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Handing Over the Keys
Afghanistan is passing inexorably into a post-American phase that will have far-reaching consequences for the interconnected space encompassing the Indian and Pakistani portions of Kashmir, Pakistan proper, Afghanistan, the five Central Asian “Stans”, eastern Iran, China’s western province of Xinjiang, and the seven republics of Russia’s South Caucasus region. In this zone, Greater Central Asia, multiple sources of conflict already exist even as new patterns of trade and investment are emerging, not least in energy. Increasing competition between long preponderant powers and challengers whose presence has heretofore been minimal are changing the calculus of risks and opportunities. Note as well that Greater Central Asia provides a bridge for competition and conflict to migrate and shape the larger interactions among China, India, Russia and the United States.
Greater Central Asia is also a zone in which ethnic groups (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Pashtuns, Uighurs, Turkmen and several others) are divided by state borders, with a potential to extend conflicts in one country into others, fanning fears of separatism and irredentism as they do. Migrants and revolutionary ideologies (democratic, nationalist and Islamist) are also unsettling the status quo in places where their influence has hitherto been minimal. Unable to assay the combined consequences of such variegated changes, states and various groups within the region increasingly view competitors with suspicion. To all this is now added the uncertainty about the aftermath of America’s exit from Afghanistan.
Until now, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has been robust enough to prevent a free-for-all competition among its neighbors. Following President Obama’s July 2009 surge, which added 30,000 U.S. soldiers, the number of American troops approached 100,000. They are supplemented by about 42,000 troops from the forty-plus states constituting the International Security Assistance Force (although only a small fraction of the coalition’s non-U.S. forces has seen sustained combat). The United States and its allies (as well as third parties) are also training the Afghan army and police. Defense Department expenditures for this purpose totaled nearly $40 billion from 2002 to 2011 and are continuing. The United States and Afghanistan are seeking an arrangement that enables an unspecified number of American troops to remain beyond President Obama’s 2014 withdrawal deadline, but whatever eventually becomes of this effort, it is not premature to speak of a post-American Afghanistan.
In addition to the 10,000 troops withdrawn by the end of last year, 23,000 will have been removed by mid-2012. The current plan is to hand all significant responsibility for security to Afghan forces at the end of 2014. Things could change, of course, but given ongoing U.S. economic woes and the American public’s weariness over a war that has lasted a decade and cost some $476 billion, it’s a safe bet that the disengagement will continue even if Obama is not reelected, and regardless of the “situation on the ground.”
We also know something about the conditions that obtain in Afghanistan as the post-U.S. phase commences. The Taliban and other insurgents cannot be defeated or forced into a negotiated settlement by 2014. Even with Obama’s surge and the contribution of allies, there are insufficient troops to force a surrender or even to leverage a sustainable negotiated peace. A full American withdrawal, or a cutback to a small presence, will likely invigorate the main groups battling the United States and the Karzai government, the insurgents of the Haqqani clan and of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—both dating back to the mujaheddin war against the Red Army—and, of course, the Taliban. Despite the tough talk emanating intermittently from Washington’s corridors of power, the fact that American officials are lambasting the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies for aiding these groups while conducting back-channel talks with the most brazen of them, the Haqqanis, shows that a war-weary United States is looking to leave. Obama’s surge and his major acceleration of drone attacks in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan have undoubtedly put the insurgency on the defensive by killing many of its commanders and reducing the areas of its control in the south, and with that the capacity to launch large offensives. Yet the Taliban has replenished its ranks and changed tactics to suit new conditions and setbacks. It is increasing attacks in the west, north and center, where the density of foreign troops is lower, ramping up suicide bombings, attacking military installations and embassies, and assassinating senior Afghan politicians and administrators. Pace the logic underpinning the surge, what the Taliban have not shown, despite the additional military pressure placed on them, is any serious interest in a settlement. They may dangle that prospect for tactical and psychological reasons, but they have never shown any indication of sincerely embracing it.
The Taliban’s aim is not to defeat the American army; with only about 20,000 fighters, it cannot hope to do so. Its aim is rather to deplete the will of the United States and its allies and to erode support for the war among their citizens simply by demonstrating the continuing wherewithal to wreak havoc through selective violence. Once foreign forces leave, the insurgents expect to face a weak Afghan government whose legitimacy has already been badly compromised by incompetence and corruption. (This hardly means that the Taliban will necessarily seize power: The Afghan armed forces and militias loyal to warlords will resist them and will be backed by outsiders—but that is another matter.)
Faced with an unpopular regime, a preternaturally weak polity and a dogged insurgency, the United States and its allies have been training an Afghan army and police force (the target is 378,000 by the end of 2012) capable of keeping order and fighting insurgents once foreign forces leave. But this is a Herculean labor, and it is failing. Fifty-seven percent of Afghan males are illiterate, the nascent security forces face an attrition rate approaching 25 percent a year, the rottenness of the state threatens to either corrupt the military and police forces or entice them to seize power, and pervasive corruption enables infiltration by the insurgents. None of this is surprising. Any military force, particularly a new one, reflects the pathologies of its milieu. Afghanistan’s military is no different. What this means is that even if built up, the Afghan security forces could be undone by deeper problems that even extended tutelage by outsiders cannot fix.1
To fill the void created by the lack of sufficient indigenous military and police units, the United States and the Afghan government have been funding and training local militias under the “Afghan Local Police” program. Whatever the intent of the policy, these units have in practice been organized along ethnic and tribal lines. Along with the other makeshift forces that pervade Afghanistan, they are already acting as free agents, robbing and brutalizing the population, notwithstanding the supposed oversight by the Interior Ministry and local tribal councils.2 In a post-American Afghanistan their ties to the government may prove tenuous at best. If past patterns hold, their commanders are apt to align with neighboring states competing for influence in the country. If there’s one trait that defines the warlord, it’s equal-opportunity cynicism.
Scorpions in a Bottle
I
f conflict will not end inside Afghanistan, what does a post-American Afghanistan mean for the region? The short answer is a lot. For a longer answer, let’s start with India and Pakistan.
The India-Pakistan contest over Afghanistan, already well advanced, will int...
Afghanistan is passing inexorably into a post-American phase that will have far-reaching consequences for the interconnected space encompassing the Indian and Pakistani portions of Kashmir, Pakistan proper, Afghanistan, the five Central Asian “Stans”, eastern Iran, China’s western province of Xinjiang, and the seven republics of Russia’s South Caucasus region. In this zone, Greater Central Asia, multiple sources of conflict already exist even as new patterns of trade and investment are emerging, not least in energy. Increasing competition between long preponderant powers and challengers whose presence has heretofore been minimal are changing the calculus of risks and opportunities. Note as well that Greater Central Asia provides a bridge for competition and conflict to migrate and shape the larger interactions among China, India, Russia and the United States.
Greater Central Asia is also a zone in which ethnic groups (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Pashtuns, Uighurs, Turkmen and several others) are divided by state borders, with a potential to extend conflicts in one country into others, fanning fears of separatism and irredentism as they do. Migrants and revolutionary ideologies (democratic, nationalist and Islamist) are also unsettling the status quo in places where their influence has hitherto been minimal. Unable to assay the combined consequences of such variegated changes, states and various groups within the region increasingly view competitors with suspicion. To all this is now added the uncertainty about the aftermath of America’s exit from Afghanistan.
Until now, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has been robust enough to prevent a free-for-all competition among its neighbors. Following President Obama’s July 2009 surge, which added 30,000 U.S. soldiers, the number of American troops approached 100,000. They are supplemented by about 42,000 troops from the forty-plus states constituting the International Security Assistance Force (although only a small fraction of the coalition’s non-U.S. forces has seen sustained combat). The United States and its allies (as well as third parties) are also training the Afghan army and police. Defense Department expenditures for this purpose totaled nearly $40 billion from 2002 to 2011 and are continuing. The United States and Afghanistan are seeking an arrangement that enables an unspecified number of American troops to remain beyond President Obama’s 2014 withdrawal deadline, but whatever eventually becomes of this effort, it is not premature to speak of a post-American Afghanistan.
In addition to the 10,000 troops withdrawn by the end of last year, 23,000 will have been removed by mid-2012. The current plan is to hand all significant responsibility for security to Afghan forces at the end of 2014. Things could change, of course, but given ongoing U.S. economic woes and the American public’s weariness over a war that has lasted a decade and cost some $476 billion, it’s a safe bet that the disengagement will continue even if Obama is not reelected, and regardless of the “situation on the ground.”
We also know something about the conditions that obtain in Afghanistan as the post-U.S. phase commences. The Taliban and other insurgents cannot be defeated or forced into a negotiated settlement by 2014. Even with Obama’s surge and the contribution of allies, there are insufficient troops to force a surrender or even to leverage a sustainable negotiated peace. A full American withdrawal, or a cutback to a small presence, will likely invigorate the main groups battling the United States and the Karzai government, the insurgents of the Haqqani clan and of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—both dating back to the mujaheddin war against the Red Army—and, of course, the Taliban. Despite the tough talk emanating intermittently from Washington’s corridors of power, the fact that American officials are lambasting the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies for aiding these groups while conducting back-channel talks with the most brazen of them, the Haqqanis, shows that a war-weary United States is looking to leave. Obama’s surge and his major acceleration of drone attacks in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan have undoubtedly put the insurgency on the defensive by killing many of its commanders and reducing the areas of its control in the south, and with that the capacity to launch large offensives. Yet the Taliban has replenished its ranks and changed tactics to suit new conditions and setbacks. It is increasing attacks in the west, north and center, where the density of foreign troops is lower, ramping up suicide bombings, attacking military installations and embassies, and assassinating senior Afghan politicians and administrators. Pace the logic underpinning the surge, what the Taliban have not shown, despite the additional military pressure placed on them, is any serious interest in a settlement. They may dangle that prospect for tactical and psychological reasons, but they have never shown any indication of sincerely embracing it.
The Taliban’s aim is not to defeat the American army; with only about 20,000 fighters, it cannot hope to do so. Its aim is rather to deplete the will of the United States and its allies and to erode support for the war among their citizens simply by demonstrating the continuing wherewithal to wreak havoc through selective violence. Once foreign forces leave, the insurgents expect to face a weak Afghan government whose legitimacy has already been badly compromised by incompetence and corruption. (This hardly means that the Taliban will necessarily seize power: The Afghan armed forces and militias loyal to warlords will resist them and will be backed by outsiders—but that is another matter.)
Faced with an unpopular regime, a preternaturally weak polity and a dogged insurgency, the United States and its allies have been training an Afghan army and police force (the target is 378,000 by the end of 2012) capable of keeping order and fighting insurgents once foreign forces leave. But this is a Herculean labor, and it is failing. Fifty-seven percent of Afghan males are illiterate, the nascent security forces face an attrition rate approaching 25 percent a year, the rottenness of the state threatens to either corrupt the military and police forces or entice them to seize power, and pervasive corruption enables infiltration by the insurgents. None of this is surprising. Any military force, particularly a new one, reflects the pathologies of its milieu. Afghanistan’s military is no different. What this means is that even if built up, the Afghan security forces could be undone by deeper problems that even extended tutelage by outsiders cannot fix.1
To fill the void created by the lack of sufficient indigenous military and police units, the United States and the Afghan government have been funding and training local militias under the “Afghan Local Police” program. Whatever the intent of the policy, these units have in practice been organized along ethnic and tribal lines. Along with the other makeshift forces that pervade Afghanistan, they are already acting as free agents, robbing and brutalizing the population, notwithstanding the supposed oversight by the Interior Ministry and local tribal councils.2 In a post-American Afghanistan their ties to the government may prove tenuous at best. If past patterns hold, their commanders are apt to align with neighboring states competing for influence in the country. If there’s one trait that defines the warlord, it’s equal-opportunity cynicism.
Scorpions in a Bottle
I
f conflict will not end inside Afghanistan, what does a post-American Afghanistan mean for the region? The short answer is a lot. For a longer answer, let’s start with India and Pakistan.
The India-Pakistan contest over Afghanistan, already well advanced, will int...
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