Discussions concerning U.S. involvement in Afghanistan today center about two significant arguments, American interests and the strategic value of the area. Often these discussions simply leave the ideas of interests and value unexplored. Also the interests of the Afghan people are seldom included. In recent media articles the Afghan elections have played a significant part in the debate, arguing that the current Karsai government has engaged in fraudulent activities. Added to these concerns is that of corruption. Accusations of massive waste and incompetence color local Afghan criticisms of U.S and European presence, as the Nangarhar project have placed in bold relief.
If we consider the issue of the strategic value of Afghanistan first we must ask, of what value are we addressing, military, economic or political. If we look at the location of Afghanistan we can see the varied surrounding players in its future, none of whose interests are aligned exactly with those of the U.S. These players benefit from continued US presence.It is obvious that the instability of Afghanistan affects the political stability of its neighbors, especially Pakistan.
Dictatorship is so well established in Pakistan that in 1999 when General Pervez Musharraf seized power there was hardly any notice and in 2002 when he suggested a referendum to affirm his rule the daily English-language newspaper, Dawn, urged him not to hold it as it would be a "farcical route to legitimacy."
India has recently built a road to Kabul from Iran as well as engineered a power line to the city also from Iran. India claims it is just engaged in helping a friend, but the obvious utility of such aid is to balance the interests of Pakistan with whom it has a long antagonistic relationship and conflicting land claims in the region. This aid enhances Iran’s access and role in Afghanistan whose alliance with border tribes and warlords has a long history. One might say, with a certain degree of practical use, that after the Soviet defeat Afghanistan was divided into spheres of influence between Iran in the west, and Pakistan in the east with the north a semi-autonomous zone. The effect, then of the Taliban victory, an organization promoted and supplied by Pakistan, was a defeat of Iranian surrogates. Since America had had a considerable involvement in building up anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan and supplying them with money, arms and intelligence by people like American agent Louis Dupree.
During the Vietnam War it was popular among some scholars to liken the American involvement there with the Athenian adventure in Sicily from 415 B.C.E. to 413 B.C.E. Often critics of the Vietnam War argued that the Soviets could be seen as the Spartans and that the Sicilian Expedition led to the eventual Athenian defeat like Vietnam would lead to a U.S. defeat. History does often repeat itself, but seldom exactly, in this case the Soviets had their own Vietnam, it was Afghanistan. The situation today in Afghanistan, however, does parallel better that of Athens at the time of the Expedition for Athens and Sparta were at peace and the Athenian Expedition was an enterprise where Athen’s generals could see no end in a conquest or pacification and once begun it could not be ended except in disaster as with no plan for the conclusion of the Expedition no end point could be described. America finds itself in this position today. Why engage further in Afghanistan, what is the goal, how do we recognize victory or a job well done?
Today the debate is focused on whether Obama should authorize more troops for the war in Afghanistan. Many have asked what is the goal of these troops, a much different attitude than in November of 2001 when the Bush administration added U.S. commando teams to aid Northern Alliance forces against the Taliban. Then the question was how to help Afghan warlords defeat the Taliban, today it is how to persuade Americans to stay in Afghanistan to prevent a Taliban victory.
Some students of the region believe that one interest the U.S. has in Afghanistan is oil, the transit of Kazakhstan oil from the western part of the country near the Caspian Sea. Various planners had suggested routes through Iran, but rejected due to U.S. concerns over the regime there, or Russia, Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan. All were rejected for a number of reasons. A pipeline through Afghanistan seemed the most efficient and easy to protect. Since 2001, however, development in the Mangystau Region has centered efforts on the port of Kuryk where oil could then be shipped or a underwater pipeline could be laid to Azerbaijan and the existing Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Some speculation was generated during the period following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan regarding Dick Cheney’s remarks in 1998 that oil in areas surrounding the Caspian Sea was necessary for the survival of western development and lifestyle. Thus one might argue that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is linked to oil in Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, etc.
But is this a U.S. interest that is valuable enough to cost us thousand more lives and billions of dollars? Oil discoveries in the Americas in off-shore finds have produced billions of barrels of new resources and renewables as well as nuclear power seem to make this investment in American lives and money obsolete and perhaps self-defeating.
Another goal might be to prevent Pakistan from collapsing into chaos, but any sober analysis of the past two decades can only leave one with the view that the wars in Afghanistan have been a destabilizing element in Pakistan as has been American aid and arms. In fact, the former Soviet republics are a more severe source of instability as seen in the war in Tajikistan where over 20,000 people died in the civil war in 1992, or the continuing conflict in Chechnya (people call themselves Nokhchii) and the rising civil war in other parts of the Caucasus like the Ingush people or in western China among the Uighurs. Smuggling of weapons, drugs and other contraband is a common affair across most of these borders and is a constant source of tension that no national government in the region nor any concept of minority independence yet proposed can resolve. If American troops can make a difference here, our history is unlikely to show the way, we have stirred rebellion and sectionalism as well as being both a buyer of drugs and the agent of destruction of farmer production of drugs. Richard Holbrooke called our various counter-narcotics efforts there as one that "may be the single most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy."
Therefore any program put forward by General McChrystal or Patraeus can only be a stalling effort in an area that is undergoing the effects of 40 years of planned destabilization oriented against the Soviet Union or between India and Pakistan. To resolve or to contain these areas for wider conflict would require the cooperation of Russia, China, India, the USA, Pakistan, the Taliban and tribal leaders in Afghanistan and Iran. Perhaps it is time for a regional summit to hammer out both a strategy for peace and development. Much of the recent government military action in Pakistan in both the Swat Valley and in Waziristan has been aimed at destroying indigenous local power structures of peoples who have been largely independent for centuries. Leaving people alone (remember the idea of self-determination) and reaching regional stability will have to be compromised along with the various nation-states ambitions. One thing is clear, more US troops is not the answer, the best threat for the region is the removal of American troops immediately. As long as we (the US taxpayer and soldier) are willing to carry the load no one else will step forward. More troops will only have the effect at home of swelling the ranks of military families that 19 years of continuous war in Iraq and Afghanistan has caused to balloon, and further increase a exploding deficit.
Now we come to other interests, the background of America's involvement in the Middle East centers around two aspects of Christian belief, one the guilt associated with the Holocaust and therefore a outward support for the existence of Israel and yet a strategic interest in the presence of a destabilizing and aggressive Western colony in the heart of Islam. Second, is the dogmatic strategies of the rightwing Neocoms whose now discredited philosophical position born in the Cold War argued that Middle Eastern dictators would collapse on invasion and the people welcome us with open arms. This was only a ruse for their belief in Straussian ideas of anti-democracy organized a strategy of forcing democracy on people at the end of a gun was directed to sour the world's people on democratic institutions and make them susceptible to domination by fiat of corporate directed greed, a la Goldman Sachs. Finally they used the support of fanatical fundamentalist Christian sects like those of Tim La Haye and ideas of the Antichrist like those spread by John Hagee. We really come to a point where the policy of containment is one of a war against Islam, much like trying to stop the Protestant Reformation and that led to the 30th Years' War. The end of that road is clear and we should not go down it.
Niccolo Caldararo, Ph.D.
Dept. of Anthropology
San Francisco State University