Afghanistan: Will it Survive After the USA Withdrawal?

July 17, 2012 by

Alex Clackson 

Image © DVIDSHUB

As the United States plans to leave Afghanistan in 2014, two main questions arise. Firstly, have the USA managed to achieve any substantial goals in increasing security and stability and in the last ten years and secondly will Afghanistan be able to survive after the occupation of the country comes to an end in 2014?

Unfortunately the answer to both questions is no. While the Taliban and other terrorist organization activity is low at the moment, it is only a matter of time before they make a return after the USA has pulled out from Afghanistan. The question here though is political, not military. It is a question of depriving the Taliban of their most powerful weapon, which is the claim that they are defending Afghanistan and their enemies are non-Muslim foreigners. A swift withdrawal of Coalition forces from the front line would be a very painful test for the Afghan military, though they would be free to choose their battles. The central problem with President Obama’s strategy for the war in Afghanistan has always been his deadline. The Taliban claim that we have the watches, but they have the time. And the President has already compromised our war effort(s) by setting deadlines for troop withdrawals that are unconnected to the end state his strategy seeks to achieve.

But the reason why Afghanistan may be heading toward anarchy is not simply due to the Afghan National Army’s lack of military preparedness to fight an insurgency without foreign support. Rather, some of the most challenging problems that the government must face once the U.S. leaves will be economic. Today, the United States and its allies provide the government of Afghanistan with the vast majority of its operating budget. American taxpayers have not only built up schools, hospitals, government ministries, and the Afghan National Army and police force; they have also paid the salaries of those who man these institutions. Further, U.S. military and foreign assistance operations in Afghanistan support many thousands of soldiers, foreign aid workers, and contractors, who pump millions of dollars into the local economy.  Read more of this post

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Afghanistan and the false moralising of liberal intervention

February 3, 2012 by 7 Comments

Oliver Hotham

Image © isafmedia

A problem, at least it seems to me, is that as soon as you get yourself involved in other people’s business you have a responsibility towards them. Once you’ve intervened and influenced things, all of a sudden everything that happens in your responsibility and you have an obligation to see things through to the end, whatever that end might be.

This problem is highlighted by the Taliban’s declaration that they will retake the country when NATO leaves. They’re probably right, unfortunately. Once NATO leaves, the current government (if it can even be called that, it behaves like a nepotistic crime syndicate) will collapse, with most of its members defecting to the Taliban, and the psychopathic, sexually repressed lunatics in charge of the insurgency will roll into Kabul, triumphant in their victory. More than ten years of foreign occupation will have not made one bit of difference to what will ultimately happen in Afghanistan, except perhaps that our governments will be poorer and those in Afghanistan who did not take the side of the occupation will be angrier. Women will undoubtedly suffer at the hands of their rulers, and much of the relative progress that has been made in the country since the invasion will be undone.

We already have a model of how Afghanistan deals with a prolonged military occupation – the invasion in the 1980′s by the Soviet Union. They too were attempting to instil their preferred model of government in the country but could not sustain their military presence faced with a growing Islamist insurgency and impending bankruptcy and economic recession. The Soviet Union left Afghanistan in rubble, with the Taliban strengthened by their apparent victory. Whatever good came of the Soviet presence, secularisation of society, education for women, and an improved infrastructure was vastly outweighed by the damage the occupation inflicted on Afghan society.

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Rethinking Afghanistan

November 28, 2011 by

Andrew Noakes

Image © The US Army

This year’s upcoming Bonn Conference will mark a decisive shift from international engagement in Afghanistan to a policy focusing on withdrawal and, it is hoped, peace with the Taliban. The reason for the change is obvious: the West is tired of war. Public support for the NATO campaign in member states is rapidly declining; by 2010, only 37 percent of the British public and 40 percent of Americans supported the presence of their military forces in the country. The elite consensus in the West, which has hitherto been in favour of international engagement, has also become increasingly fragile. In Britain, it is likely that Liberal Democrat support for the war is conditional on withdrawal and pursuit of a peace deal. Meanwhile, according to leaked US diplomatic cables, the European Union president, Herman Van Rompuy, recently summed up the feelings of European elites by telling a US ambassador that ‘no one believes in Afghanistan any more’.

In the lead up to Bonn, it is quite clear – not least to the Taliban – that NATO countries are falling over themselves to get out of Afghanistan. We might be inclined to welcome this news, but a few words of caution are necessary. The first thing to point out is that the Taliban do not have the support of anywhere near the majority of Afghans. A recent survey by the Asia Foundation revealed that only 29 percent of the Afghan population have some level of sympathy with armed anti-government groups. Meanwhile, 73 percent of Afghans (an approval rating Western leaders could only dream of) are satisfied with the performance of the national government. For many who have been assuming that NATO forces are simply propping up an unpopular regime against a popular insurgency, this may come as a surprise. Read more of this post

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