Afghanistan: The Four Questions

President Obama is expected to "announce" his "new" Afghanistan
strategy Friday - the traditional Washington day for burying things.
But there aren't likely to be many surprises. The Administration has
been dribbling details out to the news media, and what has been
foreshadowed includes: more troops, more civilians, narrower goals; a
renewed concession, perhaps, that there is no military solution.

It is widely recognized that sending more people - whether soldiers or
civilians - is very unlikely in itself to change anything fundamental,
because the order of magnitude is wrong. The United States has not
been, is not, and almost certainly never will be willing and able to
commit the resources which would be necessary to transform Afghanistan
into a peaceful "democracy" according to the present policy. The most
that could be plausibly hoped for is that additional resources would
help make a new policy work: a new policy based on a fundamental,
political shift in US policy, including accommodation with the bulk of
the political forces now backing Afghanistan's various insurgencies.

And therefore, it matters little in the big scheme of things, how many
new troops President Obama announces. If there is no real change in
policy, new troops won't accomplish anything. If there is a real
change in policy, any success will be due much more to the policy
change than to the "troop surge" under the cover of which the policy
change takes place.

What finally matters are the answers to four questions that are only
now beginning to be asked.

1. Will the United States support political negotiations between
the Afghan government and leaders of Afghanistan's
insurgencies?

It's wonderful that President Obama supports outreach to "moderate
Taliban" and "low-level fighters" and insurgents that are "only
fighting for money." But that's not going to end the war. A narrow,
circumscribed understanding of "reconciliation" was already the Bush
policy. Outreach to "moderate Taliban" will only make a significant
difference if it turns out to be the "camel's nose under the tent" for
a broader process of political engagement that draws in leaders of
Afghanistan's insurgencies and the political forces backing them.

"Support" is fundamentally different from "tolerate": talks between
Afghan officials and insurgent leaders are already underway; the U.S.
can't stop them from taking place and isn't trying to. But the U.S.
can ensure that such talks can't accomplish anything meaningful, by
refusing to cooperate. Just as any meaningful peace process is going
to eventually result in guarantees by insurgent leaders not to engage
in, support, or facilitate military operations inside or outside of
Afghanistan, so any meaningful peace process is eventually going to
result in binding constraints on U.S. military operations and
detentions. The Afghan government, at present, has almost no control
over U.S. military operations and detentions. So for talks to be
meaningful, the U.S. has to cooperate.

Western officials have conceded that it was a mistake to exclude
leaders of the former government from the post-2001 political process
in Afghanistan. It's long past time to correct this mistake.

2. Is the United States prepared to discuss its long-term
intentions in Afghanistan?

As was previously the case in Iraq, it's currently an article of dogma
that you're not allowed to say the words "timetable" or "timeline."
(Although Reps. Lee, Waters, and Woolsey appear to have recently
broken the taboo.) There's no good reason for this situation to
continue. In the case of Iraq, "timetable" moved from "unthinkable" to
"commonplace" to "provision of signed agreement."

Similarly, there's been almost no discussion of "permanent military
bases," in contrast to Iraq, where critics of the war - Iraqi and
American - put the Bush Administration on the defensive, early and
often, on this key point.

The sooner the idea of a total withdrawal of US military forces from
Afghanistan at some point in the future becomes an allowed topic of
discussion, the sooner greater space will open for negotiated
solutions, since it is widely conceded that the most important
motivation for the insurgencies is the presence of foreign troops.

3. Is the United States prepared to relax the political
constraints it has previously imposed on Afghan negotiations?

A standard formulation has been: "we support reconciliation with
insurgents who are prepared to accept the Afghan Constitution." There
is nothing sacred about the Afghan Constitution. If changing the
Afghan Constitution would help end the war, then changing the Afghan
Constitution should not be ruled out of consideration. If someone
says, "I'm not going to stop fighting until the Afghan Constitution
says that Western music is against Islam," then, if you wish, you can
say, ok, keep fighting. But there's no good reason to rule proposed
changes as out of bounds for discussion. Indeed, there are two
specific reasons for considering changes to the Afghan Constitution:
one, supporters of Afghanistan's insurgencies were excluded from the
process that produced it; two, the present Constitution enshrines
elements of centralization which are widely considered key obstacles
to effective local governance and stability.

4. Is the United States prepared to address the political roots
of Pakistan's relationship with the Afghan insurgencies?

U.S. officials are regularly quoted saying that the insurgencies in
Afghanistan cannot be effectively addressed without addressing the
support these insurgencies draw from Pakistan, including from elements
in Pakistan linked to the Pakistani military. But discussions of the
role of the Pakistani military are generally limited to exhortations
to the Pakistani government and military to "do more" to confront
insurgents, without addressing the motivations for the Pakistani
government and military to "do less," even though it is conceded that
powerful elements in Pakistan see their relationships with insurgent
groups as essential elements of national self-defense in their long
confrontation with India.

But if you recognize the importance of that, then you should
aggressively pursue two things that the U.S. is not doing now, or is
doing too little, too timidly and too slowly: one, you would try to
help elements of the Pakistani state that are linked to insurgent
groups use those relationships to pursue political solutions, so those
Pakistani players could cease playing a destructive role without
losing their chits; two, you would be aggressively using your
influence to resolve Pakistan-India conflicts, so as to reduce the
motivation for those elements in Pakistan to maintain those kinds of
chits.

But to really pursue that last point would mean that you would have to
end the taboo against talking about Kashmir, and that might well annoy
India, which generally regards Kashmir as "nobody else's business."
It's tempting before reflection to think that "we have enough
problems," but as Obama Administration officials have recognized, the
problem of Kashmir and Pakistan's relationship to Afghanistan are
inextricably linked, and if assertive US leadership towards
India-Pakistan peace might save the lives of American soldiers in
Afghanistan, wouldn't it be worth pursuing?