COMMENT: Afghanistan portents —Dr Rashid Ahmad Khan

Those who see the NATO forces’ withdrawal as a repeat of the American pullout from Vietnam in 1975 or the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 are grossly mistaken

The year 2010 has witnessed a series of developments in Afghanistan, which, as Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) has said, are going to make it a make or break year for the US-NATO-led war in the country. The war in Afghanistan has become more intense and the NATO casualties have risen. President Hamid Karzai has fixed 2014 as the deadline for the Afghan police and army to take over security responsibilities in all parts of the country.
The ball was set rolling with the start of the troops surge under President Obama’s AfPak strategy announced in December last year. Under this strategy, the strength of foreign troops in Afghanistan has reached about 150,000. For the first time the American troops in Afghanistan outnumber the US troops in Iraq. Admiral Mullen has already warned the allies that in the next few months more NATO soldiers would die in the battlefield. This statement sounds ominous in the backdrop of the fact that the year 2009 was the deadliest year for coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan since 2001. The figures for the first six months of the current year indicate that the year 2010 is going to be even worse than the previous year in terms of casualties among the US-led coalition forces. In the first six months of 2010, 365 NATO soldiers died in Taliban attacks, while in the whole of the year 2009, the number of NATO casualties was 521. Similarly, the number of civilian casualties is also on the rise.
The increasingly costly and stalemated conflict in Afghanistan has led to impatience among the NATO countries. The anti-war sentiment in the NATO countries has forced the US and its allies in Afghanistan to opt for a strategy that combines the use of increased force against the Taliban and support for reconciliation to ensure the start of the process of withdrawal of NATO forces in July 2011.
The US authorities have, however, made it clear that Washington would not abandon Afghanistan like they did in the 1990s. Instead, the Obama administration has reiterated its commitment to stay engaged on a long-term basis not only with Afghanistan and Pakistan but also with the whole South Asian region as evident from the aid package for Pakistan under the Kerry-Lugar Act, the ongoing strategic dialogue with both Pakistan and India, the Indo-US nuclear deal signed in 2006 and the presence of the US as an observer in SAARC summits. The same pattern is also likely to be followed in the US-Afghanistan relationship. The international community has already spent more than $ 40 billion in Afghanistan and, as the communiqué issued after the July 20 international conference in Kabul says, it is ready to provide more funds for development and reconstruction in Afghanistan, provided the money is spent in a transparent manner.
Those who see the NATO forces’ withdrawal as a repeat of the American pullout from Vietnam in 1975 or the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 are grossly mistaken. In the months that lie ahead, the situation in Afghanistan is likely to move simultaneously in two directions: one, the Afghan government would redouble its efforts to push forward the process of national reconciliation by engaging various Taliban groups in talks so that President Karzai’s deadline of 2014 is met. Two, there will be intensification of the war as NATO forces, on the completion of the troop surge under Obama’s strategy, would try to regain the initiative and the Taliban would try to prevent this. With the intensification of the war, more civilians and soldiers would die in the battlefield. In both cases, Pakistan will be facing a crucial test. President Hamid Karzai would like Pakistan to deliver the Taliban, especially the Haqqani network, who have battled the Afghan regime and their western backers for the last nine years with the singular aim of expelling the Americans and bringing the ousted Taliban back into power. Would Pakistan be able to make the Taliban accept national reconciliation and reintegration on the terms laid down by the Americans and the Afghan government? Going by past experience and the present realities of the war in Afghanistan, it would be an uphill task for Pakistan to persuade the Taliban to lay down their arms, renounce violence, break with al Qaeda and accept functioning within the framework of the Afghan constitution.

The writer is a professor of International Relations at Sargodha University. He can be reached at rashid_khan192@yahoo.com