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TechnoratiAfghanistan Crisis Worse Than Iraq
There's a lot we know about Afghanistan and a lot more we don't. An expert who knows much more than most of us -- whose prescient insights I have benefited from for a decade and whom the John Manley commission consulted last year -- says Afghanistan will get worse in the coming months.
Last week's dramatic jailbreak in Kandahar by the Taliban -- an embarrassment for which the Canadians blamed the Afghans who blamed the Pakistanis -- is a symptom of a bigger problem. The insurgency is getting stronger, notwithstanding steady official assurances that the Taliban have "lost momentum," are "desperate," "worn out," "on the run" and being "hunted down."
Ahmed Rashid, a veteran journalist based in Lahore, is an authority on the region and author of the best-seller Taliban (2001), which, within days of 9/11, became a must-read for world leaders, military commanders and journalists. He now has a new book, Descent into Chaos.
It says that Afghanistan constitutes a worse crisis than Iraq. Not just because of the escalating violence (8,000 Afghans killed last year, and 1,800 so far this year; more NATO troops killed in May in Afghanistan than in Iraq) or the opium that finances the insurgency. Or the ineffective Hamid Karzai who presides over corruption, warlords and drug barons. Or the frightening rise of Taliban sanctuaries and sympathizers across the border in Pakistan.
Afghanistan affects the entire region. The turmoil in Pakistan is well-known. Problems are also brewing in the five Central Asian states, especially Uzbekistan, where a repressive dictatorship is battling (and feeding) a rising Islamic militancy, whose tentacles reach back into Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Central Asia is the new frontier for Al Qaeda."
Rashid, on a book tour of North America, spoke to me by phone on Tuesday from Seattle.
He expects a major Taliban offensive, especially but not exclusively because of support from across the border in Pakistan.
"NATO nations remain divided and weak in their commitment. The American president is a lame duck. The next president won't get around to dealing with Afghanistan until the middle of next year.
"There's a vacuum. The Taliban are going to be taking full strategic advantage in the coming months.
"So long as there are Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, they will remain a potent military force. The Taliban are expanding in Pakistan much faster than anyone could've imagined."
There's the porous border. And there's the Pakistan military's "double game" of cracking down on militants while keeping some as a proxy for influence in Afghanistan.
However, "Pakistan is not the only one playing a double game. So is the U.S. All it cared about was to get Al Qaeda. It didn't (initially) care about the Taliban."
It nearly abandoned Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban in 2001, making the same mistake it had once before after helping to end the Soviet occupation in 1989, leaving a vacuum in which rose the Taliban, a failed state and the perpetrators of 9/11.
What to do?
"You cannot deal with one country without dealing with the region.
"You cannot deal with Afghanistan without dealing with Pakistan.
"You cannot deal with Pakistan without dealing with India, without making India more amenable to dealing with Pakistani insecurities by dealing with the Kashmir issue or the Indian interference and influence in Afghanistan. The Pakistan military remains fearful of India's involvement in Afghanistan. They fear that Karzai may fall and they need their own proxies in Afghanistan (just as India and Iran have theirs) ...
"You cannot deal with the Iranian role in Afghanistan without dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue."
There is no military solution -- not in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan and not in Iran.
"You need a multilateral diplomatic push on several fronts, all going on at the same time, along with a push for democracy, human rights and economic development throughout the region."
Rashid had sounded the alarm bells on Afghanistan long before 9/11 but few listened. One hopes the world heeds him now, well before making many more mistakes.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Thursday and Sunday.
© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2008
11 Comments so far
Show AllNone of this should ever have happened. the u.s. rushed off to murder Afghanistan while the country was still in the grip of post 9/11 hysteria. The excuses offered for this brutal assault were as feeble and phony as those used to hit Iraq. It was an atrocity from the beginning.
saffiyya is right the antiwar movement should be outraged about this shameful, cowardly, assault on defenseless people.
The Taliban were said to have wiped out opium production when in power. The Nothern Alliance - the "West's" allies - were said to have restarted opium production once the Taliban were swept out of Kabul. Now were are told it is the Taliban insurgency that is behind and benefitting the opium production. It seems as if we can say whatever we want about the opium production. Is it perhaps the case that Afghanistan is a topic about which we can say whatever we want, without fear of there being anyone who knows what's true or false? I, for my part, want to know when Israel is going to withdraw its frontline troops from Afghanistan.
Canadian and American milltary are can creating thousands of Afghani refugees who are flooding into Pakistan. For a while these were quite welcome. Pakistan's military government streamed them into jihadist camps and told them their portion of paradise would be the Vale of Kashmir when they liberated it. However India has not only parked three quarters of a million troops in the Vale, it has also intercepted and stopped payment to jihadist groups to feed and arm these Afghani refugees.
So now the Afghanis would just as soon take back those parts of Pakistan that Pakistan stole from Afghanistan during the partition of India and Pakistan if Pakistan is not going to give them a job. As a matter of fact, even if Pakistan's now civilion government is not going to give them a job, they will attack Kashmir just for something to do and the faint hope of even seeing something green. Therefor continued operations by Canadian and American forces translate into a continued attack on India. India isn't really happy about this and neither is Pakistan. They want to work out a peace and resume trade but these Afghani refugees have their own agenda.
"Please watch something else than FOX News"
ACtually i have watched FOX news in the past and you
cant really tell the difference between FOX and the
other mainstream media. They are only marginally
different from each other. So whats your point ?
To: gyptian
It looks that you have no real knowledge into the situation
Please watch something else than FOX News
ISI trained the Taliban on US request as Unocal wanted to pass a pipleline through Afghanistan.
Kashmir had been waiting for a referendum since 1948 (promised by India)
Need I go more
once bush\cheney inacted the "if you can't beat'em,pay'em policy"....in iraq(sons of iraq),afghanistan(propping up harmid karzi),pakistan(giving military aid and saving musharraff's butt)...everything went to hell...we have to stop thinking that money buys loyalty....i know bush\cheney wanted the middle east to be unstable,but what's going on right now is even worse than they could have imagined....(remember " we'll be greeted as liberators")in iraq and it will spread thru out the ME .........
There is a pattern here, where ever we go things go to hell.
"You cannot deal with Pakistan without dealing with India, without making India more amenable to dealing with Pakistani insecurities by dealing with the Kashmir issue or the Indian interference and influence in Afghanistan. The Pakistan military remains fearful of India's involvement in Afghanistan. They fear that Karzai may fall and they need their own proxies in Afghanistan (just as India and Iran have theirs) …
I have a lot of respect for Ahmad Rashid but he cannot give a free pass to the Pakistani Military and ISI. They are the principal enablers of the Taliban. The Kashmir issue has nothing to do with Afghanistan and the Taliban except for the fact that Pakistan would love to get their hands on the Kashmir valley.
The extreme repression and lack of any form of democracy in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) is never mentioned in any great detail. Nor is the outright oppression leveled against the Baluchis of Baluchistan in western Pakistan or Sindhis in Sindh district of Pakistan.
Pakistan is barely being held together despite so much internal fission and this is ALL the more reason the Pakistani Military and ISI should focus on internal development and fore go the reactionary impulse to perceived threats. India has its own internal problems as well as the terrorist threat from Pakistan to worry about and is clearly more interested in its own economic upliftment as opposed to having designs on its neighbors.
Rashid's attempts to portray Pakistan as the victim is baseless. The Pakistani people have clearly been the victims of the policies of their own military as well as the U.S. They don't 'need' any proxies in Afghanistan unless you make the assumption (like Rashid does) that Afghanistan is a country that needs to be ravaged and used for Pakistan's own security ... damn the Afghan people.
What Daniel David at 12:58 pm is conveniently overlooking is that the [alleged] agent of hope and change wishes to shift the military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. As Ahmed Rashid wisely notes, "There is no military solution- not in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan, and not in Iran." Obama's desire to add thousands of American troops in Afghanistan will never win the hearts and minds of the Afghani people, since they understand that more U.S. forces in their country means that more Afghan villages and homes will be obliterated by American bombs.
"You need a multilateral diplomatic push on several fronts, all going on at the same time, along with a push for democracy, human rights and economic development throughout the region."
This is what Obama, as a world-stage newbie, will be given some international cooperation to try for, a chance that a Bush follow-on in the form of McCain would not receive.
The failure fo the antiwar movement to demand that we get out of Afghanistan is very sad. We in America refuse to condemn our leaders imperialism most of the time. Eventually we will pay the price for it.