[DEBATE] : NATO'S LOST CAUSE

[Russell]

The Guardian
June 11, 2008

NATO'S LOST CAUSE

The west's 'good war' in Afghanistan has turned 
bad. A local solution, rather than a neocolonial 
one, is what's needed

by Tariq Ali

In the latest clashes on the Pakistan-Afghan 
border, Nato troops have killed 11 Pakistani 
soldiers and injured many more, creating a 
serious crisis in the country and angering the 
Pakistan military high command, already split on 
the question.

US failure in Afghanistan is now evident and Nato 
desperation only too visible. Spreading the war 
to Pakistan would be a disaster for all sides. 
The Bush-Cheney era is drawing to a close, but it 
is unlikely that their replacements, despite the 
debacle in Iraq, will settle the American giant 
back to a digestive sleep.

The temporary cleavage that opened up between 
some EU states and Washington on Iraq was 
resolved after the occupation. They could all 
unite in Afghanistan and fight the good fight. 
This view has been strongly supported by every US 
presidential candidate in the run up to the 2008 
elections, with Senator Barack Obama pressuring 
the White House to violate Pakistani sovereignty 
whenever necessary. He must be pleased.

That the "good war" has now turned bad is no 
longer disputed by a number of serious analysts 
in the US, even though there is no agreed 
prescription for dealing with the problems. Not 
least of which for some is the future of Nato, 
stranded far away from the Atlantic in a 
mountainous country, the majority of whose 
people, after offering a small window of 
opportunity to the occupiers, realised it was a 
mistake and became increasingly hostile.

The "neo-Taliban" control at least 20 districts 
in the Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan provinces 
where Nato troops replaced US soldiers. It is 
hardly a secret that many officials in these 
zones are closet supporters of the guerrilla 
fighters. As western intelligence agencies active 
in the country are fully aware, the situation is 
out of control. The model envisaged for the 
occupation was Panama. The then US secretary of 
State, Colin Powell, explained that: "The 
strategy has to be to take charge of the whole 
country by military force, police or other 
means". His knowledge of Afghanistan was limited.

Panama, populated by 3.5 million people, could 
not have been more different to Afghanistan, 
which has a population approaching 30 million and 
is geographically quite dissimilar. To even 
attempt a military occupation of the entire 
country would require a minimum of 200,000 troops.

A total of 8000 US troops were dispatched to seal 
the victory. The 4000 "peacekeepers" sent by 
other countries never left Kabul. The Germans 
concentrated on creating a police force that 
could run a police state and the Italians, 
without any sense of irony, were busy "training 
an Afghan judiciary" to deal with the drugs 
mafia. The British were in Helmand amidst the 
poppy fields. As for the new satellite states 
involved - Czechs, Slovenes, Poles, Estonians, 
Slovakians and Romanians - it was useful training 
for the future.

Five years later, in September 2006, an attempted 
bombing of the US embassy came close to hitting 
its target. A CIA assessment that same month 
painted a sombre picture, depicting Karzai and 
his regime as hopelessly corrupt and incapable of 
defending Afghanistan against the Taliban. Ronald 
E Neumann, the US Ambassador in Kabul supported 
this view and told an interviewer that the US 
faced "stark choices" and defeat could only be 
avoided through
"multiple billions" over "multiple years".

The repression, striking blindly, leaves people 
with no option but to back those trying to 
resist, especially in a part of the world where 
the culture of revenge is strong. When a whole 
community feels threatened it reinforces 
solidarity, regardless of the character or 
weakness of those who fight back.

Many Afghans who detest the Taliban are so 
angered by the failures of Nato and the behaviour 
of its troops that they are hostile to the 
occupation. Nato itself has stopped pretending 
that its occupation has anything to do with the 
needs of the Afghan people and acknowledge it as 
an open-ended American military thrust into the 
Middle East and Central Asia. As the Economist 
summarises, "Defeat would be a body blow not only 
to the Afghans, but" - and more importantly, of 
course - to the Nato alliance". As ever, 
geopolitics prevail over Afghan interests in the 
calculus of the big powers.

The basing agreement signed by Washington with 
its appointee in Kabul in May 2005 gives the 
Pentagon the right to maintain a massive military 
presence in Afghanistan in perpetuity. That 
Washington is not seeking permanent bases in this 
fraught and inhospitable terrain simply for the 
sake of "democratisation and good governance" was 
made clear by Nato's secretary general Jaap de 
Hoop Scheffer at the Brookings Institution in 
February this year: the opportunity to site 
military facilities, and potentially nuclear 
missiles, in a country that borders China, Iran 
and Central Asia was too good to miss.

More strategically, Afghanistan has become a 
central theatre for uniting, and extending, the 
west's power-political grip on the world order. 
On the one hand, it is argued, it provides an 
opportunity for the US to shrug off its failures 
in imposing its will in Iraq and persuading its 
allies to play a broader role there. In contrast, 
as one report (pdf) suggests, America and its 
allies "have greater unity of purpose in 
Afghanistan. The ultimate outcome of Nato's 
effort to stabilise Afghanistan and US leadership 
of that effort may well affect the cohesiveness 
of the alliance and Washington's ability to shape 
Nato's future."

There are at least two routes out of the Khyber 
impasse. The first and the worst would be to 
Balkanise the country. This appears to be the 
dominant pattern of imperial hegemony at the 
moment, but whereas the Kurds in Iraq and the 
Kosovans and others in the former Yugoslavia were 
willing client-nationalists, the likelihood of 
Tajiks or Hazaris playing this role effectively 
is more remote in Afghanistan.

The second alternative would require a withdrawal 
of all US/Nato forces, either preceded or 
followed by a regional pact to guarantee Afghan 
stability for the next ten years. Pakistan, Iran, 
India and Russia could guarantee and support a 
functioning national government, pledged to 
preserving the ethnic and religious diversity of 
Afghanistan and creating a space in which all its 
citizens can breathe, think and eat every day. It 
would need a serious social and economic plan to 
rebuild the country and provide the basic 
necessities for its people.

Nato's failure cannot be simply blamed on the 
Pakistani government. It is a traditional 
colonial ploy to blame "outsiders" for internal 
problems. If anything, the war in Afghanistan has 
created a critical situation in two Pakistani 
frontier provinces and the use of the Pakistan 
army by Centcom has resulted in suicide terrorism 
in Lahore with the federal intelligence agency 
and a naval training college targeted by 
supporters of the Afghan insurgents.

The Pashtun majority in Afghanistan has always 
had close links to its fellow Pashtuns in 
Pakistan. The present border was an imposition by 
the British empire, but it has always remained 
porous. It is virtually impossible to build a 
Texan fence or an Israeli wall across the 
mountainous and largely unmarked 2500km border 
that separates the two countries. The solution is 
political, not military. And it should be sought 
in the region not in Washington or Brussels.