Wednesday, August 06, 2008

The writing on the Afghan wall

Aug.6, 2008

The writing on the Afghan wall



THE US and its Western allies continue to insist that a military victory is possible in Afghanistan even as the Taliban have staged a comeback and are steadily moving to expand their control. In strict military terms, the Taliban's strategy seems to be to cut supply lines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation from Pakistan and carve out a corridor for themselves from the Pakistani border to the Afghan capital, Kabul. It is not an easy task by any measure, but, in the meantime, the Taliban have the ability to deny the US and its allies the realisation of their objectives in Afghanistan and keep them on their toes without respite.
Instead of accepting the inevitability of defeat and seeking to end the war in Afghanistan, the US and its allies are now hinting at expanding the war to include Pakistan's border areas. If that happens, then it would be a repetition of the Vietnam war where Laos and Cambodia were dragged into the conflict when the going got tough for the US in Vietnam.
As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the task at hand in Afghanistan is to "finish the job" that was launched with the military invasion of that country in 2001 following the Sept.11 attacks. That means securing absolute control of Afghanistan with a US-friendly regime in power in Kabul and then exploiting the Central Asian corridor through the country to serve Western commercial interests.
It is highly unlikely to happen. Nearly seven years after invading Afghanistan, the US-led foreign forces are nowhere near any level of effective control of the country. If anything, they are steadily losing whatever grip that they had managed to gain on parts of Afghanistan.
UN security assessments show that one third of Afghanistan is inaccessible while almost half of the country is "high risk." Militant attacks have gone up by more than 50 per cent — when the figures so far of 2008 are compared with the corresponding 2007 figures.
Civilian casualties in the US-led campaign to eliminate the Taliban have steadily climbed in the last year, heralding with them growing Afghan hostility towards the foreign forces present in the country and their Afghan government forces.
When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the ruling Taliban had alienated themselves from the vast majority of Afghans because of the imposition of their hard-line beliefs on the people, and thus it was relatively easy to oust the militant group from power. Since then, however, the unaddressed problems of the people and the rising number of civilian deaths have turned the situation against the US and allied forces in the country.
Opinion polls are indeed new to this part of the world and therefore findings need to be closely examined to get a sense of what is going on. A poll taken by a Canadian group in 2007 seems to be fairly accurate, judging from the methodology that it says it followed.
The survey found that 74 per cent want negotiations with the Taliban and 54 per cent would support a coalition government that included the Taliban although a majority disliked the hard-line movement. More than half — 52 per cent — want foreign forces out in three to five years in a reflection of the understanding among the Afghans that a hasty withdrawal of foreign forces would be disastrous for them in the chaotic country but also a rejection of their long-term presence.
The writing on the Afghan wall is clear: There would never a military victory for anyone in the country. The only option is to invite the Taliban and other Afghan groups into a dialogue along with other regional stakeholders such as Pakistan, Iran, India, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and China with a view to working out a compromise that has no room for the US objectives in Afghanistan. The sole goal of the exercise should be the withdrawal of US and allied foreign forces from the country in an orderly manner that would forestall chaos breaking out after their departure.