Iraq is still getting far more attention. But the political/military effort to build a representative government in Afghanistan isn't looking too hopeful at the moment either.
Kathy Gannon in the May/June 2004 Foreign Affairs (Afghanistan Unbound) reports on fighting in Kabul, the capital, in 1994 before the Taliban had taken over. In one "particularly grisly attack" five Hazara women were scalped by the forces of warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. She continues:
Two years after the attack on the Hazara women, Sayyaf, along with then Defense Minister Ahmed Shah Masoud and President Burhanuddin Rabbani, was swept out of town by the Taliban. Today, however, many of the warlords are back in Kabul -- and more powerful than ever. In fact, just a few months ago, during the Loya Jirga (grand council) held to draft a new national constitution, Sayyaf met with Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and President George W. Bush's special envoy. Neither side would reveal what was discussed, but it is widely believed that Khalilzad was courting Sayyaf's support for several constitutional provisions: a strong presidency, guarantees for women's and human rights, and protections for religious minorities. Sayyaf subsequently agreed to these provisions; just what he asked for in return is unknown. The mere fact that the negotiations took place, however, is unsettling, for it exposes the weakness of Washington's current Afghan strategy. The United States is betting that the same men who caused Afghanistan so much misery in the past will somehow lead it to democracy and stability in the future. The evidence, however, suggests that the opposite is happening. Opportunities have been lost, goodwill squandered, and lessons of history ignored.
Despite the superpowers dreams and ambitions of the neoconservative superhawks, there are real limits to the power of the United States. And the US simply doesn't have the ability at the moment to impose a national govenment on Afghanistan, given the violent and badly botched occupation of Iraq. So warlord rule is likely to be the situation in Afghanistan for years to come.
But we shouldn't be under any illusions that the US has somehow created a model democracy - or a democracy at all - in Afghanistan. We have not provided a new model for Islamic countries, we have not protected the rights of women or of most men either in Afghanistan, and we have not solved the problems that make Afghanistan still a breeding-ground for transnational Islamic terrorists. Not even close.
In many ways, the current Administration's approach is looking more and more like the ill-thought-out and deeply ambiguous support of anti-Soviet Islamic guerrillas in Afghanistan by the US in the 1980s. Bin Laden originally built his transnational network to support the international flow of arms, money and holy warriors to Afghanistan in that enterprise. The American press - and politicians of both parties - were happy to call the Afghan Islamic extremists "freedom fighters" back then. Gannon reports of today's situation:
How exactly did things get so bad so quickly? How did the fall of the Taliban -- a great victory for Washington, and one that seemed to herald a new dawn for this battered country -- lead to the return of the old status quo? The answer dates back to September 2001. Soon after al Qaeda staged its attacks against New York City and Washington, D.C., from its Afghan bases, the Northern Alliance teamed up with the United States to rout the terrorists and their Taliban sponsors. America's new allies, however, included some of the same men who had wreaked havoc in Afghanistan before the Taliban came to power, and many of them were almost as radical in their ideology as the Taliban themselves (Rabbani, while president from 1992 to 1996, even granted more than 600 Arab militants Afghan passports). In addition, their alliance with Washington seems to have been a tactical one at best. According to Milton Bearden, who was the CIA's main liaison to the mujahideen during the 1980s, "they never thought they couldn't manage us."
And how well is the new arrangement serving American interests, which presumably include cracking down hard on al-Qaeda and bringing Bin Laden and his closest supporters to justice?
The mujahideen may have proved good at abusing their fellow citizens, but they have not done as well at accomplishing the goal Washington has set for them: capturing or killing al Qaeda and Taliban holdouts. Even as the factional militias have wreaked havoc amongthe general population, the Taliban have started to recover and regroup, especially in the south and east. For example, government officials and Afghan aid workers in southeastern Zabul Province report that 8 of Zabul's 11 districts are now run largely by the Taliban. Meanwhile, much of the intelligence that the warlords have supplied to Washington on the Taliban has proved faulty. Last December, for example, U.S. raids on supposed Taliban and al Qaeda facilities killed 16 civilians, 15 of them children. The problem, according to [Milton] Bearden [Milton] Bearden, [the CIA's primary liaison to the Islamic mujahideen "freedom fighters" during the 1980s], is that the United States is "not clever enough to not be manipulated. The reality is that the West as a whole doesn't mean much to [the warlords]."
Its amazing to me that the NATO countries are still sticking with the international force in Kabul. There was always far more European support for the Afghan War than for the Iraq War. And providing forces in Afghanistan provides some offsetting balance to the criticism of the Iraq War by many European governments. So far, the warlords haven't seem to be targeting the NATO force. Probably because it's no immediate threat to their ambitions.
Gannon's article also provides a good description of how using the military for humanitarian assistance in areas where combat operations continue blurs the distinction between soldiers and civilian aid workers, to the peril of the physical safety of the latter and the political/military effort against the guerrillas.
Chalk up another mess for the Bush foreign policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment