Here is a joke from Kabul: Hamid Karzai, the interim head of state signs a document and hands it over to a man sitting across him. “Here is the edict for your appointment to a senior position in my government. Now its your turn to sign a document.” The new appointee asks: “What is the document that I should sign?” Karzai replies: “Your last will and testament.”
The joke may sound cynical but reflects a mood of anxiety in Afghanistan. During the past six months, at least a dozen senior officials have been murdered, including a vice President, a Cabinet minister, and a provincial governor. Former King Muhammad Zaher Shah and Defense Minister Muhammad Qassim Fahim have escaped two separate assassination attempts. In every case, Karzai’s entourage, using leaks to the American media, have alleged that the killings were organized by unspecified factions within the coalition. So mistrustful of his allies has Karzai been that he replaced his Afghan bodyguards with 72 American Marines in July.
Initially, the Americans had been careful to minimize their involvement in Afghan politics. They had come to destroy the terrorist organizations, kill or capture as many of the criminals as possible, organize some form of governmental authority, and leave. The task of leading an international stabilization force was assigned first to the British, then to the Turks, while the United Nations was put in charge of the so-called nation-building efforts.
By those yardsticks, the US had achieved the objectives of its minimalist agenda by the end of June. The terror groups were smashed, even though Osama Ben Laden, whom we believe is dead, and fellow fugitive Mulla Muhammad Omar, had not been captured. A stabilization force was in place while Karzai and his Cabinet acted the role of a national authority. Now, however, there are signs that the US may be abandoning its minimalist agenda in favor of a maximalist one that could trigger a new civil war, and drag the US into Afghan factional bloodletting with incalculable consequences.
What is this maximalist agenda aimed at? Judging by statements by Zalmay Khalizad, Washington’s point man in Kabul, the American mission in Afghanistan is being transformed from one of a limited police operation into an open-ended empire-building scheme with geostrategic goals. Under this agenda, the US would acquire a permanent military presence in Afghanistan and turn it into a base for projecting power in Central Asia, the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent, The Middle East and the Gulf.
A new pro-American Afghanistan would become a major piece in the “ Great Game” that is taking shape in the heart of Asia with Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Iran among the many players. A landlocked country larger than France, Afghanistan could serve as a terrestrial aircraft carrier for the US. American “military facilities” in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia will, in time, enable Washington to ignore the occasional sulking of Turkey and moderate Arab states where the US maintains men and materiel.
Linked to this geostrategic aim is the idea of using Afghanistan as a transit route for oil and gas pipelines from Kazakhstan and Central Asia via Pakistan and the Indian Ocean. Both Karzai and Khalilzad, an ethnic Pashtun with US nationality, have worked as consultants for the American oil companies that began promoting the scheme as early as 1996. Both had managed to win the support of the Taleban for the scheme that was dropped after Ben Laden persuaded Omar not to play along. A third Afghan who worked on the scheme, Ashraf Ghani, is now minister of finance in the Karzai Cabinet.
Some Afghans have identified Khalilzad and Ghani as a twin eminence grise in Kabul, with Karzai as front-man. At times Khalilzad has stepped out of the shadows to show who is boss. During the Loya Jirga sessions he joined the debates as if he were a member of the assembly. At one point he publicly vetoed a decision by Karzai not to put a resolution to a vote in the assembly. Some Afghan officials report directly to Khalilzad or receive his instructions over the telephone.
The US seems to be abandoning the realism that marked its policy in the first phases of its involvement in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 tragedy. At that time, the US acknowledged the fact that Afghanistan was a fragmented nation where numerous groups wielded power with a combination of violence and bribery. For example, President George W. Bush had publicly called on Northern Alliance forces not to enter Kabul. But when they did, Bush was wise enough to congratulate them. The US was also cautious not to side with groups that wanted to restore the monarchy in one form or another. On a number of occasions, notably in Jalalabad and Kandahar, the US refused to intervene to help either side.
For the maximalist agenda to succeed a number of conditions must be met. Chief among these is the creation of a strong central government capable of mobilizing public support for a long-term American military presence. Such a government is also needed for the protection of the projected oil and gas pipelines along more than 700 kilometers of the most dangerous territory in the world.
The Khalilzad-Karzai-Ghani trio hope that their ethnic group, the Pashtuns that accounts for 38 percent of the population, will dominate such a government. The problem is that the Pashtun community is the most divided of all 18 ethnic groups in Afghanistan today. The tribal and religious elite of the community had sided with the Taleban that had, in their final phases at least, become nothing but a Pashtun outfit. At the same time, the community does not have the intellectual, bureaucratic and technical elements needed for building and running a modern centralized government.
The project also requires effective control by the central government of western and southwestern Afghanistan, where the pipelines would pass. Tajik forces and their Char-Aymaq, Baluch, Ubzek and Turcoman allies now control those areas. Last week’s unsuccessful attempt by Pashtun forces to capture the derelict air base at Shindand, seen as a future American base, showed how tough it would be to change the balance of power among the factions. The US has so far resisted pressures to become involved in the fighting on the side of the Pashtuns. But these things have a diabolical logic of their own. All empires have blundered their way into situations that they have subsequently regretted.
Since its creation as a state in 1704, Afghanistan has been a patchwork of ethnic and tribal communities with a nominal central government in Kabul. It has been a buffer separating rival neighboring empires. Afghanistan has always been the easiest land to conquer but the hardest to hold. A newcomer to the region, the US should not ignore those facts. It is, perhaps, time for the US, its minimalist mission accomplished, to take a deep breath and decide what is it that it still might want to achieve in Afghanistan.
