Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist of the highest narrative and analytical
gifts, is baffled by the West’s almost demented indifference and folly
towards Afghanistan and his own country. The stakes are huge. If either
state fails, as is highly plausible, global stability will be rocked. The
United Nations, Nato, the European Union and, of course, America will see
their purposes and credibility set at naught.
Yet, as Rashid writes: “The international community’s lukewarm commitment to
Afghanistan after 9/11 has been matched only by its incompetence,
incoherence and conflicting strategies — all led by the United States.”
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Washington’s commitment, since 2001, to support
President Pervez Musharraf’s military dictatorship rather than to promote
the interests of the Pakistani people, “has created immense hatred for the
US army and America, hatred that penetrates all classes of society”.
These are strong words, yet Rashid is no foaming leftist, still less an
enthusiast for Islamic militance. He merely tells a story from the viewpoint
of a highly informed Pakistani who knows intimately almost all the leading
players, including Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, many of the Afghan
warlords, and, of course, key figures in his own country.
The severest criticism that can be made of his tale is that we know some of it
already. A group of ignorant, immensely powerful and thus dangerous men in
Washington, of whom Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, was probably the
worst, sought to exploit America’s shock after 9/11 to pursue their own
global agenda, on which taking out Saddam Hussein was tops.
Rashid inks in much detail about the post-conflict failure in Afghanistan
after Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance in December 2001. Rumsfeld’s
rejection of nation- building, matched by America’s willingness to deliver
much of the country to warlords paid by the CIA, destroyed any chance of
achieving post-Taliban stability, or making a Karzai national government
work.
Americans on the ground ladled out cash to the wrong people, ignored mass
killings of prisoners and presided over systemic and illegal brutality to
captives. “Suspects” as old as 88 and as young as 13 were shipped to
Guantanamo Bay. The neocons cared about only one objective, hitting
Al-Qaeda, and were indifferent both to collateral damage and to the
importance of salvaging the Afghan society that they had overrun.
The book asserts that America’s refusal to deploy even a few thousand ground
troops enabled thousands of Taliban, not to mention Osama Bin Laden, to
escape into Pakistan. The author flatly states that the opportunity was
there to catch Bin Laden at Tora Bora at the end of 2001, if America had
displayed greater commitment and skill.
Coupled to failure on the Afghan side of the border was Washington’s decision
to give Musharraf carte blanche to rule Pakistan as he chose, in exchange
for his declared support in the “war on terror”. The Americans were
extraordinarily naïve, says Rashid, in failing to realise how far Pakistan’s
intelligence agency, the ISI, continued to give active support to thousands
of Taliban fighters escaping from Afghanistan. Washington even allowed
Pakistani military aircraft to cross the border and evacuate ISI personnel,
Arabs and key Taliban just before Kabul fell.
The Americans continued to indulge the regime in Islamabad after the 2003
revelations of Pakistan’s sales of nuclear technology to rogue states.
Nine-tenths of Washington’s $10 billion aid to Pakistan since 2001 has gone
to its military rather than its people. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan, run by
President Islam Karimov, one of the nastiest dictators in central Asia,
became a key American base and CIA rendition centre. Karimov himself was
received at Bush’s White House.
British readers are thrown a small crumb of comfort: Rashid identifies two
British generals, John McColl and David Richards, among the few foreigners
who perceived what needed to be done in Afghanistan. Above all, they
understood that if the Karzai regime was to succeed, it was essential to
face down the regional warlords, and extend security beyond Kabul. Yet in
the face of American opposition and chronic shortage of resources, the
opportunities were missed.
The roll call of blunders seems unending. American planes bombed Afghans who
were maliciously denounced to the CIA by rival warlords. Drug barons were
offered free rein and, indeed, American subsidy. Ashraf Ghani, Karzai’s
unpopular but able finance minister, was deprived of the cash to make
reconstruction work. America indulged in surges of generosity in advance of
its own elections — notably when Bush was seeking his second term in 2004 —
but turned off the tap again once the polls closed. Too much so-called “aid”
was offered to suit the interests of donors or of consultants and
contractors, some closely linked to the US administration, rather than those
of the recipients.
Rashid gives Musharraf credit for one significant success. The president
perceived that Pakistan could no longer hope to compete head-on with India,
and must thus end more than half a century of attempts to take over Kashmir.
Yet today, Pakistan is riven with internal conflicts, and Islamic militants
possess such influence, especially in the western tribal areas bordering
Afghanistan, that the prospects of promoting stability, never mind effective
democracy, seem bleak.
Pakistan’s intelligence service is still playing a deadly double game. It
provides just enough assistance to its western counterparts, especially the
British security authorities, to keep alive hopes of a working co-operation
to crush Al-Qaeda. But the ISI stays deep in bed with the Taliban, and
shelters all manner of dangerous people.
Reading this book, contemplating the hideous mess that today extends from Iraq
through Iran to Afghanistan and Pakistan, one is left with a puzzle. We live
in a world in which more information is available, communications are faster
and travel easier than ever in human history. Yet, somehow, our rulers
contrive to make decisions based upon ignorance and misunderstanding of
other societies of a kind that would have seemed bizarre in the mid-19th
century.
Nato in Afghanistan, says Rashid, has displayed “little understanding of the
Afghan conflict, a lack of realism regarding public opposition at home, a
complete lack of transparency in dealing with the public, and an
overreliance on US leadership and analysis of the conflict”. He is
uncomprehending of those Nato nations such as Germany that display the
cynicism to send troops to Afghanistan, but refuse to let them fight the
Taliban or, indeed, perform any useful function.
The difficulty in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as in Iraq, is how now to undo the
consequences of years of policy blunders. Even generous cash aid, were it to
be made available, is hard to use well when western Pakistan has succumbed
to law-lessness, and anti-western sentiment is endemic. In Afghanistan, the
drug industry is all- powerful and the Taliban widely resurgent.
A growing body of western critics such as Simon Jenkins argues that we must
recognise failure in Afghanistan, and quit. It seems impossible to dispute
their view that defeat is the most likely outcome. Yet, as Rashid so vividly
shows, the consequences of abandoning the region to anarchy are so awful —
above all, for its own peoples — that it seems to me we must keep trying.
The key message of his book is that while it is essential to use force against
violent insurgents, in isolation tactical successes are meaningless. Unless
we implement more generous and sophisticated strategies for making failing
societies work, our soldiers are fighting wars in which “victory” is
unattainable.
Descent into Chaos: How the War Against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid
Allen Lane £25 pp544
Buy from BooksFirst
price of £22.50 with free delivery in the UK
