At this juncture, it is given that the US administration in the run up to the US presidential election would stick to its drawdown deadline: 2014. At the moment, the plan is to aggressively shrink a US force that will be about 68,000-strong in October 2012. For now the underlying assumptions for the set timetable are domestic: President Obama’s bid for re-election, and the poor economic situation of the US. However, the new emerging realities in the region warrant a revisit of the level of US forces’ drawdown timetable over the next three years.
First, the US strategy regarding political reconciliation in Afghanistan hinged on the hope that Pakistan will help negotiate with the Taliban and other insurgent groups, particularly the Haqqanis, bringing them to the negotiating table, to pave the way for a graceful exit of the NATO/US forces. This realignment was hailed as a net gainer for the US interests in the region even if it implied sacrificing some Afghan red lines and compromising on the Afghan viewpoint on certain aspects. Yet, the US went ahead to spur Pakistan to be part of the solution in Afghanistan.
But recent events like Pakistan’s reluctance to join negotiations with the Taliban insurgents, and its adoption of a confrontational policy (boycott of Bonn II Conference and hardball on issues from intelligence cooperation against the insurgents and al Qaeda, disrupting supply goods to NATO forces, orders to shoot down drones, etc) towards the US proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Islamabad does not want to be a peace maker, to say the least, in Afghanistan. Thus its proxy war effort in Afghanistan may intensify in the coming years and hard-won gains against the Taliban insurgency may be lost.
The second dynamic is the rebuilding of the Afghan national forces. As the US strategy of transition depends on transferring security responsibilities to the Afghan army to implement the drawdown, the fact is that the Afghan National Army will need time to become a force to be reckoned with and be able to take on any intensified proxy resurgence in Afghanistan.
Third, as the US and Pakistani anti-terrorism front has almost collapsed, al Qaeda as a result will become more entrenched in the tribal region and will stoke massive unrest in Afghanistan as was with the case in Iraq during the insurgency. Reduced US forces in Afghanistan will not be able to ensure parts of Afghanistan do not become safe havens for al Qaeda again.
Fourth, the US-Iran rivalry seems to have been fuelled by the recent events including the storming of the British embassy in Tehran, a tentative agreement over the long-term US strategic bases in Afghanistan and particularly the shooting/downing of the US stealth drone. It is yet to be seen how Iran responds against US interests in Afghanistan. In Iraq, it preferred to opt for strategic ‘quiet’ to let the US forces withdraw completely but in Afghanistan it may prefer to raise the mercury to boiling point for the US forces and by extension for the Afghan army.
There is no incentive for Tehran to calm things down in Afghanistan when the US bases are likely to remain there for another 10 years post-2014, which it feels would directly be threatening Iran’s expanding influence in the greater Middle East. Thus, the US may see an increased Iranian meddling in Afghanistan, given that Iran has many levers to pull in Afghanistan. Only the US can deal with such a disastrous situation provided it has sufficient number of troops there.
Fifth, the imbalance in the representation of the North and the South in Afghanistan — in government institutions, political parties, civil society and media (a legacy of the Bonn I Conference) is another serious threat that may undermine the solidarity between the various ethnic groups of Afghanistan. So the US and the world community’s role is going to be more important as impartial referees to help draw a new social contract in the run-up to the 2014 presidential elections. The only way to prevail upon obdurate groups, who do not want to be part of a new social contract, will be the US leaving behind sufficient US military forces over the next three years.
Sixth, Islamabad’s priorities are, one, to get rid of local trouble, i.e. the Taliban insurgency and, two, to establish strategic depth in Afghanistan as against the US preference to fight the al Qaeda-linked terrorists. In other words, the anti-al Qaeda coalition between Pakistan and the US has simply collapsed. Now the US may even lose its operational ability to launch drone attacks against the al Qaeda elements in the tribal areas. If the US wants to send a strong message to its supposed ally, it needs a stronger military presence across the border to convince Islamabad that its dangerous game of proxy warfare in the region and tolerating terrorist sanctuaries within its borders is unacceptable.
Seventh, the increasing isolation of Pakistan over the Afghan issue may force Islamabad to get closer to Iran. The subtext to Pakistan’s emboldened but confrontational approach towards the US is that it is confident of China’s ‘strategic help’ if needed. There is a likely chance of realignment between Iran, Pakistan and China against the US’s interests in the region. Such realignment means the Sino-Pak-Iran crescent will be expanding its influence in Central Asia/Afghanistan and West Asia at the cost of the US’s interests. Without a much larger military presence, the US may not be able to balance their formidable ‘strategic’ influence.
Notwithstanding the above reasons, the only defining factors that could delay the US forces’ drawdown may be a possible rachetting up of more US-Iran rivalry and so far the low likely aggressive response of Israel in terms of an attack on Iran’s nuclear programme. Yet, the above reasons make a compelling case for the US to delay its forces’ drawdown in Afghanistan.
The convergence of Afghan-US local, regional interests calls for revisiting the drawdown strategy by the Obama administration. The US alone has the capability to stay the course in Afghanistan and the region at large. The other heavyweight is the European Union (EU), which has remained a paper tiger in projecting its power beyond Europe even well before its recent economic crisis surrounding the euro currency set in.
The writer is a London-based Afghan affairs analyst. He can be reached at [email protected]