Rumblings seem to be rising about the position of the Western powers in Afghanistan. Elections will shortly be due in the country, and some fear that President Karzai, whom the powers have persistently backed (some will say maintained in power), is being perceived as their candidate. And while this may be objectively true, there is increasing concern that the President himself is seen as leading an extremely corrupt and isolated administration, and could become the appropriate fall guy to take the electoral blame for the strength of the Taliban forces in the country.
Current sentiment in this regard can be seen in a comment last month in the British journal, The Economist, that “the country needs more than just military force… [it needs]above all a legitimate and functioning government and a process to bring Taliban fighters and commanders back into the fold. For all of this, creating strong Afghan forces is the prerequisite. Without them, British soldiers will continue to die… until the day that is, when the British public has had enough and demands the troops come home.” This chicken-and-egg statement reflects an increasingly heightened debate going on in Britain, which has the second largest number of troops in Nato’s International Security Assistance Force, about the extent to which those troops are unable to make decisive progress in the Helmand province of Afghanistan where most of them are stationed.
But the comment must also bring back memories of the rising hostility not only to the United States presence in Iraq, which then candidate Barack Obama was able to capitalize on during the last presidential campaign, but also persistent British hostility to British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to support the Americans in Iraq come what may, that was eventually one of the main reasons for Blair’s demise. Today, an already weak Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his party must be extremely sensitive to such a possibility recurring, especially as the British Conservative Party is now taking a position of antagonism to an enlarged budget for the British defence forces.
In certain quarters in the United States, particularly among liberals, there is emerging a questioning of what is believed to be a too hasty decision to follow the Bush policy in Afghanistan. The possibility of continuity became apparent as soon as Robert Gates, Secretary of Defence under Bush, and responsible for a change of policy involving the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, was kept on by President Obama. No doubt Obama admired the sequencing of policy which Gates conducted in Iraq. And no doubt he believed that the addition of US military forces in Afghanistan, advised by both General Petraeus and Gates, can sustain enough pressure on the Taliban, to induce a gradual withdrawal by them. That strategy, however, is supposed to be combined with one of diminishing their support from the Afghan population in the contested areas, by strategies of economic and social development. But unfortunately, certainly from a British perspective, a persistent Taliban harassment of their soldiers, leading in recent times to increasing deaths, is inhibiting Nato success in Helmand province, in a situation in which the UK government is finding it difficult to increase their own military forces in Afghanistan.
The worst situation for American policy would be a stalemate of the kind that now seems to exist. This would lead to increased pressure on the weak British government for withdrawal from an Afghanistan which, since the 19th century, has been seen by the British as a graveyard or an abyss from which it is difficult to emerge. Russia, which is partially helping the Nato cause by allowing its troops to pass through her territory to Afghanistan, is well aware, since her defeat and withdrawal from that country at the end of the 1970s, of the abyss analogy. And Prime Minister Putin, a sometime Soviet intelligence operative, will well recall that not only did the United States assist the Taliban to force the withdrawal of Soviet troops, but that the defeat can be seen as one of the causes of the demise of the Soviet system itself. So Putin’s Russia of today will be anxiously watching the Afghanistan scene, even while cognisant that it has an interest in a Taliban defeat that it deems necessary to staunch the influence of radical Islamism in the ex-Soviet Asian republics and beyond.
To the extent too, that both China and Middle Eastern states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, not to talk of Israel, have an interest in inhibiting the strength of radical Islamism, there is a muted support for the American cause in Afghanistan, even though many of these states (bar Israel) cannot be seen to be giving public support to the Nato cause.
So while there is a certain spread of unofficial support for Nato’s expedition in Afghanistan, President Obama will surely be under no inclination to believe that if the situation turns more negative in Afghanistan, and support from the American electorate begins to falter, that he will be able to rely on any strong diplomatic support from the populations in his Nato allies’ countries. The President currently appears to take the view that with persistence, what is claimed today to be the success of the Petraeus-Gates strategy in Iraq can be replicated in Afghanistan. But his critics claim that the level of underdevelopment and historical lack of institutional stability in Afghanistan, make the comparison somewhat meaningless. And in any case, the President is also aware of the fact that the change of strategy in Iraq, including the decision to hasten withdrawal from the country, was itself a result of the unpopularity of the war in the US itself, that led to the loss of political legitimacy by President Bush which he was able to capitalize on. With a Republican opposition still embittered and unwilling to give the President any easy support for his programmes, he can hardly expect that he will be given any quarter by them. What was sauce for the goose will certainly be seen by the Republicans as sauce for the gander.
Yet, it is hard to see at this point that the American President sees any alternative to his present policy. The sense, real or imagined on the part of many countries, that after Iraq the United States is a weakened power, remains. He will hardly want to be seen as doing anything to increase that perception. But of course, a faltering by a major ally like Britain will do exactly that. All the signs are that the situation in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly delicate. There is a certain sense that, even if President Karzai wins the forthcoming elections, his perceived lethargic attitude to reform, or the difficulty which he has in doing anything about it, will not change much. And that would surely create a situation of open sesame for the Taliban.
