As Vali Nasr and others have argued persuasively, the U.S. held the greatest amount of leverage vis-à-vis the Taliban during and immediately after the troop surge. That being said, it is wholly untrue that the U.S. would have no ability to influence the Taliban after withdrawing from the country. There is at least one carrot the U.S. could offer the Taliban: greater autonomy from Pakistan. Indeed, although seldom acknowledged, the U.S. and the Taliban have an overlapping interest in limiting Pakistani influence in Afghanistan.
For Washington, this interest derives from Islamabad's support for fundamentalist groups that attack the U.S. and its allies, as well as its increasingly cozy relationship with China. Although the Taliban rose to power in no small part because of Pakistani assistance, all reports suggest that the group has soured on its patrons during its stay in Quetta, as a result of being repeatedly treated like a pawn by Pakistan's powerful security and intelligence forces.
While dependent on Pakistan's hospitality, the Taliban have had to live with this humiliation. If they returned to power in Afghanistan, one of their first goals would almost certainly be to reduce this dependency on Islamabad. The most practical way of doing this would be to establish some sort of relationship with other powers, which could then be used to counterbalance Pakistani influence. The Western powers (possibly with regional buy-in) could offer to play this role if the Taliban were to respect their most basic interests in Afghanistan--principally, preventing terrorist groups from operating inside Afghanistan, and preferably some degree of respect for the human rights of Afghan citizens, especially women and minorities.
Ultimately, however, the West could never be sure that the Taliban would accept these terms and, even if they did, would have to consider that the group could later renege on them. Fortunately, the U.S. and its allies wouldn't be completely dependent on the Taliban upholding the bargain as they'd retain a trump card to prevent Afghanistan from returning to the country of the 1990s and early 2000s. This trump card would simply be to take unilateral action to prevent al-Qaeda from operating freely in Afghanistan.
Having just spent over a decade inside the country, it's reasonable to assume the U.S. has built up greater local networks than it had in the 1990s. These could be used for intelligence purposes and as hired guns against the terrorists. The fact that since 9/11 the U.S. has acquired a global fleet of armed predator drones would also aide in its fight against global jihadists seeking to use Afghanistan as a base to conduct foreign attacks. In fact, this policy would not be unlike the one being pursued in Pakistan, albeit local collaboration would not come from the national government as it often does in Pakistan, but rather from various non-governmental Afghan groups.
In many ways, it would be preferable for the U.S. to conduct covert action (including drone strikes) against terrorists inside a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan rather than Pakistan. To begin with, the U.S. has stronger local networks inside Afghanistan than it does in the foothills of Pakistan. Moreover, the Taliban would be far less capable of defending Afghanistan's sovereignty than is true of the government along its eastern border. Similarly, destabilizing Afghanistan through drone strikes would also be inherently less risky than destabilizing a much more populous and nuclear-armed Pakistan.
To be sure, this scenario is far from an ideal settlement to the Afghan conflict, which has become the longest war in American history. And certainly the prospect of the Taliban returning to power in Afghanistan would greatly concern many regional states, including U.S. partners like India. But at this juncture there are no ideal conclusions to the Afghan conflict available, and not actively trying to prevent the Taliban from returning to power is hardly an unacceptable one.
#1
Wot a cluster. The whole shithole country with the Paks and the Valley should get an ethnic clensing amongst them self. And leave the rest of modern culture alone. Of course we are going to have to come back for a few times to kill the really bad guys. We should have just enough oversite to dronezap the head jihadist, or napalm the ones that are creating AlKaeada more recruitment and training camps.
#6
"We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail."
-- GWB, 9/20/2001
Sure didn't turn out that way, did it?
I shudder to think about what our adversaries have probably concluded about us based on these past 12 years: we tire quickly; we're easily distracted; we're extremely unsure of ourselves, to the point of being afraid to even name our enemy ("It's the Islam, stupid!") for fear of being accused of "racism"; and we've become so over-civilized, so effete, we consider waterboarding (which doesn't do any more than scare the crap out of an interrogation subject) to be "brutal torture."
I also shudder to think about what it will take to jolt us awake, make us jettison the political-correctness bullshit, and really deal with the menace of radical Islam once and for all.
9/11 didn't do it; what will it take?
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/11/2013 12:09 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Loss of Manhattan, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/11/2013 13:05 Comments ||
Top||
#8
I've given up trying to figure out if the problem is Liberalism per se or some sort of civilizational alzheimer's.
#11
"Winning hearts and minds" doesn't seem to work too well unless you beat them into submission first to get their attention. You just have to do it in 4 years.
#12
No, Obama can live with Taliban Rule , Not America.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/11/2013 17:16 Comments ||
Top||
#13
The Bush administration's 9/11-Afghanistan policy had become self-contradictory as early as October of 2001.
In September Bush himself, speaking before a Joint Session of Congress said:
"These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate."
The original reason for going into Afghanistan was to destroy (one of) the state sponsors of 9/11, the Taliban. It was to punish the Taliban (and their Afghan supporters) for what had already happened.
Yet, in October of 2001 Colin Powell not only offered to spare some Taliban punishment for 9/11.
He offered them political power in a new Afghanistan recognized, financed and served by the US (link).
This went off the rails well before the 4 years were over.
It is one of the odd things about Egypt's current political contortions -- many, if not all, involving Islamism -- that the constant Islamist violence in Sinai is hardly mentioned. Sinai is home both to Egypt's beach tourism industry, and to the desert roads where foreigners are most likely to be kidnapped. Yet when it comes to consideration of the broader picture, it is all but ignored: it is too different from the rest of the country, is what most experts say, Egyptians and non-Egyptians alike.
We had all better hope they are correct. Sinai's population is 500,000; the rest of the country weighs in at 85 million.
The second half of the argument about Sinai, militant Islamism and the nation's political impasse goes as follows: while Sinai may be the heartland of whatever violent jihadist groups remain in the country after their gradual defeat in the 1980s and 1990s, the brand of political Islam that dominates the rest of the country is the Muslim Brotherhood. The difference is that the Brotherhood believes in peaceful and often charitable endeavour, rather than war.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
As Vali Nasr and others have argued persuasively, the U.S. held the greatest amount of leverage vis-à-vis the Taliban during and immediately after the troop surge. That being said, it is wholly untrue that the U.S. would have no ability to influence the Taliban after withdrawing from the country. There is at least one carrot the U.S. could offer the Taliban: greater autonomy from Pakistan. Indeed, although seldom acknowledged, the U.S. and the Taliban have an overlapping interest in limiting Pakistani influence in Afghanistan.
It is one of the odd things about Egypt's current political contortions -- many, if not all, involving Islamism -- that the constant Islamist violence in Sinai is hardly mentioned. Sinai is home both to Egypt's beach tourism industry, and to the desert roads where foreigners are most likely to be kidnapped. Yet when it comes to consideration of the broader picture, it is all but ignored: it is too different from the rest of the country, is what most experts say, Egyptians and non-Egyptians alike.
