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New Plan for Afghanistan

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  • Tuesday, November 4, 2008

A New Plan for Afghanistan

By MUNIR AKRAM | Wall Street Journal Asia

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Whoever is elected president of the United States this week will face imposing challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan that require a new and comprehensive foreign policy strategy. Such a strategy will, by necessity, break away from the current political misperceptions and military missteps, and embrace a deeper understanding of the culture, traditions, needs and political motivations of both nations.

 

Conducting business as usual will be a recipe for disaster. From my perspective as a long-time Pakistani diplomat, here are 10 elements for a new, realistic and successful regional strategy for the candidates to consider:

 

1. Understand the difference between the Taliban and al Qaeda, then focus on eliminating al Qaeda. We need a realistic approach to the Taliban. It is al Qaeda, not the Taliban, that threatens the U.S. homeland. Separating al Qaeda from the Taliban will make it easier for the U.S., Pakistan and allied intelligence, police and military operations to disrupt the group's operational system.

 

2. Open negotiations with the Taliban. The insurgency in south and east Afghanistan was initially confined to Taliban fighters, although most Pashtuns there and in the northern Pakistan were unhappy at the U.S.-sponsored ejection of the Pashtun Taliban regime by the Tajik-led Northern Alliance. A series of political and military mistakes, however, by the U.S.-led NATO forces, and the corruption and incompetence of Kabul, have combined to alienate the entire populace of the region and to transform the insurgency virtually into a Pashtun war of liberation. Foreign forces have never pacified this region and U.S.-NATO forces will not succeed in doing so, either.

 

The offer made last week by the Afghan-Pakistan Jirga, a tribal council, to open talks with the Taliban, and the U.S.'s willingness to consider this, are welcome signs of realism. While negotiations should be pursued from a position of strength, preconditions and exclusions will doom them before they begin.

 

Also, negotiations cannot be credibly pursued by Kabul, Islamabad, the U.S., NATO, not even the U.N. A commission, composed of respected Pashtun leaders, Islamic scholars and neutral personalities, should be created to conduct unconditional talks with the Taliban and seek an immediate cessation of attacks and suicide bombings. The Taliban will expect to share power and will demand the withdrawal of foreign forces. A reasonable time frame for such withdrawal could be linked to their cooperation in restoring peace and stability and creation of a credible Afghan Army.

 

3. Revise U.S.-NATO military strategy. Aerial action, which has led to high civilian causalities, should be the exception, not the rule. At present, NATO garrisons should be deployed in credible strength in a limited number of locations to be used for protective or punitive purposes. Eventually, a credible and genuinely national Afghan Army will enable foreign forces to undertake an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan.

 

4. Reform the Afghan security apparatus. The Defense, Intelligence and Interior Departments cannot continue to be left in the hands of the Panjsheri faction of the Northern Alliance, which has an anti-Pashtun and anti-Pakistan agenda. The officer corps of the fledging Afghan Army should reflect Afghanistan's ethnic composition, including the Pashtuns, if it is to be a genuine national institution.

 

5. An effective war must be launched against drugs, criminality and corruption. This is a principal cause feeding popular disaffection and insurgency. Rather than destroy poppy fields, the crops of the poorest farmers could be purchased for less than $500 million by the U.N. for medicinal use. In a dialogue with the Taliban, perhaps a first proposal should be joint action against drug cultivation and trafficking.

 

6. Peace will have to be built locally. Throughout history, Afghanistan's tribes have resisted strong central control and agreed to be governed loosely from Kabul. Peace will have to be built region by region through power-sharing arrangements among the most influential people in each area, including tribal and religious leaders.

 

7. The U.S. should resist the temptation to intervene unilaterally against the so-called safe havens in Pakistan. It should help Pakistan address the militancy itself in its frontier regions. The situation there is extremely complex. U.S. reluctance to provide Pakistan with advanced counter-insurgency equipment and technology, and to share real-time intelligence, enhances a suspicion in some Pakistani quarters that the U.S. or some of its agencies may be complicit with the Afghans and Indians in seeking to destabilize Pakistan. Under these circumstances, unilateral U.S. intervention in Pakistan will intensify tensions between the two countries with potentially dangerous consequences.

 

8. Adopt a positive agenda to secure Pakistan's effective cooperation. A centerpiece should be a massive program (cost: $20 billion) for Pakistan's economic stabilization and rapid growth and development (cost around $10 billion annually), as well as preferential market advancement and investment flows.

 

9. Pursue a policy of equity between Pakistan and India. A major impediment to a positive Pakistani role in the region is the growing, if unspoken, fear in Islamabad of the implications of the strategic relationship that is developing between the U.S. and India, epitomized by the recent Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. The U.S. can regain considerable good will and leverage with Pakistan if it adopts a policy of equitable treatment for India and Pakistan on technology, trade and military issues.

 

10. Support regional security cooperation. Neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan can be stabilized while the intelligence agencies of regional states continue their activities against each other. To this end, a conference should be convened with neighboring countries and other major powers to agree on regional security arrangements that ensure respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Afghanistan and Pakistan and noninterference in their internal affairs. This should be accompanied by an agreement to promote Afghanistan and Pakistan as the hub for trade and transit between South and Central Asia, China and the Gulf. This could lay the foundation for durable peace and economic dynamism.

 

As the U.S. continues to review its policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there must be movement toward a more realistic strategy. To sweep away the conservative Islamic nature of Afghan society is not possible. Therefore, the U.S. needs to focus on fighting al Qaeda, separate it from the Taliban and, if possible, secure their cooperation in stabilizing the region. The next administration in the White House will need to revise the military's approach, build peace locally in Afghanistan, have a positive agenda toward Pakistan and build a regional consensus for peace among local actors. Only then will peace and stability be achieved.

Mr. Akram is former Permanent Representative to the United Nations from Pakistan.

 

 

 

  • Friday, November 14, 2008

How to Win in Afghanistan

A minisurge is not enough. We need more Afghan security forces.

By MICHAEL O'HANLON

 

The war in Afghanistan is not going well, and the critical problem is the same one that dogged our efforts in Iraq for years: grossly inadequate troop levels. Western troop totals there have just inched over 60,000, while Afghan security forces total some 140,000.

 

Let's put this into perspective: We are trying to do with 200,000 personnel what it took 700,000 soldiers and police (plus 100,000 "volunteers") to accomplish in Iraq. But Afghanistan is even larger than Iraq, and more populous.

 

President-elect Barack Obama has wisely promised an increase in U.S. forces for Afghanistan. But his proposed minisurge of perhaps 15,000 more troops, on top of the 30,000 Americans and 30,000 NATO personnel now there, will not suffice as a strategy. More is needed.

 

To be sure, it is not all about numbers. As Gen. David Petraeus has already underscored, Afghanistan is not Iraq, and what worked in one place may not succeed in another. Among other things, the Pakistan sanctuary enjoyed by Taliban fighters, as well as partisans supporting Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other warlords, complicates the Afghan situation enormously. That said, basic principles of counterinsurgency and stabilization do have a general applicability across missions. The size of security forces always matters.

 

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finally reached a decision late this summer to help the Afghans double the size of their Army, a policy that will bring their own total security forces to 200,000. Coupled with the two to three additional brigades of American GIs expected to go to Afghanistan in the coming months, we will collectively reach some 275,000 total coalition troops -- an improvement, but still less than half of what has been needed in the smaller country of Iraq.

 

The core reason that aggregate security forces in Afghanistan are so small is because of a conscious decision by Western states to keep them that way. Afghan politics have been part of it, but much of the rationale has been due to Afghanistan's purported inability to fund a large force. For that reason, the army has grown astoundingly slowly -- numbering just 6,000 soldiers in 2003, increasing to about 25,000 through 2005, and then going up to 36,000 in 2006, 50,000 in 2007, and 58,000 in 2008.

 

Police and border-security forces have followed a similar trajectory. As Jason Campbell and Jeremy Shapiro show in the Brookings Institution's new Afghanistan Index, only 30% of army forces and just 3% of existing police forces rank in the top two tiers of combat readiness.

 

Afghanistan's GDP is only $11 billion and its annual federal budget is just $4 billion (more than half from foreign aid). It clearly cannot sustain a large army and police. So why build a large Afghan security force?

The answer is simple: because the alternatives are worse. One possibility is to increase the number of NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan, pushing the combined cost of the operation well above the current $4 billion a month. The other possibility is most likely to lose the war.

 

The United States has been spending nearly $3 billion a year to fund the Afghanistan security forces of late. This is a great deal of money but far less than our own military costs in that country. We should be willing to double that $3 billion a year if need be. The added expenses need not stay high indefinitely.

 

Once Afghanistan's security forces have their needed equipment, and provided President Obama can cajole and pressure other major countries to foot their share of the bill, American security aid requirements should drop back to current levels.

 

Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, two notable South Asia scholars asked whether the American political system was reliable enough to commit such funds to an enlarged Afghan security force over an extended period. The answer is yes. We have proven as much over the years in funding Korea and Taiwan, Greece and Turkey, and for the last three decades Egypt and Israel, when our core security interests dictated it.

 

Certainly Afghanistan, where al Qaeda once had its main home -- and where over 20 American GIs as well as another 10 foreign troops a month have been losing their lives, carrying out a mission that Afghans themselves are not yet ready to lead -- is worth a comparable financial investment.

 

Helping the Afghanistan government recruit, vet, train and equip a total of 300,000 to 400,000 security forces will take time as well as money. Only some 40% of necessary American and NATO trainers are in place even for the current scale of effort. We have about 2,000 trainers in Afghanistan (compared with nearly 6,000 in Iraq), and NATO allies have just another 500. Doubling this scale of effort will take a new infusion of resources, including perhaps the transformation of some American combat brigades into what retired Army Colonel John Nagl describes as an Army adviser corps.

 

Thankfully, in a broader strategic sense we can be patient. While the human toll of the Afghanistan war is tragic, it remains far less bloody than was Iraq at its peak levels of violence. And the Afghan people, while less impressed with their own government and with the United States than before, remain hopeful and resilient according to public-opinion polls. But while we may have some time, we do not have time to waste. Working with President Hamid Karzai, the new American administration must make rightsizing the Afghan security forces among its very top priorities.

Mr. O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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