A new approach to Afghanistan (page 2)
However, insurgents were committed to disrupting voter registration and the elections. The Taliban and its allies stepped up their targeting of ISAF forces, particularly through improvised explosive devices, and the number of foreign casualties rose. Of 843 American military deaths in Afghanistan since 2001, 213 have occurred in 2009, already the highest annual total, according to figures compiled by iCasualties.org. Of 217 British military deaths in Afghanistan since 2001, 80 have occurred in 2009, also the highest annual figure. In September, six Italian soldiers were killed in a bomb attack in Kabul. Officials say heavy casualties have been inflicted on opposing forces.
In spite of ISAF’s efforts, turnout in the Pashtun areas of the southern and eastern provinces was low: insecurity bred fear of reprisals among voters, and lack of progress in economic development and countering corruption generated considerable voter apathy. This is despite the Pashtun heritage of the president, whose authority in the Pashtun provinces has been undermined by his inability to bring progress and a perception that he is too closely aligned with a modernising agenda.
Electoral outcome
If Karzai is returned to the presidency, figures such as Dostum, Mohaqeq, Fahim and Sherzai are likely to be rewarded with key appointments. It remains conceivable that Abdullah will have a role. However, one lesson from the elections is that however hard the US and allies try to construct a Western-style democratic model for Afghanistan, the result will almost inevitably be a government formed on the basis of deal-making and ethnicity.
embrace of a Western model has limited his ability to capitalise on the political weakness of his opponents, since many Pashtuns see democratic norms as a threat to their way of life – a threat inflated by the presence of Western forces on Afghan soil.
Western strategists – including military commanders – have long understood that combating the insurgency by military means can only be a part of achieving a workable future for Afghanistan: hence the emphasis on political and economic development as well as on training Afghan security forces. However, McChrystal’s imminent request for more troops in order to wrest the initiative decisively from the Taliban will have strong supporters in the United States, especially among Republicans. Obama will find it hard to turn down a commander in the field. Nevertheless, there are growing signs that any increase in troops will be accompanied by a shift in approach designed to ensure that a scaling back of the combat presence can be achieved relatively quickly.
Political approach
The first indications of a change came in the Obama administration’s early moves, including the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as special envoy with a regional brief. The March White Paper on Afghanistan–Pakistan policy said the desired end-state was ‘the removal of al-Qaeda’s sanctuary, effective democratic government control in Pakistan, and a self-reliant Afghanistan’. The paper’s recommendations included ‘encouraging Afghan government efforts to integrate reconcilable insurgents’. It also referred briefly to ‘building up competent provincial and local governments.’
Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British equivalent of Holbrooke as regional special envoy, referred specifically to these elements when he spoke – in a personal capacity – at the IISS Global Strategic Review conference in Geneva in September. All parties, he said, were coalescing around a broad set of measures which he called the only ‘sane strategy’. Long-term commitment was needed, but in financing and training rather than in the dispatch of combat troops. ‘We need to get on the exit ramp from combat, while we remain going down the entry ramp to that sort of long-term commitment that can give the Afghan people the confidence to solve their problems for themselves’, Cowper-Coles said. It was necessary to distribute power away from Kabul and to put all Afghan districts in a position to secure and govern themselves – ‘putting the elders back in charge’. Meanwhile, there needed to be a ‘more political approach to the insurgency’, Cowper-Coles said, with efforts at reconciliation and reintegration in ‘the Pashtun way’. Meanwhile, it was necessary to work with Pakistan and with Afghanistan’s other neighbours, including Iran. ‘The strategy is essentially one of Afghanisation, of a more civilian-led political approach to addressing the problems of security in Afghanistan, and of internationalisation in the sense of engaging the neighbours in a meaningful way in this joint enterprise.’
Graeme Lamb, a retired British general brought in by McChrystal to assist in reconciliation with the Taliban, indicated the lines of the new approach when he told the BBC: ‘If somebody is on the wrong side of the wire and is inclined to come back then ... we have to set the conditions whereby that young man comes back in, so he is not a pariah.’ It was not simply a matter of payment to stop fighting but about providing employment opportunities.
As the troop commitment is debated in the United States, Europe’s leaders have called for an international conference before the end of 2009 to map out steps in the ‘transition’ to a handover to the Afghans. However, the Taliban-led insurgents and Afghanistan’s powerful fiefdoms and vested interests will also have a strong say in determining the country’s future.
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