Afghanistan Echoes

Caught in the Headlights

An excellent, albeit disturbing, article has appeared recently in the NZ Herald, written by Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor of the Observer.

It compares and contrasts an assessment made by top military commanders in Afghanistan after eight years of Soviet occupation and war, with the recently published assessment by Stanley McChrystal, top US theatre general, after nearly eight years of US occupation and war. Both reports are eerily similar.

First, the Soviet report:

"We should honestly admit that our efforts have not led to the expected results. Huge material resources and considerable casualties did not produce a positive end result - stabilisation of military-political situation in the country. The protracted character of the military struggle and the absence of any serious success, which could lead to a breakthrough in the entire strategic situation, led to the formation in the minds of the majority of the population of the mistrust in the abilities of the regime."

"The experience of the past years clearly shows that the Afghan problem cannot be solved by military means only.

"We should decisively reject our illusions and undertake principally new steps, taking into account the lessons of the past, and the real situation in the country."

The date is August 17, 1987. The writer Colonel K. Tsagalov is addressing the newly appointed Soviet Defence Minister, Dmitry Yazov.

Now, compare this with the McChrystal assessment, of just two months ago.

"The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and Isaf's [International Security Assistance Force's] own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their Government," McChrystal argued in a document leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. He said the consequence had been a "crisis of confidence among Afghans. Further, a perception that our resolve is uncertain makes Afghans reluctant to align with us against the insurgents".

The American led-effort, wrote McChrystal, was labouring under its own illusions regarding its competence.

"Afghan social, political, economic, and cultural affairs are complex and poorly understood. [Nato and the US] does not sufficiently appreciate the dynamics in local communities, nor how the insurgency, corruption, incompetent officials, power-brokers, and criminality all combine to affect the Afghan population."

It has been reported that the US field manual for counter-insurgency in Afghanistan seems to have completely overlooked or ignored the Soviet experience. Yet, the two situations are eerily similar.

To cite one parallel, McChrystal has just announced he wants to relocate isolated firebases to relocate troops in population centres.

The Russians, confronted by a widening conflict, were forced to adopt the same strategy.

The Soviet war cost more than a million Afghan lives and, 26,000 Soviet soldiers. More than five million Afghans fled the devastated country. Soviet troop numbers reached 108,000 at their peak.

The mujahideen, unlike the Taleban today, benefited from US and other foreign military aid. And the present conflict has lacked the same intensity.

But while the scale is different, the intellectual failures associated with both wars are the same.

Neither the Russians nor the Americans intended to become embroiled in long wars.

Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, ordered the Soviet invasion to build a communist government that could stand on its own feet. It was an error repeated by the US-led efforts to rebuild the country as a democratic state.

The Soviet preoccupation with Afghanistan seems strikingly familiar. At a meeting in the Kremlin on April 1, 1979, after an uprising in Herat against the Afghan communist government, Moscow's most senior officials read a top-level report on the situation.

"Afghan reactionary forces [were] skilfully taking advantage of the almost complete illiteracy of the population, complex international and inter-tribal conflicts, religious fanaticism and nationalism."

It depicted a mujahideen insurgency in transition, "from covert subversive actions to open armed forms of activity" the aim of which was to "widen the front of the struggle, to force the government to disperse its forces across different regions".

Just as Western officials now home in on the failings of the Karzai regime three decades later, the Soviet leadership lamented the lack of legitimacy and authority of their man in Kabul - Nur Mohammad Taraki.

In both conflicts foreign forces have found themselves propping up a minority grouping with unsustainable claims to nationwide legitimacy. Russia backed the narrowly represented supporters of the PDPA, the fractious and divided Afghan communist party; now Nato has promoted a small elite surrounding Karzai's weak government.

Just as US and Nato forces would struggle after the new Taleban insurgency to prevent fighters returning to areas already cleared, the Russians suffered a similar problem.

Soviet officials complain of not being able to win on the battlefield decisively and of losing the "propaganda war". Recently US envoy Richard Holbrooke and McChrystal have talked of the need "to wrest the information initiative from the Taleban and other groups".

In the end Gorbachev announced a withdrawal and acknowledged, thereby, defeat. Meanwhile, the UN observers have announced that the recent election of Hamid Karzai was indeed fraudulent. Al Jazeera is reporting that new "fronts" are opening up all across the country--most recently in the supposedly more-settled northern provinces.

The rapid decline in security in the northern provinces is becoming the fastest changing story in Afghanistan and often one of the most under-reported.

General Atta Mohammad Noor, the governor of the Balkh province, has raised alarms about the deteriorating situation in northern Afghanistan.

Noor earned his spurs fighting in the ranks of legendary fighter Ahmed Shah Masood, the late Tajik leader of the Northern Alliance – once bitter enemies of the predominantly Pashtun Taliban – who was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives in 2001.

"I was a commander. I know the situation is becoming worse. For three years I have been telling the government about the Taliban and they don't listen. I warned them three years ago and the government did not attend to it. War will come home by home in the northern provinces," he says.

Meanwhile the Obama administration is showing signs of being caught like a possum in the headlights over the issue. The most recent development is an intimation that it will not send more troops until there is a "legitimate" government in Kabul that it can "partner" with. To summarize: Obama has declared that withdrawal is not an option; the US is going to be there for the long haul. Bad mistake. But, if you are going to take that course, better resource up to do it. But, the US forces are facing a strengthening Taliban insurrection, and are losing ground. Now the White House indicates it will not commit more troops until Afghan politics cleans its act up. Talk about wanting to dance with all the women at the ball!

It is beginning to look as if it is not a question of whether the US will withdraw, but how bad its nose will be bloodied, before it decides to accept the inevitable. We incline to the view that the decision to withdraw will not be made by the Obama administration, but by an incoming new administration. Obama now has too much political capital sunk into the Afghan war--which, remember, he declared was the "real" war, which the US had to fight (as contrasted with Iraq which was a George Bush phony war.) In the next presidential campaign, the Republican meme will likely be: "We could have won the war in 2009, but because the President dithered, the situation is now hopeless. As much as it hurts us, it is time for more responsible men to make the tough call." It was Gorbachev, not Brezhnev that ordered the Soviet withdrawal. So, we believe, it will be with Obama's war. The withdrawal will be ordered by an incoming Republican president. It will be framed as a President making a tough call to clean up an Obama-created mess.

The earliest that can happen will be 2012. Meanwhile McChrystal and his men had better bunker down. It's going to be a long, morale sapping tour of duty. Obama is heading towards being typecast around the world as a weak, vacillating, appeasing President. He is likely to go down in history as the President who was "present" in the White House, but the office of the President itself during his tenure was absent. A law lecturer who calls endlessly for more contradictory position papers does not a President make.