Solving Afghanistan

Solving the Afghanistan Quagmire
by Patrick Seale


Spectacular Taliban successes in Afghanistan and Pakistan are forcing Western leaders to re-think their anti-terrorist strategy in both countries.


In recent days, French President Nicola Sarkozy and Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown have paid separate flying visits to Kabul to assess the situation. They, and other Western heads of government, are facing the painful possibility that NATO is losing the war in Afghanistan -- a war which has also destabilized neighbouring Pakistan.


Three events, among many other violent episodes, have shocked governments and public in both the West and the region:


• The death of 10 French paratroopers and the wounding of 21 others in a Taliban ambush on 18 August, a mere 60 kilometres east of Kabul. The main Afghan- Pakistan highway passes through this district of Sarubi. Severed by Taliban roadblocks, the road is now so insecure that it is out of bounds to foreigners.


As France mourns its dead, a furious debate has broken out in Paris about the wisdom of Sarkozy’s decision last April -- clearly as a gesture towards the United States to increase the French contingent in Afghanistan by an extra 700 men to a total of some 3,000. The French parliament is due to meet in September in extraordinary session to debate strategy in Afghanistan.


• On 21 August, two suicide bombers attacked Pakistan’s largest weapons factory in Wah, 30 kilometres north of Islamabad, killing 60 people and wounding 100 more. The Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it was in retaliation for military operations by the Pakistan army in the tribal areas along the Afghan border -- carried out under U.S. pressure.


• On 22 August, the Afghan Interior Ministry claimed that U.S. air strikes in the West of the country had killed between 60 and 90 Afghan civilians, including many women and children.


The U.S. command claimed that no civilians had been killed, only some 30 Taliban militants, but it has agreed to conduct an inquiry.


Such events point to the sharply deteriorating situation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghan capital Kabul is virtually under Taliban siege. A climate of fear reigns there. All UN personnel, as well as all foreigners working for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have been consigned to their homes because of the high level of threat.


Meanwhile, 40 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan in August alone, bringing the total for the year so far to around 200, compared to 232 in the whole of 2007.


Seven years ago, NATO and the United States invaded Afghanistan to punish and destroy Al-Qaeda for its September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, and to overthrow the Taliban regime that was giving Al-Qaeda refuge. But the job was never completed, largely because, under pressure from pro-Israeli neo-cons inside the U.S. administration, the U.S. effort was diverted to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.


Today, the Afghan war has expanded into an unwinnable conflict against a formidable coalition of Pashtun tribesmen on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. The war has drawn in Islamic militants from the Arab world, from Kashmir, and even from Central Asia.


Al-Qaeda may be no more than a small element in this coalition. The tribes are fighting to protect themselves from what they sees as a foreign threat to their religion and traditions, to their tribal way of life, and to the sanctity of their families. Civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes inflame opinion and play into the hands of the Taliban.


What should NATO and the West do? The United States has endorsed a $17bn plan to build up the Afghan army to 122,000 over the next five years. Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown thinks this is still too small to defeat the Taliban. Some experts believe, however, that there is no military solution to the conflict, indeed that the war is already lost.


A more promising approach would be to negotiate a ceasefire with both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban movements, within the context of a regional strategy, which would include India and Iran, as well as the governments in Kabul and Islamabad.


The goals of such a regional strategy should be:


• To end the U.S.-NATO conflict with the Pashtun tribes of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They would undertake, in exchange, to close down the sanctuaries they provide for Al-Qaeda. Such a deal would almost certainly mean bringing the Taliban into the Afghan government and confirming the autonomy of Pakistan’s tribal agencies, free from attack by the central government.


• To agree to a timetable for the full withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, while redoubling international efforts for reconstruction and development.


• To negotiate a settlement of the long-running Kashmir dispute, which has poisoned relations between India and Pakistan since partition, but has also spilled over into their competition in Afghanistan.


• To associate Iran with a broad Afghan-Pakistan-India regional settlement, so as to reassure it that there will be no threat to its security from the east.


Such a regional strategy may seem utopian, but it should be high on the list of priorities of the next American president, before more lives are uselessly thrown away and more anti-Western anger aroused in a volatile part of the world.




Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.


Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale