The graveyard of empires
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Arif Nizami
Afghanistan, "the graveyard of empires" where no foreign invader since Genghis Khan has been able to get a foothold, is a lost cause for the West. The unceremonious exit of the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal over his acerbic and unflattering remarks in a magazine interview about President Obama, Vice President Biden and key members of his Afghanistan team, is symptomatic of this failure.
The only debatable point left is not if, but when, the US and Nato troops will leave Afghanistan. Officially, the drawdown starts in July 2011, before Oabma's re-election for a second term. But Gen David H Petraeus who replaced McChrystal, in his confirmation hearings in the US Senate, claimed that the start of withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan was the "beginning of the process" and the US commitment to the country was an "enduring one." Thus, despite immense US domestic pressure to exit, the war that has become the longest war the US has fought on foreign soil could last still longer.
The endgame does not seem to be very rosy for the US and its allies. They have already lost more than 1,000 troops in combat. However, the goal to win the hearts and minds of Afghans has eluded the foreign forces. In fact, there is increasing skepticism even in the US about the COIN (counterinsurgency) strategy much touted by its author Gen Petreaus and by his disgraced predecessor Gen McChrystal.
In the meantime, the Pakistani army and its intelligence arm, the ISI, which have considered Afghanistan as the country's strategic depth, are pursuing with renewed vigour a peace mission of their own. According to media reports, belatedly denied by official military spokesmen but confirmed by US sources, the chief of the army staff, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, ably assisted by ISI chief Gen Shuja Pasha, are busy brokering a deal between the Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the Haqqani network headed by Sirajuddin Haqqani.
Al Jazeera TV ran a story the other day of the two Pakistani generals accompanying Haqqani to Kabul for a meeting with Karzai. Kabul and the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi vehemently denied the story. It had been reported by a section of the media that Gen Kayani was scheduled to make a trip to Kabul last Monday, but the visit did not materialise. By most accounts, efforts to broker a Karzai-Taliban coalition by Pakistan are being pursued with great urgency.
Interestingly, the foreign office in Islamabad is completely silent about the matter. Nor has the prime minister spoken on an issue vital to our national security. Afghanistan, as has been the norm, has either been completely outsourced by our civilian rulers to the army and the ISI. Or, the ostensible lack of interest in the matter is a result of a strategic understanding between the military and the civilian leadership.
Washington, naturally, is skeptical of these moves. CIA chief Leon Panetta in a recent interview expressed doubts about such initiatives succeeding at the present stage. According to him, unless the Taliban are beaten on the battleground they will not come to the conference table. President Obama, while echoing the same sentiments, has termed the talks as "a useful step."
Unlike George W Bush, who as president prematurely declared victory in Iraq, no one in the present administration is talking about "victory" even as a goal. In fact the roadmap has been scaled down to "progress," meaning that Afghan soil should no longer be used for terrorist acts against the US.
According to a report in the New York Times, talks being brokered by Gen Kayani and Gen Pasha are also meant to break the Taliban-Al Qaeda nexus by persuading Al Qaeda to relocate elsewhere. There is no guarantee that this is even possible. Those who express skepticism about Taliban-Karzai talks succeeding have a valid point. Why should the Taliban concede anything as long as they are gaining strength on the battlefield and the enemy is demoralised and divided?
On the flip side, whatever the Pakistani army does to facilitate a peace deal in Kabul, as long as Al Qaeda has sanctuaries in what Washington calls "the badlands of Pakistan," Islamabad is not going to get off the hook. Pressure on the Pakistani army to launch a putsch in North Waziristan is bound to increase in the coming months.
Gen Petraeus, unlike his predecessor, will push Gen Kayani with fresh zeal to "do more." War strategists in Washington are firm in their perception that Taliban-Al Qaeda sanctuaries have to be destroyed in the tribal areas of Pakistan to secure Afghanistan and obviate the possibility of further terrorist attacks on US soil from the region.
The Central Asian Republics led by Russia have their own axe to grind in the Afghan imbroglio. Their strategic interests in northern Afghanistan and proxies in the form of the Northern Alliance will not easily accept a government in Kabul in which the Pakhtun-dominated Taliban have a leading role. It is also not clear how Mullah Omar and Gulbadin Hekmatyar will be brought on board.
India historically has well entrenched economic and strategic interests in Afghanistan, which will be hard to ignore by Kabul. It will be a Herculean task for Islamabad to convince Kabul to ask New Delhi, which is the second-largest foreign investor in Afghanistan, to close down its consulates, or even scale down its presence.
Gen Petraeus, after being unanimously confirmed by the Senate, is reaching Kabul accompanied by Gen McChrystal's bete noire, America's ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. The "warrior diplomat," as Gen Petraeus is known, made it a point to also bring Richard Holbrooke on board.
Despite this rare display of unity amongst Obama's Afghanistan team, there are underlying differences. President Obama's special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan is disliked in both the countries. Karzai resents Holbrooke's overbearing and meddlesome attitude more akin to that of the fictional "ugly American." He has not forgiven Holbrooke for questioning the legitimacy of his re-election last year.
Last month, when Holbrooke came on his eleventh visit to Islamabad, he was made to wait two days before he could meet Gen Kayani, who naturally feels more comfortable with his counterparts in the US military. In this backdrop, speculations that Holbrooke will have to be replaced are not without foundation. The nomination of presumptive US ambassador to Islamabad Cameron Hume has also been dropped owing to his reported terrible temper.
Pakistan's wish list in Afghanistan seems a tall order. Gen Kayani is due to retire in November this year. If he can pull off a workable peace deal virtually at the end of his military career he will certainly make history--both as a general who successfully led his army to fight the Taliban in Pakistan but also as one who brokered a peace deal in Afghanistan with the Taliban. At the present juncture these seem mutually exclusive goals.
The writer is a former newspaper editor. Email: arifn51@h otmail.com
The graveyard of empires
The graveyard of empires
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