The best of bad options for Afghanistan

Obama and his top officials now berate Afghan President Hamid Karzai for holding back his signature from the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), which puts the imprimatur to virtually permanent US military bases in Afghanistan. Washington has poured scorn on the statements of Karzai—the sole elected leader in Afghan history—that the signing decision must be left to his successor, who will assume office in May after next month’s election.

The plain fact is that Karzai is afraid that if he gave effect to a pact indefinitely establishing foreign military bases, he could go down in Afghan history as the second Shah Shuja. A puppet ruler installed by the British in 1839, Shah Shuja was deposed and assassinated three years later but not before precipitating the First Anglo-Afghan War.

Obama plans to keep a substantial residual military force in Afghanistan—up to 10,000 American troops, supplemented by several thousand soldiers from other NATO states. These forces will have the mandate, according to the BSA, to “conduct combat operations", foreshadowing a shift from a full-fledged war to a low-intensity war.

The residual-force size will be more than twice as large as the US-claimed number of Russian forces in the Crimean peninsula.

America’s ongoing drawdown of troop levels in Afghanistan seeks to imbibe a key lesson from the Soviet military pullout from that nation—the critical importance of staggered and calibrated reductions. The 1988-89 Soviet withdrawal happened too rapidly, leaving then Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah’s government insecure and with little international support. After the December 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union, Washington pressured India to cut off its critical financial assistance to Kabul, thereby snapping Najibullah’s last remaining lifeline.

US troop strength in Afghanistan, which reached slightly more than 100,000 in 2010 at the height of the “surge", is being gradually reduced since 2012, with just 20,000 soldiers scheduled to remain by July. In addition to a BSA with Kabul, Washington is seeking a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban, which, with US support, has opened a de facto diplomatic mission in Qatar.

The Obama policy, by hedging its bets, is trying to pursue a “heads I win, tails I win" approach to military basing in Afghanistan. Yet, it is doubtful that this approach would go well. In fact, the hedging itself suggests that Washington isn’t confident about its post-2014 strategy. America’s new, Ukraine-triggered cold war with Russia—a key conduit for US military supplies to Afghanistan—could also hurt the basing strategy.

Against this background, it seems odd that it has become almost conventional wisdom in India that the continued presence of US troops in Afghanistan is vital for Indian and regional security. Few have proffered to explain the logic of such a dicey assumption, other than to express a fear that Afghan insurgents could turn their attention post-2014 to Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and other parts of India.

Ask yourself a simple question: How many Afghan insurgents have infiltrated into J&K since Afghan fighting began in the 1980s? Almost all the terrorists who sneaked into India over the years were trained and armed by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for that purpose, with few of them being of Afghan origin. ISI has used Afghan recruits against Indian targets not in the alien terrain of India but in the home turf of these Afghans, as underscored by the terror attacks on Indian diplomatic missions in Kabul and Jalalabad.

An intensified power struggle in Afghanistan appears inevitable, irrespective of whether the US maintains residual forces or pulls out all troops. The power struggle will crimp ISI’s possible use of Afghan insurgents against India. Continued US military presence, however, will only keep the region’s jihad factories, especially in Pakistan, in business.

Furthermore, when America’s larger troop strength in recent years has failed to ward off attacks on its military facilities, a residual American force—to secure its bases—would need greater cooperation of the Pakistani Army and ISI, given their close ties with the Afghan Taliban and the latter’s Haqqani network allies. In this situation, America will continue to mollycoddle the Pakistani military establishment, with the CIA-ISI links staying intact.

Yet the US has leveraged the Indian fear to make New Delhi lean on Karzai to sign the BSA, which grants the US important concessions, including a controversial immunity for American troops from Afghan law and permitting US special operations forces to conduct anti-terrorism raids on private Afghan homes.

Make no mistake: US regional counterterrorism objectives are hardly in sync with those of India, as underscored by America’s secret talks with the Afghan Taliban and its refusal to punish Pakistan for scripting cross-border attacks in India and Afghanistan. If anything, it has rewarded Pakistan, including by restoring a $1.6-billion aid flow and agreeing to taper off drone strikes. The number of US drone strikes in Pakistan actually declined from 122 in 2010 to 26 in 2013, with no attack occurring since last December.

Even more revealing is what the drones have not targeted. To preserve the option of reaching a Faustian bargain with its main battlefield opponent—the Afghan Taliban—the US has not carried out a single air, drone or ground attack against that militia’s leadership, which is ensconced in Pakistan’s sprawling Baluchistan province. US drone strikes have been restricted to the Pakistani tribal region to the north, Waziristan, where they have targeted the nemesis of the Pakistani military—the Pakistani Taliban.

Indeed, Washington’s record since 9/11 is a testament to its use of counterterrorism as a tool to promote narrow geopolitical interests, with little consideration for the interests of a friend like India.

Karzai, criticizing the specious distinction the US has drawn between al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban to justify its efforts to clinch a deal with the latter, insists that Qaeda is “more a myth than a reality". In fact, the birth of the Afghan Taliban—fathered by ISI—was midwifed by the CIA in the early 1990s.

Obama’s post-2014 strategy actually seeks to perpetuate the same mistake that has led a much larger US force to stare at defeat in the ongoing war—limiting American military operations to Afghanistan, although terrorist havens and the command-and-control structure for the Afghan insurgency are located on the other side of the disputed Durand Line in Pakistan. Terrorism and insurgency have never been defeated anywhere in the world without cutting off transboundary sustenance and support.

US military bases and operations will contribute to keeping militancy and insurgency alive and Afghanistan in turmoil, while allowing Washington to play geopolitical games regionally, including propping up the Pakistani military. The paradox is that while India has emerged as the largest buyer of American arms, Pakistan remains one of the largest recipients of American alms, with Washington now in a position to direct some of the profits from its India arms sales to Islamabad for charity and subsidized weapon transfers.

In any event, why should India lend support to a basing strategy doomed from the start? Afghanistan’s political and security transition will be shaped positively not by a continued role for foreign forces but by three internal factors—a credible, widely respected successor to Karzai who is able to build bridges with all ethnic and political groups; free and fair parliamentary elections next year; and the strengthening of the still-fledgling, multi-ethnic Afghan Army.

The US, however, is undermining such dynamics by peremptorily offering the Afghan Taliban administrative autonomy in the south and east, including provincial governorships, in exchange for a pledge not to attack American bases. Such deal-making has angered Karzai because it amounts to bringing his political base in the south, including his own village, under Taliban administration, thus undercutting his strategy to stay relevant and influential in Afghan politics beyond his presidential term. In truth, America’s negotiations with the ISI-shielded “Quetta Shura" seek to advance narrow US objectives, including security for residual US-led forces and a face-saving official “end" to the longest war in American history—a war that has left countless Afghan civilians dead. Indeed, by emboldening Pakistan, US policy is creating new security risks even against India—a situation that could force India’s hand in Afghanistan.

Consider another paradox: The US, while seeking to keep military bases, has unveiled plans to significantly reduce aid flow to Kabul. The aid cuts are likely to compel the Afghan government to focus on the onerous task of creating a leaner and meaner security force because the present size cannot be maintained with the present level of national revenue collections, which totalled just $1.7 billion last year. This exigency will only increase the compulsion for foreign forces to stay.

Yet, after nearly 13 years of combat—and a staggering cost in blood and treasure—it is past time for all American forces to go home, rather than a sizable number of them being housed in long-term military bases. There are admittedly no good options on Afghanistan. But an indefinite role for foreign forces would be the equivalent of administering the same medicine that has seriously worsened the patient’s condition.

Afghanistan deserves the same treatment that US policy accords to the epicentre of international terrorism, Pakistan, including munificent economic and military aid and full respect of its sovereignty. A complete US military withdrawal, coupled with international efforts to strengthen the hands of the next Afghan administration and American aid to Pakistan being made contingent on non-interference in Afghanistan, will be the best of bad options to help stabilize that unfortunate country.

Brahma Chellaney is a professor at the Centre for Policy Research.

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