Long war, long peace

The United States and Afghanistan today initialed a strategic partnership agreement that reportedly commits Washington to support Kabul for ten years after the U.S. turnover of security responsibility by the end of 2014. The New York Times says the text was not released, and it hasn’t yet crossed my computer screen, but it apparently includes a substantial financial commitment to the Afghan security forces of at least several billion dollars per year.

This is the good news out of Afghanistan, where things have not been going well on many fronts.  But I attended a relatively upbeat meeting last week.  The ground rules prevent me from quoting or identifying anyone.  Here is what I heard some well-informed people say.

The counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan is relatively recent, dating officially only from 2009 though it had started in some places earlier.  Before that, Afghanistan was shorted in order to fund and staff Iraq.  And military action focused on persistent, targeted attacks rather than protecting the people.  Only in 2011 did we get maximum pressure exerted on insurgents with use of the American surge forces and the Afghan army and police, who responded well to recent coordinated attacks in Kabul and other places.  Finally we are now able not only to clear but also to hold. We need to keep the remaining surge troops in place through 2013 for maximum effect, but this should be considered only after the 2012 “fighting year” has ended in the fall (when of course there is also an American election).  It won’t cost much, only a pencil-dust few billion.  Build wasn’t mentioned.

The political part of the strategy seems to consist of not much more than the 2014 national election (possibly to be moved up to 2013).  There is no plan for provincial elections, despite the Afghan constitution and the importance of local governance.  A peaceful transfer of power at the national level would be a first for Afghanistan and an important precedent.  State Department has little capacity to do more than help ensure that.  Expectations for governance should be minimal.  The best we can do is leave behind Afghan security forces capable of maintaining a relatively stable environment in which governance can gradually improve.

Tony Cordesman has detailed the uncertainties of a sad economy, another vital ingredient to overall success in Afghanistan.

The strategy now is basically one of Afghanization of security responsibilities over the remaining two years and six months or so.  Even for this narrow objective to succeed, much more responsibility will have to be shifted to the Afghan security forces more rapidly than is currently the practice.  Embedding a handful with American troops is far from sufficient to develop the kind of independent operational capability that they will need soon, but American troops have been reluctant to sacrifice operational effectiveness for a longer-term training objective.  Also critical, but still rudimentary, are Afghan logistical capabilities.

What is the cost of failure in Afghanistan?  Extremists will return there and may provide Al Qaeda with safe haven.  The international community will lose confidence in American leadership.  It could become far more difficult to organize coalitions needed in the future in other parts of the world.

The war has been a long one.  If there is to be peace, it will take time to consolidate and continue to cost the American tax payer for at least another decade.