Friday, April 13, 2012

Afghanistan

This is the final post of my "Counterinsurgency" series.  See http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2012/03/counterinsurgency.html for the base post and http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2012/03/iraq.html for my post on Iraq.  Finally, I have argued elsewhere (http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2011/06/pakistan.html) that Afghanistan is really about Pakistan.  For the purposes of this post I am going to mostly ignore what I said about Pakistan being the key to Afghanistan and just treat Afghanistan as a stand alone proposition.  I will, however, analyze it from the perspective of what I said about Counterinsurgency.

Afghanistan has a much longer history than Iraq.  I am not familiar with most of its history but I believe its modern borders were set by the British in the 1800's.  However, I believe that unlike with the case of Iraq, these borders conformed roughly to its traditional ones.  So it is not a "created" country like Iraq.  As is usually true, with Afghanistan "geography is destiny".  In this case, the two key features are that it is landlocked and that it represents a key crossroads for commerce and invasions.  So people have been fighting over Afghanistan for a long time and Afghanis have been repelling foreigners, including apparently the British, for a long time.

I will start my analysis in roughly 1980.  the country was experiencing what was characterized at the time as a high level of chaos.  The Russians (called "Soviets" at the time) installed a puppet government.  President Carter and later President Regan sensed an opportunity.  They funded an insurgency to help drive the Russians out.  If you want to know more about this I recommend "Charlie Wilson's War".  The book by George Crile is excellent and goes into a lot of detail about the goings on.  The movie with Tim Hanks is fun but far less informative.  The plan worked.  The Russians were kicked out.  Many credit this event for the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire centered in Russia.  And, from the U.S. point of view, the whole thing was incredibly cheap.  The cost was a billion or so dollars and no U.S. casualties with the possible exception of a few CIA types.  It was considered a big success at the time but not so much now.

After the Russians left the U.S. abruptly cut of funds and Afghanistan descended into chaos.  Eventually the Taliban rose and took over the government.  They provided a safe haven for Al Qaeda.  Al Qaeda launched the 9/11 attack.  The U.S. invaded Afghanistan after the Taliban refused to kick Al Qaeda out.  And we have been there ever since, 11 years and counting at this point.

It is argued that it was a big mistake for the U.S. to cut things off after the Russians left.  But I argue otherwise.  When we started funding the Afghan insurgency we told everyone we had no designs on Afghanistan.  "We just want to kick the Russians out".  The U.S. had a poor track record with respect to meddling in the affairs of other countries so getting the locals to believe this was critical to the success of the whole program.  The U.S. made one other critical decision.  The U.S. took no direct role in the program.  We provided money and other support. But the actual operation was run by the Pakistanis though their intelligence organization, the ISI.  I contend that if the U.S. had taken a more direct role the whole operation would have been a failure.  Instead the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and others were willing to co-operate with us.  This led to an inexpensive and successful operation.  It should have come as a surprise to no one when the flow of U.S. funds was abruptly cut off as soon as the Russians left.

When the U.S. turned the money spigot off the Pakistanis saw their chance.  The U.S. position during the operation was "we'll fund anyone who will fight the Russians".  It was the ISI who actually picked which Afghani groups got support.  For their own internal reasons they picked the people who eventually became the Taliban.  After the U.S. involvement ended the ISI continued to work with the Taliban. With the money, guns, and other support the ISI supplied the Taliban had no trouble winning control of the entire country.  This left the Pakistanis exactly where they wanted to be.  They were in control of their client state of Afghanistan.  Things would have gone along swimmingly for them if the whole Al Qaeda 9/11 thing had not happened.

The U.S. under the Bush Administration was stupid to take their eye off the Al Qaeda ball.  But the Pakistanis were stupid to let their clients, the Taliban, get in bed with Al Qaeda.  But both of them did.  So now the U.S. is involved in a land war in Asia.  It is also said that the U.S. was stupid in how it conducted itself in Afghanistan after the Taliban were easily routed.  I was right that the U.S. acted correctly at the end of the 1980 war. But the situation with the current war is far different than the situation was then.  The Taliban has never broken with Al Qaeda.  It is obvious that a stable anti-Al Qaeda government was needed in Afghanistan to avoid another 9/11.  So this time around the U.S. needed to remain heavily involved in Afghanistan after combat operations ended.  But the Bush Administration felt that things would magically take care of themselves so it was free to go start a war in Iraq.

In the 1980 war the U.S. essentially picked the Pakistanis and the ISI.  This turned out to be a good pick in the short run and a bad pick in the long run.  In the present war the U.S. picked Hamid Karzai.  This too looked like a good pick in the short run because he was instrumental in routing the Taliban.  But in the long run it has not turned out well.  Mr. al-Maliki has shown that he does want Iraq to be a success and that he does want his government's control to encompass the whole country (possibly excepting the Kurd controlled areas).  Mr. Karzai seems primarily interested in maintaining his power base in Kabul and in using graft and corruption to keep the gravy train operating for himself and his friends.

The Taliban were unpopular when they were running the country.  They are still unpopular.  If I apply my "willing and able" rule then the general population of Afghanistan would be more than willing to rat out the Taliban.  But there is a serious problem with the "able" part of the rule.  Unlike in Iraq, the U.S. quickly handed the reigns of power over to the locals.  So theoretically there has been someone familiar with the local language and culture to rat the Taliban out to.  But for many Afghanis this possibility is still theoretical.  There is no effective "Karzai government" in large parts of the country.  This leaves locals pretty much on their own.

The U.S. military has been active in various parts of the country at various times.  But for many years it did not attempt to hook up with local and district authorities.  I believe that it is now devoting more efforts to direct contact with the locals.  But the main effort was and still is directed toward "Kabulization", that is working primarily through the central government in Kabul.  The Kabul government has turned out to be a weak reed.  And few troupes have significant language skills or cultural familiarity so communication is often poor.  And a large non-military effort by the U.S. has never been put into place.

Afghanistan has a lot going against it.  I think that in the early days Afghanis were happy to see us because we liberated them from the Taliban.  But the Taliban were replaced by graft and corruption in Kabul and a vacuum in the rest of the country.  Meanwhile, Pakistan continued to support the Taliban and provide them with a safe haven.  They didn't even sweep up the Al Qaeda remnants in Pakistan.  It is not surprising that an insurgency quickly arose in Afghanistan.

I have argued elsewhere that the appropriate response to an insurgency is an effective government that provides an effective police, judicial, and prison system.  That effective government is still missing in large parts of Afghanistan.  The situation boils down to how likely it is that this effective government will show up any time soon.

Iraq was saved by the Sunni Awakening.  The parts of the country not governed by the al-Maliki administration were effectively governed either by the Kurds or the Sunnis.  The Kurds had an effective government all along.  When the Sunnis decided to flip from the insurgent side to the government side the entire country of Iraq came under the control of effective government and things have settled down quite a bit since.  However, I see no group that is willing or able to play the role of "Sunni Awakening" in Afghanistan.

There are three main groups in Iraq.  There are many more in Afghanistan.  Iraq has suffered to some extent from meddling by its neighbors, especially Iran.  But there is a lot of animosity between Iraq and Iran so Iran's meddling is less effective than it would otherwise be.  In Afghanistan there is also a lot of meddling by its neighbors.  There is no equivalent to the animosity of the Iraq/Iran relationship in the Afghanistan/Pakistan relationship.  Quite the opposite.  The Afghanis are grateful for the help Pakistan provided in driving the Russians out.  So Pakistani meddling is likely to continue at a high level.

Finally, Iraq has Oil.  Afghanistan does not.  What this means is that there is a basis around which to build an Iraqi economy.  With Afghanistan it is hard to see how to get it on to a sound economic footing.  The GDP of Afghanistan is listed as $17 billion.  This number is inflated by the vast amounts of money the U.S. is pouring in to support the war.  Most of the economic activity in the country is war related.  If the U.S. involvement goes away as a result of a winding down by the U.S. it is hard to see much left with the exception of the Opium business.  So where will an Afghan government get the money to support police, courts, and prisons?  I'm stumped.

We have been at it for 11 years.  It can be argued that the Bush period was badly run.  But progress under Obama also seems limited to me.  I think politics in Afghanistan will combine with politics in the U.S. to result in a nearly complete U.S. withdrawal by the end of  2014, if not sooner.  Given the poisonous political climate in the U.S. (here I am referring solely to the unpopularity of the war) I can't see significant financial aid (e.g. tens of billions of dollars per year) continuing much after the troupes leave.  So I see Afghanistan coming to a bad end.

There are those who argue for "another ten years" in Afghanistan.  I don't see any possibility of that.  There is very little evidence that we could fix Afghanistan in those ten years given the situation on the ground today in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  So many will argue that a continued commitment would be "pouring good money after bad".  I can't imagine a counter-argument to this position.  This leaves the "if we leave - we lose" argument.  I don't think there is any stomach for spending a lot of money and manpower solely to avoid having to acknowledge that we have lost.

So things look ugly.  How do we deal with this?  The first thing to remember is what our strategic goal is.  The sole strategic interest we have is preventing another 9/11 attack from Afghanistan.  I think we can do that without having a significant military presence in the country.  We do it by threats.  We threaten not to invade again (no one would believe this threat) but to rain destruction down from the skies using unmanned drones and/or cruise missiles if we see Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization setting up shop in Afghanistan.  This destruction would be aimed at the organs of power in Afghanistan.  I think this would work and it would cost very little even if we had to make good our threat.

Then there's Pakistan.  Pakistan has been playing power politics since it was created in 1948.  It has always been able to find a sponsor, usually the U.S., that was interested in using Pakistan to balance against someone else.  But Pakistan is pretty much out of sponsors.  If we abandon them then where do they go?  Apparently they have already approached China and gotten turned down for any significant amount of monetary aid.  And all of their neighbors except Afghanistan are mad at them.  So if we cut off the money spigot to Pakistan I think they are in real trouble.  If we did then I think Pakistan would be forced to confront the many problems it has.  Pakistan is betting that we won't cut them off because they are a nuclear power.  I think we should call their bluff.  But we can't do that until we are out of Afghanistan.  If we are out of both Pakistan and Afghanistan then I think the situation will eventually get a lot better for us.  That at least, is the "happy talk" scenario.