As another fighting season draws to a close in Afghanistan, there are
several interesting developments that suggest this winter might see
some significant changes that could be precursors to a negotiated
end to U.S. involvement. Among the straws in the wind:
Despite the presence
of some 15,000 U.S. troops and last year's announcement of (yet
another) bold, new strategy, the Taliban by all accounts controls
more Afghan territory than at any time since 2002;
The 18th American
commander* in this longest war was inaugurated;
*that is, commander of NATO forces ... we tend to forget that Article
5 of the NATO treaty (pledging mutual support in case of attack) was
invoked for the only time in history after the September 11 attacks
and 17 NATO members have had troops on the ground and suffered
casualties since 2001.
President Trump,
when he has paid attention to Afghanistan, (he has tweeted six times
more often about NFL players and the anthem) has said he just wants
to bring the troops home;
The U.S. State
Department has not denied Taliban claims that there have been direct
talks between the two sides (despite official policy that we'll talk
to the Taliban only when the Afghan government is part of the
meetings;
Reliable journalists
have reported that the Taliban has moderated its behavior in
territory that it controls, no longer enforcing a harshly repressive
version of Shari law, but emphasizing effective governance, efficient
provision of basic services, and stringent anti-bribery and
corruption measures;
The newly appointed
special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in an NPR
interview that the items the United States has demanded as
preconditions for talks for the past 17 years were now "end
points" in negotiations.
All this hardly
means the end of the war but it may be the beginning of a long,
tedious process that leads to a less violent future.
The
Key Players
The United States
The U.S. is central
to the future of Afghanistan. The Defense Department is deliberately
vague about how many U.S. soldiers are in Afghanistan but the typical
estimate is around 16,000. Since 2017, American troops have been
deployed almost exclusively in cities providing training and
assistance to the Afghan security forces. There is far less emphasis
than in the past on U.S. troops playing an active role in combat, but
it seems clear that in a crisis or major battle American soldiers
play an active role. The United States is also the major source of
foreign aid to the Afghan government.
The Government of
Afghanistan
Both the executive
and legislative branches of the government
of Afghanistan were elected in 2014. The process was marred
by claims of massive fraud and threats of violence by backers of
major candidates and official figures were not immediately released.
The resulting constitutional crisis was only resolved when then U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry brokered a power sharing arrangement
between the two leading presidential candidates. Elections for a new
parliament are being held this Fall and Presidential elections are
scheduled for the spring. There is little reason to think they will
be any less controversial.
The Afghan economy
was close to total collapse when the U.S.-led coalition ousted the
Taliban regime in 2001 and has recovered significantly since then.
Nonetheless the government relies on foreign aid, much of it from the
U.S., for about two-thirds of its revenue, which often means policies
and projects reflect the priorities and preferences of foreign
governmental and non-governmental aid donors. The most serious
problem undermining the authority and legitimacy of the government is
corruption. Transparency International, the most widely accepted
organization measuring corruption around the world, ranks Afghanistan
177th (out of 180) and that includes everything from paying off the
cop who stops you at random to siphoning off millions from foreign
aid projects. Afghans also feel physically insecure as the
government appears less able to defend rural villages and the Taliban
continues suicide bombing attacks in Kabul and other cities.
The Taliban
The Taliban was one
of several ethnically or regionally based groups who forced the USSR
to withdraw from Afghanistan in the 1980's. The Taliban received
significant help from Pakistan and the United States (via the CIA)
because they were seen as effective anti-communist, anti-Soviet
fighters. This put them in position to emerge as the dominant force
in Afghanistan in the confusion and anarchy that followed the Soviet
withdrawal. It quickly became clear that the Taliban was driven by
an extremely regressive and repressive version of Islam rooted in
rural tribal culture and spread by Saudi Arabia. Women were the most
obvious victims of the regime, denied an education, prohibited from
working, required to wear a burka any time they were outside the
house, and legally reduced to being property of their husbands and
male relatives. Men fared only slightly better. Committees for the
Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, armed with whips and
clubs, patrolled the streets of cities and towns to enforce the ban
on music and dancing, punish anyone listening to foreign broadcast on
the radio, assure that all men grew beards, and punish any other
behavior they defined as "un-Islamic." The Taliban regime
waged war on Afghan history and culture and earned international
condemnation for violations of human rights. Hundreds of thousands
of Afghans fled the country, usually ending up in refugee camps in
Pakistan. The regime tolerated and enabled terrorist groups, notably
Al Qaeda, to set up training camps and outposts in the country. The
9/11 terrorists were trained and the attacks were planned and
organized by Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan. Few tears were shed
when the United States led the way to ousting the regime at the end
of 2001.
Since then the
Taliban has waged an insurgent war against the government. The
Taliban leadership and ordinary fighters can draw on almost 40 years
of experience fighting modern armies and pushing them out of rural
villages. But they lack the heavy weapons and air power to capture
urban areas. More importantly, they lack a broad base of support in
the country for two key reasons. First, the brutality and repression
of the Taliban regime is still a vivid memory for those who lived
through it and a frightening prospect for their children and
grandchildren. Second, Afghan society remains deeply divided along
ethnic lines. The old saying "I against my brothers, my
brothers and I against my cousins, my cousins and I against the
world" is still operative. The Taliban is almost an exclusively
Pashtun organization; the other groups in Afghanistan tend to resent
or resist the Pashtuns.
Pakistan
Pakistan's
relationship to the various forces in Afghanistan is complex and
multi-layered. During the war against the Soviet Union, the ISI
(Inter-Services Intelligence unit, which is the CIA on steroids) was
the major conduit for foreign assistance to the anti-Soviet forces.
That let the ISI pick and choose among a variety of groups opposing
the Soviets and ensure that they remained indebted to Pakistan after
they evicted the USSR. The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan
on maps of the region is an illusion: Pakistan is one color,
Afghanistan another and there's a crisp black line dividing them.
The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan on the ground is marked
by checkpoints and official border crossings along the few roads in
the region; for practical purposes it does not exist in the steep
mountains and deep valleys. The international boundary runs through
the middle of a large area dominated by the various tribes, clans and
sub-groups of the Pashtun ethnicity. Independent Pakistan inherited
all the headaches this area had caused the British while they ruled
India. The Northwest Frontier Province is a region of fiercely
independent traditional communities, resistant to change and
outsiders. For the past 200 years Islam has provided the vocabulary
and general principles that defines this world view.
The
government of Pakistan is seen as a hostile alien force that would
destroy the region's way of life, to be resisted just as much as the
Soviet Union in the 1980's and the American led NATO forces today.
Taliban forces continue to carry out bombings and assaults on
government facilities inside Pakistan. While some elements of the
Pakistan military try to pacify the tribal areas and disarm and
disband the Taliban forces, other elements, especially the ISI,
actively support and encourage the Taliban to concentrate on the
battle against the foreigners in Afghanistan and avoid domestic
targets.
Negotiations?
One
reason to think that the recent events in Afghanistan do represent
the first halting steps toward negotiations between these key
players, is that there seems to be a general recognition that no one
can win a military victory. After 17 plus years, it is pretty clear
that the United States cannot defeat the Taliban on the battlefield.
It also seems clear that the Afghan government has enough military
strength and the Taliban is sufficiently unpopular in much of the
country that the Taliban cannot win. This seems to be a classic
"hurting stalemate," an unpleasant conflict situation in
which neither side can realistically expect to prevail and get what
it wants. The hope becomes that negotiations can lead to a result
that is better than the unpleasant status quo.
If
negotiations actually happen in the near future, they will be
protracted and difficult. Much will depend on the American bottom
line. Until recently the United States demanded that the Taliban
renounce violence, break all ties with outside groups including
Pakistan, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and accept the Afghan
constitution as preconditions to be met before any negotiations. Now
the U.S. position is that those three conditions are to be the
results of negotiations. Unstated but obvious is the American
primary goal: an end to military involvement in Afghanistan.
Vietnam
DejaVu?
There
are some interesting parallels between Vietnam in the 1970's and
Afghanistan today: an indigenous fighting force which sees itself as
defending the homeland from foreign invaders, a local government
dependent on American aid and riddled with corruption, and an
external actor supporting the insurgent forces. There are some major
differences as well. The biggest difference is that Afghanistan is
not a crucial issue for Americans, dividing thew country and
contributing to major social changes, which might make it easier for
the United States to negotiate a low key exit. . Perhaps looking
at how the Vietnam, war ended can give us some clues abut how
Afghanistan might end.
The
1973 agreement between the United States and North Vietnam called for
withdrawal of U.S. forces, an end to support for the Viet Cong from
Hanoi, and negotiations between the Government of South Vietnam and
the Viet Cong. The withdrawal began smoothly enough but ended in
confusion and chaos as thousands of South Vietnamese who had worked
with the U.S. realized they were going to be left behind. The North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces continued to gain territory and
entered Saigon on April 30, 1975 as the last American military and
civilian personnel hurriedly evacuated.
One
possible outcome in Afghanistan is that the United States and the
Taliban agree to a U.S. military withdrawal (meaning the Taliban will
not attack or hinder U.S. and NATO troops as they leave the country)
and the Taliban agree that they will not permit terrorist groups to
set up camps and training centers in Afghanistan. The Taliban and
Afghan government agree to a cease fire allowing each side to
maintain control of the territory it currently occupies and promise
to hold elections for a new national government as soon as conditions
allow.
This
result would certainly appeal to any U.S. administration because it
would allow the President to claim that he (some day she) had
achieved the original 2001 goal of preventing Afghanistan being used
as a haven and staging ground by terrorists and left the Afghan
government with a well trained and equipped national army. This
result would appeal to the Taliban because it gets the Americans out
of the way and the Afghan army has not shown any significant ability
to fight without a great deal of help from American or NATO forces.
The Afghan government would not be happy with this settlement, but
it, like the South Vietnamese government, would be unable to
influence the bargain.
After
the American withdrawal the most likely scenario is that the Taliban
would quickly gain control of most of the country, as the Afghan army
would crumble and melt away. Pakistan would experience a wave of
refugees as westernized Afghans fled in fear of a harshly repressive
Taliban regime and government officials and employees fled in fear of
reprisals. The United States of the late 1970's allowed several
hundred thousand Vietnamese refugees to make a new life here. The
United States of the second decade of the 21st Century would not
welcome several hundred thousand Afghan refugees.
