Time to Get Out of Afghanistan

By Doug Bandow

After September 11 the U.S. intervened in Afghanistan to kill Osama bin Laden, dismantle al-Qaeda, and punish the Taliban. Washington finally has succeeded at all three tasks. It is time for American forces to come home.

For many people Afghanistan started out as the good war. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda turned Taliban-ruled Afghanistan into a sanctuary as they plotted the death of thousands of Americans. The Central Asian state -- in contrast to Iraq -- was an appropriate target for military retaliation.


However, President George W. Bush and his neoconservative-dominated administration never seemed much interested in catching bin Laden or finishing off al-Qaeda. And the Taliban appeared to be barely an afterthought.

Instead, the Bush administration wanted to remake the entire Middle East, and swiftly redeployed men and materiel to launch an aggressive war against Iraq. As a result, bin Laden escaped to Pakistan, al-Qaeda metastasized as national affiliates spread, and the Taliban regrouped with Pakistani aid. The allies were losing ground in Afghanistan when George W. Bush left office.

President Barack Obama has twice increased allied military deployments. Now he faces his self-imposed deadline of July, when the troops are supposed to start coming home. However, the military opposes meaningful reductions and outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to "leave the shooters until last."

The president and his aides have been caucusing about what to do. Press Secretary Jay Carney explained: "It will be a real drawdown but it will depend on conditions on the ground."

Actually, it needs to be a real drawdown whatever the conditions on the ground. Washington has achieved its purposes. It is time to turn Afghanistan over to the Afghan people.

As the Iraq war has been winding down, the Afghanistan war has been ratcheting up. Some 1600 Americans have died in the conflict, more than half on Barack Obama's watch. The financial cost is about $10 billion a month at a time when the U.S. government is borrowing 40 percent of every dollar it spends. And the conflict diverts attention and energy away from preparing the American armed services for a world in which Washington will have fewer resources while facing additional competitors.

Bin Laden is dead -- and found something other than virgins to welcome him below. Al-Qaeda has been badly damaged as an international organization and barely exists in Afghanistan. The organization shifted remaining operations elsewhere, including in Pakistan, as evident from bin Laden's presence there.

Moreover, the Taliban appears to have learned a painful lesson about the consequences of harboring terrorists. A decade ago there were indications that the Taliban government was not pleased when bin Laden brought down on his hosts the wrath of the United States. Today's Taliban has even less reason to welcome back al-Qaeda if the U.S. is willing to leave Afghanistan. The Taliban would not want to win back power, only to lose it again if Washington returned as a result of a new terrorist attack.

What American forces are attempting to do today is largely irrelevant to American security: build a competent, effective, honest, and democratic central government to run Afghanistan. The task may not be impossible, but it certainly is daunting. After nearly a decade of war, all the U.S. and its allies have erected is a corrupt and inefficient administration known mostly for stealing money and votes. The capital of Kabul is a fortified city where foreigners and Afghan officials live and work behind large walls topped by barbed wire.

President Hamid Karzai's writ extends little further than the deployments of U.S. and NATO troops. Other areas of relative peace are controlled by local warlords and non-Pashtuns. The one constant across the country is disdain for the Karzai government and fear of the Afghan National Police, famous for looting the law-abiding.

U.S. officials extol the progress on the ground made after the increase in American forces, but Afghanistan is like a giant balloon, where pressure in one area creates a bulge elsewhere. Pashtun-dominated Kandahar may be safer today, but Taliban activity has moved into the north. Moreover, allied gains seem limited and ephemeral -- Gen. David Petraeus calls them "fragile and reversible" -- and highly dependent on the continuing presence of foreign troops.

Merely expanding the size of the Afghan security forces is no answer. Afghans with whom I talked last year said that sending in the police only "made Taliban," since people joined the latter to stop being shaken down. Adding to the better-regarded Afghan National Army does not mean that its members will be able and willing to defend the Karzai government, especially without outside support. South Vietnam possessed one of the world's largest and best equipped militaries before that nation's sudden collapse.

Moreover, while allied military operations kill Taliban, they also lose hearts and minds. The death of civilians, especially from airstrikes, has become a major issue with the Karzai government. While commanding forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McCrystal acknowledged that many civilians had been killed at check-points, even though none of them had posed any threat. Also volatile are religious and cultural differences, which exploded in the heretofore peaceful city of Mazar-e-Sharif earlier this year, when a mob murdered United Nations employees in retaliation for the burning of a Koran in America.

Maybe it is theoretically possible to fix all this, but at what cost and in what time? This is a project for a generation.

Nevertheless, for those committed to the mission in Afghanistan, the situation, whether improving or deteriorating, will always warrant a continued military commitment. We don't want to leave while we are winning and thereby toss away our hard-won progress. And we don't want to leave while we are losing and thereby sacrifice everything we have already invested.

Perhaps the strangest argument for staying in Afghanistan is that doing so is necessary to maintain regional stability lest Pakistan and India, in particular, as well as Iran, Russia, and China restart Central Asia's "Great Game." However, they all have been competing for years. Even while acting as America's nominal ally Islamabad, or at least powerful forces in Islamabad, has been supporting the Pashtun Taliban. All of the other countries are involved as well. America's military presence merely puts the U.S. in the midst of conflicts in which it has little or nothing at stake.

And the war is the greatest destabilizing force in Pakistan. The latter may be the most dangerous spot on the globe -- an economically backward nuclear power governed by a weak civilian government and strong military where the intelligence services have long aided and abetted Islamic fundamentalists. While tolerating American cross-border activity, Islamabad is simultaneously fighting a near civil war at home and a sometimes hot covert war with neighboring India. Demanding that the Pakistanis sacrifice what for them are vital security interests by abandoning the Taliban only pushes that nation closer to the breaking point.

Yet again Washington is learning the limits of being a superpower. What we say does not go, either in the mountains and valleys across Afghanistan or in the capitals of neighboring states. The U.S. should be dropping fragile client states, not adding new ones.

The best strategy is negotiation among Afghanistan's many factions backed by talks among Afghanistan's neighbors. Many in Washington hope to gain a military advantage before embarking upon any negotiations. Moreover, some of the suggested preconditions would require the Taliban to essentially surrender -- not likely for forces which have been fighting for years. And if the Taliban takes the same approach, no talks let alone peace will be possible. Any agreement will require compromise and concessions.

America's bottom line should be simple: no support for or toleration of terrorists. Everything else should be on the table. Unfortunately, the result is not likely to be the liberal, Western-looking state that America -- and many Afghans -- desire. But some kind of compromise, which likely would mean a federated Afghanistan with the Taliban in control of Pashtun areas, seems possible. It surely is a second best solution. But it is better than perpetual conflict.

Sometimes war is an ugly necessity. But not in Afghanistan today. Americans are not dying there to protect America. After nearly a decade -- roughly as long as the Civil War and American participation in World Wars I and II combined -- it is time to bring U.S. troops home.