Every war has a story line. World War I was "the war to end all wars". World
War II was "the war to defeat fascism".
Iraq was sold as a war to halt weapons of mass destruction; then to overthrow
Saddam Hussein, then to build democracy. In the end it was a fabrication built
on a falsehood and anchored in a fraud.
But Afghanistan is the "good war", aimed at "those who attacked us", in the
words of columnist Frank Rich. It is "the war of necessity", asserts the New
York Times, to roll back the "power of al-Qaeda and the Taliban".
Democratic Senator Barack Obama is making the distinction
between the "bad war" in Iraq and the "good war" in Afghanistan a centerpiece
of his run for the presidency. He proposes ending the war in Iraq and
redeploying US military forces "to finish the job in Afghanistan".
Virtually no one in the United States or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) calls for negotiating with the Taliban. Even the New York Times
editorializes that those who want to talk "have deluded themselves".
But the Taliban government did not attack the United States. The US's old ally,
Osama bin Laden, did. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are not the same organization
(if one can really call al-Qaeda an "organization"), and no-one seems to be
listening to the Afghans.
What Afghans say
A recent poll of Afghan sentiment found that, while the majority dislikes the
Taliban, 74% want negotiations and 54% would support a coalition government
that included the Taliban.
This poll reflects a deeply divided country where most people are sitting on
the fence and waiting for the final outcome of the war. Forty percent think the
current government of President Hamid Karzai, allied with the United States and
NATO, will prevail, 19% say the Taliban and 40% say it is "too early to say".
There is also strong ambivalence about the presence of foreign troops. Only 14%
want them out now, but 52% want them out within three to five years. In short,
the Afghans don't want a war to the finish.
They also have a far more nuanced view of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. While the
majority oppose both groups - 13% support the Taliban and 19% al-Qaeda - only
29% see the former organization as "a united political force".
But that view doesn't fit the West's storyline of the enemy as a tightly
disciplined band of fanatics.
Whither the Taliban?
In fact, the Taliban appear to be evolving from a creation of the US, Saudi
Arabian and Pakistani intelligence agencies during Afghanistan's war with the
Soviet Union in the 1980s, to a polyglot collection of dedicated Islamists to
nationalists. Taliban leader Mullah Omar told the Agence France Presse this
year, "We're fighting to free our country. We are not a threat to the world."
Those are words that should give Obama, The New York Times and NATO pause.
The initial US-led invasion in 2001 was easy because the Taliban had alienated
themselves from the vast majority of Afghans. But the weight of occupation, and
the rising number of civilian deaths, is shifting the resistance toward a war
of national liberation, and no foreign power has ever won that battle in
Afghanistan.
War gone bad
There is no mystery as to why things have gone increasingly badly for the
United States and its allies.
As the US steps up its air war, civilian casualties have climbed steadily over
the past two years. Nearly 700 were killed in the first three months of 2008, a
major increase over last year. In a recent incident, 47 members of a wedding
party were killed in Helmand province. In a society where clan, tribe and blood
feuds are a part of daily life, that single act sowed a generation of enmity.
Anatol Lieven, a professor of war at King's College, London, says that a major
impetus behind the growing resistance is anger over the death of family members
and neighbors. Lieven says it is as if Afghanistan is "becoming a sort of
surreal hunting estate, in which the US and NATO breed the very terrorists they
then track down".
Once a population turns against an occupation (or just decides to stay
neutral), there are few places in the world where an occupier can win.
Afghanistan, with its enormous size and daunting geography, is certainly not
one of them.
Writing in Der Spiegel, Ullrich Fichter says that glancing at a map in the
International Security Assistance Force's headquarters outside Kandahar could
give one the impression that Afghanistan is under control. "Colorful little
flags identify the NATO troop presence throughout the country:" Germans in the
northeast, Americans in the east, Italians in the West, British and Canadians
in the south, with flags from Turkey, the Netherlands, Spain, Lithuania,
Australia and Sweden scattered between.
"But the flags are an illusion," he says.
The UN considers one third of the country "inaccessible", and almost half "high
risk". The number of roadside bombs has increased fivefold over 2004, and the
number of armed attacks has jumped by a factor of 10. In the first three months
of 2008, attacks around Kabul have surged by 70%. The current national
government has little presence outside its capital. Karzai is routinely
referred to as "the mayor of Kabul".
According to Der Spiegel, the Taliban are moving north toward Kunduz, just as
they did in 1994 when they broke out of their base in Kandahar and started
their drive to take over the country. Asia Times Online says the insurgents'
strategy is to cut NATO's supply lines from Pakistan and establish a "strategic
corridor" from the border to Kabul. (See
Islamabad blinks at Taliban threat June 28. )
The United States and NATO currently have about 60,000 troops in Afghanistan.
But many NATO troops are primarily concerned with rebuilding and development -
the story that was sold to the European public to get them to support the war -
and only secondarily with war-fighting.
The Afghan army adds about 70,000 to that number, but only two brigades and one
headquarters unit are considered capable of operating on their own.
According to US counterinsurgency doctrine, however, Afghanistan would require
at least 400,000 troops to even have a chance of "winning" the war. Adding
another 10,000 US troops will have virtually no effect.
Afghanistan and elections
As the situation continues to deteriorate, some voices, including those of the
Karzai government and both US presidential candidates, advocate expanding the
war into Pakistan in a repeat of the invasions of Laos and Cambodia, when the
Vietnam War began spinning out of control. Both those invasions were a disaster
and also led directly to the genocide in Cambodia.
By any measure, a military "victory" in Afghanistan is simply not possible. The
only viable alternative is to begin direct negotiations with the Taliban, and
to draw in regional powers with a stake in the outcome: Iran, Pakistan, Russia,
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, China and India.
To do so will require abandoning the US's "story" about the Afghan conflict as
a "good war". In this new millennium, there are no good wars.
Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist.
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