The following article is a defense of the current US approach in Afghanistan that uses a heavy dose of the kind of military reassurance we’re now used to hearing in Iraq about how everything is going fine. But, ironically, in doing so it reinforces the picture presented in the article I referenced in an earlier post.
Afghanistan: From Here to Eternity? Parameters Spring 2004 by Sean Maloney of the Royal Military College War Studies Programme, who also serves as the Strategic Studies Advisor to the Canadian Defence Academy.
I mention Maloney’s article with some reservations, because the academic tone provides rhetorical cover for some slight-of-hand tricks. But it’s useful for two reasons. One is that it acknowledges the basic dilemma of warlord rule in Afghanistan and the essential inability and unwillingness of the Bush Administration to seriously insist on a viable central government. To most Americans, that doesn’t sound like the triumph of freedom that Bush and other Republican spokespeople present Afghanistan to be. Because he’s trying to make this situation sound good, it’s a sort of “evidence against interest” that he factually reinforces much of the analysis of critics, particularly as regards warlord rule.
Another useful aspect of the article is that it’s about the best case one can make for calling the Afghan War a success while acknowledging the basic reality of warlord rule there. At some point, probably sooner than later, something along this line will be the argument of those who defend the Bush Administration’s results in that situation. And given the choice between abandoning Iraq and committing large numbers of American troops to a protracted guerrilla war in Afghanistan, there’s no real possibility that the Bush team will leave Iraq. In fact, they’re fine with leaving Afghanistan to the warlords.
The slight of hand comes with the polemical framing of the analysis, like this straw-man argument: “To suggest that the activities of Taliban remnants during the latter half of 2003 are somehow the equivalent of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968 defies reality.”
I agree with him there. To suggest that Don Rumsfeld has donkey ears also defies reality. But, for all the criticism I’ve heard of Rummy – and I don’t consider my day complete without making one or two myself – I’ve never heard anyone suggest that he has donkey ears. Nor anyone saying that Afghanistan faced “the equivalent of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.”
After several pages of dodges, though, Maloney tells us about the warlords. These paragraphs largely tell the story of the prospects for Harmid Karzai’s central government in Kabul, all the more so because he’s trying to present the warlord situation as acceptable. Pre-translation of the acronyms: OEF = American troops (basically); ISAF = the NATO forces supporting Karzai.
OEF forces cannot and should not do this alone, however. Indeed, there have been calls for the rapid expansion of the Afghan National Army (ANA), and some of its units have worked alongside OEF forces in counter- Taliban operations. It will take time, much longer than originally anticipated, to form a multi-ethnic national army. The other military power in Afghanistan, however, is collectively wielded by the Afghan Militia Forces or AMF.
These are the personal armies of the tribal and ethnic chieftains who fought the Taliban. Usually called “warlords,” these leaders were integral to successful operations against the Taliban in the first phase of the war. Special operations forces work closely with them to coordinate OEF air and fire support, conduct tactical training, and provide advice when required. The loyalties of these chieftains and the people they control and represent can shift for a variety of reasons, as OEF commanders found out during Operation Anaconda in 2002. It is critical that the members of any military force operating in Afghanistan understand, to the extent possible and at all levels, the intricacies of the tribal relationships and religious affiliations of the groups it interacts with. Failure to do so will result in the failure of mission objectives at all levels. Have no doubt: the lines walked by OEF commanders are extremely fine ones in Afghanistan, and it requires significant agility and political dexterity to maintain the situation there. There are legitimate grounds for pessimism if this balancing act fails.
Yeah, those warlords were fine, except for when they let Bin Laden and hundreds of his most experienced fighters escape in Operation Anaconda.
There are competing views as to the role of the chieftains in the future of Afghanistan. The school of thought that demands a strong central government backed up by the ANA ignores these power brokers at its peril - or worse, demands that they be disarmed and tried for human rights violations. The chieftains are, in fact, the men who control Afghanistan. They must be part of the solution and made to feel that they are, since it was their people who ultimately bled to take down the Taliban and al Qaeda alliance. No way has been found to merge the ANA and the AMF. Indeed, problems similar to those encountered by Zimbabwe and South Africain the creation of new armed forces after regime change are minor compared to the ANA-AMF problem. (my emphasis)
In other words, the militias aren’t going to be merged into a national army, period. And it’s the warlord’s militias that actually control Afghanistan, not the Karzai government.
It is highly unlikely that these chieftains will work with an expanded ISAF or other international force as closely as they have with the OEF forces. Indeed, an expanded ISAF will be viewed with suspicion and probably seen as a precursor force to ouright imposition of ANA control and therefore central government control. That is a presecription for renewed civil war, something similar to the events of the post-Soviet, pre-Taliban period in the early 1990s, or worse. (my emphasis)
Also a way of saying that the warlords run things in the provinces, not the alleged central government. But I think the highlighted sentence also works vice versa. The European governments don’t take as favorable a view of warlord rule in Afghanistan as the Bush Administration does. (Although this article from the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Web site indicates that Germany’s Foreign Minister, Green Party leader Joschka Fischer, has a very pragmatic approach to dealing with the warlords: „Wir helfen gerne“ 04/20/04.)
Maloney’s defense of the US goals as having been achieved, mostly anyway, is alsoworth noting:
American objectives in Afghanistan are, however, clearly stated, if not made widely available. First is the destruction of al Qaeda's networks, training camps, stockpiled resources, and communcation systems. Second is the destruction of any governing entity providing support or sanctuary to al Qaeda: this was primarily the Taliban regime. Third, reconstruction efforts would be undertaken to ensure that international terrorism could not use Afghanistan and its people as a haven or operating base in the future. Incidentally, American objectives in Vietnam were never this clearly stated, let alone achieved, particularly in the critical 1963-65 phase of that war. The vague language used at the time indicated that American forces were to "stop communism in South East Asia" and "train the south Vietnamese army."
Actually, American objectives in Vietnam were far more clearly stated that he indicates, but we’ll let that slide for now. He argues with some plausibility that the first two were achieved, though without the third being achieved the durability of the first two is questionable. Achieving the third objective “is in progress and willl take time.” He indicates that we should not expect to see anything resembling a Western-style democracy in the next five years.
Maloney tries to present the current Afghan resistance as largely insignificant. His point is, essentially, because they’re fighting a guerrilla war we don’t have to take them too seriously. But his image of what is achievable on the third objective is a far cry from grandiose Bush Administration claims of glorious victory:
The violent activity conducted by Taliban remnants and their sympathizers [guerrillas] will never completely stop. We should not expect it to. We should expect, however, that there will be no more large-scale military operations by enemy forces—that is, anything larger than a ten-man ambush party or, at worst, some platoon-level equivalent action. We should expect to see the minimization of enemy attempts at subversion among the civilian population, particularly the Pashtun populations in southeast Afghanistan. (my emphasis)
And this is someone who’s pumping up the great successes and bright prospects in Afghanistan.
No comments:
Post a Comment