Times Article on Afghanistan
20 November 2010
“Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of hanging in the morning”. The problem is it does so, Dr Johnson might have added, in ways which are unpredictable.
Barack Obama, David Cameron and the Nato leaders hope that announcing a date for our withdrawal from Afghanistan will focus minds on what has to happen before then. But I fear that it is concentrating minds on what will happen afterwards instead.
Commenting on Nato, the founder and leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar, a rather more mordant wit, said “They may have the watches, but we have the time”. Most Afghans feared he might be right. Now they know he is.
Everyone in Afghanistan has been wondering when the end game starts. Now they know it has. They know, too that whatever we say about “sticking it out” and being prepared to “surge for victory”, the international community is now heading — whether pretty immediately, like Canada, or by 2015, like Britain — for the door marked exit.
The announcement of withdrawal dates on both sides of the Atlantic has elevated time to the principal battlefield in Afghanistan. And it is not one on which we have the advantage.
It is easy to understand, of course why Mr Cameron and other Western leaders feel they must do this. They know that there is another sleeping giant they have to contend with. Public opinion is now running at between 60 and 70 per cent in favour of withdrawal. This is not a political issue yet. But it would be a foolish leader who relied on it not becoming one soon. Having, over the past nine years, failed to convince voters that we have, either reasons for being there or a strategy for winning, the unlimited haemorrhage of blood and treasure is now simply not sellable at home. That withdrawal dates make solid sense at home, does not alter the fact that they do not in Afghanistan. Domestic politics at home is once again the enemy of strategy abroad.
Our military commanders tell us that now that we have, at last, the right strategy and enough forces to carry it out, we are turning the dynamic against the Taliban on the battlefield. I am prepared to believe them. But have we the time to train up the Afghan Army and, especially, the police (where things remain far, far behind where they should be) to take our place? Perhaps; but this is far from certain.
Perhaps yes, becomes definitely no, however, on the political front, where things continue to go backwards. It’s the Taliban whose writ is widening, not that of Hamid Karzai. In the key southern areas of Afghanistan it is they who are seen as the coming power, not President Karzai’s government and its international partners.
And now that partnership is itself beginning to look terminally shaky. The increasing frequency and ferocity of criticism, public, private and leaked, directed at President Karzai from Washington, including hints that he is on medication to steady his mind, is striking. Much of this, I suspect, is caused by Washington’s frustrations, some of them personal, at having expended so much for so little return from him. Some of this is fair, but much of it is not and nearly all of it arises from an insufficient understanding of the position we have put President Karzai in.
Never an easy or flawless partner, President Karzai has nevertheless, been largely, a loyal one. But he too is now feeling the need to bend to what power comes next. He has justification when he complains that his biggest problem has been the failure of the international community to speak with a single voice, leaving him to balance both internal forces and the external ones among his Western allies too. This has been, above all the most significant Western failure in Afghanistan and it’s not getting any better. How can we criticise the Afghan President for not putting his house in order, when we have so significantly failed to do the same for ourselves.
So who can blame President Karzai for concluding, as he has done to Western anger recently, that there is a political alternative to Nato. And, by the way, he is right, whether we like to admit it or not.
The rational alternative to play into the end game is to bring in, as he proposes, neighbours (as we should have done long ago) such as Pakistan, India and Iran and other regional players such as China, Saudi Arabia and maybe Russia to seek a broader context for the peace which Nato has been unable to achieve on its own.
All these players, including Iran, will have both an interest and a role in ensuring that Afghanistan does not descend into a civil war after we leave. Getting them to commit now, perhaps through an international treaty, to the preservation of Afghanistan’s territorial integrity, may be one of the best ways to provide a bulwark against this disastrous possibility.
The bottom line is that creating a victor’s peace is beyond Nato within the set time frame. We need to press ahead fast now with a political solution. This will likely have three ingredients; a programme of reconciliation and engagement with the Taliban; a decentralised constitution which runs more with the grain of Afghan tribal structures; and a regional solution which brings in the neighbours. Military engagement will have to remain — as Frederick the Great said “diplomacy without arms, is like music without the orchestra”.
But the emphasis now must be on a political solution. I think London understands this. But Washington is still having difficulty accepting it. They should overcome this soon. For the longer they leave this the more the balance will shift away from us — the more options will close against — until only one prospect remains; that of hanging in the morning.