Afghanistan: Stalemate in the “Great Game”

On Saturday the New York Times reported yet more evidence of the incorrigible corruption of the Karzai government in Afghanistan.  Fazel Ahmed Facqiryar, a former Deputy Attorney General, has recently been fired for asserting publicly that the investigations of more than two dozen allegedly corrupt officials – including cabinet members, provincial governors, and ambassadors – are being blocked by President Karzai.    Facqiryar declared:

“We propose investigations, detentions and prosecutions of high government officials, but we cannot resist [Karzai].  He won’t sign anything. We have great, honest and professional prosecutors here, but we need support.”

Karzai is possibly the biggest obstacle to defeating the Taliban because insurgencies feed on corrupt government.  If we are to have a chance of success against the Taliban, President Obama has rightly and repeatedly pointed to the necessity of the United States having a responsible Afghan partner.  Competing with Karzai for the “most unhelpful ally award” are factions within Pakistan’s intelligence services who support Taliban operations in Afghanistan by allowing militants and arms to cross the border.

We need to reevaluate our relationship with supposed allies who are in reality undermining our war against the Taliban. U.S. options in Afghanistan are dwindling along with  America’s political will to support the war.    It is time for US policy to adapt to the facts that we have no credible partner in Kabul and that Pakistan is likely to remain duplicitous.   We also need a fallback strategy consistent with a modest US military presence in Afghanistan.

First, it’s time to take away Karzai’s American Express Card.  Karzai and his cronies must no longer be permitted to line their pockets with US tax dollars, making themselves rich and at the same time discrediting the government they claim to run.  The United States and its NATO partners should increasingly find ways to go around Karzai’s officials and deliver foreign aid directly to local legitimate Afghan leaders and institutions.    Whether or not America can find loyal and reliable allies in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan remains to be seen.  But we must try before the inevitable withdrawal of most US forces from the region.  Distributing the lion’s share of the cash ourselves will make this task easier.

Second, it is also time to  get quietly tough with Pakistan.  As Secretary of State Clinton has publically charged, Pakistani officials – somewhere – know the whereabouts of Osama Bin Ladin.  The billions of dollars the US gives in aid to Pakistan must be contingent upon a consistent anti-Taliban and anti Al Qaeda policy.  Unfortunately, the publicly scheduled withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan minimizes our leverage.  To the Pakistanis the United States is obviously not a reliable partner.  Pakistan’s security forces will continue to play their traditional Islamist allies against their traditional enemy, India.  The only hope is that the Taliban, which for the first time recently waged a war inside of Pakistan, will continue to make itself loathsome to ordinary Pakistanis, and that its barbaric acts will moderate any reversion to Pakistan’s old pro-Taliban foreign policy.    Some smart Pakistanis must surely realize that the Taliban will eventually turn on them when it has sufficient strength.

Since Pakistan shows little sign of changing its ways,  the United States will turn to India for mutual support.  This is not  necessarily a bad thing.  As the world’s most populous democracy, India is America’s natural ally on the Asian continent.  Indians and Americans are equally enemies to Islamist extremism.  India is also the essential counter-weight to the growing power of China.  With many shared values and interests, India will agreeably do some of the heavy lifting for us in the region.

Historically, the battle for the region that today comprises Afghanistan and Pakistan is called “the great game.”   The United States would have played this game much better if the resources and political will that went into the invasion of Iraq gone to Afghanistan instead.  Had this happened, we might have left something behind  more permanent and more satisfying to the Afghan people as well as to our own interests.  But now American will and the resources we are willing to commit are slim to exhausted.  President Obama is unlikely to spend his diminished  political capital on Afghanistan.  The United States will play out its current hand under the leadership of General David Patraeus, a proven warrior.  Perhaps he will once again pull an ace out of his sleeve.

More likely, a relatively modest contingent of US troops will soon find themselves removed from the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, and based in friendlier areas to the north from which we will make endless surgical strikes against Islamist militants festering in the area on either side of the mountainous the Pakistan – Afghanistan border.  Life for Pashtuns seems headed for particularly miserable future under Taliban rule and NATO bombardment.  In “the great game,” all parties seem headed for an unhappy stalemate.