Toward a muddling-out option on Afghanistan

Show me the exitHaas piece in Newsweek is intelligent enough.  In effect, he argues that a nation-building effort designed to make Afghanistan whole will not succeed and will cost too much, so accept that this fake state will feature a Taliban-heavy south a la Blackwill and then make your choices on how you want to manage the situation, his big choice being either you seek “reintegration” with the Taliban or you acquiesce to their enclave in the south and spend your time and money building up the north and competing enclaves in the south (Tajik, Baluchi, Hazara) that would otherwise be trapped in an achieved rump Pashtunistan.

Haas argues that Pakistan would never accept a true Pashtunistan because it would threaten the integrity of its own fake state, which is probably true in terms of initial reaction, but I suspect that Islamabad would ultimately see such a soft border solution as to its advantage—legitimizing its “strategic depth” argument.  The question would be, would that be enough for Islamabad or would it pursue its historical habit of wanting Pashtun control to extend all the way to Kabul.

As I’ve argued earlier here, I see real promise in soft border solutions both north (Pashtunistan) and south (Kashmir) of Islamabad, not in the sense that I see them as easy outs, but rather that I don’t see any other long-term solution that will work better.

I honestly see the Pashtun southern enclave solution in Afghanistan to be not that much unlike the Kurdistan Regional Gov in Iraq.  Yes, the sheer existence raises the possibility of a “greater X” ambition on the part of co-ethnics “trapped” in neighboring states, but it’s an elegant solution compared to any drive to re-unify the fake state through force or even soft-power nation-building.  Plus, it creates the breathing space opportunity to work economic solutions on the enclave itself, which, in the case of the Taliban-controlled south, will admittedly be far harder to pursue than in the welcoming-if-corrupt KRG.

Nagl’s countering analysis on Petraeus’s approach:  that same strategy that stabilized Iraq can work in Afghanistan—the effective building up of Afghan’s security forces to defend themselves against the Taliban.  Frankly, if Petraeus and Caldwell (working the issue directly as a subordinate) can’t make it work, I don’t know who can.

The golden lining to date:  Petraeus convincing Karzai to allow him to pursue McChrystal’s plan to create community-based security forces.  To the extent that Petraeus succeeds, his contribution could dovetail with the Haas/Blackwill notion of  reintegrating the Taliban to the extent of recognizing their enclave in the south while building up the capacity of competing enclaves there to defend themselves.  What you end up with X months/years down the road is a Lebanon-like situation where the Taliban are forced to compete with outside-financed nation-building efforts in a reasonably stable country.  The expectation would be that the Taliban are no Hezbollah, and that Pakistan wouldn’t extend itself to compete via the Taliban in such nation-building, given that the south of Afghanistan was implicitly recognized as constituting a sphere of its influence.

Comments

[The Cockeyed Optimist]

Tom, its been a while since I posted but the new job's kept me busy. It's an interesting idea that if we cannot 'save 'the entire country we accept the inevitable partitioning, even along a soft line of borders.

I guess for a resource driven conflict, and increasingly that's what I see, the US reluctant to expend more resources for a unsure solution, then it makes sense to build what you can, and contain the rest.

I do know that here in Australia we are looking at whatever gets us out asap, so if that means we focus on the north as our bastion of calm, then we can start to pressure the south with a more stable and fingers crossed more prosperous and better governed north.

[Ted O'Connor]

Sounds like trying to play chess with marbles...on a vibrating board. A friend came back from Afghanistan recently, a high level contractor, old spook type. Sensible guy. Not optimistic about the outcome. One of his complaints was the cost. Says the taxpayers will hang us all from tall trees if they ever find out.