Power sharing is the natural outgrowth of a political/military impasse. It is essentially already occurring at the local level, with the Taliban wielding substantial governing authority in at least a third of Afghanistan’s districts. Rather than trying to evict the Taliban from the territory of the largely supportive Pashtun population, the United States and the Afghanistan central government should acknowledge that renegade Pashtuns--not groups of international terrorists, but nationalist insurgents--have earned the right to participate in government in some capacity. (Karzai, notably, is himself an ethnic Pashtun, but has long feuded with the Taliban, and the post-2001 governmental structure has strongly favored former warlords and his close allies.) In some areas, the Taliban has acted as a local government--keeping order, providing services, mediating disputes, etc.--and, in others, it is confined to anti-government propaganda and violence. But, through participation in government, its actions can be evaluated by the people and observed by the global community. The Taliban should not, of course, be allowed to take over--but a group with a constituency should be allowed to at least try, under a representative system, to participate in governance subject to the expressed will of the people. Whether that simply means greater opportunities for engagement or formalization of political powers for certain demographics--as there is in Iraq, for example--should be up for debate and negotiation, but political process must be the focus, rather than pure military goals. Like most Americans, I have nothing but enmity for anyone even tangentially involved in the terrorist attacks against the United States, but achieving our strategic goals often requires dealing with people we find repellent.
Some kind of political compromise is unavoidable no matter what the United States does, but, if we acknowledge that, we can influence how it is forged. This is the very lesson of Iraq--not, as many claim, that a troop increase will turn the tides. Rather than destroying the Iraqi insurgency, we split the nationalists from the (very small number of) international terrorists by engaging the former group politically and focusing military efforts against the latter. We offered disaffected Sunnis a voice in government, encouraged them to take part in the political process, and insisted upon enforcement of an Iraqi constitution that protects their rights--all despite Saddam's Sunni-dominated murderous reign. We also gave money and arms to Sunnis in exchange for their efforts against foreign fighters, and we ultimately established a withdrawal timetable that demonstrated to each side that political compromise was necessary immediately. Whether these approaches will be vindicated in the coming years is an open question, but it helped begin to shift the method of conflict from violence to politics.
Of course, for insurgents to come to the bargaining table, they must believe they cannot win. Whether they are at that point now is an open question, and, if they are not, then increasing American troop levels could both demonstrate U.S. resolve and set back the insurgents enough to convince them that they can either negotiate and participate in governance or face an indefinite U.S. troop presence. It must also be clear that any support of international terrorism will engender immediate and severe consequences. And a political solution would need support from international institutions, regional allies, and substantial economic and humanitarian aid. It is not an easy goal, nor one that will happen productively by itself, but it is worth doing, and worth doing right.
If I were to blindly go along with the current discourse on Afghanistan, I would also say that this moment represents our Last Chance to Get It Right. But the reality is that political compromise will happen at some point, and, even if it doesn’t happen now, little will change in the near-term. The question then becomes, how many lives, how much money, and how much strategic energy will we expend in the meantime?
A.J. Rossmiller is a fellow at the National Security Network, a former intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the author of Still Broken: A Recruit’s Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon.
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COMMENTS (9)
Let's be optimistic. Today we face critical junctures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two years from now we can face critical junctures in Iran, North Korea and Pakistan too. Or, if the neo-conservatives win the debate, add Venezuela and Georgia. And they have every reason to be optimistic don't they?
Also, that will solve the problems about where to get the money for healthcare, environmental and education reform, right? There won't be any. It will all be tied up in the tens of trillions of dollars we'll need to meet the Defense Department budget around the globe.
You can't put a price on freedom, right?
Sorry, I keep bringing up the part about the money, Wall Street and the military industrial comp ... view full comment
Let's be optimistic. Today we face critical junctures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two years from now we can face critical junctures in Iran, North Korea and Pakistan too. Or, if the neo-conservatives win the debate, add Venezuela and Georgia. And they have every reason to be optimistic don't they?
Also, that will solve the problems about where to get the money for healthcare, environmental and education reform, right? There won't be any. It will all be tied up in the tens of trillions of dollars we'll need to meet the Defense Department budget around the globe.
You can't put a price on freedom, right?
Sorry, I keep bringing up the part about the money, Wall Street and the military industrial complex because no one here at TNR sems to think that plays any role at all in it.
george walton
Excellent essay and an important point--"The Taliban", to the quite real extent that they represent the traditional fighters of the Pashtun nation of more than 40 millions living as they have always done on both sides of the Durand Line, will no more be "defeated" now by foreigners than they have been since Alexander the Great. The sooner we dispense with this hubristic will-o-the-wisp, the better.
Small exception to the application of the traditional ratio of counter-insurgents to insurgents necessary, though. The geographical and cultural realities of Afghanistan, and the development of modern tools like drones, mean that we do not require a uniform presence of troops everywhere. Protecting ... view full comment
Excellent essay and an important point--"The Taliban", to the quite real extent that they represent the traditional fighters of the Pashtun nation of more than 40 millions living as they have always done on both sides of the Durand Line, will no more be "defeated" now by foreigners than they have been since Alexander the Great. The sooner we dispense with this hubristic will-o-the-wisp, the better.
Small exception to the application of the traditional ratio of counter-insurgents to insurgents necessary, though. The geographical and cultural realities of Afghanistan, and the development of modern tools like drones, mean that we do not require a uniform presence of troops everywhere. Protecting the population centers while allowing specialized assets to head-hunt theater wide means we can probably sustain a successful effort with fewer than the half-million or so the ratio would indicate as necessary, especially if we can dramatically increase the size of the Afghan security forces .
In my view the single most effective move we could make would be to drop entirely our ridiculous, immoral, and counter-effective "war on drugs". Attempting to shift blame for drug abuse from recreational users in wealthy countries to starving farmers in the Third World has undermined our friends and helped our worst enemies world-wide.
I agree, Bob, but the idea that Afghan forces are going to be competent AND reliable is a bit of a stretch, I think.
No, we're going to be there a good while, making sure that, at a minimum, Afghan territory is not used to plot against us. Beyond that, the Pashtuns should be let alone as much as we can. But we've got to stay, because if we leave, the Paks will cut a deal with their Taliban, and we'll be right back where we were on 9/10.
The real question is, should we send more troops now, and the POTUS is dithering, as Dems do when confronted by war. I suspect he will give McChrystal what he says he needs, but we shall see?
What say you?
BTW, Geaux Gators!
I agree, Bob, but the idea that Afghan forces are going to be competent AND reliable is a bit of a stretch, I think.
No, we're going to be there a good while, making sure that, at a minimum, Afghan territory is not used to plot against us. Beyond that, the Pashtuns should be let alone as much as we can. But we've got to stay, because if we leave, the Paks will cut a deal with their Taliban, and we'll be right back where we were on 9/10.
The real question is, should we send more troops now, and the POTUS is dithering, as Dems do when confronted by war. I suspect he will give McChrystal what he says he needs, but we shall see?
What say you?
BTW, Geaux Gators!
"the Paks will cut a deal with their Taliban, and we'll be right back where we were on 9/10."
No we won't.
On 9/10 there wasn't a focused worldwide manhunt for Al Qaeda, on 9/10, we allowed a radically fundamentalist regime to take over and largely run an entire country. If we mostly pull out of Afghanistan, the world will still hunt Al Qaeda and I doubt Europe would be super psyched to allow the Taliban to take over Kabul (not that they could anyway).
This global hegemony crap is ridiculous, makes us weaker.
"the Paks will cut a deal with their Taliban, and we'll be right back where we were on 9/10."
No we won't.
On 9/10 there wasn't a focused worldwide manhunt for Al Qaeda, on 9/10, we allowed a radically fundamentalist regime to take over and largely run an entire country. If we mostly pull out of Afghanistan, the world will still hunt Al Qaeda and I doubt Europe would be super psyched to allow the Taliban to take over Kabul (not that they could anyway).
This global hegemony crap is ridiculous, makes us weaker.
Please stop comparing Iraq to Afghanistan. What is now Iraq has historically been successfully conquered many times, unlike Afghanistan.
If the hereditary Popalzai Durrani Pashtun King Karzai cannot figure out how to reconcile even the southern Pashtuns, then remove the pressure on his network of warlords while legalizing the Afghan opium crop for medicinal use.
or redraw the map. erase the Durand line and call it Pashtunistan. let Iran have Herat. relocate all Hazara to Mongolia to avoid more Hazara genocide. hope the Uzbeks and Tajiks can reach agreement in the north. let China have the eastern finger "where three empires met" as a permanent military base.
and wait for the return of Bab ... view full comment
Please stop comparing Iraq to Afghanistan. What is now Iraq has historically been successfully conquered many times, unlike Afghanistan.
If the hereditary Popalzai Durrani Pashtun King Karzai cannot figure out how to reconcile even the southern Pashtuns, then remove the pressure on his network of warlords while legalizing the Afghan opium crop for medicinal use.
or redraw the map. erase the Durand line and call it Pashtunistan. let Iran have Herat. relocate all Hazara to Mongolia to avoid more Hazara genocide. hope the Uzbeks and Tajiks can reach agreement in the north. let China have the eastern finger "where three empires met" as a permanent military base.
and wait for the return of Babur, vastly preferable to the reincarnation of Tamerlane.
K2K is totally right by asserting that Iraq is nothing like Afghanistan, the only thing they have in common is that they're both really f**king far away, besides that, there's little else in comparing them.
K2K is totally right by asserting that Iraq is nothing like Afghanistan, the only thing they have in common is that they're both really f**king far away, besides that, there's little else in comparing them.
It is self-evidently true that Iraq is not Afghanistan. For our purposes, the main difference is that Iraq is a relatively literate and modern country sitting on the fulcrum of the world economy and representing the heartland of Islam, while Afghanistan is a wild, ungovernable place as the ass-end of nowhere, with a mostly illiterate population competing with Bangladesh, Somalia, and Congo for the bottom in most measures of development. We can probably get useful Afghan forces up if we concentrate on local self-defense units rather than the "central government".
The idea that Afghanistan can provide a unique sort of haven for AQ is at odds with reality. The 9/11 attacks came primarily from Ha ... view full comment
It is self-evidently true that Iraq is not Afghanistan. For our purposes, the main difference is that Iraq is a relatively literate and modern country sitting on the fulcrum of the world economy and representing the heartland of Islam, while Afghanistan is a wild, ungovernable place as the ass-end of nowhere, with a mostly illiterate population competing with Bangladesh, Somalia, and Congo for the bottom in most measures of development. We can probably get useful Afghan forces up if we concentrate on local self-defense units rather than the "central government".
The idea that Afghanistan can provide a unique sort of haven for AQ is at odds with reality. The 9/11 attacks came primarily from Hamburg. The sort of planning and training done for it could just as easily have been done in a hotel room and on the internet. Afghanistan is important for us primarily, if not exclusively, because of Pakistan. Secondarily, it provides us with a place to practice and demonstrate our military capabilities.
I gotta go with Bob's assessment above. I have nothing against more troops going to Afghanistan if it were for protection of the major population centers and development. Turn Kabul into what passes for modern in that part of the world, and use our drones to take out any Taliban foolish enough to build bases.
I gotta go with Bob's assessment above. I have nothing against more troops going to Afghanistan if it were for protection of the major population centers and development. Turn Kabul into what passes for modern in that part of the world, and use our drones to take out any Taliban foolish enough to build bases.
What Powell says, and blackton...
What Powell says, and blackton...