No respite for Afghanistan

Last week, the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, publicly admitted that his government and the United States were engaged in three-way talks with the Taliban. Efforts to reach out to the Taliban have, of course, been underway for some time now. After a few false starts, it seems that Kabul and Washington have finally got the process going. The course and outcome of these negotiations will be of great interest to India.

The ground for trilateral negotiations was prepared in meetings over the past year between American officials and Taliban leaders. These contacts were facilitated by Qatar and Germany and that’s why the Taliban leadership has agreed to open a political office in Qatar. They are in discussions with the US to secure the transfer to Qatar of some of their senior comrades being held in Guantanamo Bay.
In short, the stage is set for serious negotiations with the Taliban. But there is little reason to believe that the attempt at political reconciliation with the Taliban will succeed.
To begin with, the Obama administration’s diplomacy and military strategy are out of sync. Even as the talks with the Taliban are gaining traction, Washington has announced its desire to advance the timetable for a military drawdown in Afghanistan. The projected date for completing the withdrawal is the end of 2014. But earlier this month, US defence secretary Leon Panetta announced at a Nato meeting that American forces would transition from their combat role to a training, advisory and assistance role by mid to end 2013. The Afghan National Army (ANA), however, is far from ready to take the lead in combat operations. The size of the ANA has considerably increased over the last 18-24 months, but it continues to be plagued by poor training and organisational weaknesses.
It is not surprising that a senior Afghan general observed that new timeline proposed by Mr Panetta would be a “disaster for Afghanistan”. The Taliban would certainly be emboldened and may well conclude that the US is on the run. In such a situation, the Taliban leadership will simply string along its American and Afghan interlocutors and bide its time.
What’s more, the Taliban’s patrons in Pakistan will similarly conclude that they will have the upper hand in a couple of years’ time. The Pakistanis are well aware of the fact that the proposed Qatar office for the Taliban is an attempt to reduce their role in the negotiations. They will certainly try to shore up their ties with the Taliban leadership and dissuade it from making any substantial moves. The Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, observed a few days ago that it was “unrealistic” to expect Pakistan to persuade the Taliban supremo, Mullah Omar, to join the negotiations. The Obama administration, for its part, is unable to turn the screws on Pakistan in any meaningful way. Washington and Islamabad continue to behave like a couple trapped in a bad marriage but unwilling to file for divorce.
The prospect of a negotiated end to the conflict is further undermined by the recent American moves vis-a-vis Iran. The ongoing attempt to impose throttling sanctions on Tehran and to isolate it politically will have ripple effects on the situation in Afghanistan. Iran has enough clout and sufficient resources on the ground to play the spoiler. Washington is naïve in hoping to leave behind a stable Afghanistan in 2014 while simultaneously keeping Iran out of the regional security structures.
Then again, the Obama administration may not be all that naïve. The continuing economic downturn in the US, the worsening fiscal position of the government, the polarisation of domestic politics, the desire to execute a “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific: all these may have persuaded Washington to embark on a strategy of “decent interval”. This term refers to the approach adopted by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in withdrawing US troops from South Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger were aware of South Vietnam’s weakness and vulnerability following an American pull-out.
They sought a “negotiated” end to the war with North Vietnam that would insert a “decent interval” between the American exit and the inevitable collapse of the agreement and the eclipse of South Vietnam. This enabled them to claim that they had secured “peace with honour”, and to feign disbelief when North Vietnam over-ran the South. Similarly, the Obama administration may not be blind to the realities behind the current negotiations. It may simply be aiming at a settlement that lasts long enough to be passed off as at least a partial success.
Washington has insisted that it will continue to have a strong residual presence in Afghanistan to go after the Al Qaeda and its affiliates. But the real test of its commitment to Afghanistan’s future will be financial. At the recent Bonn Conference, President Karzai requested for aid worth $10 billion every year until 2025, in order to implement a programme for security and development. In fact, this figure understates the requirements of the Afghan government. Estimates prepared by Kabul show that the annual cost of security would amount to 26 per cent of their GDP.
If we add the cost of reconstruction and governance programmes, the expenditure figure rises to over 50 per cent of GDP. Will the US and its allies be willing to cough up large enough sums when their own economies are undergoing a slowdown?
All of these questions must be on New Delhi’s mind as it considers its own strategy for Afghanistan in 2014 and beyond.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi