US's Afghan strategy based on false premise about Pashtuns: By Jan Assakzai

[janassakzai200@gamil.com]

The US is not winning in Afghanistan: it is not only because of its flawed strategy but also because of its strategy being based on false premise.

The US and NATO assume that Afghan Taliban are the reaction of Pakhtuns towards the US. Washington believe that it is the Taliban that represent the 15 million Pakhtuns in Afghanistan.

They ingored the fact that Paksitan's establishment uses proxies(first Mujahideen, later, The Taliban) in Afghanistan and (LeT etc) in India to project its influence as foreign policy tool. This has been its guiding policy for the past over three decades. The purpose is to obtain strategic depth in Afghanistan and to contain India's military superiority through non-state irregular forces.

Interestingly, this projection of Pakhtuns have been promoted by the Pakistan's 'security' analysts and pro- establishment media-(by the way this article will never find a place in the mainstream media as it is considered editorially "biased").

From grand strategic point of view, the Taliban emerged in Afghanistan mainly as a result of the US abandonment of Afghanistan following the Soviet Union's withdrawal.
But It was Pakistan's establishment that promoted the Taliban as the sole Pakhtun opposition in Afghanistan. There were moderate Pakhtun leaders like Zahir Shah, Current Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his late father Ahad Karzai. In the south east was another Pakhtun leader Abdul Haq who was later allegedly killed by the Taliban.

Pakistani intelligence agencies mounted a massive public relation campaigns for the Taliban by conducting seminars, publishing books, writing articles, and launching other publications. Zarb-e-Moman was launched to propagated the operational successes of the Taliban. It was a time when there was no single major Pakhtun publication not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan.

The pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F) was even prevented to establish relations with the Afghan Taliban. One of the top leaders of JUI(F) who is a sitting senator told this scribe off the record that ISI gave a list of particular Pakistani Ulemas to Mulla Omar to exclusively keep contacts with. According to him all those Ulemas were apolitical figures and were under the spill of the ISI.


Afghan watchers vividly recall that low level ISI officers like Col. Imam were more famous in Afghanistan than Pakistan.

Accordingly thousands of FC personnel were sent to Afghanistan to help push the Taliban drive against the Northern alliance. There were at least three thousands Pakistani para-military troopers fighting along the Taliban in the North of Afghanistan. At the time of the fall of Kunduz to the Northern Alliance, Gen Perves Musharraf had sent a special plane to pick them which also include some senior military strategists guiding the Taliban attacks. Gen Musharraf especially sought the US permission for their evacuation, though Islamabad vehemently denied this.

Almost every madrassa was closed in Northern Balochistan, FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to join the Taliban assault after the fall of Kabul.

This scribe himself witnessed the "Taliban" from Punjab and Sindh in Kandhar in early 1990s particularly their number considerably grew at the time of the first US attack on Afghanistan under the Clinton administration.

The Pakhtuns image was even more tarnished during Gen Musharraf who openly said that Pakhtuns are the Taliban and the Taliban are Pakhtuns.
Following Sept 11 attacks, Gen Musharraf joined the US alliance yet continued to support the Taliban.

The top leadership of the Taliban were allowed to establish Quetta Shora. Northern Balochistan served as sanctuary for the retreating Taliban-where they took rest, recruited and resupplied.
FATA was turned into a defacto headquarter of al Qaeda and the Haqqani Network which started operating in the neighbouring provinces of the Loya Paktia region in Afghanistan extending its reach to as far off places in Kabul and other neighboring provinces. Even some pro-establishment newspapers openly started to use " Mujaheddin" for the Taliban to highlight their successes.

Why it is a miss-perception that Pakhtuns are supporting the Taliban, is because there is a sole monopoly of the Taliban who created terror and intimidation among the hearts of Pakhtuns population. Over the last twenty years Pakistan only supported one political and military entity among Pakhtuns in Afghanistan : the Taliban.

As a policy, It promoted extremism on both side of the border. In Afghanistan’s south, it defeated Pakhtun nationalists and progressive strands but in Pakistan it could not completely wipe out as the history of Pakhtun nationalism went back to over 100 years.

After Sept 11, when the US and NATO came into Afghanistan they did not provide alternative socio-economic model to Pakhtuns. The efforts of the US and NATO in establishing Afghan military force were too late and too little to balance and then contain the Taliban.

It is like arguing that Pakhtuns in FATA support al Qaeda, and the Taliban. But the truth is the opposite. Pakistan allowed the sole monopoly of religious groups and later militants to dominate the Pakhtuns while denying the moderate and democratic politicians and anti militant groups to operate in FATA for geo-political reasons. Why because FATA was meant to support proxy Taliban effort in Afghanistan. It was the backwater.

In the south of Afghanistan every tribal, political leader, activists even teachers who opposed the Taliban were killed.

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been accusations by a British officer that Pakistani and Iranian made IEDs were used to kill British troops, according to well respected British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph (July 2).

But Pakistan denies all these allegations. Islamabad also denied initially that there was any al Qaeda operatives or Afghan Taliban in North Waziristan or Quetta was the base of the Taliban's Shora. In strategic parlance, the "plausible denialability" has been the guiding principle of Pakistan's pro-Taliban policy right from the beginning.

Unfortunately, the US and NATO also bought into these myths and ignored millions of Pakhtuns men and women in Afghanistan who braved the threats of the Taliban and cast votes in every presidential elections. If they were the Taliban or the Taliban supporters or were the Taliban sympathisers then why they voted moderate leader like Hamid Karzai despite the boycott of the Taliban. The premise that the Taliban are the extension of the Pakhtuns is insult to those millions of Pakhtuns who voted for Karzai.

But these arguments are irrelevant as long as there is a sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan. This is also the reason that the TTP is still alive and kicking as it enjoys a safe haven in FATA where the army has prematurely declared victories all allowed its friendly warlord to continue to run their own Islamic Emarat of Waziristan..

The US counter insurgency experience in Vietnam also could not remove Laos and Cambodia as sanctuary from the equation providing opportunity to rebels to re-group and resupply. The FARC rebels in Colombia is another example.

Unless, the US and NATO re-evaluate their assumptions about Pakhtuns in Afghanistan, any readjustment in their counter insurgency strategy may be an exercise in futility, as all roads to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and its possible diffusion go through Islamabad. (Source: FP)
janassakzai200@gmail.com

[janassakzai200@gamil.com]

US strategy in Afghanistan is flawed: By Jan Assakzai

(Source: The Friday Times, July 2-8)

Gen McChrystal provided an opportunity for President Obama to turn his back, once again, on the effectiveness of the war strategy

The commander of US Forces-Afghanistan and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force General Stanley McChrystal apparently left President Obama little choice after making blatantly critical remarks about senior administration officials in an inflammatory Rolling Stone magazine interview.
The departure of Gen McChrystal is unlikely to affect the US withdrawal timetable in Afghanistan. In any case, Washington seeks to extricate itself from Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as it can to restore its strategic “reserves”.

US watchers do not believe that President Obama’s decision to remove Gen McChrystal and replace him with Gen David Petraeus was an overnight one, the US Central Command Chief who conceived, formulated and executed the current strategy in Afghanistan. After all, Gen McChrystal also subscribed to the same strategy.

The underlying issue is that the US-led effort in Afghanistan has limited prospects for success. Gen McChrystal’s comments simply provided an opportunity for President Obama to turn his back once again on the prosecution of the war, and the effectiveness of the strategy guiding that effort.

The concept was to establish security while winning over the population, and then quickly and aggressively establish basic governance, civil authority and development projects. As in Iraq, it did not seek to impose a military reality, but to create pockets of security to facilitate political reconciliation.

However, the Marja operation seriously questioned the implementation of this policy. Marja became what Gen McChrystal called a “living ulcer”. The Americans could not easily undermine the Taliban’s operational ability or carve out security pockets and failed to move to civil governance as envisaged.

The delay of the long-anticipated Kandahar offensive also came in on the heels of other strategic lessons learned from the Marja experience. It raised serious questions about the effectiveness of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police and their ability to take on additional responsibility.

Gen McChrystal’s resignation came at a time when the Taliban perceived themselves as victorious. Perceptions are growing within the West, and Afghanistan’s neighbours that NATO is losing the war, whereas Afghans remain deeply sceptical of the US commitment to Afghanistan.

Another blow came in the shape of the US programme contracting out more than 70 percent of logistics to Afghan trucking companies. It is seen to be funding both warlord militias independent of the Afghan security forces, and indirectly the Taliban. It also risks undermining the attempt to establish good governance and civil authority central to the ultimate success of the US exit strategy, in addition to bolstering the Taliban’s resources and support bases.

The lack of a decisive success and the delay of the Kandahar security offensive means perceptions are shifting in the Taliban’s favour, casting a big question mark on the prospects of success of the US and its allies. The war of perceptions in Afghanistan is critical, where the US and NATO have ambitious goals but tight time tables.

Intelligence has been at the heart of the US challenges in Afghanistan, a fact that was clear from the beginning of the strategy. But slower progress in Marja and the Kandahar offensive has raised serious questions about the accuracy of US intelligence and the mismatch between the local perceptions of the people and US strategy. Security is proving elusive and the population does not appear to be willing to join the side of the Afghan government yet, due to fear and intimidation of the Taliban.

With the elusive progress in southern Afghanistan, political settlement is becoming an increasingly central component of the exit strategy. This is the US State Department’s main focus, and there appears to be considerable US support behind Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s reconciliation efforts.

The Taliban are very aware of the tight US timetable. They appear to be maintaining a significant degree of internal discipline and have not let the US block reconcilable elements, as the Americans had originally hoped.

To the dismay of President Karzai, Gen McChrystal was a loyal commander and Karzai now has to work with his replacement and create new understandings. For Pakistan’s Army Chief Gen Kayani, the resignation of Gen McChrystal serves as another moment for glee. Gen Kayani knows that the US cannot manage a graceful exit from Afghanistan without the active cooperation of Pakistan Army. Ultimately, unmanned border crossing points between Pakistan and Afghanistan mean the Taliban insurgency across the border can not be diffused without denying sanctuary that enables them to regroup, re-arm and resupply.

Gen McCrystal’s unceremonious departure drove home the message for President Obama that ultimately the strategy Washington selected to achieve demonstrable results quickly is flawed. The Afghans may not be entirely uninterested in coalition offers, but the socio-political alternative that Washington is offering is simply not compelling. Any adjustment to the US strategy at this late stage will simply reinforce the perception that the US and NATO are not winning.

Jan Assakzai is a London-based analyst and can be contacted atjanassakzai200@gmail.com