"Curse of the Khyber Pass"

Milton Bearden, in the National Interest, here

"...But still the Americans were fooled into seeing an easy victory ahead. In early December 2001, the noose had tightened on Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan near Pakistan’s Kurram Agency, one of the districts in the FATA. ........ a gathering of prominent Afghans was convened at the Hotel Petersberg, across the Rhine from Bonn, under the auspices of the United Nations. On December 22, 2001, an Afghan Interim Authority, comprised of thirty members, was established, with Hamid Karzai at its head. .......The Taliban had been overthrown, a ruling body for Afghanistan had been chosen, a constitution was in train, elections planned, and, we were assured, Osama bin Laden was steps away from capture or death........It had all seemed so easy that by 2002 vital military resources were being redirected from Afghanistan to the Bush administration’s new target, Iraq.....

HOWEVER, THE United States had committed the cardinal sins of empire. Fast-forward seven tough years, and the experience of the latest superpower to venture into Afghanistan looks like that of all of those who came before. The admonition against placing an unpopular emir on the Afghan throne was breached at the outset.

There is an unrelenting insurgency—we call it the Taliban, though that is a dangerous oversimplification. It is in effect a Pashtun insurgency, made up of, indeed, Taliban, but also angry Pashtuns, criminal bands and paid gunfighters. ....... Islamabad is fully involved in the conflict now. FATA is a war zone, with the Pakistan Army taking higher casualties than coalition forces in Afghanistan. Further afield inPakistan, the so-called “settled areas” of the North-West Frontier Province, prominently the picturesque Swat Valley, are under mounting threat of “Talibanization,” though in many cases the Pakistani Taliban is little more than teenage punks with guns, paid around $8 per day from drug money flowing in from Afghanistan......

SO WHAT NOW?

The Obama administration has been quick to learn that Afghanistan is anything but “the good war.” .....But the first problem with U.S. planning begins with the idea that increasing America’s military footprint is enough. Campaign rhetoric about ramping up U.S. troop presence by another three brigades is being challenged, and properly so. . . . .”

Then there is the question of how to deal with the militias. Discussion of arming Afghanistan’s militias has led to little in the way of consensus. Many Afghans and some old Afghan hands say it won’t work because it has never worked before, that it will lead to more conflict and that militias armed by outsiders can never be controlled. Others say it is worth a try. Both may be right. The militia solution always surfaces when a foreign enterprise in Afghanistan faces failure; and, yes, militias armed by outsiders have ended up fighting each other in the past. During the 1980s militias repeatedly turned on their Soviet armorers, or otherwise betrayed them. Indeed, Soviet-armed militias in eastern Afghanistan became quartermasters for the CIA, selling their weapons to the mujahideen for hard CIA cash, while saving the CIA huge transportation costs to boot. The Soviets paid the freight.

But the United States, inevitably, will arm some militias. The question will be how many and where and how? Some recommend giving the Karzai government a hand in the process. That should be carefully thought through, as it may only end up increasing the intramural fighting. If militias must be raised, the United States had better do it in concert with traditional tribal-leadership systems that have been nearly destroyed by thirty years of warfare on both sides of the zero line. The United States must also concurrently work with Pakistan to help regenerate the traditional tribal system in the FATA as a companion effort to arming militias in Afghanistan. President Karzai may not be happy with U.S. involvement in a militia program; nor will he view the militias we raise as his natural allies. He will be right. The idea of an Afghan presidency designed somehow to control all of Afghanistan was built into the system when the interim government was established in Bonn in 2001. It was a mistake then, as now. The new administration and the new special envoy should correct this as they cajole into existence a presidency with natural Afghan limits and begin to work out new relationships with the outlying governors who hold real power outside Kabul. Whenever Afghanistan has been “well ruled” in the past, those at the helm in Kabul understood their limitations in dictating to the provinces. That balance will have to be reestablished.....

AS WITH all of the other problems the new administration faces, Afghanistan and Pakistan need new, even radical, rethinking if the United States is ever to reverse a failing enterprise. The only certainty about Afghanistan is that it will be Obama’s War, as surely as Iraq is Bush’s War and Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson’s War. The president’s new team for Afghanistan and Pakistan has been dealt a losing hand, but if anyone can turn the tables, they just might be able to do it."

Posted by G, Z, & or B at 10:36 AM