Afghan battle fatigue

By JON STEPHENSON - Sunday Star Times

AN AMERICAN special forces commander told a New Zealand SAS team hunting insurgents in Afghanistan: "We're going to put our boot in the middle of the puddle and see which way the water squirts."

The commander was "a hell of a nice bloke", one SAS man recalls. Another begs to differ, describing the American as "a bit of a loose cannon" who "talked shit". The US military, he adds, "don't know how to do hearts and minds".

Stomping in puddles – raiding homes, detaining the wrong people, and killing civilians in wayward air strikes – has cost America dearly in Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander there, knows winning hearts and minds – and quickly – is the only way to avoid defeat.

Eight years after the US-led invasion, success seems further away than ever. The Taliban – the conservative Islamic movement that ruled the country from 1996 until it was toppled in 2001 – is leading an increasingly virulent and effective insurgency.

Casualty figures for US and allied forces are at record levels, while Afghans are disillusioned and demoralised. McChrystal has asked for more troops, warning that failure to turn the Taliban tide in a year "risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible".

The West now faces some difficult questions – and so does New Zealand. What has gone wrong? Can the situation be turned around and, if so, how? What precisely is our strategy? Few in the West seem to know, or agree on, what "success" in Afghanistan might look like. In the aftermath of 9/11, America's goal was to rid the country of terrorists and prevent it being used again as a safe haven for al Qaeda. That soon morphed into promises to rebuild a society shattered by decades of conflict and chaos: to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

In Afghanistan, however, western intentions have a nasty habit of running aground on the reefs of reality. Diplomats such as US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, interviewed recently in New Zealand, now couch their hopes for Afghanistan's future in phrases like "some form of stability".

How even that objective can be reached by America and its allies is unclear to many, including the assistant secretary. "All I can tell you," Campbell told Television New Zealand's Guyon Espiner, "is that there is a deep and profound recognition that we need a better strategy..."

Campbell's boss, US President Barack Obama, is struggling for answers. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate is mulling over McChrystal's grim Afghanistan assessment and working with Washington's defence chiefs on a way to win his "war of necessity".

 

BUT BACK in Wellington, Prime Minister John Key has not waited to learn what tack Obama will take. In August, he announced the drawdown of New Zealand's provincial reconstruction team in Bamiyan province and ordered 70 Special Air Service commandos back to the fray.

The SAS troopers are highly regarded for their skills and versatility, and were sent on their fourth Afghanistan deployment at the specific request of the Obama administration. Among other tasks, they will be training and mentoring Afghan commandos from the Crisis Response Unit, or Task Force 24.

Labour leader Phil Goff, who criticised the return of the SAS, has suggested the Afghanistan conflict may be hopeless. In a recent interview with the Sunday Star-Times he said the call for more combat troops to go there reminded him of the latter days of the Vietnam War.

"I think the critical question is: you cannot win in Afghanistan unless you have an effective partner in the local administration and a reliable partner. And I don't believe that [America and its allies] have an effective and reliable partner."

The former defence minister is not alone in this. After meeting United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York last week, Goff quoted the UN chief as saying Afghanistan was in "political crisis" after evidence of widespread voter fraud by supporters of President Hamid Karzai.

"We have a litany of failures," says a high-level official in the Afghanistan government, speaking to the Star-Times on condition of anonymity. But he says the international community and Karzai share the blame.

"To make Karzai the public face of failure is downright criminal," the official says. "They're undermining their partner, and then they wonder why he can't deliver."

He says America and the international community must start working with and empowering Afghans. Of the billions in aid money that has been poured into Afghanistan, roughly three-quarters had been disbursed by the UN, NGOs and foreign governments.

There is plenty of corruption and inefficiency on the part of foreigners, he claims. "They've done no better than the Afghan government. We have had no results to show for it."

Goff, however, appears to view the dodgy election as a watershed event. "This outcome aggravates the situation where the Afghanistan government has been shown to be endemically corrupt, its national police incompetent and deeply unpopular, and the Afghanistan government ineffective in failing to deliver to the Afghan people," he says.

"This is the context in which President Obama is making a decision as to whether to commit further US troops to that country."

EVERY CHOICE Obama makes will be a bad choice, says Arturo Munoz, a senior political scientist at the Washington DC-based Rand Corporation, a global policy think-tank. "If he stays, it's bad; if he leaves, it's bad. If he sends more troops, it's bad; if he doesn't send troops, it's bad. The least-bad option is what he needs to choose."

Munoz spent three decades in the CIA and was in one of the first CIA teams that entered Afghanistan in early 2002. He says Goff is right about one thing: foreign forces can't win in Afghanistan. The Afghans will have to defeat the Taliban – and that, he argues, is still possible.

"The only reason why the Taliban is doing so well is because of the mistakes we have made."

The good news is that, despite America's mistakes, polls consistently show most Afghans do not want the Taliban back. That goes for the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara as well as the Pashtun – Afghanistan's largest and most powerful ethnic group, from which the Taliban are predominantly drawn.

"If you had massive widespread popular support for the Taliban, even just in the Pashtun areas, then I would say it's hopeless," says Munoz. "But I think the Taliban are seen by many as a backward set of people that are going to impose a retrograde regimen."

The bad news is that distaste for the Taliban does not equate to support for American forces. Nor does any dislike of Mullah Omar and his men mean support for the corrupt and ineffectual Karzai administration.

He says what the average Afghan wants is an end to the petty corruption that makes their daily life a misery: an end to the bureaucrats, policemen and judges who demand bribes at every turn. "That the elections were free and fair? I think that's a lesser concern."

EVEN WITH good equipment, first-rate intelligence and a disciplined, well-led army, counter-insurgency is notoriously hard to get right. T.E. Lawrence, better-known as "Lawrence of Arabia", famously described it as "messy and slow, like learning to eat soup with a knife".

Afghanistan, with its patchwork of ethnic and tribal groups, is no exception. For foreign forces, telling friend from foe can be next to impossible. As one New Zealand SAS trooper says: "Anyone could be a farmer by day and Taliban by night." The only way to know, soldiers say, is when the bullets start flying.

But attributing all resistance to "the Taliban" is a mistake, says Seth Jones, another Rand scholar and author of In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan. This is not a Taliban insurgency, he argues, but a very localised and complex one with more than a dozen groups operating in the country.

He says the Taliban might be the largest group, but clans and tribes are key players too. Then there are criminals and militias, as well as intelligence agents from Pakistan who are supporting or collaborating with Afghan insurgent groups.

Munoz agrees. "It's very much tribal-based: they come together against a common enemy, as they did with the Soviets. What unifies all these people is us."

Building that unity is made easier for the Taliban when US forces or those of its allies are heavy handed in their operations. The air strikes that kill innocent civilians are a classic example.

"We have been saying for years: `This is collateral damage and it's unavoidable.' But the Afghans don't feel that way," says Munoz. "They say, `Well, it is avoidable. You don't have to call in an air strike. The Taliban don't have any airplanes, and they fight all the time'."

Getting this aspect of counter-insurgency right is not rocket science, he says. A simple cost/benefit analysis tells you that there is little point in killing one insurgent if you kill 10 civilians in the process and thereby create 100 new enemies.

Up against the high-tech US military juggernaut, the Taliban have become adept at publicising their enemy's mistakes, knowing civilian deaths sit badly in the western world as well as with Afghans. Like McChrystal, they know this war will not be decided on the battlefield.

As with other insurgents groups throughout history, they also understand that they do not have to win; they just have to avoid losing. Time is on their side, and they know it. "The Taliban," says Munoz, "are extremely confident that we will tire."

SO, IS the situation hopeless? Not at all, says the high-level official. "It's absolutely salvageable." He adds, however, that Obama as well as McChrystal must work hard and work fast to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan.

"I think right now we're on a knife-edge," he says. "I think a majority of Afghans want the Americans there, but it's a thin majority. It isn't that the Afghans don't welcome the foreign troops; they just want their lives to improve as a result."

He says the average Afghan believes America and its allies are simply looking for an exit strategy. They worry that they will be left to face the Taliban alone and ask: "Why should I put myself on the line?" "They are fence-sitters," the official says.

So, one of Obama's first tasks must be to convince Afghans that America is there for the long haul – committed to staying until its goals have been met. And those goals, says the official, must be realistic.

The West must abandon any notion that Afghanistan can be transformed into a Jeffersonian democracy. The goal should be a moderate Islamic country, at peace with itself and with its neighbours; a minimal state, strong enough to deliver basic security and services to its people.

The official's preference is for the "clear, hold, and build" strategy that is already being applied in troubled provinces like Helmand, and getting Afghanistan's security forces to a level that allows some US and Nato troops to be pulled out. That, he estimates, will take three to five years.

But all of this effort will be wasted, he says, if America does not go after Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan or force the Pakistanis to do so properly.

"The Pakistanis know exactly where they are.

"At some point in time we will have to bite the bullet and say: `If you don't go after these guys, we will'."

Upping the ante with Pakistan is a high-stakes strategy – and three to five years is a long time in politics, especially US politics. America's allies would love to get out, and experts agree that, when Nato countries abandon the cause, the US will be politically and militarily incapable of continuing on its own. Commentators say McChrystal will get two years at most to turn things around, whether or not he gets extra troops.

The end may come even sooner if US casualties mount, public support in the States for the war slumps further, or American politicians pull the plug. Democratic congressional leader Nancy Pelosi is among those uneasy about the war – a worrying sign, for those who know their history. The Vietnam War did not end because of a US military defeat but when the congress cut off funding.

Meanwhile, McChrystal has issued a virtual ban on air strikes in civilian areas. He wants the additional troops he has asked for to help deliver security to Afghans, but he wants those troops to tread carefully.

Will the extra troops McChrystal is after help or hinder the cause? "I think it's the behaviour of those forces," says Munoz. "The complaints that have been made by the Pashtun for years don't have to do with the number of troops, but how they're used."

WHAT WOULD failure look like? What would happen if the West left Afghanistan? Many commentators claim it would descend again into conflict and chaos, and very likely into civil war. Some predict the Taliban would carve out a "Pashtunistan", anchored in a large southern chunk of the country.

But would this present a danger to America and its Nato allies, let alone New Zealand? Key apparently thinks it would, stating that the decision to send the SAS back to Afghanistan is linked to the need to stop it becoming "an even bigger hotbed for global terrorism".

Terence O'Brien, former New Zealand diplomat and now senior fellow at the Wellington-based Centre for Strategic Studies, has little truck with this view. Al Qaeda has been dispersed, he says, and the Taliban were never interested in international jihad. "Their interests stopped at the border of Afghanistan."

Others say some Taliban factions have been radicalised by the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan, adopting al Qaeda's ideology as well as its trademark tactics like suicide bombings. But they say the longer the West remains in Afghanistan, the more radical the Taliban are likely to become.

Either way, it is not difficult to get the impression that Key's decision to dispatch the SAS is less about a commitment to the "Afghanistanians" than a desire to "curry favour with the Americans", as O'Brien claimed recently.

But it can be no coincidence that Key has put an 18-month cap on New Zealand's military commitment. With his currency trader's eye for risk, he will know the odds in Afghanistan are stacked against the West.

So, if Munoz were a betting man, would he put money on the US-led forces or the Taliban winning the day? Who does he think will be ahead in 18 months? "I think the Taliban are ahead," he says. "I think the Taliban will be ahead."

The history of America's involvement in Afghanistan these past eight years is, says Munoz, a history of lost opportunities. "We were welcome there. I experienced it myself. The Afghans, contrary to all the stuff you read about xenophobia, wanted help. "Afghans had been tired of civil war; they were tired of the Taliban. They saw the Americans as people who could make their lives better. "And as a quid pro quo for not resisting the invasion, they gave us a chance.

"We have not brought progress to Afghanistan. Things are not better; in many respects, things are worse. You haven't had the job creation, the economic infrastructure, to really transform society.

"Now the Taliban are saying: `What did you get out of the American occupation? Corruption, air strikes, humiliation, and joblessness."'

British foreign correspondent and long-time Afghanistan observer Christina Lamb argued recently that foreign forces have essentially lost the trust and consent of the Afghans. She doubts they will be able to regain it.

Munoz is not quite as pessimistic, but accepts that the prospects for US success in Afghanistan look bleak. "We have made too many mistakes. We have lost too much time."

Jon Stephenson has spent much of the past eight years reporting issues and events associated with the so-called "war on terror". He was the only New Zealand journalist to report from the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and has also covered conflict in Lebanon and Gaza.

New Zealand's role in Afghanistan

One thing Afghans care about greatly – more than corrupt officials or their government's failure to deliver jobs and services – is the way they are treated by foreign forces.

Here America's record is not distinguished, and this, says political scientist and former CIA officer Arturo Munoz, goes to the heart of his country's failure in Afghanistan.

The searching of villages, the frisking of women, the arbitrary arrests of Pashtun men, the disarming of those who see a gun as their birthright – all these actions have caused deep offence and have served as a recruiting aid for the Taliban.

"Coalition" nations such as Denmark and New Zealand were also caught up, following the US-led invasion, in a policy that focused on counter-terrorism at the expense of counter-insurgency: on capturing or killing "high-value targets" rather than winning hearts and minds. New Zealand SAS troopers and their Danish counterparts have well-earned reputations for professionalism and decency. But in Afghanistan, both countries' special forces have been small players in a big game.

Senior SAS sources say their orders came down from the Americans. "They decided our missions," one told the Star-Times, and the Danes and New Zealanders were sent on occasion to snatch Afghan suspects, some of whom were mistreated in US custody. Standards on raids were strictly observed by the SAS, the New Zealand commandos insist.

Their rules of engagement, issued by defence chiefs in Wellington, stated no one could shoot unless their life or a colleague's was in imminent danger. But having the wall of your compound blown open in the middle of the night and heavily armed men invading your home cannot be pleasant, regardless of whether the invaders are disciplined or happen to come from New Zealand or Denmark.

"Firm but fair" is how an SAS commander termed the treatment of suspects detained by his men, none of whom struck him as an insurgent. "I know we looked after them," another SAS man told the Star-Times.

US soldiers at Kandahar Detention Center took a more "robust" approach to detainees the New Zealanders handed over, and the issue was raised by the SAS. The mistreated prisoners, who turned out to be innocent, were returned to their villages with sacks of rice as compensation. Rice notwithstanding, the experience cannot have gone down well – and in the Pashtun culture, where honour is paramount, an affront to dignity is not easily forgiven.

One Afghan man, arrested by Danish commandos due to faulty intelligence and abused at Kandahar by US soldiers, later told the Associated Press: "If they gave us all of Afghanistan now, it wouldn't make up for this insult."

Provincial reconstruction teams, such as the New Zealand one at Bamiyan, are much more focused on the counter-insurgency philosophy of winning hearts and minds, and a high-level Afghan official says he cannot understand John Key's decision to wind it down and re-deploy the SAS.

"I think that's a huge mistake," the official says. "It sends the wrong signal. Those [SAS] troops will be doing whatever the Americans are doing, and that is hunt-and-kill missions." He says some counter-terrorist operations that are mounted by commandos are a necessary evil, but "special forces do not have a good reputation with the Afghan people".