A Turnaround Strategy

Given that the United States is in its seventh year of war in Afghanistan, it might surprise many Americans to recognize that not one Afghan was involved at any significant level in the 9/11 attacks. Barnett Rubin, who has studied the region for decades and is chairing an Asia Society report on Afghanistan, makes the point more forcefully: "Afghans have played no significant role in any major terrorist attack before or after 9/11." This is true. All the plots that have been traced back to the region lead not to Afghanistan but to Pakistan, where U.S. officials acknowledge the top leadership of both the Taliban and Al Qaeda now reside.

Pressure Pakistan. When the United States invaded Afghanistan, it did not defeat Al Qaeda and its supporters among the Taliban. They simply fled to Pakistan, their original home. The story is by now familiar. During the 1980s, the Pakistani military—through its Inter-Services Intelligence agency—helped form militant Islamic groups to wage asymmetrical war against Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and against India in Kashmir. This strategy was financed by Saudi Arabia and the United States. It gave birth to the Taliban and helped provide Al Qaeda with a home when Osama bin Laden was expelled from Sudan.

It is crucial to recognize that the Pakistani military achieved substantial success with these militias. They bled India at very low cost, neutralizing New Delhi's much larger army, and chased the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. These represent the only two significant strategic successes for the Pakistani military in decades, perhaps in its history.

The American debate on the need to "press" Pakistan to dismantle these militias misses this point. Pakistan has long viewed its clients as having given the country "strategic depth"—keeping its historic foes, India and Afghanistan, off balance. For Islamabad to genuinely renounce these groups would require a fundamental strategic rethinking within the Pakistani military.

This is hard but not impossible. The civilian government in Pakistan, weak and ineffective though it may be, is allied with the international community on these issues. It too wants a Pakistani military that knows its boundaries, does not run militant groups and conceives of the country's national interests in less-confrontational terms. The United States has enormous influence with the Pakistani Army, though it has not always used it well. (When we cut off military-to-military relations in the 1990s, because of congressional sanctions against Pakistan's nuclear tests, we lost a generation of officers who felt betrayed by America.) If the military agrees to dismantle these jihadist networks—demonstrably—Afghanistan and India should respond with concessions to ease regional tensions. I don't want to make this sound easy. Of all the tasks that Petraeus and Holbrooke have, this one is the hardest. And yet, if the problem with Pakistan cannot be solved, the war in Afghanistan cannot be won.

Afghanistan is a complex problem, and progress will be slow and limited. But we need to stabilize the situation, not magically transform one of the poorest, most war-torn countries in the world in the next few years. It will help immeasurably if we keep in mind the basic objective of U.S. policy there. "My own personal view is that our primary goal is to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists to attack the United States and its allies," said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last week. That is an admirably clear statement.

It is not that we don't have other goals—education, female literacy, centralized control of government services, drug eradication, liberal democracy. But many of them are objectives that will be realized over very long stretches of time, and should not be measured as part of military campaigns or political cycles. They are also goals that are not best achieved by military force. The U.S. Army is being asked to do enough as it is in Afghanistan. Helping it stay focused on a core mission is neither cramped nor defeatist. It is a realistic plan for success.

© 2009