The West is Running Out of Time in Afghanistan

The Jamestown Foundation ^ | October 17, 2006 | Michael Scheuer

[neverdem]

NVM: Modules
Volume 3, Issue 40 (October 17, 2006) | Download PDF Version The West is Running Out of Time in Afghanistan By Michael Scheuer From all observables, the Taliban insurgency is spreading from its deeply rooted base in southern and southeastern Afghanistan to provinces in the west and east. In addition, several Islamist insurgent organizations active during the 1979-89 jihad against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan—the "old mujahideen"—have allied themselves with the Taliban. Among the more important and militarily powerful of these long-established groups are Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami and the forces of Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, which belong to the Hezb-e-Islami-Khalis organization. Historically, both groups have been able to deploy substantial forces in the strategically vital corridors from the Khyber Pass through Jalalabad to Kabul, and along the only major highway running from Kabul to the southern provinces. Prior to the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, the first of these organizations was hostile to the Taliban, while the second was at best neutral toward it (Asia Times, October 5). Also noticeable in 2006 has been the strongly Afghan-centric nature of the insurgency. As in the jihad against the Red Army, the most important insurgent forces are made up of the Afghans themselves. Since Western leaders and the media focus so much attention on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, the Afghans' dominant role in the war is often lost sight of. While al-Qaeda fighters and other so-called foreign fighters are active in Afghanistan—London's al-Hayat reports that more and more Saudi men are going to fight there since the Taliban assumed the military initiative this year—they are important but secondary contributors to the war effort (al-Hayat, October 3). As in the 1980s, the Afghans publicly and correctly point out that the U.S.-led coalition is increasingly facing a "nation in arms." On this question, for example, Taliban spokesman Abdul-Hai Mutamen highlighted the always intense nationalism and xenophobia of his countrymen when he said that while Afghans and foreign fighters "have spiritual sympathy with each other...Our resistance is a pure Afghan resistance" (Pakistan Observer, October 8). Another aspect of the Taliban's current agenda that is identical to the mujahideen's political tack in the 1980s is its definitive position that it will not participate in, or even negotiate with, President Karzai's government. In words familiar to those knowledgeable about the absolute intransigence of the Soviet-era mujahideen leaders, Taliban spokesman Mutamen recently explained that there would be no peace talks with Kabul because: "There is no independent government in Afghanistan now. The foreigners have established the current government. The occupying forces should first leave Afghanistan. We can then think of future peace talks...Our resistance, which has now spread throughout the country, is not for the sake of power or government. This is a very silly thought. We want to regain independence so our people can live under the system which they desire which is, of course, and Islamic government" (Afghan Islamic Press, October 7). As much as the Taliban's improved military performance is an ill omen for Karzai's government and the U.S.-led coalition, three other factors greatly augment the progress that the Taliban is making on the battlefield: Law-and-order: Western media reporting, newspapers published in Kabul, Herat and Kandahar, and statements by the Taliban show that crime rates are high in urban areas and that much of rural Afghanistan is plagued by bandits, warlords and narcotics traffickers. In other words, the law-and-order situation in most of the country is uncannily similar to the neatly anarchic environment that helped facilitate the Taliban's ascendancy in 1996. The failure of the Karzai government and its Western allies to deploy enough military forces to establish a reliable, country-wide law-and-order regime is the Taliban's most valuable non-military ally. Afghans invariably put the security of their families, businesses and farms above the implementation of elections and parliaments. Pakistan and Waziristan: The Afghan government and some Western officials have condemned Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's peace deal with the Pashtun tribes in the country's Waziristan region as being intended to strengthen the Taliban. The reality, however, seems to be that Musharraf made the deal because his army's presence in the tribal lands had become unsustainable politically. In addition to suffering heavy casualties in fighting Pashtun tribes, the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Waziristan—heavier casualties than those sustained by the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan—the Pakistani army's "invasion" of the province smashed Islamabad's 50-year-old modus vivendi with the tribes to live-and-let-live and brought the area to the verge of civil war. In making peace, Musharraf did what he had to do by choosing to protect Pakistan's political stability and geographic integrity over continuing an armed intervention that threatened both and which would ultimately be feckless because of the U.S.-led coalition's failure to defeat the Taliban and control the Afghan countryside. There is no question that the Taliban is stronger because of the deal—if for no other reason than the safe haven it provided—but so is Pakistan's political stability, which was being undermined by the radicalizing impact that the army's incursion had on the country's powerful pro-Taliban and pro-al-Qaeda religious parties (Daily Times, October 3). Time: The old adage that familiarity breeds contempt is no place on earth truer than in Afghanistan, and there it additionally always breeds armed resistance. In the Afghans' view, the U.S.-led coalition has occupied Afghanistan for five-plus years, has failed to deliver a more prosperous and safer society, has killed a large number of Afghan civilians and shows no sign of planning a near-term departure. Always short of patience in regard to foreigners running their affairs, most Afghans probably would concur with Taliban spokesman Mutamen's statement that "the people of Afghanistan...never accept foreign dominance...America has attacked Afghanistan without any reasonable plan or suggestions. The Americans, therefore, get nothing but the death of their soldiers in Afghanistan. We want NATO and other foreign troops to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible" (Afghan Islamic Press, October 7). Ominously, another Taliban leader, Mullah Mehmood Allah Haq Yar, claims that not only has the Pashtun-dominated Taliban's patience run out, but that the forces of the late Ahmed Shah Masood—heretofore backing Karzai—are beginning to decide that they did not defeat and evict Moscow only to be ruled by the West. In late spring 2005, Yar claims to have talked with Northern Alliance representatives who "condemned the foreign presence in the country, but insisted that the Taliban take the lead [in attacking it] and then they would follow suit." Yar claims that the Taliban's contacts with the Alliance commanders are continuing (Asia Times, October 5). Overall, the increasing pace of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan suggests it is only a matter of time until the commanders of the U.S.-led coalition are faced with telling their political leaders that a decision must be made to either heavily reinforce coalition forces—it appears that more than the 120,000 men Moscow deployed to Afghanistan in the 1980s would be necessary—or begin preparations to withdraw from the country. If taken now, such a decision would be made in the context of polls showing popular opinion in Canada and Britain turning decidedly against continued participation in the Afghan war and media reports that France may begin to withdraw its special forces from Afghanistan next spring (Associated Press, October 15).
	Find this article at: http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2370167

[oceanview]

at some point, a country that cannot raise an army of its own people willing to fight and die to be free - can't be free. yes, NATO could be doing more, we should be bombing on he Pak side ofhe border, etc. But the real question is, what are the Afghans doing?

[misterrob]

The Taliban is a movement that is not going to be erased from the face of the earth short of exterminating the population in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We can defeat them on the battlefield time and time again but as long as people choose to embrace this form of Islam the battle will continue for years to come.

Karzai is a weakling who has been unable to project the power that he needs to put the population under his boot. It is the only form of government that these people follow.

[A CA Guy]

Yep, we inch closer to the battle of Islam versus the modern world.

[bybybill]

Print, cut, and plant by your rose bush. Our troops tell a completely different story. Other than an occasional sniper or roadside bomb, they can`t hurt us. On the other hand, when three Taliban have a meeting, our Air Force crashs the party.

[oceanview]

they have an endless supply of fighters in Pakistan (and even some recruits in Afghanistan) to fuel them, so unless we bomb on the Pak side of the border, we can't eliminate them. and time is on their side.

[oceanview]

they can't "hurt us" in a military sense, sure. but the battle is over the will to sustain a low level fight.

if its just an "occasional sniper" as you say, then why can't we pull out completely? certainly there enough afghan forces to stop an occassional sniper or roadside bomb.

[blam]

"On the other hand, when three Taliban have a meeting, our Air Force crashs the party."

As they should dofor Taliban funerals.

[denydenydeny]

Scheuer was one of the "brutal Afghan winter" types who predicted a disaster for the Coalition in 2001. He just revises the prediction every now and then, tacking on current news articles, the direr the better.

[Killborn]

Scheuer is an anti-Bush hack who's only quality is that he is also anti-Clinton. All his prescriptions are BS. This whole rising Taliban is part of the same defeatist meme that the Socialist media is using to bring suppport down for the War on Terror.

And FReepers are falling for it hook, line, and sinker.

[Cicero]

Hard to say. Michael Scheuer has criticized clinton recently for being a liar. On the other hand, he is apparently a leftist, one of those rogue CIA man who thinks he knows better than anyone else and is happy to undermine the government when they fail to do exactly what he recommends.

The problems he raises are real. But I think he exaggerates. No, we can't stay in Afghanistan forever, and we can't fix Islam without some help from the Muslims themselves, or a massive conversion effort that will need to be religious, not political.

Muslim remains an intractably violent and evil religion, IMHO.

[oceanview]

the NATO commanders themselves have asked for more forces there.

[Killborn]

That's NATO. That's Europe's concern. We have our own forces.

[Criminal Number 18F]

a country that cannot raise an army of its own people willing to fight and die to be free - can't be free

The Afghan National Army consists of almost 40,000 soldiers today, with several thousand more in training.

I was involved in their first major combat operation in January, 2003. They are motivated. There are some really, really good leaders in there, too. (There are some duds, too. They are working to weed them out). Many of the early officers were taken for political reasons, and you often have guys on the same staff who fought against each other some time in the last couple dozen years.

Ultimately, these guys will shoulder the load and we'll go home. They take more of it all the time.

I think Scheuer is mistaken to give as much credence as he does to the statements of Taliban spokesmen. Also, he seems to suggest that the opposition of Hekmatyar and Haqqani is something new. Both of those guys were with the TB and against us from Day One, even though both had fought against the TB.

The idea that Massoud's guys will flip as a unit... unlikely. More likely they will break up into separate factions as Atta, Daoud and Fahim Khan all have their own vision. The other two are nominally loyal to FK at this time, who is nominally loyal to the government.

Afghanistan has not had a functioning, legitimate central government since 1973. All these guys have decades of experience in which you needed to be loyal to family, tribe, and ethnic group above all.

As far as Scheuer's comments about tracking people down... I suspect that, although he was an agency guy, he was a Langley weenie that never walked that ground, and certainly didn't look at it with the eye of a combat infantryman or guerilla campaigner (as I do). It is very, very good terrain for hiding. Which is an understatement that should produce peals of laughter from anyone else who's been there.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Eurotwit]

He seemed to rely heavily on some of the jihadi cheerleaders over at Asia Times.

[Jacob Kell]

Wasn't the author of this article the guy who wrote "Imperial Hubris"? It sounds to me like the only sources he uses are Taliban ones, and they're probably not exactly the most truthful.

[dgallo51]

The whole idea behind Balkanization is to never provide law and order. You give your administrator personal security, but never enough to provide security beyond a 'green zone'…the whole object is to keep the administrator totally dependent upon you for his mere survival, in return for which, he sells everything he can to pay for whatever security we will sell him. You only buy yourself headaches if you provide real security…they don't listen so well when they're secure.

[jmc1969]

Things are going to get very bloodly next year with the Taliban and al-Qaeda no longer forced to fight two armies at once (NATO and the Pakistani Army). Because, of the Pakistani peace treaty with the Taliban they now can concentrate on Afghanistan and have a free base in Pakistan.

Unless we deal with Wariziristan our NATO allies are going to run because of political pressure at home next year. We may then have to restart major combat operations and heavy bombing, but unless we deal with Pakistan we can't beat them.

[bybybill]

WE can`t pull out completely yet because that create a vaccum that the terrorists would gladly fill. They and the fence sitters in Afganistan would call our leaving now as a victory, as they would in Iraq . We can`t do that.
please answer a question: I`ve studied a lot of wars and I can`t remember one with a timetable. If there ever was one, please let me know.