Afghanistan: the march of folly

[unhappycamper]

Afghanistan: the march of folly
Maharajakrishna Rasgotra
Saturday, Jun 12, 2010

The United States is in the process of committing a historical blunder with grave consequences for not only Afghanistan but also the regions surrounding it. President Barack Obama's decision to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2011 is understandable: the long and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taxed the patience of the Americans, and the President himself must start planning his campaign for the second term. But it is the manner of the planned exit and its consequences that cause worry.

The strategy devised at the London Conference in January 2010 on Afghanistan — “reintegration and reconciliation” — is a veiled scheme to hand over Afghanistan, once again, to Pakistan. President Obama's rhetoric on the “Way Forward in AF-PAK” has the same thrust. The consequences of this dangerous scheme are not hard to foresee: the return of the brutal Taliban rule in Kabul, the resumption of a civil war which will suck in the neighbouring countries; and spread of terrorism and bloodshed farther afield. The end result will be a virtual partition of Afghanistan into Pushtoon and non-Pushtoon countries and the eventual rise of a larger, independent Pushtoonistan incorporating Pakistan's own Pushtoon lands. I would not wish that fate for Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The march of folly in Af-Pak began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978. Today, NATO has about the same troop strength in the country as did the Soviets have in 1982 — 1,10,000. In late October 1982, at a meeting in the Kremlin to which I accompanied Indira Gandhi, General Secretary Breznhev ruefully told the Indian Prime Minister that he had blundered into Afghanistan; that he did not quite know what 1,10,000 Russian troops were doing there; and that he wanted to get out of the country. “Show me the way out.” he asked Indira Gandhi, who cryptically responded that the presence of the Soviet army in Afghanistan was doing no good to Russia, Afghanistan or India. “The way out of Afghanistan,” she said, “is the same as the way in.”

In other words, Moscow should declare the mission accomplished and walk out of the quagmire. It took the Soviet Union three regime changes, eight years and a Gorbachev to do that simple thing. However, for three or four years before the Pakistan-sponsored Taliban invasion, Afghanistan was stable and at peace. That same course is not open to the U.S. today. For, if nothing else, it will leave behind a welter of widespread unrest, conflict and violence. And the U.S. itself will be reduced to a much diminished player, with little influence and role in a rising Asia.

At the end of the Afghan jihad, President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan asserted that the triumph of the jihadis had earned his country the right to install a government of its liking in Kabul. And Washington readily rewarded its loyal Islamist ally, leaving it alone to manage Afghanistan as it thought best. That dispensation ignored the traditions and sentiments, cultural linkages of Afghanistan's Hazaras, Uzbeks and Taziks and the interests of other neighbours and friends — Iran and the Central Asian republics, India and Russia. In the event, Pakistan squandered its one chance to win the friendship and affection of Afghans of all shades of ethnicity and belief by imposing on Kabul a regime of Sunni fundamentalists. It lost the trust of the Afghan populace, and the Taliban is hated in Afghanistan to this day.

The jihad had many other noxious side-effects. It gave birth to the al-Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and other terror outfits. The size, reach and mischief potential of the Inter-Services Intelligence greatly expanded. In a side bargain, Pakistan acquired the Islamic bomb and Abdul Qadeer Khan his nuclear mart. The jihad fulfilled Huntington's prophesy of the 21st century's civilisational wars.