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With NATO in Afghanistan (June, 2006) One of the difficulties of pontificating from the comforts of home is that one may not get a clear picture of events on the peripheries. The more complex the event, the more necessary it is to sally forth and take stock of the situation for oneself. There are few crises as complex as Afghanistan – a country wracked by a quarter century of war, where the organs of state are few and fragile, where the human development index is among the lowest in the world, where multiple ethnicities compete for political power, and where the neighbours surreptitiously use it as a chessboard on which to compete for regional supremacy. Throw in a coalition of well-intentioned foreigners who attempt to walk softly while brandishing big sticks and you have the makings of an epic poem worthy of Homer - or, in keeping with the venue, Rudyard Kipling. I found myself among British troops - “Tommies” in Mr. Kipling’s parlance - some weeks ago while travelling through Afghanistan as a guest of NATO. With a small group of journalists and academics I toured the headquarters of the international force tasked with stabilization and reconstruction before proceeding down to the restive Kandahar province, where 2,300 Canadians toil alongside American, Dutch and British forces. Our visit coincided with a critical moment in the mission. The Americans were reducing their presence in the south and re-deploying to the border with Pakistan in order to thwart infiltration by Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives. The NATO partners seemed nervously content to be taking charge of the southern half of the country. They would be bringing their (arguably) superior stabilization and public outreach skills to bear – skills that had been honed on the streets of Belfast and the country roads of Bosnia. But they also knew that the Taliban viewed them as a soft touch compared to the Americans, and had fought many pitched battles to disabuse them of that notion. Kabul was largely as I remember it from my last visit a year ago. Crisp air and cloudless skies belied the searing heat that would be the norm from midday until sundown. The city was relatively calm, the most visible manifestation of instability being the jostling of cars and trucks on the few stretches of paved road leading out the city. Heavy construction equipment lined the roadsides waiting for intrepid entrepreneurs to stake their claim to a piece of the national re-building effort. Travelling in an armoured convoy, we visited a training base for the new Afghan army. British instructors the impressively urbane Afghan general in charge of the facility sought to assure us that the training of recruits was proceeding as well as could be expected given limited resources. Enduring the curious stares of the recruits as we walked the grounds, one could not fail to be impressed by the dedication of these young men, nor fail to be awed by the daunting task awaiting them in the Taliban-controlled regions of the country. Only 16,000 of a planned 70,000 troops had yet been trained, and one wonders if this latter figure would be sufficient for country of Afghanistan’s size. More so since the troops lacked the heavy weapons and aviation that would be necessary to assert control over the vast countryside. This caused me to reflect on the words of a former commander of the NATO force who is now Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff. Sometime after his return from overseas duty, General Rick Hillier said that in order to succeed in Afghanistan, the welfare of the people you’re trying to help must be foremost in your mind. Helping to restore national institutions – of which the army is but one – was critical not only so that Afghans could stand on their own, but so the allied nations could eventually draw down their military presence, leaving the diplomats, development workers, and technical advisors to their respective yet complimentary tasks. The implications of this were clear. Until sufficient indigenous forces were recruited trained and equipped, foreign forces would bear the primary burden of keeping the Taliban off balance. But to carry the day, socio-economic development – the reconstruction of roads and power grids, the provision of basic medical care and education – would have to be given equal if not greater attention. Afghans needed to see and touch the fruits of foreign intervention. Having done the bidding of international donors – including braving the wrath of the insurgents to elect a new government - they yearned for tangible evidence that the bare necessities of life would accrue to them. The vast majority had no time for “fashionable Western precepts” such as gender equality. Only richer societies had the luxury of worrying about such things. And they were keenly aware of the corruption and venality that was creeping back into their political life. Warlords and drug barons (often one and the same) were infiltrating the corridors of power, undermining public confidence in all levels of government. The increasingly embattled president, Hamid Karzai, finds himself in a Catch-22 situation whereby his weak administration and embryonic security forces do not (yet) have the ability to extend central authority throughout the country. Consequently he has had to break his promise to his international benefactors and to his fellow citizens by forging unholy alliances with those who can enforce order in the provinces return for the centre turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, past and present. Yet another Catch-22 involved the drug trade. NATO forces are aware that the cultivation of poppies – one of few plants able to grow in the country’s arid climate – provides sustenance for poor Afghan farmers and their families. But the conversion of the crops into raw opium also empowers the drug lords and the Taliban who tax the harvest. Crop eradication – once enthusiastically encouraged by donor nations – is now quietly being discouraged on the grounds that it will drive farmers into the arms of the insurgents. Not that they would adopt the Taliban’s fundamentalist leanings, so raw are the memories of the former’s half-decade of misrule. Rather, NATO officials sheepishly admit that without the revenues from poppy-growing, and in the absence of alternative livelihoods, farmers may agree to become “Taliban for a day”. In return for a few US dollars and a promise not to slit the throats of their families, these unfortunate men might agree to a Taliban request to plant an explosive device on a road travelled by coalition troops. Counter-narcotics, we were assured, underpins every other security issue in Afghanistan. It is both a result and a cause of government incapacity. It was a problem for which there was no immediate or clear solution, as attempts to introduce alternative livelihoods had heretofore made scant progress. So while the official Afghan and NATO position was to combat the drug trade, in practice allied troops were no longer destroying poppy fields. The need to pacify the Afghan countryside had obliged them to choose the lesser of two evils. Yet another challenge was Pakistan. Although some progress had been made in capturing Al-Quaeda operatives in the “Federally-administered Tribal Areas” bordering Afghanistan, Pakistani authorities were not cracking down on Taliban who had been taking shelter in the area. Popular support for the Taliban was reported to be high in Waziristan and Baluchistan (which have enjoyed virtual autonomy since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947), making interdiction of men and supplies across the border well-nigh impossible. Intelligence co-operation between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the US was said to be on-going, but the veteran Pakistan-watchers in our party doubted its efficacy. The Karzai government no faith in the sincerity of Pakistan’s pledge to crack down, noting that beneath President Pervez Musharraf’s cosmopolitan exterior lay a calculating politician who would concede the issue to the Islamists in parliament. After all, Pakistan had been one of only three countries to recognize the former Taliban government. Our arrival in Kandahar was a metaphor for NATO’s push to the south. Four years after the Taliban had been deposed and only recently had international troops and their provincial reconstruction teams arrived on site. No other province was so susceptible to Taliban influence, and yet the international community had dithered in extending its hand. Recent fighting was said to be not attributable to any Taliban resurgence, but to the fact that allied troops were venturing into areas previously beyond the government’s control. There was no way to verify either explanantion. Listening to a Canadian officer recount efforts at re-building the local police force and public infrastructure, it seemed that there was much to recommend in the allied approach to counter-insurgency - a judicious balance of force, development funds, and reconstruction projects. But I also sensed these efforts (especially the latter) could be enhanced through additional money, more troops (including Afghans) for reconstruction work, and transport helicopters to replace those of the departing Americans. Putting more of an Afghan face on the reconstruction effort would give the mission a boost, as it gives Afghan more of a stake in their own recovery. The Taliban are undoubtedly aware of this, and have carried several bombings targeting soldiers, labourers, and government workers. The tactic is reminiscent of those employed in Iraq: strike at society’s weakest points, make the country ungovernable, and the foreigners will lose hope and depart. Laying off poppy eradication might provide some room for the consolidation of public support. But a credible, co-ordinated, long-term development plan focussing on essentially low-tech economic activity and the re-building of public infrastructure (including roads to convey goods to market) would be essential. The legalization of opium production for pharmaceutical purposes has been suggested as a way of helping farmers while financially disempowering non-state actors. But one wonders how the government could possibly hope to control production and export of the product, let alone taxation of its sale, under current circumstances. On the homeward journey I spent the better part of an hour peering out the window of our C-17 cargo aircraft. Below me the rugged Afghan countryside with its parched hills and narrow valleys slipped by. Passing over a perched village I contemplated the lot of those dwelling 20,000 feet below. Had they yet been touched by the international presence in their country? Would they ever be, or would life continue much as it had for centuries? Were they even prepared to embrace change and strive for economic development when to do so risked death at the hands of a guerrilla movement that offered nothing in the way of development – only oppression and contempt? Or would they succumb to the notion (and the irony) that an end to the violence was preferable to material gains promised to them, even if it was the Taliban itself that was the author of that violence? As I retook my seat my thoughts turned to the people back home. How much blood, sweat and tears were we prepared to offer this proud and wretched country? Would our tendency to expect instant gratification cause us to tire of building a nation from scratch? Did we have the wisdom to objectively gage the successes (and failures) of our attempts to give Afghans an alternative to rule by the warlords or the Taliban? Would the establishment of reasonably effective governance, reasonably effective security forces, and an economy with a reasonable prospect of diversification signal that the mission had been accomplished? My first trip to Afghanistan sold me on the necessity of the task. My second did little to dissuade me of the criticality of finishing it. But it also left me wondering about its feasibility. Could the forces of regression – the corruption within government, the drug-running, the homicide bombings and the general ruthlessness of the guerrillas – could be contained long enough to do it? So many problems. So many competing interests. So little time to make headway. One thing is clear: the answer to Afghanistan’s woes may lie not with us. It may lie more in the choices Afghans will make for themselves, and in the willingness of neighbouring countries to pursue their own agendas. Canada and its NATO partners may do everything right in Afghanistan, but things may still go terribly awry.
by David Rudd
David Rudd is the President and Executive Director of the CISS.
Copyright CISS 2006
