In Afghanistan, loss means the collapse of the Karzai government and the return of the Taliban. Loss also means the unchecked resurgence of the opium trade and the end of seven years worth of sustainable economic development initiatives. Finally, real loss in Afghanistan means true failure for Bush's misguided Iran containment plan (U.S. bases supported by stable pro-U.S. regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan). Whether or not Iranian containment is the most pressing issue in the region is another story entirely.
Should U.S. and NATO forces (the latter also at an all-time high of 26,000 since December) leave Afghanistan, precious influence over and upon Pakistan's tribal regions will also be lost. As everyone knows, the mountainous regions of northern Pakistan (esp. Waziristan) -- just over the Khyber pass from Afghanistan's Tora Bora cave network -- are home to nearly unfettered Taliban and al-Qaeda training camps and operations strongholds. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf claims to have global anti-terrorist interests in mind and strong anti-terrorist military policy in place. He remains "pro-U.S." and anti-Taliban/al-Qaeda. But as last summer's Red Mosque siege, the Bhutto assassination, a quadrupling of suicide attacks in Pakistan, and recent Taliban successes in Afghanistan show, Musharraf's iron fist needs some alloying from his allies.
These issues -- threats to development, the risks associated with allied failure in Afghanistan, and the ultimately feeble hand of Musharraf are the subject of recent articles in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Washington Monthly. Last week's Sunday edition of the Post included a series of articles on Iraq, the most powerful of which was an article about the effect of Iraq's many displaced populations on regional stability and economic/political development.
This Sunday's Post gives all its attention to Afghanistan, with a strangely comforting interview with Afghan President Hamid Karzai (perhaps dismaying, depending on whether you take Karzai's answers as dejectedly noncommittal or optimistic) and an article about small success in Jalalabad overshadowed by Taliban success on the other side of the country. Karzai shocked me with his answer to Lally Weymouth's question about Iran:
Q: How much influence does Iran have in your country right now, Mr. President?
A: We have had a particularly good relationship with Iran in the past six years. It's a relationship that I hope will continue. We have opened our doors to them. They have been helping us in Afghanistan. The United States very wisely understood that it is our neighbor and encouraged that relationship. I hope Iran would also understand that the United States is a great ally of ours and that we value that alliance with the United States. So that is the foundation of our relationship with them, and I hope that it will continue as it is.
Wow!!: "The United States very wisely understood that [Iran] is our neighbor and encouraged that relationship." Is that the same United States that calls Iran an Axis of Evil country and maligns Iran for providing Iraqi insurgents with the materials that go into EFPs (a new breed of armor-piercing shape-charge IEDs)? Is that the same United States that recently added Iran's Revolutionary Guard to its dread list of terrorist organizations? The same United States that, up until a month ago, was threatening bunker-busting bombing missions over Iran's potential but actually non-existent weapons facilities? I know Karzai's in between rocks and hard places (actually three rocks when you include Pakistan), trying to please Tehran, Washington, and Brussels, not to mention a swath of formidable warlords and domestic political forces; but are such answers nothing more than the squeals of a pinched man? I hope not. I hope it's true that Iran is a positive actor in the future of Afghanistan. And oh how I hope it's true that some representative agency of the United States "very wisely," officially or unofficially, recognized where Afghanistan's logical friends and enemies are in the region. Such an "agreement" or "realization" would be called "diplomacy" by some, something that has been lacking between Iran and the United States for almost thirty years.
Afghan insecurity poses a threat to the region as a whole, and Iran has as much of a stake in Afghanistan's future as the United States, if not more. It's helpful to remember that Iran is managed somewhat tentatively by its slim Persian majority (51%), holed up mostly in Tehran and its environs. Instability in Afghanistan invites instability along Iran's ethnically and economically repressed southeastern border, where the regionally prominent Baluchi population -- which moves between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan -- remains a threat to the Iranian state. This from the Congressional Research Service's May 2007 "Report for Congress": "In March 2007, a group called Jundallah attacked a government motorcade which left 20 people dead, kidnapped a number of hostages, and executed at least one member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards." I'd say that's a significant attack; if such an attack were carried out on U.S. citizens by any splinter group it would be the biggest insurrection since the Civil War. I'd also say increased instability of southern Afghanistan -- a region known (and feared by Iranian and Pakistani authorities) for its major smuggling industry -- only presents the possibility of more attacks like this one. Hence Iran's support for a stable Afghanistan. If Iran is supporting Karzai's government, and supporting U.S. interests in doing so, why would Iran encourage Iraqi instability?
Similarly repressed and militant ethnic populations exist on Iraq's borders (Azers and Kurds), and instability offers these groups freer reign too; so wouldn't it be in Iran's interest to promote Iraqi stability too? Maybe they are, but Bush's Axis of Evil rhetoric prevents the sort of diplomatic dialogue necessary for an expansion of Iran's role (or at least of our truthful awareness of it). Maybe it's only because Afghanistan has been so far out of the limelight that U.S. and Iranian agents have been able to "wisely understand" each other; the lack of media attention has ensured no Washington firebrands would notice.
Karzai shocked me with another of his answers:
Q: Are you going to run for another term in 2009?
A: Well, I have things to accomplish. Who was it who wrote -- Robert Frost? -- "The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep."
WOW! Can you imagine President Bush quoting poetry at all? Let alone poetry in a foreign language? Karzai wins me over with that response. I only wish our own presidential candidates were able to focus on their jobs over their presidential aspirations like Mr. Karzai. Had Bush not been wholly focused on winning in 2004, I wonder if 2003 - 2006 would've been such botched years in Iraq and Afghanistan (hmmmnn . . . I wonder if we would've gone to Iraq at all, had Bush's sole concern -- and the concern of all those riding along with him, or maybe it's better to say 'all those for whom he chauffeured' -- not been neocon re-election).
The same Outlook section also features an article by David Ignatius about a tentative development success story in Nangahar province, titled "An Afghan Province Points the Way." "You can see in Jalalabad what success would look like," writes Ignatius; "the challenge is to make that picture real across Afghanistan." Focusing mostly on the blend of factors leading to relative stability in Jalalabad, Ignatius also examines the increasing instability in southern Afghanistan and the sad potential of a northward spread of the violence. As evidence of that potential, he cites the minister of education, Hanif Atmar, who reports that "Taliban terrorist attacks killed 147 students and teachers over the past 10 months and seriously injured 200 others. This campaign of intimidation closed 590 schools last year, up from 350 the year before. In areas where students are too scared to go to school, stability and security are still distant goals."
Contrarily, "the American contribution to stability in Jalalabad," writes Ignatius, "is twofold. First there's the PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) effort. With its focus on economic development, the team is reaching out to the very people whose support the Taliban insurgents need to survive. . . . A second component of U.S. success here is the low-visibility but high-impact mix of combat and intelligence operations. . . . When you visit places like Jalalabad and see things working the way they're supposed to, there's always a disconnect with what you've been reading and hearing about the larger war. . . . The reality is that the larger war in Afghanistan isn't going as well as it seems to be in this province. Roadside bombs and suicide attacks were up last year. The Taliban is gaining strength in some parts of the country. The Afghan national government is weak and disorganized. And NATO's operations are a ragged quilt--with no other nation matching U.S. effort, either in combat firepower or people friendly PRTs."
Ignatius makes an interesting point with his take on the claim that "counterinsurgency wars are . . . about creating a state of mind. Security is a habit," Ignatius wisely understands, "born of weeks and months of ordinary life." The problem, he continues, is that "insecurity, too, is a habit, born of fear that a suicide bomber may attack your village or your Kabul hotel, regardless of how infrequent those attacks may really be."
(To be continued)
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