Military

DATE=11/29/02

TYPE=FOCUS

NUMBER=8-041

TITLE= STRUGGLING AFGHANISTAN, PART ONE

BYLINE=ED WARNER

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

(EDS: THIS IS FOR MONDAY'S BROADCAST)

INTRO: Substantial gains by fundamentalist parties in recent Pakistani elections add to the problems facing Afghanistan's already shaky government. These parties support the Taleban and al-Qaida remnants now regrouping in the murky borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It will now be harder for U-S forces to root them out and find their still missing leaders, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. In the first of two scripts, VOA's Ed Warner examines these complications for Afghanistan's Karzai government.

TEXT: The election was not in Afghanistan, says Ed McWilliams, a former U-S special envoy to Afghanistan. But it might as well have been.

The victories of the religious parties in the Pakistani elections have grave implications for Afghanistan. The provinces they now control border Afghanistan and thus permit easy passage for al-Qaida and other terrorists intent on harassing or possibly undermining the present U-S backed Karzai government in Kabul.

Mr. McWilliams says Pakistan's newly empowered fundamentalist leaders have made their intentions clear:

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We know that the new provincial leadership in the northwest frontier province has specifically called for an end to the American presence in Pakistani air bases and other bases and has called broadly for an end to cooperation between the United States and the government of Pakistan.

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Mr. McWilliams says these religious leaders have the forces to back up their threats; namely, Taleban and al-Qaida groups still avoiding capture:

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What we know is that the majority of the senior leadership of the Taleban did escape our bombardment just a year ago. I think we have actually picked up only two or three of the senior leadership of the Taleban. Mullah Omar, the leader, of course, himself is missing.

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Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid writes in "The Nation" that the "Afghanistan/Pakistan region is the key to insuring that al-Qaida does not re-emerge as a military force under a new Islamist or nationalist guise. Everywhere else in the world, al-Qaeda operates underground and in secret. In Afghanistan, it rockets U-S troops."

So the war is by no means over, says Mr. McWilliams, as long as the terrorists can keep it going:

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It is a simple fact that while they may have been defeated on the battlefield, they have not been effectively defeated as a political force or even, we might say, as a military force, insofar as they have not been disarmed. And we see growing attacks, admittedly ineffective attacks, on our forces in recent months on the ground in Afghanistan.

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Mr. McWilliams says there appears to be a U-S prejudice against what is called nation-building. Whatever it is called, reconstruction must take place or deteriorating conditions will revive the very terrorism the United States went to war to defeat:

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We seem to be forgetting that we have essentially a yet to be completed mission in Afghanistan. Not only are our forces vulnerable to the continued fundamentalist threat. The Karzai government faces a very, very serious threat as well, both from the Taleban, al-Qaida and some of the old mujahedin fundamentalist leaders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdul Rasul Sayaaf, who very much remain actors on the stage in Afghanistan.

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Observers say the regional commanders or warlords are as powerful as ever, thanks in part to ample U-S cash and arms. They were used to help defeat the Taleban, but the question now is who is using whom?

Arthur Helton and Jennifer Whitaker of the Council on Foreign Relations write that "warlords openly defy central government edicts as they battle for turf. With his phalanx of American guards, but no power to affect security outside the capital, President Hamid Karzai looks disturbingly like the warlord of Kabul."

Carl Conetta, director of the Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says the warlords could prove as dangerous as the Taleban to the Karzai government:

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The Taleban are one element among many that threaten the stability of the country. The warlords who were allied with us for a brief period when we toppled the Taleban do not consistently have interests that are the same as those of the United States or of the Karzai government. What is happening is the consolidation of warlord power in different areas of the country.

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Face the facts: we have to work with the powers that be, a U-S military officer told Ralph Peters, a former U-S army intelligence officer who writes on military strategy. Continuing to back the Afghan warlords may be tactically right, says Mr. Peters, but strategically wrong.

In the Wall Street Journal, he writes that we must beware our tendency to do what is easy today, though destructive tomorrow. No use supporting the bad guys who end up doing us harm. The United States, he says, must help create a humane, successful central government in Afghanistan that will control the warlords.

With an adequate number of troops and a long-range plan, the United States, says Mr. Peters, can move Afghanistan toward a rule of law and help restore education and infrastructure. "That takes commitment, patience and reasonable expectations all difficult qualities for our ebullient democracy. Instead of being viewed as a country that only bombs Muslims, we might be seen at last as a country that builds, too."

That is not an impossible dream, says Charles Dunbar, professor of international relations at Simmons College in Boston. He thinks warlords who differ among themselves can be brought to cooperate in rebuilding Afghanistan:

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I think a key point to remember is that even the most independent minded warlord of Afghanistan is interested in having a central government that is able to function first and foremost, of course, a central government that is able to channel benefits from the outside into the provinces of the country.

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But strengthening the central government requires a shift in U-S strategy, says Mr. McWilliams. It means assuring security beyond Kabul:

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The United States itself is deployed outside of Kabul in its pursuit of Taleban and al-Qaida elements. We are not really addressing the problem of regime security broadly in Afghanistan. We are simply in a hunt and pursuit mode, and that does not really respond to the security needs of the people outside of the Kabul area.

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Mr. McWilliams say there are signs the United States is beginning to make such a policy shift, but the sooner it is done, the better for Afghanistan.

For Focus, this is Ed Warner