Dr Maleeha Lodhi
Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The writer is special adviser to the Jang Group/Geo and a former envoy to the US and the UK.

In 2009 Britain’s then Prime Minister Gordon Brown famously said that his country’s war effort in Afghanistan “was to keep Britain’s streets safe” from terrorism. That disingenuous claim served as a rationale for the military involvement at a time when public support for it began to plummet in his country as indeed in other Western nations.

A new book published in the UK now turns that self-serving narrative on its head. One of its chapters correctly concludes that the planned departure of American and British forces from Afghanistan and a less visible security presence in the region will in fact reduce the threat of terrorism in the West.

The study ‘Afghanistan: To 2015 and Beyond’ by one of the world’s most influential think tanks features a dozen experts and researchers from the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). The volume examines the challenges on the path to the 2014 transition when responsibility for security, governance and development will be handed over by Nato countries to the Afghan government.

Its outlook on how this will pan out reflects conditional optimism. The main finding is that Afghanistan faces an arduous transition but not one that is doomed to failure. The country will not rapidly descend into civil war and instead make slow if patchy progress towards stability.

Many would regard its principal conclusion to rest on rather tenuous assumptions. The volume argues that Kabul will prevail and the centre will hold because “the central government has probably amassed sufficient power” to ensure this as well as progress achieved in building the Afghan National Army. This prognosis is challenged by some of the analysis in the book especially that dealing with Afghanistan’s political problems.

A surprising shortcoming of the book is the lack of attention given to efforts and prospects for a political settlement, on which any transition realistically rests. It is the non-military strategy that will decisively determine the outcome of endeavours to stabilise Afghanistan before and after 2014.

For over a year international consensus has congealed around the idea that only a negotiated settlement involving talks with the Taliban can end the decade long war. Interestingly the book’s launch coincided with a flurry of diplomatic activity geared to paving the way for formal talks between the US and Taliban representatives. This has been revealed in media reports based on briefings from the Obama administration about the possible opening of a Taliban office in Qatar to set the stage for negotiations.

The IISS book gives inadequate consideration to the issue of peace talks and how the move to a political strategy from a kinetic one is an essential pillar for progress for the 2014 transition. Several chapters do refer to a political settlement but mostly in passing and in no great depth. The chapter on ‘Domestic Politics and State-Building’ discusses this but rather cursorily and only in terms of barriers to substantive peace talks. In an otherwise insightful analysis Toby Dodge deals with Afghan reconciliation as one of five political problems facing the country and persuasively argues that future stability will depend on the possibilities of finding solutions to these.

But absent in this or any other chapter in the 270-page study is detailed exploration of the process of Afghan reconciliation and appraisal of what peace making should or will entail. The book would have been more comprehensive if it had devoted at least a separate chapter to what might well be the defining path to 2014 – the political track of negotiations. The American approach now sees such talks as a critical component of the draw-down process.

What would have added value to the volume was if it had assessed how US policy evolved towards accommodation and reaching out to Taliban leaders. This was reflected in the several ‘contacts’ that American officials had with Taliban representatives in 2011. This potentially game changing part of the Afghan endgame has seen many a shift and turn. From a no-dialogue posture to one that initially only called for re-integration of the insurgency’s foot soldiers, Washington’s position underwent substantive change. First came the conditional willingness to talk to ‘reconcilable’ Taliban members. This developed into the present stance, which aims at ‘inclusive’ talks and is signalled by the ongoing efforts to fashion a formal peace process involving mutual confidence measures and a Taliban political office.

US recalibration of Afghan strategy over the past year or more made it clear that Washington no longer sought or could secure a military victory in Afghanistan. Top administration officials began to say that the war would have to be ended by negotiations. But it wasn’t until a landmark speech by Hilary Clinton in February 2011 that the US modified the terms for peace talks. This address marked a significant policy shift. Clinton publicly affirmed that what were previously three pre-conditions for talks with the Taliban were outcomes that the US sought to accomplish from negotiations. These three objectives were: renunciation of violence, breaking off ties with Al-Qaeda and acceptance of the Afghan constitution.

The book’s lack of focus on these important developments is also reflected in its prescriptions for western policy. Three are identified. Continued and substantial western aid to Afghanistan, military and civilian training and ‘muscular regional diplomacy’. Missing is what the Obama administration is now seeking to build momentum towards – talks for a political settlement. A senior American official recently stated: “Reconciliation is the most important pillar of our effort” to the 2014 transition.

The book is also behind the curve on another important count. It does not mention much less explore the regional implications of the long-term partnership agreement being negotiated between Washington and Kabul. Although the contents of these negotiations have not been made public enough is known about them to have merited an appraisal.

The aim of this agreement is to provide for a US military presence beyond 2014 with access to several bases in Afghanistan. This residual American force is expected to comprise a) trainers/advisers b) a counter terrorism capability and c) support personnel for the intelligence apparatus. A pivotal question the book should have addressed is whether such an arrangement will help or hinder peace talks and consolidate or erode a fragile regional consensus.

Despite these gaps the book is a valuable addition to the growing literature on the future of Afghanistan. The section on ‘Strategic Geography’ is excellent. Dana Allin’s chapter on US policy includes a useful discussion of what he calls the emerging Obama doctrine of “ muscular but more narrowly focused pursuit of American interests.” That doctrine he writes reflects Obama’s “apparent conviction that the United States has become strategically overextended, and needs a process of managed retrenchment...to achieve an economic restoration at home.”

Half the book’s chapters deal with Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours and illuminate the competing interests and dynamics at work. They are a useful reminder of the regional obstacles that have to be overcome on the difficult course to Afghan stability. The verdict is a hopeful one – that these strategic circles can be squared because the regional states appear to have learnt from the past.

Nigel Inkster’s chapter on the international and regional terrorist threat is insightful even if one does not agree with some of his observations. His conclusions are especially note-worthy. One of them is this: “ Over time, a reduced US presence – whether military in Afghanistan or CIA in Pakistan – represents the best option for lowering the temperature and creating circumstances in which the countries of the region can best address the threats they face from militancy.” But transitioning to this, he argues, requires US policymakers to assume “a different calculus of risk in respect of terrorism, and to accept that whatever the degree of US presence in the region, some ‘residual threat’ will continue for the foreseeable future.