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The US strategy in Afghanistan is in deep trouble. President Obama's
December announcement that US forces would begin to draw down from July
2011 is being widely read in South Asia as the beginning of the
endgame for the US and Nato in Afghanistan. Regional states are
beginning to jostle for influence. They will be left for the second
time in less than 25 years to deal with the consequences of a strategic
retreat by a major power from Afghanistan. The nature of America's
problems and Islamabad's support for the Afghan Taliban has moved
Pakistan into poll position to recover its "strategic depth" in
Afghanistan. If it does so, the Pakistan Army and ISI will undoubtedly
conclude that their support for Islamic extremism and terrorism has
been rewarded.
All four strands of the US-led transition strategy are going
badly. Efforts to create a powerful Afghan National Security Force to
provide security across the country are faltering; the
counterinsurgency or COIN strategy has backfired in Marjah and the
Kandahar operation has been delayed; the peace and reconciliation
process is failing because some of the main Afghan opposition parties
have declined to participate and Taliban representatives have insisted
they will not negotiate; and the efforts to legitimize the Karzai
government have been undermined by fraudulent elections and ongoing
allegations of corruption and incompetence. America's hand is being
weakened further by the civil-military tensions exposed in the "Rolling
Stone" article, which led to the sacking of General Stanley
McChrystal. The United States has seen nothing like it since the 1971
publication of "The Pentagon Papers" foreshadowed the ignominious
withdrawal from Vietnam.
The dilemma for the United States and
the rest of Nato is that with so much blood in the soil of Afghanistan
and so much money spent to resource the war, the Alliance needs a
success story to provide the political fig-leaf for disengagement and
persuade their respective publics that the price has been worth paying.
For the leaders of many Nato members, political futures are at stake.
Yet the scale of challenge in Afghanistan is so great, and the need to
find a resolution to the residual question of al-Qaida so pressing, that
neither the US nor Nato can achieve an exit strategy on their own
terms.
The most plausible success story, and one which would
allow forces to come home with political cover and the al-Qaida issue
addressed, is that the US and Nato have achieved a stable transition in
Afghanistan to an inclusive Afghan government, that the Taliban have
given up support for al-Qaida and come into the political process, and
that the US will retain a residual regional presence — as it has in
Iraq — to maintain downward pressure on al-Qaida in the theatre. The
United States has come to believe that the key to this entire narrative
is Pakistan.
Pakistan has resolutely supported the Afghan
Taliban since it was forced to flee Afghanistan in late 2001 and it is
from Pakistani sanctuaries and the main leadership shuras in Quetta,
Gerdi Jangal, Miram Shah, and Peshawar that the Afghan Taliban has
staged its comeback. Backed by the Pakistan Army/ISI the Afghan Taliban
is now once again in the ascendancy in Afghanistan and is thus key to
any US/Nato disengagement. This is why Pakistan's Generals Kayani and
Pasha have made a series of recent visits to Kabul in which they have
offered to broker deals with the various Afghan Taliban groups and the
Karzai regime; it is why Pakistan has now cleared the way for Mullah
Baradar to be extradited to Kabul to participate in the process, and it
is why secret meetings have been held with Sirajuddin Haqqani, and
others to seek to engineer an endgame. Pakistan has simultaneously been
pushing its erstwhile proxy Gulbuddin Hekmatyar into the process and
quietly boosting militant strength in the Afghan-Pakistan border region
by facilitating the movement of Punjabi Taliban into the theatre.
Pakistan is also circulating the idea that the Afghan Taliban will give
up al-Qaida to reach a deal, even though there are few reasons to
believe this is so and no means to enforce any such offer the Taliban
might make to ease the US/Nato withdrawal.
Pakistan's price for
being helpful to the US is acceptance of Pakistan's primacy in
Afghanistan and that it has a strong role in shaping US regional
engagement going forward. It is a measure of the desperation of the US
that they seem prepared to agree this deal, cede the lead to Pakistan,
and condemn the people of Afghanistan to Taliban rule or to civil war.
Simply
put, the United States seems ready to reward Pakistan's duplicitous
support for militant Islamic extremism with the huge geostrategic prize
of Afghanistan. The implications of this for India are grave indeed
and it is difficult to believe that a White House friendlier to Delhi
would ever have countenanced such a deal. India is emerging as a great
power and with great power come commensurate obligations. India must
take a stronger hand in Afghanistan and find a response which provides
the United States and Nato with another way forward, which offers the
people of Afghanistan an alternative to the Taliban or civil war, and
which denies Pakistan a strategic victory which will surely resonate
across the region for generations to come.
The writer is
founder-director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the
University of Bradford, UK
