Losers
and winners in Obama's Afghanistan By M K Bhadrakumar
United States
President Barack Obama never fails to rise to the
occasion when rhetorical flourish is the need of
the hour. By that yardstick, the drawdown speech
on Wednesday in Washington that he thoughtfully
titled "On the Way Forward in Afghanistan", has
been more a programmatic speech than intended to
stir up the mind. His judgment is correct that the
occasion is not one of celebration but of
justification for what is to be done about
something that went horribly wrong.
There
are winners and losers in Obama's speech. The
losers, first. They are the Pentagon, Afghan
President Hamid Karzai, Pakistan and South Asia
and the amorphous creature known as al-Qaeda. The
winners are the Taliban and, once again, Pakistan.
The shift from "combat to support" and
from the military track to the political track is
the reflection of growing skepticism about the
purposiveness of the troop
"surge". Obama thanked the soldiers for a good job
done, but that was more perfunctory. He claimed
the "surge" to be a success and then he moved on.
He didn't praise the "surge" - the 33,000 troops
he ordered to Afghanistan in late 2009 - as an
outstanding success. He was sombre. He thanked the
foot soldiers who had laid down their lives in
supreme sacrifice, but he failed to mention the
hero of the "surge" - General David Petraeus, the
US's commander in Afghanistan and now nominated by
Obama to become the new director of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
From all accounts,
this is not the kind of drawdown the Pentagon
would have wanted - 10,000 troops by end-2011,
33,000 by mid-2012 and the withdrawal of the
remaining 70,000 troops at a "steady pace" through
2013 so that by end-2014 "this process of
transition will be complete". Obama left it open
whether all 70,000 would be withdrawn by end-2014
or whether, as in Iraq, where 10,000 troops may
stay back even after the complete withdrawal
promised by end-2011, there will be an American
residue on a long-term left in the Hindu Kush
mountains.
Conceivably, Obama left it
vague since the issue isn't completely for him to
decide. He would know that the time is long past
for the US to dictate the aftermath of the bloody
10-year war. When you fail to win a war, the
aftermath has to be decided by consensus. So,
first and foremost, the Taliban will have a say,
and then Karzai's government and, increasingly,
regional powers too.
Besides, Obama admits
that America has limitations. Money can be better
spent at home for road-repair, for creating new
jobs and industry "at a time of rising debt and
hard economic times at home". America is not going
to withdraw into an isolationist mood, but it
won't have enthusiasm for interventions abroad
unless it is threatened. And even if threatened,
the choice will be not to deploy large armies
abroad (rather through high-tech weapons) and to
rally international action.
Obama asserted
that al-Qaeda was a spent force and there was no
reason to wage a war anymore. Vigilance is what is
called for so that the serpent doesn't rear its
head again. But he gave a warning to Pakistan that
he still intended to "address terrorist
safe-havens" in that country. He added that he
would "continue to press Pakistan to expand its
participation ... work with the Pakistani
government ... and will insist that it keep its
commitments".
Obama didn't bother to offer
any olive branches to Islamabad, make any form of
overtures to mend the fractured US-Pakistan
relationship, leave alone to even momentarily take
note of Pakistan's claims of the enormous
sacrifices it has made - more so than any of the
US's allies.
Put plainly, he is moving on
without a "thank you" note. This is going to be
noted by the Pakistani military command in
Rawalpindi and the civilian leadership in
Islamabad. What consequences might follow lie in
the womb of time. Curiously, Obama's choice also
gives a window of opportunity to the Pakistani
side to cherry pick.
On the other hand,
Pakistan is also a big winner. Obama's speech is,
quintessentially, a vindication of all that the
Pakistani military has been demanding for the past
year or two - that the Afghan war is futile, that
it is time to reconcile the Taliban, that the
military track is a road to nowhere, that enduring
peace and stability can only be reached through a
peace settlement.
Now from the pinnacle of
power in the US comes the word, indirectly though,
that "yes, Pakistan said the right thing all
along". Obama duly acknowledges in his speech that
the "tide of war is receding" in Afghanistan.
Obama speaks of the prospect of a political
settlement with optimism, although "there will be
dark days ahead".
The nuances of the road
to peace in Obama's speech will merit maximum
attention as that is where the meat lies for the
coming days. He speaks of the Taliban as a whole
without segregating the Haqqani network. As long
as the preconditions of reconciliation can be met,
just about all are welcome to walk into the peace
tent. The mood is of "forget-and-forgive". The
Taliban have been noted as part of the "Afghan
people".
Two, Obama admits that the
reconciliation must be "Afghan-led". He echoes the
standard US position but says nothing more by way
of addressing the palpable fears in Kabul and
Islamabad which regard this as mere lip-service,
whereas the US insists on being the locomotive and
keeps its Afghan and regional ally in the dark.
Maybe, this is a minor detail.
Or, maybe,
there is nothing Obama can do about the situation
because when the camel enters the tent, it
invariably becomes the case that the tent has
little space left for others. But Kabul and
Islamabad are sure to be left wondering until US
envoys come to the region to annotate Obama's
speech, as to whether anything has changed in the
US's lone-ranger diplomatic strategy toward the
peace process.
The most interesting point
in the entire speech is the optimism Obama exuded
with regard to the reconciliation of the Taliban.
He says he has "reason to believe that progress
can be made ... the goal that we seek is
achievable". But then, he tantalizingly leaves it
at that. The conclusion needs to be drawn that
Obama is quietly pleased with the feedback he has
received from US officials' secret confabulations
so far and he has reason to believe that the
Taliban are amenable to persuasion and will be
willing to deal.
Obama fails to mention
Karzai in this context of the peace process, which
is a deafening silence. True, he takes note of the
Afghan government's key role in stabilizing the
ground situation, but his emphasis is unmistakably
on America's tryst with the Afghan people at
large.
Equally, Obama says nothing about
the conference that the Germans are ambitiously
planning to hold in December in Berlin in the
mould of a Congress of Vienna where the Taliban
would apparently sit around the table under the
chandeliers with diplomats in pin-stripe suits
sipping champagne. But Obama does speak of another
international conference, but that will be
restricted to the US and its allies and will be
held in May in his "hometown" Chicago "to shape
the next phase of this [Afghan] transition".
Obama is a gifted politician and can
visualize the immense potential of displaying
before the American public just ahead of the
presidential elections in the US how brilliantly
he salvaged the Afghan war, which the previous
Republican government had left in a mess.
Obama can count on the newly-elected
Chicago mayor and old chum Emmanuel Rahm to do a
splendid job in making the May conference a
defining moment of the election campaign.
Actually, Obama doesn't miss out in his speech on
the follies of the previous George W Bush
administration in not paying enough attention to
the Afghan war and thoughtlessly launching the
Iraq invasion in 2003.
Arguably, it is
Obama's right to make political mileage at home
from the conclusion of the Afghan war. (The peak
of the drawdown - mid-2012 - also coincides with
the peak of the election campaign.) After all, it
takes superhuman courage for a commander-in-chief
to realize that a war cannot be won. It is even
more difficult to make sure that the retreat
doesn't look like a defeat or having to be made
from the top of the US Embassy building in Kabul
in helicopters. Obama is successfully achieving
both.
The Taliban have won the war. No
quibbling over this plain truth. Keeping them out
of the Afghan power calculation is no longer the
American objective. The US recognizes that the
Taliban are an integral part of the Afghan nation.
No section of the Taliban will be excluded from
mainstream Afghan life out of American pride or
prejudice. All are welcome to board the peace
train to Kabul.
The region surrounding
Afghanistan will be aghast, wondering what the war
was all about it. A lot of debris is lying around,
thanks to the destruction the US has caused. Obama
pleads American has no money for reconstruction.
"America, it is time to focus on nation-building
here at home." Those dozen words will be echoing
not only in the valleys and mountain tops of
Afghanistan, but all through the Central Asian
steppes and the ancient Indus Valley.
The
stark reality is that Obama's speech will send
shivers of fear down the spine of the non-Pashtuns
in Afghanistan. There is nothing worse than
offering someone protection and support and then
walking way at the heat of the moment. Central
Asians will worry how the triumphal return of the
Taliban will play out among the forces of Islamism
in their countries, which are already bracing for
the arrival of the Arab Spring.
India will
feel badly let down. Iran will be pleased to no
end. So may Russia to the extent that history will
record that it wasn't the only superpower that
failed to win a war in the Hindu Kush. China's
dependence on Pakistan increases by leaps and
bounds to ensure that the Taliban keep their word
that they have no agenda beyond Afghanistan's
borders.
How the unpalatable truth sinks
in will be Pakistan's formidable challenge. Like
the witches told Banquo in William Shakespeare's
play Macbeth, it is a mixed blessing. He
may be about to lose his own life, but his
progenies will live in regal glory - "Thou shalt
get kings, though thou be none." Can there be a
greater satisfaction?
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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