There’s a very interesting article in the Washington Post this morning which says that as president Barack Obama plans to pursue a new approach to Afghanistan, what’s described in the article as a “regional strategy”:
The incoming Obama administration plans to explore a more regional strategy to the war in Afghanistan — including possible talks with Iran — and looks favorably on the nascent dialogue between the Afghan government and “reconcilable” elements of the Taliban, according to Obama national security advisers.
Unfortunately, other than this
Obama said during the campaign that his administration would explore talks with countries such as Iran and Syria, rejecting bedrock Bush policy and rhetoric that some U.S. military officials believe may have outlived their usefulness.
Iran, on Afghanistan’s western border, has played a mixed role over the years, at times indirectly cooperating with U.S. objectives and at times assisting the extremists. The Bush administration has kept Tehran at arm’s length, but “as we look to the future, it would be helpful to have an interlocutor” to explore shared objectives, said one senior U.S. military official. The Iranians “don’t want Sunni extremists in charge of Afghanistan any more than we do,” he said.
and the tantalizing headline the article doesn’t really have a great deal to say about what a regional strategy in Afghanistan would look like.
It seems to me that more U. S. troops in Afghanistan, which President Elect Obama has repeatedly says he supports, is probably in direct conflict with a productive regional strategy. It’s nearly the last thing those in the region would want.
The region is, presumably, Iran, Pakistan, and India. Unfortunately, I suspect that the objectives of these three powers with respect to Afghanistan are at odds.
Pakistan will certainly want to maintain Afghanistan as a reliable and docile client. Additionally, they’ll want their Al Qaeda guests to be left alone in Waziristan, precisely the opposite of our own objectives.
India’s goals will presumably be much the opposite.
What does Iran want from Afghanistan? Presumably, it wants the Iranian people in Afghanistan to stay in the fold and not foment discontent on the Iranian side of the border.
Would a regional strategy mean peacekeepers from the neighbors in addition to or instead of NATO forces? They might well be more amenable to the idea than our NATO allies are to install more of their own forces in Afghanistan. I’m not sure I can think of a more frightening prospect than Iranian, Pakistani, and Indian forces tromping around in Afghanistan.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about the subject than I could offer some more details on what a productive regional strategy for Afghanistan might be, how it could be achieved, and whether such a thing is in our interests.
“What does Iran want from Afghanistan?”
Herat. De facto or de jure. I have no idea what one would talk about with Iran. As it stands, Iran will keep building roads and rail between Iran and Herat. It will send money to Ismail Khan, who will keep the Taliban out and maintain fundamentalist law with his Islamic police. Do we want to stop this or encourage it?
I’m so far an outlier on this subject that my opinion is virtually meaningless. I think that we should stop trying to apprehend the Taliban or Al Qaeda and merely prevent them from reasserting control in Afghanistan and try to contain them. By “containment” I mean something rather rigorous: no one goes in, no one goes out. If Pakistan doesn’t want to play nice, make travel there more expensive, too. No travel, no training camps.
Dave, that sounds like a better strategy than the current one. As I understand current NATO strategy, point one is to extend the authority of the central government of Afghanistan. I think that premise is flawed. I don’t think Afghanistan is going to ever have a significant centralized government within my lifetime.
I think we should either be working directly with regional and municipal governments to enhance security, or alternatively we should be working to restrict foreign influences. In the second case, I would be more interested in keeping Iran out and forcing Ismail Khan to work within a loose alliance with Kabul and other regions/cities.
Dave,
Iran, Pakistan and India do have divergent goals in Afghanistan. Pakistan wants to prevent Afghanistan from getting too close to India and Iran (both of which have traditionally been allies against Pakistan). That’s the main reason that Pakistan continues to support the Taliban, as a means of maintaining what little leverage they have in the country, should the US pull out and leave a pro-Indian government in Kabul. Iran and India both want to prevent the rise of the Taliban, a government both fought against via funding for the Northern Alliance. Iran, doesn’t so much want Herat as part of Iran, as much as it wants to use it to retain enough influence in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from ever rising again. After all, a new Taliban government in Afghanistan would threaten Iran as much with or without Herat under its control. Aside from using Herat to prevent the Taliban’s rise, they also use Herat as a market for the export of Iranian goods.
That said, however, there is one thing that could help bring these three parties to the table, unfortunately, it is something the US until now has largely opposed; the IPI pipeline, which could go from Iran to Pakistan and finally to India. The US opposes the pipeline because it gives Iran a means to transport its natural gas east (as one suspects such a pipeline would eventually stretch all the way to China), securing a growing market for Iranian natural gas exports. However, the US could drop its opposition to such a project, from which India, Iran and Pakistan would benefit, in order to get the three working together in Afghanistan. That would mean, working with those elements each has sway with to promote security in the region. Iran here would play a similar role to that it played in southern Iraq, where when things threatened to explode, it acted as a mediator between competing Shiite factions to stave off greater political unrest.
India, and Iran could jointly get the largely Northern Alliance controlled government in Kabul to more openly negotiate and welcome Pashtun’s in the south into positions of power to balance out the Northern Alliance heavy structure of the government. At the same time, Pakistan, whose economy is in the tank, could be pushed to deal with al Qaeda effectively, while pushing the Taliban toward talks with Kabul on a political settlement that would grant at least those Taliban willing, not only amnesty but also government posts thereby addressing the northern alliance imbalance in the central government, while also ameliorating Pakistan’s concerns about that government’s extreme pro-Indian/Iran tilt. There will be Taliban who won’t lay down their weapons, but I suspect a significant group will, and they could in turn be used to bring stability to southern Afghanistan.
At the same time, given the level of instability in Iranian and Pakistani controlled Balochistan, through where the pipeline is planned, the US and these parties can work to divert it, or create another section through southern Afghanistan, as a back up corridor for Iranian natural gas to pass to market. This of course, would also have to follow extensive negotiations with Iran on their nuclear program as well as their status in the region, which would include Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, more than any other country, Iran will be the key.
In terms of bringing the other Central Asian states, we can use the carrot of pipelines through Afghanistan, and Iran, to get their energy exports to market, as a means of not only providing Afghanistan with additional revenue from transport rights, but also circumventing Moscow’s tight grip on their energy supplies, thereby giving Europe an alternative to Russian controlled energy pipelines.
I disagree that Iran’s interest in Herat is limited to the Taliban and trade. The British drove Iran out of Herat in the 1850s. Herat has long been considered of strategic importance to Iran’s defense of Khurasan and it’s denial by the British is a continued point of resentment. Ismail Khan’s employment of Islamic police prevents Iran’s eastern border from becoming a source of non-revolutionary thought or aid to anti-Iranian insurgencies. In short, Iran sees and has always seen Herat as either part of the Persian nation or a part of Iran’s near-abroad.
It is true that Herat has always been considered a strategic outpost for Iran, but the city has been under Afghan control since at least the late 1800’s after Dhost Mohammed made it part of the larger Afghan state. As such, Iran is limited in what it can do there, and with the right carrots and sticks, including Chinese need for their natural gas, we can insure that Iran, though having great influence in Herat will not undermine the Afghan state too much. Plus, leaving Herat as part of Afghanistan makes sense from a strategic point of view, since it allows Iran to have an important outpost (albeit a persian speaking Tajik one) within Afghanistan from which to monitor events in Afghanistan and to pressure the Afghan government in their dealings. That is something that can’t be helped, it was gonna happen the moment we overthrew the Taliban. Iran is the regional hegemon, and without a balancing force, as Iraq was, their power in the region has grown. There’s not much we can do about that in the short term, but through the right use of diplomacy and the stick, we can eventually turn that power for our own benefit.
I’ve read pretty extensively about Afghanistan and have been there myself, so here’s my 2 cents.
A regional strategy is required mainly because of the how the borders in this part of the world were drawn. In particular is the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Simply put, Pakistan considers an independent and strong Afghanistan an existential threat to Pakistan’s existence as a state. Pakistan fears that its western provinces (which constitutes over 1/2 the country’s land area) are another East Pakistan, aka Bangladesh. Most of the peoples in western Pakistan have more in common and more affinity with those in Afghanistan than the ruling Punjabs. In Pakistani eyes a strong Afghan = the dissolution of Pakistan. As a result, Pakistan will never support the creation of a strong central government in Afghanistan which explains its actions over the last several years.
I’ve said before (not sure if it was here or elsewhere) that Pakistan and Afghanistan are conjoined dysfunctional twins. There is no solution in one without the other. It may be (and I hope) that such a realization is at the heart of an Obama “regional strategy.” Given what he’s said on the topic in the past, I’m skeptical, but perhaps his advisers have educated him.
Iran’s interest in Herat is secondary to its interest in Afghanistan’s Hazara minority, which is Shi’ite. That Taliban were very hard on the Hazara and that was the principle reason Iran opposed them. The Hazara now are doing really well, which makes Iran happy. Iran wants that to continue, but they also want to influence events in Afghanistan as a bulwark against restive minority populations along the border. I don’t think Iran has any designs on Afghan territory or seriously considers it possible to annex Herat. It’s also little known that Iran (particularly the eastern areas) has a serious heroin/opiate abuse problem which is supplied, naturally, by Afghanistan.
IMO, India should have no role in Afghanistan. It’s there currently mainly to put a stick in Pakistan’s eye. All that does is play into existing Pakistani fears.
Let’s not forget Russia and the central Asian states that used to be part of the USSR. They have allies (both historically and ethnically) in Afghanistan and they want their interests protected as well. While they don’t mind seeing the US flounder in Afghanistan, they don’t want a resurgence of the Taliban for obvious reasons. Added is that Chechen fighters have increasingly become a component of the foreign and Al Qaeda associated fighters in the AF/Pak border area and their interest in a somewhat stable (but weak) Afghanistan are clear.
So, would a “regional strategy” look like? There are many possibilities – too many to go into here. Personally, I think one key aspect will have to be a long-term US commitment to Pakistan. Pakistan, for good reason, doesn’t trust us, and without a long-term commitment they will continue to hedge their bets and talk (and act) out of both sides of their mouth. This is something VP-elect Biden has talked about before, so maybe he has a hand in this.
Good exposition, Andy. If you want space here to expand on this as a guest post, you’re welcome to it.
I’m not particularly sanguine about enlisting the support of Pakistan in resolving the situation. Rather, I think that they see their interest as keeping Afghanistan weak, disorderly, and concommitantly violent.
While I agree that a longterm commitment to the region is necessary, what the nature of the commitment might be is not entirely clear to me. Is there really any more to commit to in Pakistan than there is in Afghanistan?
Andy, I’ll point out that Iran’s hostilitiy to the Taliban didn’t prevent them from helping al-Qaeda transit in and out of Afghanistan before 9/11 and after the invasion. I think Iran is naturally hostile to the Taliban, but more so to the U.S.
Iran sent Qods forces to the Herat region, some of them trained in Lebanon in the art of distributing aid to organize support. Annexation may be unlikely (unless Biden dictates policy), but Lebanonization appears likely. I just don’t see any benefit from opening the door to this outcome. OTOH, Herat has long historical and cultural ties to Iran — I don’t think we can completely shut that door either.
Dave,
I agree that we have to be realistic about enlisting the support of Pakistan. We really need to be aware of what they can and cannot do and what carrots and sticks will work on them – something the current administration hasn’t exactly been good at. My main point that stability in Afghanistan requires stability in Pakistan and the latter is be best done through engagement and a long-term commitment to Pakistan. As it now stands, Pakistan thinks that once AQ and/or the Taliban is defeated that Pakistan, no longer necessary to the US, will once again become a pariah state, just like what’s happened over and over again through the last several decades. Pakistan is probably correct in this fear. We historically have only been friends of necessity or convenience and in the current situation, this provides a perverse incentive to appear to help us while at the same time ensuring we don’t succeed. They believe that if we meet our policy objectives in Afghanistan then they can say good bye to American aid and engagement. So it’s to break that cycle that I think a long-term commitment is needed along with substantial non-military aid.
The additional justification, of course, is that Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state. I therefore believe it’s prudent to do what we can to stabilize and positively influence Pakistan over the long term, even disregarding Afghanistan and AQ. A stable nuclear Pakistan is also (or should be) higher on our priority list than defeating AQ. Unfortunately, our actions against AQ have destabilized Pakistan.
It’s really will be interesting to see if the Obama administration will alter the desired Afghanistan end-state put in place by Bush. I personally feel pretty strongly that any lasting central Afghan state will not have much influence in the parts of the country that most concern us. I therefore think that idea that the solution to preventing the return of an AQ safe-haven through nation-building is not likely to succeed over the long term.
PD Shaw,
Like most nations, particularly in this region, Iran holds somewhat to the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” thinking (Just look at the groups we supported against the Soviets in the 1980’s). Yes, Iran has supported groups hostile to the US that aren’t exactly great friends of Iran. However, for the most part, this support has been limited and I think it is more about making a point to the US than anything else – pointing out that, “hey, we have influence here too and if you piss us off, we can play the spoiler.” For example, if Iran wanted to, it could do what the US did in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and supply groups in both Iraq and Afghanistan with advanced weapons – particularly surface-to-air missiles. On the other hand, Iran was very helpful in 2001-2002 by providing access to reliable sources and leaders inside Afghanistan that we were able to exploit to fight the Taliban.
Also, it may be Iran believes the US attempt to create a central Afghan state will ultimately fail, and so its actions can be explained as preparation for that eventuality. Personally, I think the odds of them being correct are better on that score than our odds. One last note is that Iran hosted (and continues to host) a lot of Afghan refugees. By improving conditions along their border, they hope to get those refugees to leave.
As I’ve written all too frequently before, IMO there’s a swathe of ungoverned territory stretching from the Bosporus to the Indus. At best the pseudo-states in that band of territory are loose confederations of city-states with little control over the area beyond their immediate exurbs. The capital cities are sometimes little more than large villages, the areas beyond those exurbs are sometimes all but inaccessible to the cities that nominally govern them.
The notion that the pseudo-states within this territory can be turned in the foreseeable future to cohesive modern states with central governments and the pervasive rule of law, a prerequisite for democracy, is far-fetched.