[R-G] Ali: Nato's lost cause

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/11/pakistan.nato
Nato's lost cause

The west's 'good war' in Afghanistan has turned bad. A local solution,  
rather than a neocolonial one, is what's needed

Tariq Ali
Wednesday June 11 2008

In the latest clashes on the Pakistan-Afghan border, Nato troops have  
killed 11 Pakistani soldiers and injured many more, creating a serious  
crisis in the country and angering the Pakistan military high command,  
already split on the question.

US failure in Afghanistan is now evident and Nato desperation only too  
visible. Spreading the war to Pakistan would be a disaster for all  
sides. The Bush-Cheney era is drawing to a close, but it is unlikely  
that their replacements, despite the debacle in Iraq, will settle the  
American giant back to a digestive sleep.

The temporary cleavage that opened up between some EU states and  
Washington on Iraq was resolved after the occupation. They could all  
unite in Afghanistan and fight the good fight. This view has been  
strongly supported by every US presidential candidate in the run up to  
the 2008 elections, with Senator Barack Obama pressuring the White  
House to violate Pakistani sovereignty whenever necessary. He must be  
pleased.

That the "good war" has now turned bad is no longer disputed by a  
number of serious analysts in the US, even though there is no agreed  
prescription for dealing with the problems. Not least of which for  
some is the future of Nato, stranded far away from the Atlantic in a  
mountainous country, the majority of whose people, after offering a  
small window of opportunity to the occupiers, realised it was a  
mistake and became increasingly hostile.

The "neo-Taliban" control at least 20 districts in the Kandahar,  
Helmand and Uruzgan provinces where Nato troops replaced US soldiers.  
It is hardly a secret that many officials in these zones are closet  
supporters of the guerrilla fighters. As western intelligence agencies  
active in the country are fully aware, the situation is out of  
control. The model envisaged for the occupation was Panama. The then  
US secretary of State, Colin Powell, explained that: "The strategy has  
to be to take charge of the whole country by military force, police or  
other means". His knowledge of Afghanistan was limited.

Panama, populated by 3.5 million people, could not have been more  
different to Afghanistan, which has a population approaching 30  
million and is geographically quite dissimilar. To even attempt a  
military occupation of the entire country would require a minimum of  
200,000 troops.

A total of 8000 US troops were dispatched to seal the victory. The  
4000 "peacekeepers" sent by other countries never left Kabul. The  
Germans concentrated on creating a police force that could run a  
police state and the Italians, without any sense of irony, were busy  
"training an Afghan judiciary" to deal with the drugs mafia. The  
British were in Helmand amidst the poppy fields. As for the new  
satellite states involved – Czechs, Slovenes, Poles, Estonians,  
Slovakians and Romanians – it was useful training for the future.

Five years later, in September 2006, an attempted bombing of the US  
embassy came close to hitting its target. A CIA assessment that same  
month painted a sombre picture, depicting Karzai and his regime as  
hopelessly corrupt and incapable of defending Afghanistan against the  
Taliban. Ronald E Neumann, the US Ambassador in Kabul supported this  
view and told an interviewer that the US faced "stark choices" and  
defeat could only be avoided through
"multiple billions" over "multiple years".

The repression, striking blindly, leaves people with no option but to  
back those trying to resist, especially in a part of the world where  
the culture of revenge is strong. When a whole community feels  
threatened it reinforces solidarity, regardless of the character or  
weakness of those who fight back.

Many Afghans who detest the Taliban are so angered by the failures of  
Nato and the behaviour of its troops that they are hostile to the  
occupation. Nato itself has stopped pretending that its occupation has  
anything to do with the needs of the Afghan people and acknowledge it  
as an open-ended American military thrust into the Middle East and  
Central Asia. As the Economist summarises, "Defeat would be a body  
blow not only to the Afghans, but" – and more importantly, of course –  
to the Nato alliance". As ever, geopolitics prevail over Afghan  
interests in the calculus of the big powers.

The basing agreement signed by Washington with its appointee in Kabul  
in May 2005 gives the Pentagon the right to maintain a massive  
military presence in Afghanistan in perpetuity. That Washington is not  
seeking permanent bases in this fraught and inhospitable terrain  
simply for the sake of "democratisation and good governance" was made  
clear by Nato's secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the  
Brookings Institution in February this year: the opportunity to site  
military facilities, and potentially nuclear missiles, in a country  
that borders China, Iran and Central Asia was too good to miss.

More strategically, Afghanistan has become a central theatre for  
uniting, and extending, the west's power-political grip on the world  
order. On the one hand, it is argued, it provides an opportunity for  
the US to shrug off its failures in imposing its will in Iraq and  
persuading its allies to play a broader role there. In contrast, as  
one report (pdf) suggests, America and its allies "have greater unity  
of purpose in Afghanistan. The ultimate outcome of Nato's effort to  
stabilise Afghanistan and US leadership of that effort may well affect  
the cohesiveness of the alliance and Washington's ability to shape  
Nato's future."

There are at least two routes out of the Khyber impasse. The first and  
the worst would be to Balkanise the country. This appears to be the  
dominant pattern of imperial hegemony at the moment, but whereas the  
Kurds in Iraq and the Kosovans and others in the former Yugoslavia  
were willing client-nationalists, the likelihood of Tajiks or Hazaris  
playing this role effectively is more remote in Afghanistan.

The second alternative would require a withdrawal of all US/Nato  
forces, either preceded or followed by a regional pact to guarantee  
Afghan stability for the next ten years. Pakistan, Iran, India and  
Russia could guarantee and support a functioning national government,  
pledged to preserving the ethnic and religious diversity of  
Afghanistan and creating a space in which all its citizens can  
breathe, think and eat every day. It would need a serious social and  
economic plan to rebuild the country and provide the basic necessities  
for its people.

Nato's failure cannot be simply blamed on the Pakistani government. It  
is a traditional colonial ploy to blame "outsiders" for internal  
problems. If anything, the war in Afghanistan has created a critical  
situation in two Pakistani frontier provinces and the use of the  
Pakistan army by Centcom has resulted in suicide terrorism in Lahore  
with the federal intelligence agency and a naval training college  
targeted by supporters of the Afghan insurgents.

The Pashtun majority in Afghanistan has always had close links to its  
fellow Pashtuns in Pakistan. The present border was an imposition by  
the British empire, but it has always remained porous. It is virtually  
impossible to build a Texan fence or an Israeli wall across the  
mountainous and largely unmarked 2500km border that separates the two  
countries. The solution is political, not military. And it should be  
sought in the region not in Washington or Brussels.