Af-Pak: The Gathering Storm

America’s Afghanistan surge is doomed from the start, but a solution may lie in carving out a Pashtoon nation.

Everything is simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult —Carl von Clausewitz

So here we go again. The soldiers go marching in. The graves are singing, in the very graveyard of empires, Afghanistan. Obama is an oracle. He does know his history. He will not do a Vietnam. Thus the deadline, thus the surge. We are not being defeated, he tells the world. We will do a surge, do some surgery, and withdraw on our own accord. You can already hear drums of the beating retreat as the star spangled banner is lowered for the last time in Kabul.

Get one thing upfront—this is no surge. The 30,000 new troops can’t hold even the periphery of that city dreaded by us, the people of the Indus, Ghazni. The wizards of Armageddon are betting on technology on all those drones, on the firepower of 155 mm calibre field guns, on Hellfire missiles fired from Apache choppers, on the magnificent gizmos that provide ‘theatre dominance’. Go ask the British and Russian veterans—in the Hindukush, it’s the boot on the ground that matters, the rest is peripheral.

Conceivably, the US may maintain a token presence beyond July 2011. The key for a democrat—by which I mean one who knows comparative democracy—is that democratically speaking, Afghanistan is Algeria. That the Taliban and sundry groupings of Islamists will capture Kabul if they want by the ballot. Only, they don’t quite believe in it.

To put it in other words, you cannot really leave Afghanistan to the Afghans. Much the same way as Charles Schultz once said, “He loves humanity, it’s the people he hates.” Afghanistan wants those infidels out, period. Like Algeria did. And the only way to handle that is to have the stomach for the long haul. Unlike Obama’s bow to the emperor of Japan, you have to bow, and bow deep around these parts, to the call of the aazaan.

Optimists in India see the surge as good news. They point to evidence that at long last, Obama has faced up to the fact that the theatre of the Afghan conflict is on both sides of the Khyber Pass. Pakistan is the key to this conflict. It is also a sticking point. The decisive battles will be the ones that are fought east of Khyber. Can America pull it off? Does it have the influence with Islamabad to extend the envelop? These are the key questions.

The answer, alas, is no. Pakistan has never been the willing participant the US wants. The wily leadership in Islamabad knows that sponsoring terror is the only leverage it has vis-a-vis the wider world, apart from the nuclear button. Take these two out, and all you have is a poverty-ridden country humiliatingly dependent on aid from the US and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan will do what great strategists do in war. Wait, and hope that the US sticks to its deadline, withdraws and creates a vacuum.

Like in any war, there are serious risks. Should the US withdraw without a stable alternative, you can bet on a worldwide Al Qaida resurgence. They will boast that after defeating the British Empire in the 19th century, the mighty Red Army in the 20th, and the US expeditionary forces in the 21st, nothing can stop them.

Ponder the consequences for a moment. Pakistani-backed militants worldwide will reckon that compared to the foes they have vanquished, the Indian Army in Kashmir would be a cakewalk. Be prepared for attrition of a level unseen in Kashmir thus far.

The real solution to the problem is political and not military. What a majority of Afghans want is a Pashtoon nation under Sharia law. This nation, though, would straddle the Khyber Pass and include parts of Pakistan. The artificial Durand line was a colonial creation. Its time is now past.

The Afghanistan project is much bigger than any military offensive. It calls for redrawing of borders. Does the international community have the capacity to help foster an Islamic Pashtoon nation? Anything short of that will only lead to a long bloody and inevitable conflict at the very epicentre of a great game without end.

About The Author

Ninad D. Sheth