‘Post-Withdrawal Afghanistan’ And US – OpEd

By Ahmad Hamza Subhani

The post-2014 condition in Afghanistan, after the disengagement of the US-NATO-International Security Assistance Force, has been a matter of serious debate. The main trouble lies in foreseeing the genuine aspirations of sundry actors involved in the Afghan predicament, particularly of the US.

The US, without any proper strategy, has been unable to figure out the shamble in Afghanistan, for which it is to some extent accountable. As a result, the it has sabotaged the entire region through ‘defective’ strategies. The only ‘trophy’ that it can avow is the elimination of Osama bin Laden. Otherwise, the ‘terrorism’ that the Americans came to eradicate has increased, not decreased.

The exodus of foreign forces from Afghanistan, especially its extent and pace, presents a wide range of acceptance. The cognizance gap between the American-led alliance and the Taliban-led Afghan resistance groups are rather wide. Both are ecstatic about a respective victory. America is looking for at least, a figurative residual force, while political resistance groups are asking for a total disengagement. The Afghan National Security Forces’ dearth requisite capacity and potential to carry out orders after the withdrawal of foreign forces, elevate the phantom of a civil war seaping into Pakistan.

America’s Afghanistan policy is pinned around deliberate ambivalence. This ambiguity has given rise to a conjectural condition edifice based on various degrees of a rollback of American influence, viz. total hands off, partial military disengagement, complete military withdrawal and yet detention of economic and political impact of varying degrees are some of the presumptions on which most of the suppositions are hinged.

America’s core interest has now shifted to East Asia. Whatever the prospects of foreseeable objectives, Afghanistan is now of fringe interest to America. The United States has a powerful remote intelligence, surveillance, and strike capabilities that could only be dreamed of in the 1990s. These capabilities increasingly can be engaged from “stand-off” distances. Some of these potentials require localized basing, but Afghanistan is not the only country that can provide inconspicuous basing options. Eleven years of an immense quiet intelligence endeavor partnered with Afghans and Pakistanis have created a nexus of friendly contacts that will be continued long after 2014. In some ways, the post-2014 milieu in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area could extend into a prolonged “intelligence war,” with hundreds of US operatives and billions of furtive dollars invested in avert further terrorist attacks on the United States.

The Afghan National Security Forces can possibly preserve this stand-off, but only as long as the US Congress pays the multibillion-dollar annual bills needed to keep them fighting. The war will thus become a bout in stamina between the US Congress and the Taliban. Unless Congress shows more tolerance than the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, funding for the ANSF will eventually dwindle until Afghan forces can no longer control their ground, and at that point, the country could easily plunge into mayhem. If it does, the war will be lost. A policy of simply handing off an ongoing war to an Afghan government that cannot support troops needed to win is thus not a strategy for a “responsible end” to the conflict; it is closer to what the Nixon administration was willing to accept in the final stages of the Vietnam War, a “decent interval” between the United States’ departure and the eventual defeat of its local confederate.

There are only two real alternatives to this, neither of them gratifying. One is to get serious about negotiations with the Taliban. This is no elixir, but it is the only option to outright defeat. To its kudos, the Obama administration has pursued such talks for over a year. What it has not done is spend the political capital needed for an actual deal. A settlement the US could live with would require hard political engineering both in Kabul and on Capitol Hill, yet the administration has not followed through.

The other plausible approach is for the US to cut its losses and completely leave Afghanistan, leaving behind no consultative presence and reducing its aid considerably. Outright disengagement might damage US stature, but so too would a slow-motion genre of the same defeat—only at a greater cost in blood and treasure. And although a speedy US departure would cost many Afghans their lives and freedoms, continuing to fight could simply delay such an outcome and risk the sacrifice of more American lives in a lost cause.

The current administration in Kabul is seriously venturing toward open dialogue with the resistance forces. It appears that a lot of preliminary work has been done in this regard. Pakistan is not only supporting the dialogue process, but also has considerable involvement in initiating it, with the US also endorsing the proposal. There is a paradox, though. On the one hand, the parties to the confrontation are being persuade to sit for negotiations, and on the other, the US is being advised to detain the evacuation of its forces.

Considering that the key demand of the resistance movement is a complete withdrawal of all foreign forces, it remains to be seen how the talk’s initiative will pan out. If the resistance forces agree to conduct a meaningful dialogue, they would want iron-clad guarantees that the departure time frame would be uppermost on the agenda. In all probability, the resistance would agree to full-scale open talks only when the time frame issue has been resolved in secret negotiations.