliban
regime in late 2001, while simultaneously playing a key
role in Iraq. Now he will devote himself exclusively to
the Afghan project.
Khalilzad's main job has
been to firm up the new road map, first of all by
getting the support of some Pashtuns. Driven by the
exigencies of September 11, Washington had made a big
mistake: it had identified all Pashtuns as Taliban. When
the Northern Alliance was chosen as a partner of the US,
this mistake was given real substance. It is well known
by now that the Pashtuns have deep suspicions about the
Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, who comprise the majority of
the Northern Alliance. Khalilzad, a Pashtun himself,
recognized the problem at the outset, and had put his
friend and fellow Pashtun, Hamid Karzai, a virtual
non-entity in the Afghan Pashtun community, up as the
interim president of Afghanistan. Despite several
attempts to break loose, Karzai has remained firmly in
the iron grip of the Northern Alliance for the past two
years.
So, Khalilzad's new job called for
dividing the Taliban militia into "good Taliban" and
"bad Taliban". There was no question that leader Mullah
Omar would remain the epitome of the "bad Taliban".
Efforts began in earnest to put together a gang of "good
Taliban". Pakistan's help was sought, and things were
put in motion. In September, the virulently anti-Mullah
Omar governor of Kandahar, Gul Agha Shirzai, was
replaced by Irfan Pashtun. And in October a jail break
occurred in Kandahar, in which 30 Taliban were allowed
to escape. It looked as if the road map was going
places.
It is not as if the Taliban are an
unknown quantity for the US. Indeed, the two have a long
and not at all unfriendly relationship. Just before
September 11, 2001, the US had a lot of contact with the
Taliban. In fact, Taliban officials at least once
visited the US for meetings with the Unocal pipeline
people, meetings that were presided over by Zalmay
Khalilzad and his friend, Hamid Karzai.
In July,
2000, according to a report by a Pakistani journalist,
Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina
Rocca met the Taliban in Islamabad and announced US$43
million in food and shelter aid. Later, the US State
Department made clear that the humanitarian assistance
was spent by the Taliban in a fashion that was not the
way the US wanted it to. In order to resolve this
problem, renewed US contacts with the Taliban were made.
That came in the form of a visit by seven US officials
to Kabul in late April, 2001.
Much earlier, when
Kabul fell to the Taliban in September 1996, the US
State Department announced it would establish diplomatic
relations by sending a diplomat to Kabul. State
Department deputy spokesman Glyn Davies said the US
found "nothing objectionable" in the steps taken by the
Taliban to impose Islamic law. Senator Hank Brown, a
supporter of the Unocal project, was also generous. He
pointed out, using his smart business acumen, that "the
good part of what has happened is that one of the
factions at least seems capable of developing a
government in Kabul". As for Unocal, its vice president
for corporate development Douglas M Miller called the
Taliban's success a "positive development".
Dancing around the Taliban
After
capturing Kabul, as the Taliban started their northward
military push, top US officials continued to pay regular
visits to Kabul. They included former US assistant
secretary of state for South Asia Robin Raphel, her
successor Karl Inderfurth, deputy secretary for
political affairs Thomas Pickering, and the then-US
ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson. Washington's
policy toward Afghanistan between the fall of Kabul and
the November 1997 visit to Pakistan by former secretary
of state Madeleine Albright, seemed to be primarily
motivated by commercial concerns involving the
realization of the Unocal pipeline project. Albright was
the first US diplomat to come out categorically against
the "despicable" attitude of the Taliban concerning
women's rights.
Karl Inderfurth, who succeeded
Raphel in July 1997, was quoted by the Washington Post
on January 12, 1998, even after Madeleine Albright's
remarks about the Taliban, as saying: "We do believe
they [Taliban] can modify their behavior and take into
account certain international standards with respect to
women's rights to education and employment."
Bill Richardson, now governor of New Mexico, was
the highest-ranking US diplomat to visit Afghanistan
since Henry Kissinger. During his April 1998 visit - six
months before the US embassies in Africa were attacked
and two months after al-Qaeda issued a declaration of
jihad to "kill the Americans and their allies - civilian
and military" - the US ambassador to the UN was reported
to have offered recognition of the Taliban regime in
exchange for the handing over of Osama bin Laden to the
US.
In addition to these long-term contacts, for
the past 20 months the former Taliban foreign minister,
Mullah Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, has been sitting in the
US-controlled Bagram air base near Kabul, a prisoner
since his arrest. Muttawakil has been talking to Karzai.
Over the months, he sent a number of his emissaries to
the provinces to contact his "good Taliban" friends,
urging them to join the new Afghanistan-in-the-making.
These friends were mostly Pashtuns from eastern
Afghanistan, and, undoubtedly, many of them live on the
Pakistan-side of the Durand Line that separates
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On October 8, US
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was in
Kandahar. Some Taliban officials told Reuters they had
reports that the talks for a break within the Taliban
may have involved the Taliban's former interior minister
Mullah Abdul Razzak, acting without the consent of the
organization's supreme leader Mullah Omar. Supreme Court
Chief Justice Mawlavi Fazi Hadi Shinwari told Reuters it
was Afghan government policy to leave the door open for
Taliban whose hands were "not tainted with the blood of
Muslims".
It was also only natural for
Khalilzad, Armitage and Karzai to concentrate on
Kandahar because Kandahar is the undisputed capital of
the pro-Taliban Pashtuns. So, from the look of things in
early October, it seemed that Bush might actually
succeed in getting some of the US troops back to the US
to assure Americans that, having achieved the objective,
he is in the process of winding down operations which
jeopardize American lives.
Getting
lost
There are many uncertainties in working out
this road map. One was the underestimation by Khalilzad
and the American neo-conservatives of the toughness of
the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency
and al-Qaeda in opposing parts of the road map. Although
US intelligence agencies were aware that the Taliban in
Pakistan's Baloch city of Quetta, and the Arab and
Chechen-led al-Qaeda, were re-arming themselves and were
in no mood to put down their arms, they miscalculated
their resolve. Mullah Omar also saw the danger, so did
the former US-asset and now virulent anti-US Pashtun
leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
These anti-US and
anti-Karzai forces subsequently ratcheted up their
guerrilla activities another notch in southern and
southeastern Afghanistan. Some Taliban and al-Qaeda
militia were also taken north to Nuristan, ostensibly
with the help of the Pakistani ISI and some military
officials. The objective of the northward trudge by the
militia was to draw US troops away from the southern and
southeastern Pakistan-Afghanistan borders.
There
could be another reason why al-Qaeda and some Taliban
moved north. The Pakistan ISI has realized that the
al-Qaeda militia cannot be protected in eastern
Afghanistan from the Americans, who are scouring the
Federally Administered Tribal Agencies on the Pakistani
side. It was, then, best to move them north toward
Pakistan's Northern Territory; if they cannot be brought
back soon, these fighters may come in handy against the
Indians in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region, the
ISI figured.
The strength exhibited by the
Taliban since early October, and even before that,
combined with the devil-may-care attitude of the
Pakistan ISI, made the situation more complex. The first
one to crack under pressure was Muttawakil. After Karzai
offered him a cabinet post, Muttawakil, the "good
Taliban", not only rejected the post but requested
shelter in distant Qatar. Muttawakil has since been
released, and for good reason his whereabouts have been
kept a secret. To add to Muttawakil's worries, the
Taliban supreme, Mullah Omar, issued an order to
"assassinate Muttawakil".
Whether Muttawakil
will be able to get to his desired asylum location
remains unclear. It is evident, though, that the road
map is now stuck in the deep labyrinthine of Afghan
ravines. In Moscow, where Indian Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee recently was on a three-day (November
11-13) visit, both the Russian and the Indian heads of
state expressed concern about the Taliban - the "bad
Taliban" that is - coming back to power. It definitely
looks that way now. But, then, what else can Bush do to
bring the boys home?
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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