Afghanistan: regional perturbations
By Richard North - August 15, 2021
It’s interesting to have president Biden confirm his options in a White House statement yesterday. When I became President, he said, “a small number of U.S. troops still remained on the ground, in harm’s way, with a looming deadline to withdraw them or go back to open combat”.
Over the 20 years of “our country’s at war in Afghanistan”, he said, “America has sent its finest young men and women, invested nearly $1 trillion dollars, trained over 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, equipped them with state-of-the-art military equipment, and maintained their air force as part of the longest war in U.S. history”.
On that basis, he asserted, “one more year, or five more years, of US military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country”. And, he added, “an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me”.
Reminding us that he was reacting to a deal originally cut by Donald Trump, at the start of his presidency Biden says there were only a small number of US troops in harm’s way, whence he was faced “with a looming deadline to withdraw them or go back to open combat”.
In a statement of what appeared to be absolute finality, he declared: “I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan – two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth”.
As outlined yesterday, this does really does set the seal on the matter. Even though the Taleban are at the gates of Kabul, there are no signs of a last-minute reprieve, with US troops returning to the fray.
All we’re going to get – as Biden makes it clear in his statement – is a “swift and strong U.S. military response” if the Taleban take any action on the ground “that puts US personnel or our mission at risk”. And, with that, he’s done. The boys (and girls) are coming home.
In the immediate future, and possibly for some time to come, there is the growing refugee crisis, which doubtless will take some years to play out. Those Afghans not fortunate enough to be evacuated by the departing coalition forces face a long and arduous journey before taking the dinghy to Dover and their final refuge.
Meanwhile, it seems pretty well assured that a Taleban take-over of the Kabul government – even if it happens – will not be the end game. In the entire history of the country, no single ruler or administration has long been able to exert a grip over the entire territory which constitutes modern Afghanistan.
The Taleban, no more than any other faction, will not be a force for national unity. And, while they have been successful in tipping the dominoes of a corrupt and rotten Kabul administration, it is unlikely that their skills will run to feeding and the administration of Kabul city, its population of over four million swollen by hundreds of thousands of evacuees.
As the Taleban administration falters – especially in the face of what will most likely be isolation from the international community – most pundits expect the continuation of the civil war which, in effect, has been in progress since before the Soviets left in February 1989. And, with the number of players involved, there is no clear lead as to the eventual outcome.
In the first instance, what has been notable is the many of the Taleban successes have been achieved with the assistance – or non-intervention – of former Mujahadeen rivals, who have been bought off with local deals and promises of division of spoils. In the normal manner of things, once the coalition forces have departed, old rivalries will re-emerge and the various factions will end up fighting each other.
While some covert assistance, apparently, has been given by Iran, one of the key players will be Pakistan, whose government has been in the past a willing host for Taleban insurgents and, latterly, whose territories have been used by the Taleban for their purposes, with Pakistan’s less than enthusiastic support.
It has been recently reported that the substantial number of vehicles, pieces of weaponry and ammunition falling into Taleban hands have been transferred to Pakistan instead of being appropriated for personal use by local militia.
Significantly, with the casualties caused among their forces, the Taleban have been trying to use the services of foreign cadres for training new recruits. Around 6,000 fresh terrorists based in Pakistan are being trained by Arab and Chechen instructors with the aim of raising a new unit. Meanwhile, the infiltration of Taleban terrorists into Afghanistan from Pakistan continues.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has almost completed a security fence along its 1,622 mile border with Afghanistan, initially started to prevent the movements of terrorists but now as much to prevent the flow of refugees adding to the 1.4 million displaced Afghanis already in Pakistan.
Already, there have been clashes on the border between Pakistani forces and hundreds of Afghans stranded on Pakistani side of the border crossing with Afghanistan after its closure by the Taliban (pictured).
But, wherever there is a Pakistani interest, there is usually an equal and opposite Indian interest not very far behind. Their strategic interest is best-served by ensuring that Af-Pak relations are none too cosy, using Afghanistan as a back-door to destabilise Pakistan.
Here, the weakening of Kabul’s grip on its territories will increase the pressure for the reunification of Pashtunistan, artificially divided by the Durand Line imposed under British colonial rule in 1919 and which has been a constant bone of contention ever since.
Over this issue, relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have never been good. As one commentator observed, Pakistani governments have generally treated Afghanistan as its fifth province. But no self-respecting nation can allow itself to be treated like this, least of all the Afghans who have withstood the might of the British and Russian empires, and the onslaught of the Soviet Union followed by the American invasion.
What has been in the mind of those seeking strategic depth or treating Afghanistan as a backyard, he says, was Pakistan’s larger size, population and military might. They saw Afghanistan as a landlocked country which depended on Pakistan for import of basic food items and had a small and ineffectual army.
For India, therefore, a “clever geopolitical ploy” would be the rekindling of Pashtun nationalist spirit that Pakistan for decades has been hell-bent on undermining in favour of spreading pan-Islamism as an antithesis to Afghan nationalism.
The challenge before Delhi, it is suggested, is to deflect every sign of fundamentalism and promote the shared features and values of Pashtunwali or Pashtun way of life, their honour (namuz), solidarity (nang) and other cultural etiquettes which are older than Islam, and is still prevalent amongst the Pashtun tribes.
India needs to start thinking how over 50 million Pushtuns living on both sides of the Durand Line – 35 million on the Pakistani and 15 million in Afghanistan can be reunited. Once the Afghan infightings end, India should establish deeper and overt contact with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa based Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) and also reignite the lingering Durand Line dispute between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The broader strategic picture is that the Pashtunistan question could unlock all the regional contradictions that should ultimately snowball into Pakistan’s disintegration, thereby reintegrating the North-West Frontier Province into Afghanistan, liberating Baluchistan and reverting disputed eastern areas back into India.
Developments, however – as the Wall Street Journal observes – could impact heavily on Chinese interests in Pakistan and threaten Beijing’s entire economic programme in Central Asia. This could damage already fraught relations between India and China, further adding to regional instability.
The repercussions of the Taliban’s march on Kabul, therefore, could be momentous, spreading far beyond the borders of Afghanistan and destabilising the entire region. From such perturbations neither the United States nor Europe will be entirely isolated, in which case Biden’s strong wish to be done with Afghanistan may come back to haunt future presidents.