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CIAO DATE: 09/03
Foreign Policy
From Victory to Success: An FP-Carnegie Special Report
Don't Forget Afghanistan
Anatol Lieven*
Developments in Afghanistan since the Taliban were overthrown in autumn 2001 reveal the gap between Western rhetoric supporting democratization and development in Muslim societies and the actual commitment that Western countries are prepared to make. Afghanistan also puts the widespread portrayals of societies thirsting for Western democracy in sharp contrast with the reality of local political structures and traditions.
Afghanistan cannot be developed by its existing weak and deeply divided government—an administration only in name—or by current Western approaches to aid, which depend on working through that government. Yet if the country is not to sink back into the conditions that produced the Taliban and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Afghanistan must see real development. Since it is out of the question for the United States and its allies to occupy and administer Afghanistan themselves, the West must develop a strategy based on working with, and not against, regional forces.
Eighteen months after the Taliban fell, the overwhelming majority of the population has yet to see signs of economic reconstruction. The Taliban remain active in much of southern Afghanistan and have recently intensified attacks on U.S. troops and Western aid workers. The current timetable calls for national elections in 2004, followed by the establishment of an elected government and a withdrawal of both U.S. troops and international peacekeepers. This plan looks doubtful if not delusional.
For valid reasons of speed, geography, regional politics, and safety, the Bush administration chose to conquer Afghanistan not with U.S. troops but with those of local anti-Taliban forces backed by U.S. airpower. The continuing U.S. hunt for the Taliban and al Qaeda also depends heavily on local Afghan allies, subsidized and armed by the United States. As a result, power in Afghanistan’s regions has fallen into the hands of a variety of warlords and armed ethnic and tribal militias. In Kabul, a dominant political position was seized by Panjshiri Tajik forces belonging to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which retains a tight grip on the command of the so-called National Army and police. This action makes it even less likely that non-Tajik ethnic groups will agree to the deployment of central state forces in their regions.
Meanwhile, the U.N. International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) remains restricted to Kabul. ISAF plays a critical role in preventing conflict between the different elements in the unstable interim administration of figurehead President Hamid Karzai, but without an enormous increase of force, peacekeepers cannot extend this tenuous stability to the rest of Afghanistan.
In these circumstances, rapidly extending the current central government’s military and administrative powers looks hopeless. In the medium term at least, Western development strategy should instead concentrate on two areas: helping the Kabul government establish health and education facilities, which do not directly threaten regional rulers, and using the U.S. military to repair infrastructure, beginning with roads.
A start has been made on the latter with the establishment of three provincial reconstruction teams under U.S. military leadership, but these teams should be greatly enhanced and extended. And they won’t succeed without payoffs to local warlords. But if the alternative is to wait until Afghanistan possesses a real nationwide administration, then reconstruction will be delayed indefinitely—and only the Taliban and al Qaeda will benefit.
Notes
Note *: Anatol Lieven, a former correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan for the Times of London, is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment. Back