End the War on Terror
The situation in Afghanistan has turned so far against the United States, NATO, the international community, and those Afghans who originally hoped that the post–September 11 intervention would finally bring them a chance for normal lives that it will be very difficult to salvage. Al-Qaeda has established a new safe haven in the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies of Pakistan, from which it supports insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan and continues its global planning against the United States and its allies. Its press releases are so frequent that they are hardly newsworthy unless they feature video of Usama Bin Laden himself. [The Obama administration refocused efforts on al-Qaeda, severely degrading its capabilities and ultimately killing Bin Laden himself in his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011.] Negative trends in Afghanistan include the deterioration of security, Afghan governance, and regional stability. The stability of Pakistan, a nuclear weapons state that has been the main source of proliferation over the past two decades, is now at serious risk. Rising India-Pakistan tensions further exacerbate the regional risk, as do tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and its relations with Hizbullah and Hamas.
The task in Afghanistan would have been difficult under any circumstances. The Bush Administration’s unique record of incompetence, fecklessness, and criminality has ensured that the Obama Administration inherits its responsibilities under the worst possible circumstances, not only for the region but globally as well. Still, as President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel said of the economic situation, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
This serious crisis may finally force equally serious thinking about the goals of the international intervention in Afghanistan and the means required to have any serious hope of attaining or approaching them. Rather than proclaim objectives limited only by the audacity of our imaginations (an Islamic democratic, stable, gender-sensitive, and prosperous Afghanistan) and the paucity of our means (fewer resources per capita than any other such operation), we need to align objectives with reality, and means with objectives.
The most important change in the definition of U.S. objectives is to explicitly renounce the War on Terror. Instead the United States is engaged in a war against al-Qaeda, which attacked the United States and its allies. Al-Qaeda, a nonterritorial transnational network, can obtain a safe haven only through alliance with groups such as the Taliban, which have a national or ethnic base connected to a territory and population. Such alliances are inherently unstable, however, insofar as any territorialized political movement has objectives related to the territory and population where it is based, objectives that are necessarily different from al-Qaeda’s global goals of reestablishing the Islamic caliphate throughout Muslim territory.
The “war on terror,” which amalgamated all Islamist groups that used violence into a common threat, thus strengthened its primary target, al-Qaeda, by creating incentives for local groups treated as “terrorists” to ally themselves with al-Qaeda. All handbooks of war, dating back at least to Sun Tzu, have recommended dividing the enemy. The War on Terror did the opposite.
Counterterrorism requires military and intelligence tools, but only a drastic strategic reorientation can provide those with their required political complement. In the Afghan context, such a clear, public reorientation of counterterrorism policies should lead the United States and its partners in Afghanistan to offer political negotiations to any Taliban and other insurgents who are willing to separate themselves from al-Qaeda. Such a policy has been in effect formally for several years, but related policies on sanctions, detention, and reintegration have not been restructured to reflect that stance. Political accommodation with groups that accept effective guarantees against the creation or protection of terrorist sanctuaries will require reciprocal U.S. guarantees against detention or sanctions for any leader willing to enter into such an agreement. Thus far the United States has no mechanism to ensure that such a guarantee is observed by the multitude of agencies involved in the counterterrorism effort.
The same shift in counterterrorism policy should apply to Pakistan, though it will take a different form. The United States should support efforts by the elected government of Pakistan to separate Pakistani insurgents from al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters, in particular by supporting programs to reform the status of the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies to address the grievances and isolation of the population there.
Separating Afghan or Pakistani Islamic insurgents from al-Qaeda would constitute a serious political setback for the latter that would damage its claims to legitimacy and its recruitment capacity in the Islamic world. Much of the diffuse international sympathy for al-Qaeda (now on the decline) derives from resistance to “occupations” of Afghanistan and Iraq. Any political settlement with Afghan insurgents, especially the Taliban leadership, would deprive al-Qaeda of that claim.
Inclusion of Taliban leadership and other insurgents in a political settlement does not mean returning Afghanistan to Taliban rule or abandoning the broad portion of the Afghan political spectrum that has worked with the international community and welcomed liberation from Taliban rule. Nor is it meant as a quick fix to replace policies aimed at the regional factors behind the insurgency or the corruption and abuse that have so weakened the Afghan government. A political settlement cannot succeed without policy changes by the Taliban’s regional sponsors, and insurgents cannot be reintegrated unless the government becomes more credible.
What the United States should ask of its Afghan partners is that any political agreement be based on recognizing the authority of the Afghan government and its security forces throughout the territory of Afghanistan. Participation in power among (more or less) disarmed political groups through coalition or cooptation is acceptable; division of the country into spheres of influence under the control of multiple authorities or security forces is not. Power sharing in the latter sense permits formation of safe havens.
This is what the U.S. and Afghan governments should mean when they state that negotiating partners must accept the Afghan constitution. This should not mean passage of an ideological test requiring agreement with every article but recognition of the sovereignty of the government established by the constitution. Many issues dealt with (often ambiguously) by the constitution will remain contentious for a long time, and not only to insurgents. Insurgents who lay down arms will have the same rights as other Afghans to disagree with and seek to change the constitution through peaceful means.
Such a declaratory policy is already in effect, but no one takes it seriously, since the existing policies on detention and sanctions send the other message. Taliban and al-Qaeda are detained together in Guantanamo and sanctioned together by the UN Security Council. Closing Guantanamo is a first step. Afghan and Pakistani detainees (except for those closely linked to al-Qaeda leadership, which includes no Afghans) should be transferred to national custody or released. The international community will have to fund generous reintegration packages in both countries.
Both national and international sanctions regimes should be changed to guarantee security and integration of insurgents who join the political process. Russia has thus far opposed removal of anyone from the sanctions list, for reasons that should be explored further. The main reason is probably its concern that the purpose of integrating former Taliban is to consolidate a NATO base in its near abroad. Diplomatic efforts to overcome these objectives could serve common Russian and Western interests in the elimination of the threat from al-Qaeda.
Such a policy change will not work by itself. To succeed, it must be accompanied by military, security, and governance efforts that enable the Afghan government to present a more credible alternative than it has. The Afghan Taliban leaders are dependent on their Pakistani sponsors and supporters, including the country’s military and security apparatus, for their safe haven, and regional diplomacy aimed at changing Pakistan’s security calculus remains essential. The core of such a policy is firm support for the efforts of the elected government of Pakistan to gain control of the country’s security policy and define the national interest as the welfare of the citizens of Pakistan.
Within Pakistan, integrating FATA into what Pakistanis call the “mainstream” is also not a quick fix. It will require a strategy that will take many years. There will be armed resistance by al-Qaeda and many other armed groups whose existence depends on the isolated nature of these areas. But gaining control of national territory in order to protect the rights of Pakistani citizens will certainly provide a more legitimate mission for the country’s security forces than assisting the United States in its “War on Terror.”
No single policy change can solve any problem, let alone a set of problems so complex and interdependent as those of this region. But such a bold, clear announcement, followed by concrete public steps, can go a long way toward transforming the poisonous environment we all have inherited.