Clinton off the mark on
Afghanistan By M K Bhadrakumar
The Barack Obama administration's choice
of Marc Grossman as successor to the late Richard
Holbrooke, former special representative for
Afghanistan and Pakistan, is significant for three
reasons. If Grossman's diplomatic career spanned
Pakistan and the Afghan mujahideen at a time when
Pakistan was a "frontline" state for the United
States, his two stints in Turkey in a bygone era,
including as ambassador, make him an "expert" on
the strange workings of a political democracy run
by the country's military.
Indeed,
Grossman also devoted his career to the remaking
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
including the denouement to the alliance's first
"out-of-area" operations in the Balkans. Thus,
Grossman's appointment gives away a certain
shift in Obama's thinking -
gradually moving away from the military "surge" in
Afghanistan to a diplomatic and political track of
reconciliation with the Taliban.
The
"leaks" last week by administration officials to
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll
appeared almost alongside Grossman's appointment -
that the US administration is engaged in direct
talks with the Taliban. Coincidence or not, this
was also the gist of the policy speech delivered
by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the
Asia Society at New York on Friday regarding the
war.
With Grossman's appointment, the past
two months' drift in US policies has been
punctuated. But the US's capacity to pull off a
denouement to the war that Clinton outlined
remains in doubt. The principal points in her
speech were:
The transition to Afghan-led security will
commence as planned in the coming weeks and the
drawdown of US troops will be completed by
end-2014.
Washington will continue to pursue a
three-track strategy running on "mutually
reinforcing tracks": a military "surge" combined
with a civilian effort to revitalize the political
economy of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a
diplomatic "surge" to end the war.
Reconciliation with the Taliban is subject to
well laid out conditions.
The US will relentlessly degrade the Taliban
and they will face international "ostracism" until
they choose political compromise.
At the same time, the US recognizes "we will
never kill enough insurgents to win this war
outright".
Therefore, US civilian and military efforts
will aim at supporting a durable political
settlement and the US will "intensify our regional
diplomacy to enable a political process".
Did Clinton break new ground? The answer
is "no". The war is fast morphing into a "bleeding
wound", to use Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's
famous words of another superpower's Afghan war.
Clinton tacitly acknowledged the stalemate. So,
all that the Taliban need to do is to simply "wait
it out". Just as Washington has preconditions, so
do the Taliban.
In a statement on
Saturday, the Taliban zeroed in on precisely the
aspect of the ongoing US-Afghan negotiations for
American military bases in the post-2014 phase
(although Clinton deftly glided over the issue in
her speech): "Afghanistan is not a country where
the native people will tolerate the presence of
foreign troops ... The Americans should know that
neither the rulers of the puppet regime nor the
hand-picked parliament is entitled to trade on the
destiny of Afghanistan ... establishment of
permanent bases in Afghanistan is an American
pipedream and is not realizable."
Most
significantly, the Taliban concluded, "The
regional countries unmistakably realize the goals
and objectives of America behind their prolonged
presence in Afghanistan. Naturally, the regional
countries will not accept this notion but rather
will oppose it. They will even forge an alliance
against it if they find an opportunity to do so
and will make efforts to hand out a forceful and
devastating blow to the American plan."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai seems to
agree with the Taliban. He said in Kabul on
Saturday: "This [agreement on US bases] is not
something to be done only by the Afghan government
and it neither has the authority. It is Afghans
who should come up with a decision. In any case,
Afghanistan needs peace as a precondition and it
wants to make sure that neighboring countries
don't feel any threats."
Interestingly,
Karzai echoed a Russian Foreign Ministry statement
earlier in the day: "This information [regarding
US bases] makes one think and it raises questions.
Why will the US military bases be needed if the
terrorist threat in ... Afghanistan is ended? Will
Kabul be able to combine negotiations on a
long-term American military presence with the
reconciliation process? How will Afghanistan's
neighbors view the establishment of a foreign
country's military bases near their territory?"
Karzai is convinced that Washington is
systematically weakening his authority. He and the
Pakistani military leadership will see the new
approach in Clinton's speech as a ploy to scatter
their nascent endeavor to kickstart an
"intra-Afghan" peace process and, generally
speaking, to create confusion among Afghan
protagonists.
Clinton failed to concede a
pivotal role for Pakistan in the search of a
settlement. She defined Pakistan's role in terms
of cracking down on Taliban sanctuaries, keeping
up cordial state-to-state relations with
Afghanistan, maintaining non-interference in
Afghan affairs and principally moving onto a
sustained trajectory of settlement of differences
(including over Afghanistan) and normalization
with India. In short, Clinton offered to Pakistan
a "peace dividend" in terms of its own internal
stability and enhanced regional cooperation with
India.
She failed to acknowledge
Pakistan's "special" interests, a broader security
matrix that also includes the alarming prospect
(from Islamabad's point of view) of a regional
imbalance emanating out of the cascading US-India
military cooperation and Washington's unilateral
recognition of India as a nuclear-weapon power.
On the other hand, Clinton made it
abundantly clear that the key levers of the
political process to reconciling the Taliban as
well as regional politics over Afghan problem
would remain very much in Washington's hands.
Conceivably, Washington counts on its
non-Pashtun allies inside Afghanistan to frustrate
any Afghan-Pakistan peace process that gets beyond
the US's control or defies its objectives and,
second, it counts on Saudi Arabia to be the
regional "balancer" vis-a-vis Pakistan and Iran,
given Riyadh's old links with the Taliban.
Washington seems confident it can play merry havoc
within the Taliban leadership by splintering or
atomising the group, thereby denying Pakistan its
"strategic asset".
The US strategy
outlined in Clinton's speech, wittingly or
otherwise, could create misgivings in Islamabad
regarding Karzai's game plan. It all seems rather
an audacious hope. The hard realities
are:
The US possesses very limited
capability to persist with its much-touted
civilian and military "surge". The US claims
that the Taliban are weakening and lack
conviction. The security situation is
deteriorating, war is spreading to the north and
Kabul city's security perimeters have been
breached. The latest accord among militants in
Kurram agency gives "strategic depth" to the
Taliban operating out of the North Waziristan
tribal area in Pakistan. The US military faces
the contradictory situation of adhering to a
drawdown deadline while simultaneously degrading
the Taliban on the battlefield and reinforcing the
political and diplomatic "surge". Washington's
equations with Kabul and Rawalpindi are at an
all-time low. The Afghan-Pakistan relationship
is way beyond the US's control. India-Pakistan
relations are fraught with huge question marks and
Washington faces an uphill task balancing its ties
with the two South Asian adversaries. The
US-Iran "standoff" is entering uncharted territory
following the developments in the Middle East and
the Persian Gulf. Major regional powers harbor
misgivings regarding the US's "unilateralist"
approach and its geopolitical objectives. The
war is increasingly controversial in Western
opinion and Obama is gearing up for a tough
re-election campaign. Clearly, the timeline favors
the Taliban.
Clinton's optimism seems
unwarranted. She said, "Today, the escalating
pressure of our military campaign is sharpening a
decision for the Taliban: break ties with
al-Qaeda, give up your arms and abide by the
Afghan constitution, and you can rejoin Afghan
society. Refuse, and you will continue to face the
consequences of being tied to al-Qaeda as an enemy
of the international community. They cannot wait
us out. They cannot defeat us. And they cannot
escape this choice."
Very tough talk,
indeed. And no mincing of words, either. But, if
only life were that simple and the road ahead that
straightforward. British Pakistani author and
commentator Tariq Ali once wrote that it is when
such eloquent rhetoric appears that a resounding
voice can be heard echoing through the valleys and
hills of the Hindu Kush - loud, derisive Pashtun
laughter.
Ambassador M K
Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included
the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and
Turkey.
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