NATO and the exit from Afghanistan

November 21st, 2010

Addressing the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) summit in Lisbon, Portugal, US President Barack Obama has reaffirmed that the US and its allies “will move towards a new phase, transition to Afghan responsibility, which begins in 2011, with Afghan forces taking the lead on security across Afghanistan by 2014”. He will start withdrawing American soldiers from Afghanistan next year, just as the ‘surge’ of American troops he allowed is beginning to have effect in the eastern theatre of war in the country.

The US is in Afghanistan together with 42 other countries out of which 28 are Nato members. There are nearly 140,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan under the Nato rubric of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and the US, but many member countries either want out or will stay clear of the combat zone. After 600 deaths suffered this year at the hands of the Taliban — the highest yearly toll since 2001 — and the economic downturn in Europe, enthusiasm for war has significantly dampened. No one talks of ‘victory’ anymore and that means that Nato will have to change the way it is operating.

It certainly means withdrawal. Countries that have received the brunt of the Taliban assault — the UK, Canada and Denmark — want to leave much before 2014. Others have not agreed to be in harm’s way, keeping their forces in areas where there is not much fighting going on. Holland and Canada are in the process of bringing their soldiers back home as public support for this ‘collective defence’ venture, evoked after 9/11 under Article 5 of the Nato charter, dwindles. The American public is no less unenthusiastic but politicians in the US are more agreed about the need to retain some presence in Afghanistan even after 2014.

There is not much the US can do about the lack of enthusiasm among its Nato allies. Yet, President Obama was successful in getting the member states to send in 10,000 additional troops. There is no doubt that Nato states are worried about the threat of international terrorism radiating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hence there is some dissension among politicians responding to public pressure, on the one hand and strategists counting the number of times the European Union has been attacked or could have been attacked by al Qaeda cells, on the other.

One thing is certain. Nato members have become sharply aware of the failure of a purely military strategy in Afghanistan which ignores such ancillary civilian functions as reconstruction, local employment programmes and health aid, etc. After 61 years of what its supporters have called a successful existence, Nato has found itself bogged down in a season of bad economic news. One expert in the US says: “Although Nato still has value as a regional alliance, for demographic, economic and cultural reasons, it will be increasingly hard-pressed to generate substantial useful military capability.” It is also being made more abstract in its thinking by more European states wanting to join for reasons that hardly gibe with the founder members.

A German think-tank has put forward suggestions for the next phase of the Isaf presence in Afghanistan: “The foundation of our policies must be what the people want locally, not what we in the West see for Afghanistan and Pakistan. We need a new thought and solution approach from the bottom up and no perception of our designs in the hearts and minds of Afghans.”

It goes on to propose: “A new emphasis of German developmental aid policy should be in the particularly important tribal areas (Fata) in Pakistan, close to the border to Afghanistan, because these areas are significant for al Qaeda and the Taliban. From here, Afghanistan and Pakistan are attacked and terrorists are trained for missions in Germany.”

The Americans plan to stay during President Obama’s tenure in office. Till then, events on the ground are going to acquire more importance than most Pakistanis realise. Nato may be in the mood to flee today but its nucleus is worried about the region because of Iran which it perceives as a global threat. The Republicans now dominant in the US Congress agree. Pakistan’s importance will increase in the days to come but, if the mood in this country is any index, the relationship will become increasingly problematic. Pakistan lacks the ability to do what Nato wants it to do, but it puts up a posture of defiance based on a mistaken assessment that it can project its power into Afghanistan to offset the presence of India.

Pakistan’s threat of power projection into Afghanistan is clearly based on its presumed capacity to manipulate the Taliban and their master, al Qaeda. It sees a dichotomy of intent among the Taliban where there is none: the Taliban who kill Pakistanis are the very Taliban that have attacked Afghanistan and continue to do so. Pakistan has repeatedly demonstrated that the non-state actors it uses against other states don’t necessarily take orders from it at all times. As in the case of Hekmatyar, it is also amply proved that the Afghan elements it uses to spearhead its power-projection also don’t follow its instructions when it clashes with their own objectives. There is increasing evidence that it is Pakistan, through its so-called ‘peace deals’, that actually takes instructions from its proxies.

Pakistan will be the most threatened state in the region after Nato withdraws from Afghanistan. Because of policies related to its military India-centrism, the state in Pakistan has become extremely weak. Its lack of writ in about 60 per cent of the territory has been compounded by the rise of criminal groupings, ready to align with local and foreign terrorists found in Fata and some big cities like Karachi. Governance across the years of war in Afghanistan has become problematic, encouraging many to flee the country with their investments. The Darwinist dictum was not that the weakest will die but that the one unable to mutate will die.