Editorial

The West's weakened Warriors

Somewhere along the Pakistan border near the city of Quetta, a partially sighted mullah is rubbing his hands with satisfaction as he savours the news coming out of Western capitals. Whether he monitors Washington DC, London, Paris or Berlin, the message that comes across to Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban, is clear and unequivocal: NATO has lost its stomach for the war in Afghanistan and politicians in the West are finding excuses to withdraw at the earliest opportunity that decency permits.

For those old enough to remember America's disastrous war in Vietnam, and the subsequent withdrawal, there is an eerie similarity between the pronouncements that came out of Washington then and the kind of language — a political and military doublespeak — that is being used now about Afghanistan. Suddenly, the talk is about withdrawing Western forces from the Afghan countryside to Afghan cities, empowering the Afghan army (just as the South Vietnamese army was empowered) and even talking to 'responsible' elements among the ranks of the Taliban who might want to participate in some future political deal. All this amounts to creating a pretext for pulling out from an area that has proven far too expensive in cash and manpower for the Americans to endure.

Lord Ashdown, former leader of the British Liberal Democrats, who is quoted elsewhere in the magazine, puts it succinctly when he says, 'In these kinds of operations, winning militarily but losing politically means losing. And we are losing. It's the insurgency that is expanding across the country, not the writ of Kabul.

'Maybe President Obama didn't quite mean what he said last year when he announced the start of the US withdrawal next summer. But words, even inadvertent ones, have a momentum of their own. And few in Afghanistan doubt the direction in which that momentum is travelling. And they are probably right. They know even if we chose not to, that this is the beginning of the endgame in Afghanistan.'

Ashdown's assessment comes against the backdrop of the Netherlands announcement that it is pulling out its forces next year. The Canadians are due to leave next summer and even the UK, which prides itself as the most steadfast ally of the US, could start a partial withdrawal from next year.

This is not the time or place to ask why the US-led military intervention has failed. Suffice it to say that most Afghans do not believe the Americans have the stamina to stay for the long haul. Inevitably, the question being asked on the streets of Kabul and other cities is what will take the place of the Americans when they leave.

It is all very well for Western politicians to argue that it is time for the Afghans themselves to shoulder the burden of defending their own country, or that stability will follow once President Hamid Karzai has rooted out corruption. This is a simplistic analysis. The Karzai administration, corrupt or not, has very little popular backing and will not last more than a few weeks after an American pullout. Like the South Vietnamese generals of several decades past, Mr Karzai will head off to a comfortable retirement somewhere like Florida or California.

It is possible that a small non-Taliban enclave will survive for the time being in a corner of Afghanistan. From the West's point of view this would be the least bad outcome of a disastrous war. The worst outcome, and one that is being discussed by the Taliban's godfathers in Islamabad, is a Taliban sweep back to power everywhere. In Islamabad there is already talk of assigning specific parts of Afghanistan to specific Taliban lieutenants: Haqqani to Khost and Paktia, Hikmatyar to Kunduz, etc.

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