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The Realist Prism: The Najibullah Exit Strategy in Afghanistan
Nikolas Gvosdev| 23 Jul 2010
The 2014 Afghan security plan unveiled by President Hamid Karzai this week at the international conference in Kabul raises once again the question of whether the U.S. and NATO are moving towards a 21st century variant of the "Najibullah strategy" as they seek to determine their end game in Afghanistan.
The reference is to the regime of Mohamed Najibullah, the Afghan leader at the time the Soviet Union withdrew its combat forces from Afghanistan in 1989. The Afghan government that the Soviets left behind controlled the major population centers as well as some of the rural regions of the country, primarily in the non-Pashtun north and west, and had a tenuous hold over the major lines of communication. The Najibullah regime had inherited a generous amount of military equipment, including aircraft and even SCUD missiles. The government in Kabul was also heavily subsidized by Moscow, subsidies that helped it secure the support of local powerbrokers and purchase the allegiance of insurgent commanders.
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Can Obama learn from Soviets how to withdraw from Afghanistan?
Dec 11, 2009 08:26 EST
President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will begin pulling its troops out Afghanistan in 2011 provides a good opportunity to look back and study history. This will, after all, be the second time Afghans have bid farewell to a superpower, and Nikolai Gvosdev in Foreign Affairs offers an interesting take on what happened the last time, when the Soviets pulled out in 1989.
The man the Soviets left in charge was Mohammad Najibullah, who clung to power for three more years, then sheltered for another four years in the U.N. compound in Kabul, before finally ending up strung up by the Taliban from a Kabul traffic lamp in 1996. Najibullah’s grisly end means his career hardly seems like one that President Hamid Karzai would want to emulate. Yet Gvosdev’s account is a reminder that Najibullah actually held on to power far longer than most in the West expected. His government in fact actually outlasted the Soviet Union itself, which collapsed in 1991.
In Gvosdev’s account, the key to Najibullah’s success lay in part in lavishing funds on tribal and provincial chiefs. That tactic became impossible after the Soviet Union disintegrated and the money dried up. Even so, Najibullah might have still hung on had Pakistan not been given free rein by the West to back the Mujahideen that unseated him.
These days, Najibullah is actually quite a popular figure in Kabul. You can spot his moustachioed face on faded posters tucked into windows or peeling from the walls of cafes. The West may automatically loathe anyone with a Soviet taint, but Afghans can be forgiven for comparing Najibullah favourably to the horrendous leadership that followed — especially the bloodbath unleashed by the feuding warlords who toppled him. The period from 1992-96, when Kabul neighbourhoods were flattened by rival ethnic militia commanders firing from surrounding hilltops, was probably the darkest night of Afghanistan’s 30 years of war. Afghans of all communities have a visceral fear of a return to that time, which is why so many backed the Taliban’s rise to power in 1996 and why even Karzai’s fiercest rivals in this year’s presidential election rarely sought votes by threatening to call their followers out onto the streets.
Unlike the Soviet Union, the United States is presumably not going to disintegrate within two years of pulling its troops out of Afghanistan. Nor is Pakistan likely ever again to be given as free a rein as it had in the early ’90s to back guerrillas fighting to topple its neighbour. The U.S. withdrawal will be gradual, not abrupt, and this time the West’s aid money — a bargain compared to the war — can keep flowing more or less indefinitely.
Perhaps Karzai — and Obama — could do a lot worse than to study Najibullah’s career, to see how to keep Afghanistan together when the superpower exits.
(Above: A portrait of former Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah appears pasted in a Kabul window, Dec. 11, 2009. Photo by Peter Graff, Reuters)
http://blogs.reuters.com/afghanistan...m-afghanistan/
Nikolas Gvosdev| 23 Jul 2010
The 2014 Afghan security plan unveiled by President Hamid Karzai this week at the international conference in Kabul raises once again the question of whether the U.S. and NATO are moving towards a 21st century variant of the "Najibullah strategy" as they seek to determine their end game in Afghanistan.
The reference is to the regime of Mohamed Najibullah, the Afghan leader at the time the Soviet Union withdrew its combat forces from Afghanistan in 1989. The Afghan government that the Soviets left behind controlled the major population centers as well as some of the rural regions of the country, primarily in the non-Pashtun north and west, and had a tenuous hold over the major lines of communication. The Najibullah regime had inherited a generous amount of military equipment, including aircraft and even SCUD missiles. The government in Kabul was also heavily subsidized by Moscow, subsidies that helped it secure the support of local powerbrokers and purchase the allegiance of insurgent commanders.
__________________________________________
Can Obama learn from Soviets how to withdraw from Afghanistan?
Dec 11, 2009 08:26 EST
President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will begin pulling its troops out Afghanistan in 2011 provides a good opportunity to look back and study history. This will, after all, be the second time Afghans have bid farewell to a superpower, and Nikolai Gvosdev in Foreign Affairs offers an interesting take on what happened the last time, when the Soviets pulled out in 1989.
The man the Soviets left in charge was Mohammad Najibullah, who clung to power for three more years, then sheltered for another four years in the U.N. compound in Kabul, before finally ending up strung up by the Taliban from a Kabul traffic lamp in 1996. Najibullah’s grisly end means his career hardly seems like one that President Hamid Karzai would want to emulate. Yet Gvosdev’s account is a reminder that Najibullah actually held on to power far longer than most in the West expected. His government in fact actually outlasted the Soviet Union itself, which collapsed in 1991.In Gvosdev’s account, the key to Najibullah’s success lay in part in lavishing funds on tribal and provincial chiefs. That tactic became impossible after the Soviet Union disintegrated and the money dried up. Even so, Najibullah might have still hung on had Pakistan not been given free rein by the West to back the Mujahideen that unseated him.
These days, Najibullah is actually quite a popular figure in Kabul. You can spot his moustachioed face on faded posters tucked into windows or peeling from the walls of cafes. The West may automatically loathe anyone with a Soviet taint, but Afghans can be forgiven for comparing Najibullah favourably to the horrendous leadership that followed — especially the bloodbath unleashed by the feuding warlords who toppled him. The period from 1992-96, when Kabul neighbourhoods were flattened by rival ethnic militia commanders firing from surrounding hilltops, was probably the darkest night of Afghanistan’s 30 years of war. Afghans of all communities have a visceral fear of a return to that time, which is why so many backed the Taliban’s rise to power in 1996 and why even Karzai’s fiercest rivals in this year’s presidential election rarely sought votes by threatening to call their followers out onto the streets.
Unlike the Soviet Union, the United States is presumably not going to disintegrate within two years of pulling its troops out of Afghanistan. Nor is Pakistan likely ever again to be given as free a rein as it had in the early ’90s to back guerrillas fighting to topple its neighbour. The U.S. withdrawal will be gradual, not abrupt, and this time the West’s aid money — a bargain compared to the war — can keep flowing more or less indefinitely.
Perhaps Karzai — and Obama — could do a lot worse than to study Najibullah’s career, to see how to keep Afghanistan together when the superpower exits.
(Above: A portrait of former Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah appears pasted in a Kabul window, Dec. 11, 2009. Photo by Peter Graff, Reuters)
http://blogs.reuters.com/afghanistan...m-afghanistan/
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