BEIRUT — The global financial crisis has momentarily overshadowed news of the two active wars the United States is leading in Iraq and Afghanistan. The balance of political vs. military actions to stabilize those two countries remains fluid. The change in American leadership coming up in the months ahead will be an opportunity to revisit these issues, and gloomy news from Afghanistan in the past week is good reason for this matter to get much more attention.
The most recent bad news came October 9, from the top American military commander, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who told reporters that, “The trends across the board are not going in the right direction” in Afghanistan, and that he “would anticipate next year would be a tougher year.”
He also agreed that Afghanistan was likely to continue “a downward spiral,” as was stated by a nearly completed intelligence assessment, unless things improved suddenly and significantly. Among the problems the senior American military and intelligence leaders acknowledge these days in Afghanistan are a robust and expanding heroin trade, the limited impact of the central government in Kabul, a steady stream of militants from next door Pakistan where they enjoy safe havens and popular support, and a weak economy.
This pessimistic view follows reports that the British ambassador in Kabul has spoken privately about his sense that the war is not winnable militarily. At the same time, the top American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, has spoken about a need for up to 15,000 more troops, above and beyond the 8,000 troops that President Bush has pledged to send in the coming six months.
The two American presidential candidates both have recognized the dangers in Afghanistan and seem willing to raise the tempo and scale of the war there, perhaps in line with a slow retreat from Iraq. So this is a good moment to raise the issues in Afghanistan that were not sufficiently discussed about Iraq before the Anglo-American invasion of that country in 2003.
The basic question that needs answering is whether foreign military power is a credible, legitimate and effective means to address political violence that is anchored in local socio-political issues and historical problems of state-building.
To their credit, American military commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq have regularly spoken about the limits of military power. The problem is that their civilian leaders, and the generally mediocre and often ignorant politicians to whom they report, are not as aware of the limits of military force. The idea of sending tens of thousands of new troops to Afghanistan to break through to victory is much too simplistic a response to a situation that defies military solutions.
The problem for the United States (and other countries that send troops to Afghanistan) is that leaving the status quo as it is also unacceptable, given the power of tribal leaders and military forces that rely on income from narcotics, the limited impact of the central government, and the continued sanctuary available to Al-Qaeda and other militant groups in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions.
There is no easy solution that is going to transform Afghanistan into Belgium. Western leaders should somehow adjust to the fact that the goals of stable statehood, legitimate governance, economic prosperity and overall security will come from an indigenous process of historical evolution anchored in native priorities and interests. It will not come from forceful interventions by American, British and other foreign armies, no matter how many sophisticated ways they find and kill enemy targets.
The simple reason for this is that, in history as well as in sports, nationalism trumps imperialism, and defense trumps offense. Foreign military interventions and invasions will always spark resistance that is fierce and sustained because it blends the two indomitable elements of personal humiliation and nationalistic self-assertion. Historical factors also play a role in countries like Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who were born in conditions that were either traumatic or colonialist, and did not allow for a natural percolation of legitimate nation-building elements.
Introducing foreign armies into such situations only makes the underlying tensions worse, not better. The foreign armies always leave one day, and the locals resume the two dynamics that have defined their lands and people for millennia: contesting power in a national context, or negotiating coexistence in a tribal context.
As Afghanistan works itself back into the news in the months ahead, it would be useful for America’s civilian officials and military commanders to look at the bigger picture of the limits of their own military power. Since both American presidential candidates are so enamored by Israel, they might also study the lessons that their dear Israel has learned in recent years about the limits of military force in places like Lebanon and Palestine.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 13 October 2008
Word Count: 795
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