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Has America lost its way in Afghanistan?

M.K. Bhadrakumar

The stark reality is that there isn't any political process anymore in Afghanistan. The American strategy of taming the Taliban or engineering defections from its ranks is a shambles.

WHEN GEORGE W. Bush stopped over in Kabul for a few hours during his South Asia tour, it was the first visit by an American President to Afghanistan in 50 years. The Afghan war lifted Mr. Bush out of the trough of political controversy that followed his questionable 2000 election victory. The Bush Presidency never looked back. The Taliban regime's ouster was hailed as a sweet success story, which made America secure, and, in turn, embellished Mr. Bush's re-election campaign in 2004.

Afghanistan continues to be the home page in the war on terror. No matter the ground realities, the American public largely believes the war has been won. The invocation of the "victory" at this point mitigates to an extent the messiness of the Iraq war and the controversies and scandals surrounding the Bush administration on multiple fronts.

There was arguably cause to celebrate too. Never in its history has Afghanistan been brought so definitively into the Western camp. The country is, for the present at any rate, a tool of U.S. regional policy. It also fits into the script of the Bush administration's democracy project — no rude surprises here, no Hamas, no Muslim Brotherhood or Hezbollah to snatch power slyly through the ballot box.

But the question remained whether Mr. Bush would utilise his visit to announce any fresh American initiative for arresting the dangerous slide in the Afghan situation. In the event, apart from "a great Afghan lunch" hosted by President Hamid Karzai, and the photo opportunities in Kabul, the U.S. President had nothing much to say. Curiously, he spoke more about the Afghan problem while in Delhi and Islamabad. Mr. Bush would "encourage" India to "work directly" with Mr. Karzai in building a multi-ethnic democracy. As for Islamabad, Mr. Bush partly wanted to determine whether or not President Pervez Musharraf was as committed as he used to be to the war on terror, and partly to "push" the Pakistani leader to do more in curbing extremist activities in the region at this juncture when the U.S. sought to cut back its troop strength in Afghanistan and hoped to hand over the baton to NATO.

Admittedly, Pakistan's role has become more critical than ever before. In mid-February, Mr. Karzai visited Islamabad to make it clear he expected Pakistan to make serious efforts to halt the flow of personnel and weapons across the border. But, interestingly, Mr. Karzai turned down a Pakistani proposal for fencing the Pakistan-Afghan border to prevent infiltration, as that would sanctify the Durand Line! On the other hand, he warned: "If [the attacks] don't stop, the consequences ... will be that this region will suffer with us, exactly as we suffer. In the past we suffered alone. This time everybody will suffer with us."

On any single day, the Afghan state media feature diatribes against Islamabad for providing Taliban with sanctuaries, a logistical framework, and a recruiting base. An Afghan journalist wrote last week, "When you walk through the streets of Quetta, you hear Taliban religious songs blaring out of music shops. These incendiary chants, called tarana, call on youths to join the jihad, kill infidels and repel the occupiers ... In fact some sections of the city seem to be populated entirely by the Taliban ... they lie in wait in Quetta, plotting their return."

But the issue has gone far beyond cross-border terrorism. Indeed, in the pervasive climate of "anti-Americanism" gripping Pakistan, it is a moot point whether the Taliban enjoys the covert backing of the Pakistani establishment. The public mood within Pakistan itself is fast becoming such, for a variety of reasons, that a broad empathy is developing among large sections of people (who are by no means jihadi symapthisers), with what the Afghan tragedy epitomises — America's "muscular diplomacy" in the region, to use Henry Kissinger's words.

The core issue is of Pashtun alienation. The Taliban and its vast reservoir of militant supporters within Pakistan harbour the grouse that the Americans usurped power in Kabul. They feel embittered over the brazen American manipulation of their movement through the 1990s, the string of broken promises made by the Americans, and ultimately their humiliating ouster from Kabul followed by the foreign occupation of their country.

Unless a political process is soon kick-started by the United Nations in the nature of an intra-Afghan dialogue leading to genuine powersharing, the security situation may become irretrievable. Following the recent parliamentary elections, the power equations in Kabul have become complex. The Kabul set-up feels uneasy about the Bush administration's verbal commitments to the long haul. Naturally enough, all sorts of elements are jockeying for position.

The result is rampant corruption and venality, nepotism, wheeling-dealing, and a virtual paralysis in governance. Commenting on the recent rioting in Kabul's main prison, a prominent Afghan daily wrote, " The authorities invariably blame the Taliban and Al-Qaeda for any incident... they cover up their ineptness, mistreatment and sexual abuses of prisoners... . Women and children are abused and ignored. Women and children who go to prison never return home with honour intact."

The overall outlook of the war remains gloomy. In a recent testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Lt. General Michael D. Maples, admitted that the Afghan opposition posed a "greater threat" to Mr. Karzai's Government than at any time since the American intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001. Gen. Maples concluded: "The Taliban-dominated insurgency remains capable and resilient."

Indeed, it does not need the ingenuity of the American intelligence establishment to perceive how bad the ground situation has become. From southern Afghanistan, the Diplomatic Editor of The Times, Richard Beeston wrote last week: "I think that President Bush couldn't come out to visit India and Pakistan without paying a visit to Afghanistan as well, but the situation in Kabul is far removed from that in other parts of the country ... the fact remains that far from being a beaten force, the Taliban appears to be resurgent ... Much of the country has changed very little since the Americans arrived in 2001.

"Pashtun areas such as Helmand remain suspicious of foreign intervention. I was in a market today and bought a cassette of songs praising Mullah Omar. That same cassette was being played loudly on a neighbouring stall and no one minded. So whatever George Bush and Hamid Karzai say in Kabul, the truth is that the Government's writ simply doesn't run here."

Mr. Beeston has underlined the impasse in the Afghan political process. Actually, the stark reality is that there isn't any political process anymore. The American strategy of taming the Taliban or engineering defections from its ranks is a shambles. Mr. Karzai has not been able to consolidate support in the Pashtun heartlands in the southern provinces either. Thus, Mr. Karzai (and the Americans) has swung back to dependence on erstwhile Northern Alliance elements. That is further fuelling Pashtun alienation.

Simmering passions

As the recent sectarian violence in the western Herat province and the outbreak of clashes between the supporters of Rashid Dostum and Abdol Malik in the remote Faryab province on the Amu Darya show, ancient passions are lurking just below the surface. Mr. Dostum made an ominous call recently from Shibirghan that if only complete authority in Kabul were turned over to him, he would take the battle to the Taliban's sanctuaries and annihilate them.

Apart from the political impasse and the overall state of lawlessness, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime has warned that a big rise in poppy cultivation is expected this year. The report says, "Villagers have already planted crops on a scale equal to or exceeding that of 2005." A separate report of the British Foreign Office predicts "dramatic increase" in poppy cultivation in the Pashtun province of Helmand, which is a Taliban stronghold.

Meanwhile, the Trans-Afghan gas pipeline project (TAP) that was supposed to provide the lifeblood for Afghan reconstruction (and had kindled the American interest in Taliban movement in the early 1990s) is vanishing from the shelf.

The Americans now prefer a Trans-Caspian pipeline project that will evacuate Turkmen gas to the European market. American and Turkish officials resumed discussions in Ashgabat in January on the Trans-Caspian pipeline project, which was originally mooted by the Clinton administration in 1997.

TAP should have been Pakistan's "peace dividend." A commitment to the sanctity of the Durand Line by the Kabul Government should have been yet another "peace dividend." Neither would seem to be on the cards. The American attention span is proving to be limited. Washington would like to move on in pursuit of new longings in greener pastures.

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