Iraq pullout threatens US Afghan presence
By Barbara Slavin
WASHINGTON - Washington's failure to gain Iraqi approval for a significant
United States military presence in that country beyond December could make it
harder for Afghanistan to agree to a similar deployment beyond 2014.
Vali Nasr, a former senior adviser to the State Department on Afghanistan and
Pakistan, said the Iraq experience could be a "model" for Afghanistan. "Nobody
thought the US could go completely out [of Iraq]," he told Inter Press Service
(IPS) on Tuesday. "Now they have."
Frank Ruggiero, the deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan,
told IPS, "I'm not aware of a spillover" from the Iraq negotiations, which
foundered over Iraqi refusal to grant US forces
immunity from local prosecution.
But he acknowledged that negotiations on a so-called strategic framework
between the US and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai are not
proceeding quickly. He said that the Afghans are focusing on issues such as US
night raids and detention practices rather than the question of how many US
forces remain in the country long-term.
Nasr and Ruggiero spoke on the sidelines of a symposium at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars that posed the question of whether there is
"a regional endgame" for the decade-old US-led war in Afghanistan.
Participants, who included former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, were
subdued in their assessments, noting that Afghanistan's neighbors have
different priorities and have already begun to hedge their behavior in
anticipation of a US withdrawal.
The Barack Obama administration is hoping that regional representatives,
meeting Wednesday in Istanbul, will sign onto a series of principles declaring
"full respect for Afghan sovereignty and territory", according to a State
Department official who briefed reporters on Monday and asked not to be named.
The official said that diplomats are also being asked to endorse a gradual
transition from US security leadership to Afghan control, a political solution
to the war and a so-called "New Silk Road" vision for regional economic
prosperity.
Such declarations cannot paper over the real challenges Afghanistan faces in
trying to build a stable future in an unsettled neighborhood.
Kissinger, speaking in his distinctive German-accented rumbling baritone, said
that US administrations historically have gotten into wars with "objectives
beyond the capacity of the US domestic consensus required to support and
implement" them. In Afghanistan's case, he said, this included implanting a
government "whose writ ran all over the country" and that would "represent some
fundamental democratic principles such as women's rights and education".
Afghanistan, he said, "is a particularly difficult country to attempt this
because it isn't really a state [but] a nation that comes together primarily to
expel foreigners."
United States hopes to "win" the war are unrealistic, Kissinger suggested,
given Pakistan's harboring of Taliban fighters. "I know of no guerrilla war
that was won when there were sanctuaries within reach," he said.
He said the Obama administration should postpone major troop withdrawals as
long as possible to maintain maximum leverage and should warn the neighbors
that if they do not cooperate as the US withdraws, "You'll have to take the
consequences on your own."
However, Afghanistan's two key neighbors - Pakistan and Iran - appear to prefer
those consequences to a continued US military presence on their borders.
Iran has reportedly sent arms to the Taliban and cultivated an economic
relationship with India that will allow both to trade with Afghanistan and
Central Asia by circumventing Pakistan.
Pakistan, meanwhile, is believed to be harboring the Afghan militants with the
most US blood on their hands, the Haqqani network, which is said to be
responsible for a series of spectacular attacks in Kabul including attacks on
the Intercontinental Hotel and US Embassy and a weekend suicide bombing that
killed a dozen US soldiers.
A story in the New York Times on Tuesday quoted unnamed Western analysts as
saying that senior members of the Haqqani family, including brothers and
children of patriarch Jalaluddin Haqqani, had been spotted recently in
Islamabad.
Given that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was found and killed by US forces in
May in a nearby resort for retired military, Abbottabad, a senior Haqqani
presence in the Pakistani capital would suggest that the Pakistani government
is actively aiding the enemies of the United States while accepting billions in
US military and economic aid.
Charges that Pakistan's intelligence services, the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), were working with the Haqqani network first surfaced publicly in
September when outgoing chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral
Michael Mullen, told congress that the Taliban leadership known as the Quetta shura
and the Haqqanis "operate from Pakistan with impunity. attacking Afghan troops
and civilians as well as US soldiers". Mullen went on to call the Haqqani
network "a strategic arm" of the ISI.
The Obama administration subsequently tried a softer approach. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton led a high-profile inter-agency delegation to Pakistan
last month which urged Pakistani officials to cooperate with the US in reining
in the Haqqanis and bringing them to the negotiating table. That visit preceded
last weekend's suicide bombing.
Nasr, who left the State Department earlier this year, said that US relations
with "the two countries that are really important - Iran and Pakistan" - had
steadily worsened while the US had the best relations with the countries "that
matter the least" in terms of Afghanistan's long-term future.
Iran and the US are at odds over multiple issues, including Iran's nuclear
program and alleged support for terrorism.
Anti-US sentiment in Pakistan is at historic highs since the killing of Bin
Laden. Politician and former cricket star Imran Khan attracted over 100,000
people to a recent rally in Lahore at which he said that Pakistan would not
allow itself to be "enslaved" by the United States or attack Pakistani
militants at US bidding.
Pakistan and Iran "are very happy to help us leave but they are not necessarily
going to support our vision for Afghanistan which includes (a continued US
military) footprint," Nasr told the Wilson Center audience.
United States officials have spoken of leaving 20,000-25,000 US troops in
Afghanistan beyond 2014 to shore up the Afghan government and continue
counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaeda and its Pakistani allies.
However, the appetite for the war has waned as US casualties rise beyond 1,800
killed and 15,000 wounded.
Kissinger, who served during Republican administrations that first widened the
Vietnam War and then ended it through a peace deal that swiftly crumbled in a
communist victory, warned against treating the Afghan conflict as a partisan
issue.
"What this country really needs is a reconciliation at home," he said, speaking
of the United States. "The national interest of the US doesn't change" with
every election.
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