World - Coming to terms with a resurgent Taliban

M.K. Bhadrakumar
For the bulk of the Indian strategic community, the unthinkable is happening — the prospect of an Afghan settlement involving the Taliban is increasing.
A sensational expose by an investigative journalist, based on highly sensitive cable traffic last month between the French embassy in Kabul and Quai d’Orsay in Paris, has thrown light on the Afghan war. For us in India, it is especially helpful in spotting the war, otherwise hidden behind the global banking meltdown and the India-United States nuclear deal.
Claude Angeli, veteran journalist of Le Canard Enchaine, got hold of a copy of a coded cable by the French Deputy Chief of Mission in Kabul, Francois Fitou, based on a briefing by the heavyweight British diplomat, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who serves as ambassador to Afghanistan. What Sir Sherard told Mr. Fitou in confidence is worth recalling:
— “The current situation [in Afghanistan] is bad; the security situation is getting worse; so is corruption and the Government [of Hamid Karzai] has lost all trust.”
— “The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them … They are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic.”
— “We [NATO allies] should tell them [United States] that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one. In the short term, we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan … The American strategy is doomed to fail.”
— Britain aimed to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 2010.
— The only realistic outlook for Afghanistan would be the installation of “an acceptable dictator” and the public opinion should be primed for this.
For the bulk of the Indian strategic community, the unthinkable is happening — the prospect of an Afghan settlement involving the Taliban. From all accounts, the Taliban appears edging closer to the Afghan capital and tightening its control in the provinces ringing Kabul.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Karzai has appealed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to mediate with the Taliban. To request the Saudi King to stake his prestige is serious business. Mr. Karzai couldn’t have acted alone. Alongside there are reports that the British intelligence has been talking to the Taliban envoys in London. The influential Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that senior Taliban functionaries who travelled to Saudi Arabia in the recent days have put forward 11 conditions, which include the withdrawal of foreign forces, political accommodation of the Taliban in key Ministries and the drawing up of a new Constitution that affirms Afghanistan as an Islamic state.
The Indian policymakers, who are bogged down in the labyrinthine passage of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, need to take note that the ground is dramatically shifting. Regional security is set to transform. Several factors call for reckoning. First, there is cause to worry about Washington’s attention span in the period ahead to press ahead with the Afghan war.
The big issue in America is the bailout of the economy. As well-known columnist Alexander Cockburn summed up, the Americans are indifferent to whether Sarah Palin is capable of waging a nuclear war or frying ‘Afghan terrorists.’ Their sole concern today is that in the political tier in Washington, they have someone “who sounds somewhat like a human being with the same concerns as them, starting with the fear that their local bank will lock its doors in the morning.”
That is truly an extraordinary recalibration of national priorities for a world power. Barack Obama and John McCain, during their debate on September 26, paid lip service to Afghanistan but were preoccupied with the new priorities. Both took the easy way out, agreeing that they would take troops out of Iraq and put them in the Hindu Kush. But is it that simple? Surely, there is a vague sense of bipartisan enthusiasm in the U.S. for an Afghan “surge.” The new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, says he could do with three additional brigades to the one promised by the Pentagon, which will add at least 15,000 troops to the current 35,000.
But the total allied force level in Afghanistan stands at just above 70,000 including the U.S. troops. The NATO allies are reluctant to commit more troops. After much U.S. persuasion, French President Nicolas Sarkozy chose to be helpful, adding a measly 100 troops to the French contingent, while opinion polls show that two out of every three French citizens disapprove of the war. The outgoing NATO commander estimated that 400,000 troops are needed to defeat the Taliban. An optimal troop level is impossible to be met. The U.S. and its NATO allies simply do not have the capacity to deploy the troops necessary to force a military settlement or to pacify and occupy Afghanistan.
Even with additional troops, to quote the new head of the U.S. Central Command, David Petraeus, “wresting control of certain areas from the Taliban will be very difficult.” Mr. Petraeus’ approach is to repeat his tactic in Iraq, to bribe the Pashtun tribesmen and to turn them against the pro-Taliban groups — in other words, hire Pashtun mercenaries to fight the war. Given the Pashtun character and tribal ethos, the strong likelihood is that the tribal belt will become anarchic and the war will spread to Pakistan. Its effect on Pakistan will be catastrophic but the expansion of the war is unlikely to stem the tide within Afghanistan, which has gone badly wrong for the western forces.
The Taliban today operates in virtually every Afghan province. It has the capacity to mount sustained offensives. It has created a parallel government structure. Pamela Constable, correspondent of The Washington Post and old hand on the South Asia beat, wrote recently: “In many districts a short drive from the capital, some of them considered safe even six months ago, residents and officials said the Taliban now controls roads and villages, patrolling in trucks and recruiting new fighters.”
Meanwhile, a new dimension has appeared. The incoming U.S. administration in January may not consider doubling down in Afghanistan as an option at a time when its attention is riveted on putting together a rescue package for the American economy that may involve up to $11.3 trillion. How would this scenario play out in the tangled Afghan mountains — precisely, how would the protagonists of the Afghan resistance view Washington’s difficulty in financially sustaining the open-ended war effort? ‘Deep, rich chuckle’
The irrepressible British columnist, Neil Lyndon, obviously made a point when he wrote last week: “Whenever the wind stops howling over the mountains of Tora Bora, a deep, rich chuckle can presumably be heard echoing down the valleys. If he is still alive, nobody will be enjoying the plight of America more than Osama bin Laden. The anarchic carnage in the American financial and political system brings in sight a humiliating withdrawal and defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq. It even raises the possibility of the final collapse of the evil empire which Osama forecast.”
Gloomy but entirely plausible. A perception is growing that with the U.S. government taking responsibility for $5 trillion in liabilities in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and under compulsion to pledge billions to support the financial system, there is bound to be difficulty in bearing the combined cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimated could total $2.4 trillion over the coming decade. No wonder, a feeling is gaining ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan that it is a matter of time before Washington makes a deal with the Taliban for a coalition government.
The interplay of these various factors will accelerate as Afghanistan gears up for the presidential election in 2009. The election year will be highly divisive. There is challenge to Mr. Karzai from other Afghan groups. His political base in the Pashtun areas remains fragile. The U.S. and its allies are yet to decide whether Mr. Karzai is their best choice to hold the reins of power for another five years. Britain, in particular, has had public spats with Mr. Karzai. The failure of the war is blamed on him.
But the failure of the war is not personal. A U.S.-style presidential system does not suit Afghanistan. The country needs a decentralised system of power-sharing and a constant search for intra-Afghan compromise. Most certainly, it means bringing the Taliban into the political process. The cardinal mistake has been that the Taliban movement is entirely conflated with the Al-Qaeda, whereas, to quote Tariq Ali, “If NATO and the U.S. were to leave Afghanistan, their [Taliban’s] political evolution would most likely parallel that of Pakistan’s domesticated Islamists.”
Tariq Ali didn’t mention Maulana Fazlur Rahman but New Delhi knows how farcical it would be to remain in the grip of paroxysms of nervousness about the redoubtable Islamist leader. Our apprehensions withered away once the Maulana, variously described as the ‘father of the Taliban,’ began visiting India. Equally, we need to do some ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking about the Taliban.
(The writer is a former ambassador and Indian Foreign Service officer.)