By Max Hastings
Published: July 30 2009 19:05
The British and American peoples perceive Afghanistan overwhelmingly in terms of their own body bags. There are good grounds for anger about under-resourcing of the campaign. But losses are the price of any war. British deaths over eight years remain fewer than those incurred in six weeks of the Falklands conflict, while US theatre casualties are a tiny fraction of Vietnam’s.
What matters is whether the Nato engagement is being conducted on sound principles, in pursuit of attainable objectives. The policy review by the new US commander, General Stanley McChrystal, has been delayed and is now expected to be delivered to the White House in mid-August. The British are fearful that it will understate the bottom-up Afghan political challenge and over-emphasise top-down military and economic issues.
The British are dismayed that the Obama administration’s approach lacks urgency amid a deteriorating security situation – only about a third of the country is now controlled by Kabul. They believe no progress will be made until the Americans lean hard on President Hamid Karzai’s corrupt and indolent regime to raise its game and launch a major programme to seduce and bribe reconcilable Taliban to lay down their arms, an objective declared by David Milliband, foreign secretary, in a speech to Nato this week.
US policy chiefs, though conscious of the corruption issue, are more optimistic about Mr Karzai. They decline to act in a fashion that might be branded neo-colonialist, which includes using Nato personnel to do things Washington wants Afghans to be seen doing. The British are equally committed to a rapid expansion of the Afghan security forces, but fear that waiting for Mr Karzai’s people to act in important policy areas is a recipe for failure.
Many issues at stake are not unique to Afghanistan, but will recur anywhere the west might seek to intervene in future. For instance: the US and its allies place implicit faith in the virtues of democracy. Yet what if an Afghan popular choice runs in favour of oppressing women and growing opium? Sir Michael Howard, the historian, has said: “If we try to change the Afghans, to make them different people, we are bound to fail.”
When I put this point to a Washington strategist engaged in Afghan policymaking, he said solemnly: “Societies to which the US gives its support must subscribe to minimal standards of behaviour.” He added that he perceives much more popular support among Afghans for ending opium dependence and educating women than some British acknowledge.
Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to perceive a divide between what we would like Afghanistan to become, and what many Afghans, however misguidedly, prefer. Paul Collier, the Oxford development economist, wrote eloquently in his recent book Wars, Guns and Votes about the limitations of democracy in impoverished societies. In the absence of a collective identity, a free media, the rule of law and the accountability that can derive only from voters being taxpayers, Prof Collier suggests that they almost inevitably make poor or corrupt electoral choices, in a tribal rather than national interest.
Mr Karzai is likely to win next month’s election, because political opposition has failed to cohere. But this will do nothing to alter the fact that many Afghans, especially in the south and east of the country, see in his rule no benefit to themselves. They are less enthused by the Taliban alternative than by traditional tribalism free from Kabul’s interference and avarice.
So much western public attention focuses on what our troops are or are not achieving, that it seems important to emphasise fundamentals. The greatest problem facing the allies is not military but civil: the absence of Afghan administrators to exploit tactical successes by bringing visible benefits to local communities.
Western aid and political attention focus on the national government. The intent is honourable, to foster its empowerment. But, in the absence of an effective bureaucracy, large sums of cash go unspent. Communities see promises, indeed basic needs, unfulfilled. A British officer suggests that, alongside mentoring the Afghan army, we should long ago have established a civil service college to breed Afghan officials.
One policymaker describes it as “scandalous” that there are no credible incentives for Taliban fighters who abandon insurgency. One tenuous rehabilitation scheme, the Proceayee Tahqueem Solha (PTS), collapsed in the face of Kabul’s corruption and incompetence. Until a new programme is implemented, fighting remains a better economic proposition for tribesmen than giving up.
There is a dire lack of local intelligence. The British Secret Intelligence Service runs a good but as usual modest operation, while the CIA’s big station focuses upon al-Qaeda rather than Afghan factional issues. The shortage of drone aerial surveillance is a major factor in British casualties.
Gurkha soldiers make a special contribution because they can converse with the locals, but the British field scarcely any Pushtu language speakers. The US army has started a language programme but this will take time to kick in. Meanwhile, the communication gap militates importantly against rapport with the Afghans.
It would be useful to provide junior Nato officers with discretionary cash. A British soldier says: “Since the Taliban recruit a lot of their fighters by giving farmers $10 a day, why shouldn’t we offer them the same? You can buy a lot of loyalty.”
Success is unattainable unless means can be found to put an Afghan face on the way forward. Foreign forces careering through villages in armoured vehicles, scattering flocks in low-flying helicopters and killing civilians through promiscuous use of firepower are a formula for assured failure. US and British commanders know this. They are striving to wage war more sensitively. This is hard, when a low-firepower policy can cost their own men’s lives.
The patience of the British and – to a lesser extent – US publics is eroding. Nato seeks to fast-forward a process of creating viable structures in a wholly underdeveloped society which, in the era of empires, required decades. Imperialists could also be uninhibited in their use of compulsion.
The gulf between allied aspirations and Afghan realities may prove unbridgeable. Nato’s stabilisation effort relies upon a local government whose shortcomings may be irredeemable. If the west loses in Afghanistan, it will be for the same reason the US lost in Vietnam: “our” Afghans may prove no more viable than were “our” Vietnamese, the Saigon regime. Some Americans characterise such a view as British defeatism. But it seems impossible to advance from where we are now without acknowledging what a bleak place this is.
It is not over yet. A narrow window of opportunity remains. The challenge is not to escalate Nato’s war-fighting effort, though ground must be won and held, but to make Afghan institutions and security forces work. To achieve this, greater American urgency and tougher handling of the Karzai regime seem indispensable. If the right decisions are made quickly and a lot of money is pumped in, the Taliban might still be beaten.
The US and its allies are pursuing goals in the objective interests of the Afghan people, and important to western as well as regional security. It seems right to persevere. But unless policy becomes more coherent, imaginative and forceful, we shall lose Afghanistan, and deserve to.
The writer is an FT contributing editor
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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