World leaders can look at the same
events and interpret them in radically different ways. So it is
with President Barack Obama’s June 22 announcement to accelerate
the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.
Obama plans to bring home 10,000 troops by the end of 2011,
an additional 23,000 by the summer of 2012, and all U.S. combat
forces by 2014. From his perspective, the U.S. is “starting this
drawdown from a position of strength” -- al-Qaeda has been
weakened, Osama bin Laden is dead, and the Taliban have suffered
“serious losses.”
Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Afghan government and important
regional players such as Pakistan, India, China and Russia see
the U.S. withdrawal differently. To them, Obama’s decision
indicates that the U.S. is again abandoning Afghanistan. They
are likely to compare it to the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan
in 1989. However false these regional perceptions might be,
unless the U.S. moves quickly to counter them, these countries
will act in ways that will make it much harder to preserve even
limited U.S. gains in Afghanistan.
For most Americans and Europeans, the Soviet war in
Afghanistan (1979 to 1989) is ancient history. But for Afghans,
Pakistanis and Indians, present-day events are following a
disturbing pattern. In the 1980s, the U.S. armed the mujahedeen
rebels who resisted the Soviet invasion. But once the Soviets
withdrew, Afghanistan was no longer a priority for the U.S. As
Michael Armacost, a top official responsible for American policy
at the time put it, “We weren’t interested in what happened in
Afghanistan internally. We were just interested in getting the
Russians out.” Afghans and others probably wonder if the U.S.
sees Afghanistan the same way today, with “al-Qaeda” substituted
for “the Russians.”
Regional Reactions
There are other worrisome parallels. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev viewed Afghanistan as a “bleeding wound” that
undermined his efforts to reform the domestic economy and build
a benign new international image. Many in the region suspect
that Obama, like Gorbachev, would prefer to sacrifice the Afghan
government that his country installed and nurtured for 10 years,
rather than extend the war.
Faced with potential U.S. abandonment, all the region’s key
actors will likely look to protect their interests. Afghan
President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban leadership are Pashtuns,
Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group. Karzai will be tempted to
step up efforts to reconcile with elements of the Taliban to
unite Pashtuns behind his leadership, even if that alienates
Afghanistan’s non-Pashtuns. In turn, non-Pashtun leaders might
consider reviving ethnic militias to shield their people from
the risk of Pashtun domination.
Another Victory
Many Pakistanis will surely push a new narrative that
celebrates the U.S. withdrawal for demonstrating, again, that
Islamic militancy can defeat a superpower. Pakistan can be
expected to increase support for insurgents in order to ensure
its future influence in Afghanistan. The Taliban and the
Pakistanis may also try to delay reconciling with Karzai until
after the U.S. leaves, because then their leverage will be
greater.
India, Russia, the central Asian countries and China will
all be concerned that giving the Taliban a share of power would
legitimize Islamic militancy and encourage their own extremists.
Russia has even supported the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization’s involvement in Afghanistan. “The minimum that we
require from NATO is consolidating a stable political regime in
(Afghanistan) and preventing Talibanization of the entire
region,” Boris Gromov, the last Soviet commander in Afghanistan,
and Dmitri Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO -- both normally
anti-NATO hardliners -- wrote in January 2010. Iran also opposes
a Taliban return to power.
To limit Taliban influence, especially along their borders,
these countries will consider reviving the Northern Alliance, a
non-Pashtun group that fought the Taliban from 1996 to 2001.
That could lead to civil war.
U.S. Actions
Not all of these regional reactions are inevitable. To
deter them, the U.S. should move quickly to prevent
Afghanistan’s disintegration and strengthen Karzai’s negotiating
position. The key is to make absolutely clear that the
withdrawal of U.S. combat troops doesn’t mean that America is
abandoning Afghanistan. Specifically, Obama should emphasize
that the U.S. will maintain a military presence in Afghanistan
to prevent al-Qaeda’s return, to train the Afghan army and to
deter attempts by Pakistan or Iran to destabilize Afghanistan.
Ideally, officials in Washington should strike an agreement with
their counterparts in Kabul on the size and purpose of a post-
2014 military presence.
It is important that Obama and the U.S. Congress find the
money to pay and equip the Afghan military and police and pay
for basic government services until the Afghan government has
the resources to do so. The U.S. also needs to reassure the
Indians, Central Asians, Russians and Chinese that Afghan
reconciliation with parts of the Taliban doesn’t justify an
effort to reconstitute the Northern Alliance, or otherwise
undermine the government in Kabul. Most important of all is to
persuade Pakistan’s leaders not to obstruct negotiations on
reconciliation.
The American public is obviously tired of war. On the other
hand, few would want to see their government squander a decade
of U.S. involvement at a cost of almost 1,700 lives and hundreds
of billions of dollars. Having taken ownership of the war,
President Obama has to find a way to withdraw while preventing a
collapse of the Afghan government and a return to chaos. That is
no easy task.
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