"America's got the watches, but the
Taliban has the time" (BBC, January 16). This telling
statement, attributed to a Taliban spokesperson
illustrates a fundamental truth about the present
situation in Afghanistan: The longer it takes to
consolidate the peace and deliver a peace dividend to
the beleaguered population, the greater the likelihood
that anti-government spoiler groups, whether they are
the Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami, or
al-Qaeda, will be able to unravel the nascent
state-building process.
The Taliban are acutely
aware that sustained donor interest and military support
will not last forever; donor fatigue, shifting budgetary
priorities and waning donor attention are inevitable.
With the world's eyes firmly fixed on Baghdad - not
Kabul - maintaining high levels of donor support for
Afghanistan is an arduous task. A historic window of
opportunity exists to stabilize and reconstruct this
war-torn country, but with each passing day that window
closes ever more slightly. Once that window is closed,
there is no guarantee that a similar opportunity will
arise again, for the Taliban and other fundamentalist
groups will be waiting to take advantage of the
situation.
Undoubtedly, the above-mentioned
assessment would be considered alarmist by many actors
close to the state-building process, particularly
members of President Hamid Karzai's inner circle and the
United States Pentagon. It was Karzai who declared at a
February 26 joint news conference, with US Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the occasion of his one-day
visit to Kabul, that the Taliban were defeated and "as a
movement [it] does not exist any more." "They are gone,"
he said, attributing continuing violence to "common
criminals", as opposed to politically driven insurgents.
These were the boldest public statements made by
Karzai about the Taliban since he took office after the
Taliban's ouster, in early 2002. Similarly dismissive of
the group's capabilities, Rumsfeld stated: "I'm not
seeing any indication the Taliban pose any military
threat to Afghanistan." Only a week earlier, one of
Rumsfeld's top aides at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of
Defense Dov S Zakheim, contemptuously spoke of the
"cowardly" nature of Taliban operations.
Such
proclamations would normally arouse feelings of
unbridled relief and joy among most Afghans and
internationals working in Afghanistan - that is, if they
did not contrast so sharply with recent events on the
ground. More than 550 people have been killed over the
past six months, making it the most violent period in
the two years that have elapsed since the fall of the
Taliban regime. Within 12 days, between February 14 and
February 26, nine Afghan aid workers and one US soldier
were killed in separate incidents across the country.
Perhaps what is most alarming about this recent spate of
attacks are the tactics that have been employed. Since
December 28, 2003, there have been four suicide attacks
in Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of eight people
- six Afghan intelligence agents and two International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) peacekeeping soldiers.
The evidence does not support the notion of an
overwhelmed and defeated enemy.
In a January
interview, Lieutenant-General David Barno, the commander
of US forces in Afghanistan, explained that since the
Taliban "couldn't come out in large numbers against
coalition military forces" it was no longer a major
threat. If the US military formulates threat assessments
on the basis of an adversary's ability and willingness
to fight conventional battles in large military
formations, then the Taliban are indeed a spent force.
However, if there is one thing that September 11
and the ensuing "war on terror" has shown, it is that
measuring security threats on the basis of conventional
criteria, such as troop numbers and weapons technology,
is outdated. Groups with nothing more than explosives
and belief can be as dangerous as an entire conventional
army; while their acts are certainly criminal, to
dismiss or disparage the threat they pose is a grave
miscalculation.
Far from marking the defeat of
the Taliban, recent events have signaled a new phase in
the anti-government insurgency. One must only examine
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to gauge the potential
physical and psychological impact of suicide attacks.
There is no established history of martyrdom operations
in Afghanistan, but just as counter-terrorism tactics
and strategies have assumed a transnational character,
shared by states around the globe, so, too, have those
of terrorist and insurgent groups.
Further
suicide attacks, which are unpredictable and virtually
impossible to prevent, could deliver a severe blow to
the state-building process. In the aftermath of the
December 28 suicide blast, a Taliban spokesperson
proclaimed that 60 more suicide bombers were in Kabul
awaiting orders to strike. With the United Nations still
reeling from the devastating attack on its headquarters
in Baghdad and the shooting death of a UN High
Commissioner for Refugees worker in Ghazni Province in
November 2003, another major attack on the UN could
trigger a pullout of the organization's international
staff.
"Countries that are committed to
supporting Afghanistan cannot kid themselves and cannot
go on expecting us to work in unacceptable security
conditions," Lakhdar Brahimi, the former UN envoy to
Afghanistan, stated on December 3, 2003. If the UN were
to withdraw, this would leave a void in the
reconstruction process that would be difficult to fill.
Karzai is correct in claiming that the Taliban
movement in its previous form no longer exists. It has
evolved into a decentralized guerilla group that
portrays itself as a vehicle for Pashtun nationalism.
The group is concentrated primarily in the southeast and
operates in small, disparate units. In response to early
setbacks in their military operations against coalition
forces, the Taliban have adopted a new approach,
shifting the locus of their attacks from military
targets to "soft targets", such as aid workers,
government employees and civilians. The new strategy has
borne fruit, as the UN and major international
organizations, including the International Committee of
the Red Cross, have scaled back their operations in the
south, depriving approximately one-third of the
population of much-needed development assistance. This
perpetuates a destructive cycle by which Pashtuns,
disillusioned by the failure of the Karzai government to
fulfill its promises of greater security and economic
opportunity, are driven to support extremists.
General James L Jones, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization's (NATO's) supreme commander in Europe, has
estimated that the Taliban's strength has dwindled to
1,000 hardcore fighters. Accordingly, Jones has
concluded that "the level of the threat ... is quite a
bit lower" than previously assumed. While his estimate
regarding the number of operational insurgents may be
accurate, he neglects to consider the growing number of
Taliban sympathizers in the south, which may number in
the tens of thousands.
This civilian support
base, which includes government officials in some areas,
may not have any direct involvement in Taliban
operations, but provides crucial indirect support. Such
assessments also overlook other spoiler groups involved
in the anti-government insurgency, such as Hekmatyar's
Hezb-i-Islami, which has forged a loose strategic
alliance with the Taliban. It is estimated that
Hekmatyar commands a comparable number of fighters as
the Taliban - and is actively recruiting.
The
support that the Taliban have received from Pakistan,
its long-time patron, has been a decisive factor in its
resurgence. Taliban supporters organize openly in
Pakistani cities like Quetta and Peshawar; Pakistani
madrassas, or religious schools, continue to
churn out dedicated Taliban foot soldiers in large
numbers, and a significant proportion of Taliban attacks
over the past two years has been launched from Pakistani
territory.
Initially, Washington was reluctant
to pressure the Pakistani government to crack down on
Taliban cross-border activity, due to fear that it could
destabilize the government of President General Pervez
Musharraf and open the door for an Islamist coup in the
nuclear-armed country. However, in recent months, the US
has opted to ratchet up pressure on Pakistan, a policy
that has begun to show results.
The Pakistani
military has launched an early spring offensive against
al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in the border area with
Afghanistan, leading to scores of arrests and the deaths
of dozens of insurgents. Barno, the US force commander
in Afghanistan, has said that Pakistani and US forces in
that country are working together like a "hammer and
anvil" to combat these groups. While cessation of
Pakistani support to the Taliban would weaken the group
considerably, it is far from certain whether recent
Pakistani actions represent a permanent policy shift
that will be observed by all levels of Islamabad's
military and intelligence apparatus, or merely a
temporary maneuver to appease the administration of US
President George W Bush.
The Taliban and its
allies cannot overthrow the current regime unilaterally.
However, coupled with other security threats the danger
posed by the Taliban is greatly amplified. And these
linked threats include the burgeoning drug trade, which
now accounts for a staggering 50 percent of Afghan gross
domestic product; the entrenchment of regional warlords;
and a surge in crime rates. War in Afghanistan follows
seasonal patterns, with the spring traditionally being
campaigning season. Taliban spokesman Mohamed Saiful
Adel, in a statement to the Agence France Presse in
mid-February, affirmed that the Taliban will "stage
attacks on an unprecedented scale in the spring".
Elections, currently scheduled for June, will
undoubtedly be the prime target of attacks, prompting
many UN and Afghan officials to openly advocate the
delay of the polls until next year.
Overcoming
the present security crisis in Afghanistan requires
augmented international support and a renewed,
multi-layered strategic approach, encompassing several
components. First, security sector reform, intended to
rebuild the country's security institutions, must be
advanced with greater urgency. Undermined by a lack of
funding, inadequate donor coordination and insufficient
local capacity, the process has been largely
ineffectual.
Exemplifying this security sector
stasis is the program to train the Afghan National Army
(ANA), which has been overseen by the US. The desertion
rate of the ANA reached a startling 10 percent per month
in October 2003. Although the figure has now been
lowered to 3 percent per month, of 10,000 soldiers
trained as of February 2, 500 have deserted.
Insufficient salaries, poor food and living conditions
and difficulties finding qualified recruits have been
cited as the principal reasons for the high attrition
rate. The US has begun to take steps to rectify these
deficiencies, including an increase in the pay scale,
improvements of barracks, the establishment of a
comprehensive recruiting strategy, and the formation of
a national guard to complement the ANA, but it is clear
that even more must be done to put the process on track.
Second, domestic security forces will be unable
to provide the base level of security needed for the
state-building process to move forward for two to three
years, the minimum amount of time it will take to
complete basic structural reforms and create security
forces of a critical mass necessary to enforce the rule
of law. During this period, it is advisable that the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
underwrite the country's security.
NATO,
currently in command of the the ISAF in Afghanistan, has
pledged to do so by establishing numerous provisional
reconstruction teams, small units of soldiers and civil
affairs officers mandated to provide security for
reconstruction activities and to carry out small-scale
development projects at key locations across the
country.
However, three months after NATO's
governing council authorized expansion, member states
have yet to commit the requisite troops. Although NATO
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has repeatedly
referred to Afghanistan as the alliance's "top
priority", at a NATO defense ministers' conference in
early February, he was unable to collect more than a few
offers of liaison officers and controllers for Kabul's
airport. Quite apart from expansion, it appears NATO may
have difficulty fulfilling the mandate of the ISAF's
mission in Kabul once most of the Canadian contingent
withdraws in August. This has created a monumental
problem for the Afghan government, as the international
community has once again elevated the expectations of
the populace and pinned those expectations to the Karzai
government. If NATO fails to deliver on its promise of
expansion, it will not only undermine the credibility of
the alliance, it may also delegitimize the government.
Lastly, the entire state-building process is
dependent on durable and long-term donor commitments of
funds. The Tokyo Donors Conference of January 2002
grossly underestimated the costs of reconstruction,
particularly with regard to security. An opportunity to
rectify this mistake will present itself at a second
pledging conference to be held in Berlin from March 30
to April 1. A recent study by the American
non-governmental agency, CARE International, and the
Center on International Cooperation of New York
University pointed out that only 1 percent of
Afghanistan's reconstruction needs had been met thus
far. To address this shortfall, the Afghan government is
requesting US$28.5 billion to rebuild the country over a
seven-year period, a reasonable figure considering that
$33 billion has been committed to Iraq over five years,
a country of comparable size, but possessing extensive
natural resources.
The government will do more
than merely present a pledging figure to the
international community; it has published a report
offering a comprehensive strategic plan for investment,
reconstruction and reform over the next seven years (see
report).
The Berlin meeting represents a historic moment in which
the international community will be able to right past
wrongs and guarantee Afghanistan's continued progress on
the road to peace and stability.
The Afghan
government has designed an ambitious yet realizable
vision for its future, taking firm ownership of the
process; all that is left is for the international
community to buy into this strategy. As the Afghan
government report states: "In light of the ubiquitous
security, economic and social ramifications that the
collapse of Afghanistan's peace-building process would
have for the international community, it is an
investment that donors cannot afford not to make."
The Afghan government and the international
community are winning the war against the Taliban and
its allies, but victory has yet to be assured. This
challenge can only be met with unwavering resolve and
vigilance from all the actors involved - a necessity
that could be imperiled by premature declarations of
victory.
Mark Sedra is a research
associate at the Bonn International Center for
Conversion. He recently returned from Afghanistan, where
he spent two months assessing the needs of the Afghan
security sector on behalf of the United Nations and the
Afghan government. He writes regularly for Foreign Policy in Focus,
which gave permission for this article to be posted.
