Exiting Afghanistan - the next American quandary


	December 20, 2001	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Exiting Afghanistan - the next American quandary
By Alexander Casella

It is to the credit of American diplomacy that, in the weeks preceding its military intervention in Afghanistan, Washington was already planning an exit strategy. While the primary aim of the US intervention was to eliminate Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network, and hence the Taliban regime that provided him with his main base of operation, this was only a first step - albeit a major one - in a complex strategy.

Ultimately, eliminating the Taliban regime also entailed replacing it by another one, albeit as yet largely undefined. Afghanistan marks the first time since the end of the Vietnam War that the US has intervened in what was clearly an internal civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Had the Taliban not provided a base of operation for bin Laden, they would still today be ruling most of Afghanistan.

As for the speed with which the Taliban collapsed, this was primarily due to the fact that in Afghanistan, unlike South Vietnam, the US found indigenous allies who were actually willing to fight and who have now for all practical purposes won their own war.

In Washington's perspective, the defeat of the Taliban would be a hollow victory if Afghanistan were permitted to return to the state of anarchy which prevailed after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and which permitted the fundamentalist group to seize power in 1996. Thus, stabilizing Afghanistan in a post-Taliban era is now an essential component of Washington's global anti-terrorist strategy. Conversely, implementing that component required a fundamental rethinking of the overall thrust of the foreign policy of President George W Bush.

With the specter of private sector terrorism having reached, for America, the dimensions of a practical reality, Washington was forced to reassess its relations with a number of countries that it had previously ostracized and which overnight became objective allies, albeit silent ones, in its war against Islamic fundamentalism. Syria, Iran and China, which keep a close watch on their populations, suddenly loomed as better guarantors of security against uncontrolled terrorism than more mild regimes such as Egypt or Pakistan, where fringe fundamentalist movements are tolerated.

Likewise, a Republican administration whose foreign policy was based on bilateralism and regional alliances suddenly discovered a use for the United Nations. During its first eight months in office, relations between the Bush administration and the UN were essentially in limbo as the confirmation of the new US Ambassador to the world body, John Negroponte, one of Washington's ablest diplomat, lay held up in Congress. September 11 brought a swift end to this episode of partisan politics. Negroponte was confirmed on September 14 and assumed his functions three days later, thus ensuring that Washington would both have a UN policy and someone to promote it.

Delegating its war against terrorism to the UN was never in the US cards. Indeed, what goes under the name of "UN peace-keeping" is little more than "peace monitoring" - that is, lightly-armed troops in white vehicles and blue helmets whose presence is supposed to ensure that a previously reached peace agreement is not excessively ignored. Thus, peace-making in the sense of peace enforcing was never an option as far as the UN was concerned.

When peace enforcing did occur, as in East Timor, it was undertaken by one army, in this case the Australian, with UN blessing, but under its own command, moving in and, once hostilities were terminated, making room for a UN administration.

Likewise in Kosovo, the military option against Slobodan Mislosevic was exercised by the US within the framework of NATO with no UN endorsement, either requested or forthcoming. Only after the Serbs had withdrawn from Kosovo did the Security Council endorse a UN presence in the province in the form of a civilian administration, which was left with picking up the pieces and rebuilding the country.

This pattern was repeated in Afghanistan where the US took the initiative to intervene militarily, albeit with the support of a number of allies. As for the UN resolution, adopted after September 11 condemning terrorism, this could be construed to correspond to an undefined degree of theoretical support, but in now way entailed that the US was acting under any form of a UN mandate.

While the US was very clear in its implicit contention that it did not require a UN mandate to intervene in Afghanistan, Washington, in order to avoid the creation of a vacuum in the country, sought to repeat what it had done in Kosovo, namely, to hand over the problem to the UN once its intervention would be completed. This strategy was to be implemented in two phases. The first was to create a provisional coalition government comprising the victorious Afghan factions, as was successfully achieved at the UN-sponsored Berlin meeting.

The second was to promote a high level of UN involvement on the ground, including both an administrative presence and a strong contingent of blue helmets to be provided by a large number of countries possibly, with Muslim populations. This was a scenario that a risk-averse UN secretariat in New York did not particularly relish. The compromise reached was that promoting security in Kabul would be entrusted to a small multinational force composed essentially of Western troops under British command. This force, while mandated by the Security Council, would not come under the label of "peace-keeping" and therefore would no be tied by the restrictions consonant with a UN force.

Whatever solutions reached, they required the endorsement of a majority of the 15 nation-strong UN Security Council, including that of its five permanent members, namely China, France, Britain, Russia and the US, all of whom have the right to veto any decision taken. Thus, in order to engineer an exit strategy that would see the UN play a major role in ensuring some degree of stabilization in Afghanistan after a US military withdrawal, Washington imperatively needed not only the support of its traditional allies but also that of Russia and of China.

That it did receive this support is indicative of two fundamentals. First, that there is now a coincidence of interests between the US, China and Russia in combating Islamic fundamentalism. Second, that what others perceive as a coincidence of interest has become for Washington, for obvious domestic reasons, a matter of urgent priority. The end result is that if it intends to keep the UN system on its side, Washington will have in the future to tread somewhat more carefully than it did in the recent past in its dealings both with Moscow and with Beijing.

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