Afghanistan: Drawdown or
drawback? By Brian M Downing
Following the announcement on Wednesday by
United States President Barack Obama, the US will
have 10,000 fewer troops in Afghanistan by the end
of the year, from a total of over 100,000, with
another 23,000 to depart by the middle of 2012.
With the reduction, the US and the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
will concentrate on several districts where
insurgents have been largely driven out or where
Pashtun tribes have long opposed the Taliban and
are reasonably supportive of the ISAF.
This will entail leaving parts of the
south and east - discordant in America's
unyielding victory culture. But withdrawal has been
underway for over a year now,
most notably from the Korengal Valley in April
2010.
Within these limited "enclaves" in
the south and east, the ISAF can better allocate
resources to building roads and schools, providing
medical and veterinary services and completing
irrigation and electrification programs. The ISAF
will also be able to concentrate on training local
militia forces and establishing intelligence
networks. Counter-insurgency programs may well
work out better in more limited areas of the
contested south and east.
In time - a
commodity admittedly not well stockpiled in
Western publics - the enclaves will contrast
sharply with the areas left to insurgent forces.
Afghans will come to see where their children
receive better schooling and health care, where
their crops and herds fare better, and where jobs
are more plentiful. Insurgents may lose their
popular appeal as bringers of liberation and
prosperity.
Insurgent forces will almost
certainly face desertions from their ranks. Most
insurgents are uninterested in the lofty goals of
insurgent groups; they seek mainly to rid their
valley of foreigners. With the latter chiefly in
enclaves, many fighters will see their goal
accomplished and return to their villages.
This was the case in the late 1980s when
the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan,
province by province. Mujahideen commanders found
their rank and file leaving their units by the
thousand. Many commanders began fighting each
other and some allied with the Kabul government
for protection.
Reform in Kabul The withdrawal of US and other troops will put
a great deal of pressure on the Kabul government
to reform itself. Indeed, Obama made that point
rather forcefully on Wednesday. Kabul must build a
fair and effective government or face an
inevitable victory by insurgent forces.
Further, it must build an effective army
and police force to take the place of departing
ISAF troops. Few in Afghanistan are unaware of the
hideous fate that befell president Mohammad
Najibullah and other officials when the Taliban
took Kabul in the mid-1990s. Even fewer will be
confidant that a US helicopter will take them to
safety after a decade of corruption,
intransigence, and misrule and so many US
casualties.
Vietnam might provide a useful
case history of withdrawal and reform. South
Vietnamese presidents stubbornly resisted US
pressure to reform the land tenure system, army,
and state. The governmental officials, safe in
their Saigon villas, persisted in their ways as
American troops fought the war. Landlords retained
the best land; generals were promoted due to
connections rather than performance; and
officialdom took its percentages.
When
president Richard Nixon began to withdraw troops
in 1969, however, South Vietnam adopted widespread
if belated reforms. Land was redistributed to the
tillers and professionalization of army and state
finally took place. It was too little, too late.
South Vietnam fell just two years after the last
GIs departed from Tan Son Nhut air base.
While this should be instructive to Kabul
officialdom, it might also advise them to continue
grabbing while they can - and to keep a jet fueled
at Bagram.
Regional powers Reduced Western forces will also encourage
regional powers to assume a larger role in
Afghanistan. India, Iran, Russia and China have
all been involved in development and training
programs, but they must be more forceful with the
government in Kabul and the ones in Islamabad and
Rawalpindi as well.
Regional powers have
far more to lose from a Taliban Afghanistan than
does the literally distant and figuratively
receding US. They face the spread of insurgent
movements into other parts of Central Asia,
including into their own lands.
The
regional powers must reinforce Western pressure on
Karzai to build a fair and competent government,
though another option might be more promising -
allying with leaders of the non-Pashtun north.
They oppose the Taliban but also oppose Karzai as
just another grasping and blundering Pashtun
ruler. The prospect of a restored Northern
Alliance would serve the dual purposes of warning
Karzai and preparing the north for civil war in
the event of a Taliban victory.
It is
increasingly clear that the problem of terrorism
and militancy in the region lies not with al-Qaeda
or the Taliban, but with Pakistan - more
precisely, with the Pakistani army and its
intelligence service. It is they who built
training bases in Afghanistan for the
Lashkar-i-Taiba, the Jaish-i-Mohammed and a slew
of other militant groups operating along the AfPak
line and in Kashmir. It is they who give sanctuary
to Taliban fighters and leaders. And it was near
one of their compounds where Osama bin Laden was
found to be operating and then killed by US
special forces.
If there is a solution to
the region's insurgency and terrorism problems, it
will come through concerted diplomatic and
economic pressure on Pakistan to become a
responsible member of the world community or
degenerate into the North Korea of the region, if
not the largest failed state in history.
The importance of regional powers in
solving international crises may well be the
United States' emerging strategy as its public is
finding the global mission it eagerly assumed in
the heady days after World War II as far too
costly. US assistance in world affairs will be
there, but at levels that are reduced - perhaps
greatly so. North Atlantic Treaty Organization
powers must take up more of the burden of European
security. Libya is to be solved by powers just to
the north. Chinese navalism is a matter for the
nations of East and Southeast Asia. And so it is
with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Brian
M Downing is a political/military analyst and
author of The Military Revolution and
Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War
and Social Change in America from the Great
War to Vietnam. He can be reached at
brianmdowning@gmail.com.
(Copyright 2011
Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about sales,
syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
