january 2009
Ke remmedts
Ater seven years o war, the international com-munity has ailed to create the conditions ora sustainable Aghan state. The reality is thatthe international coalition now has limitedresources and a narrow political time rame tocreate lasting Aghan institutions. Yet, build-ing such institutions is our only realistic exitstrategy.The debate in Washington and Europeancapitals has recently centered on how many more troops will be sent to Aghanistan in2009 as part o a
military
surge. Such a tacti-cal adjustment is unlikely to make much o adierence in a country where the basic popu-
Fs d Et: a ateteStteg f te afg W
GillES DorronSoro
Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Endowment or International Peace
ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
C
ARNEGIE
n
Objectives in Aghanistan must be reconciled with the resources available to pursue them.
n
The mere presence o oreign soldiers fghting a war in Aghanistan is probably the single most important actorin the resurgence o the Taliban.
n
The best way to weaken, and perhaps divide, the armed opposition is to reduce military conrontations.
n
The main policy objective should be to leave an Aghan government that is able to survive a U.S. withdrawal.
n
Strategy should dierentiate three areas and allocate resources accordingly: strategic cities and transportationroutes that must be under total Aghan/alliance control; buers around strategic areas, where NATO and theAghan army would ocus their struggle against insurgents; and opposition territory, where NATO and Aghanorces would not epend eort or resources.
n
Withdrawal will allow the United States to ocus on the central security problem in the region: al-Qaeda and theinstability in Pakistan.
Summar
F O R E I G N P O L I C Y
f o r t h e N e x t P r e s i d e n t
lation-to-troops ratio is estimated at approxi-mately 430 people per oreign soldier. Every year, we have seen small-scale surges o troopsand resources, only to have more violence,growing casualties, and an ever-stronger insur-gency. Meanwhile, the Aghan and Westernpublics are losing patience.The real question is how combat troopsshould be used. The two choices we ace are whether to continue playing oense by goingater the Taliban, especially in the south andthe east, and spreading troops thin; or whetherto adopt a new strategy ocusing on protectingstrategic sites, namely, urban centers and key
2POLICY BRIEF
roads, to allow or the development o a strongcore o Aghan institutions.The latter strategy consists o de-escalatinga war that has become a Jihad and buildingenough Aghan military capacity to main-tain relative stability in these key areas. Toaccomplish that, we have one major political weapon: a progressive and ocused scaling-down o combat troops on our own terms.This would neutralize the Taliban’s appealsor Jihad against unbelieving oreign invad-ers, open up space or Aghan institutions andpolitical solutions, and allow us to ocus oureorts on areas where we can still make a di-erence. This strategy brings its own risks, butthe risks are ar smaller than continuing withmore o the same policies and reaching a point where we are let with no choice but to leavein chaos.This analysis oers ve main recommenda-tions that I here reer to as a “ocus and exitstrategy.”1) Available resources must shape the strat-egy, not the other way around. The UnitedStates and its allies have nearly reached theirmaximum level o commitment. The more mil-itary resources the allies put into Aghanistan,the less time they have to succeed. The reasonis that the nancial and human costs o main-taining a high-level military presence becomepolitical liabilities.2) Due to limited resources, the objectiveshave to be clear and limited. The main objec-tive is to leave an Aghan government that cansurvive a U.S. and NATO withdrawal. Policiesthat are not part o the general strategy shouldnot be priorities. For example, it is not possibleto have an eective counternarcotics policy orto impose Western values on Aghan society.3) The key idea is to lower the level o con-fict (i.e., to reverse the current trend o ever-increasing violence). The only way to weaken,and perhaps divide, the armed opposition isto reduce military conrontations. The UnitedStates must dene three areas: strategic zones(under total allied control), buer areas(around the strategic ones), and oppositionterritory. Policies would be very dierent ineach area; the resources allocated to institutionbuilding would be mostly concentrated in thestrategic areas.4) The only meaningul way to halt theinsurgency’s momentum is to start withdraw-ing troops. The presence o oreign troopsis the most important element driving theresurgence o the Taliban. Combat troop re-duction should not be a consequence o anelusive “stabilization”; rather, it should con-stitute an essential part o a political-military strategy. The withdrawal must be conductedon U.S. terms only, not through negotiations,because negotiations with the armed opposi-tion would weaken the Aghan government.Negotiations between the Aghan governmentand the Taliban cannot bring positive resultsuntil the Taliban recognize that the govern-ment in Kabul is going to survive ater the withdrawal.5) Withdrawal would allow the UnitedStates to ocus on the central security prob-lems in the region: al-Qaeda and the instabil-ity in Pakistan. The withdrawal would allowPakistan to dene common interests with theUnited States instead o playing the constantdouble game we have witnessed in recentdecades.
Te Pspet f lsg te W
Ater seven years in Aghanistan, the Westerncoalition does not have much to show interms o progress. All available data indicatea general ailure in security and state build-ing: increased civilian and military casualties,expansion o the guerillas, unavorable percep-tions o oreign troops by the local population,absence o unctioning national institutions,and growing destabilization o the Pakistaniborder, which threatens NATO’s logisticalroads, essential or resupplying NATO orces.Most o the two provinces south o Kabulare under the control o the Taliban. Eortsto improve health services and educationare undermined by the persistent insecurity.Reasonable expectations or 2009 are that the
Gilles Doonsoo
, a visit-ing scholar at the CarnegieEndowment, is an epert onAghanistan, Turkey, andSouth Asia. His research o-cuses on security and politicaldevelopment in Aghanistan,particularly the role o the In-ternational Security AssistanceForce, the necessary steps ora viable government in Kabul,and the conditions necessaryor withdrawal scenarios.Previously, Dorronsoro was aproessor o political scienceat the Sorbonne, Paris and theInstitute o Political Studies oRennes. He also served as thescientifc coordinator at theFrench Institute o AnatolianStudies in Istanbul, Turkey.He is the co-ounder and edi-tor o the
South Asian Multi-disciplinary Academic Journal
and the
European Journal of Turkish Studies
. He is theauthor o
Revolution Unend-ing: Afghanistan, 1979 to thePresent
(Columbia UniversityPress, 2005), and
La révolutionafghane, des communistes aux Taleban
(Karthala Publishers2000), and editor o
La Turquieconteste. Régime sécuritaire et mobilisations sociales
(Editionsdu CNRS, 2005).
FOCUS AND ExIT3
number o Western casualties will grow over300, and the Taliban insurgency will expand.Historically, a guerrilla organization with asanctuary, relatively good organization andresources, quick recruitment, high levels o commitment, and a oreign enemy ar romits base has a strong likelihood o winning inthe long run. Canada’s plan or military with-drawal ater 2011 is a sign that tensions areincreasing inside the coalition about sharingthe burden o an unpopular war. A long-termpresence (“generational commitment”) in Aghanistan with 300 allied deaths per yeardoes not seem politically easible. In other words, the simple continuation o the samepolicy with an incremental increase o troopsis most certainly going to ail to deeat theTaliban militarily.I a strategy is the matching o ends tomeans, there has not been a clear U.S. strategy in Aghanistan since the war began in October2001. Until the arrival o Robert Gates atthe Department o Deense, the idea that the Aghan situation had become serious had noteven been publicly considered by Westerngovernment ocials. NATO communiquésritually orecast the imminent disappearanceo the Taliban insurgency. In this war, spin andunrealistic expectations have led to signicantsel-inficted wounds, contributing to the be-lated U.S. response to the worsening situa-tion between 2001 and 2006. Conventionaland wishul thinking did a grave disservice to Aghanistan in the years ater 2001.It would be unair to put all the blame on theBush administration. Since 2001, the expertshave been generally wrong about Aghanistan.
1
Expectations ater 2001 were ar too optimistic and based on allacies, such as the ideathat the Taliban were oreign to Aghan soci-ety and had no local support. In the words o two widely noted experts, “a residual Talibaninsurgency is unlikely,” allowing them to pre-dict the “likely disappearance o the radicalIslamist movements in Aghanistan.”
2
Why worry when the experts in the eld are pre-dicting the end o the war and the weakeningo the undamentalist networks? In this sense,many experts contributed to the U.S. attitudeo benign neglect toward Aghanistan. The vo-cabulary o the postwar reports (“reconstruc-tion,” “state building,” “development”) wasa sign o a undamental misunderstanding o local dynamics. For years, the words “war” or“counterinsurgency” were orbidden in the o-cial communications o some Western gov-ernments on the assumption that they wouldrighten their populations. At present, the only bright spot is that a-ter years o denial, the arrival o Robert Gatesat the Pentagon brought a dramatic changein U.S. thinking. The urgency o the Aghanquestion has been recognized, and ocialshave begun to mention the prospect thatNATO could lose the war. The general reviewo the Aghan strategy currently underway willcontribute to the ormulation o an Aghanpolicy or the Obama administration.The need or a debate about the Aghan war is obvious. Yet, according to Anthony Cordesman, “the amount o data providedhas actually declined as the confict has grownmore serious.”
3
Lack o inormation precludesan honest debate and impairs the gathering o badly needed outside assessments. The experts’access to the Aghan eld is ar too limited,precluding a sound analysis o counterinsur-gency practices at a local level.Today, the propositions made in deningan
Aghan strategy are generally designed to x existing policies more than to propose new ones.
For example, building a more avorable re-gional environment with Aghanistan’s neigh-bors would certainly not be useless,
4
but it would not address the central question o the
Te dete Wsgt d Epe ptss eet eteed w m me tps we set t afgst 2009 s pt f mtsge. S tt dstmet s ke t mkem f dffeee.... Te e qest s wmt tps sd e sed.
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