A strategic error called Afghanistan

More than many realise, this latest incident was a defining moment in the post-9/11 relationship with Afghanistan. It signified that despite all protestations, the United States still has not learned the most compelling lessons it needed to glean from past policy failures in this region. This tragic miscalculation was hardly a time for blandly expressed ‘‘regrets’’ for having caused ‘‘collateral damage’’, it was a time for contrition, compassion, and a pledge to start delivering on the solemn promises that were made to the people of Afghanistan following the defeat of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Those promises were that America would take the lead in bringing a new era of reconstruction, reconciliation and social progress to this beleaguered land.

This has not happened. In fact, somewhat later during a visit to Washington, Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah, seems to have underlined this very point. While diplomatically thanking America for all it has done for his country thus far, Abdullah clearly indicated that the time has come to move beyond merely military operations if his country’s future is to become a departure from its recent past. Afghanistan now needs, he declared, ‘‘support, security and reconstruction.’’

This is what America pledged to provide following the rout of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. There was talk of a ‘Marshal Plan’, an aggressive American initiative to do whatever was necessary to eradicate the social conditions seen to be the underlying cause of the fratricidal warfare and economic stagnation that transformed Afghanistan into inner Asia’s premier basket case and the plaything of surrounding great powers, Islamic extremists and local warlords.

Outside Kabul, virtual anarchy reigns. In the absence of a viable central political authority, local chieftains are reestablishing the old patterns of ad hoc dominance that set Afghanistan up for its terrible ordeals in the first place. But the US has essentially been sitting on the sidelines, more or less contemplating its navel. It has wholly militarised its strategic orientation to the country and the region. Most of the US’s time is spent on overt and covert Special Forces operations that pursue an increasingly elusive enemy deployed along the Pakistan border, in the nether recesses of the Afghan hinterland, and in other adjoining states like Uzbekistan. There are no signs of meaningful US involvement in the revitalisation and reconstruction undertakings of which Abdullah spoke.

What there is of broader pacification and reconstruction activity has been left to the United Nations, to token European and Turkish contingents, to private agencies. The US has been acting as little more than a cheerleader, paying mostly lip service to the larger responsibilities required Foul-ups such as the recent wedding-party massacre will continue and indeed may further escalate as long as this strategic paralysis continues; it will certainly erode still further an already fading US credibility in Afghanistan and the region.

The Bush administration needs to stop pleading poverty of means and start recognising that its problem is a poverty of strategic imagination; that its neglectful conduct arises from a patently disingenuous alleged aversion to ‘‘nation building’’ and an alleged pious regard for Afghanistan’s ‘‘sovereignty’’. Afghanistan’s leaders can adequately handle the ‘‘sovereignty’’ problem; what they cannot handle are the reconstruction and pacification problems minus significant American commitment. The real issue is whether the United States is prepared to spend major assets in the short run for much greater gains in the long run. That is the essence of sound strategic thinking which transcends the inevitably limited prospects inherent in Special Forces operations larded with gunships and heavy bomber raids that kill more friends than enemies.

The prevailing situation is not unlike the dilemmas that stalk the US in the rest of South Asia as a result of its refusal to exercise strategic imagination vis-a-vis Pakistan. It continues to delude itself into thinking that half-measures—i.e. tactical measures alone—will be sufficient to preserve the peace and ensure progress there under the aegis of a military dictator who pays lip-service to these noble aspirations while doing nothing to bring them about. Pervez Musharraf is the problem rather than the solution; he embodies the retrograde mentality of the country’s current ruling classes who are responsible for Pakistan’s inability to move toward democracy, economic modernity and peace with India. But the US is unwilling to forthrightly address these realities by adopting comprehensive, even risky, measures to bring about needed structural change.

A step in the right direction would be for Bush to personally apologise for this latest and all other massacres of innocents, offer recompense to the victims, and initiate measures that demonstrate that strategic vision means just that. By fixating almost exclusively upon search and destroy missions (shades of Vietnam!), i.e., by militarising strategic vision, and now additionally diverting its attention to Iraq, the leadership has denied itself the means for addressing the political, economic and sociological factors whose resolution will alone facilitate the eventual conclusion of what otherwise promises to be an interminable saga of blood-letting.

(The writer is a Visiting Scholar in the Program of South Asian Studies at the University of Virginia)