Uncertain future: Afghanistan on its own

Kabul, Feb 1 : As the US and Afghanistan agree to a speedy handover of combat operations to the Afghans, Amin Saikal says there are concerns about whether the Afghan National Army and the government can manage on their own.

The US president Barack Obama and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai have now agreed to a speedy handover of all combat operations to the Afghans, with American troops switching to a supporting, training and counter-terrorism role until their withdrawal by the end of 2014.

The process is likely to commence as early as April this year. Both leaders have expressed confidence in the capability of the Afghan Security Forces to do the job. However, this may not turn out to be the case.

A new Pentagon report, released in December 2012, states clearly that of the 23 brigades of the Afghan National Army (ANA), which now has a total troop strength of about 200,000, only one was ready to take on independent operations, and even then with American air support. The rest of the brigades have not achieved a capacity to replace the US and the allied forces.

Many credible military analysts believe that most of the ANA soldiers are still poorly trained and equipped, and that they suffer from low morale, high rates of desertion, malpractices and drug addiction, as well as a lack of strong allegiance to the central government.

The ANA is in many ways a microcosm of Afghanistan's mosaic society where clan, tribal, ethnic, sectarian and linguistic identification and loyalty to local power holders, or what have popularly become known as warlords, still hold strong sway. It is also trained in a piecemeal fashion by the US and its various NATO and non-NATO allies, and lacks national cohesion and uniformity of training.

The fact that it has only a very fledgling air force - something that the US has promised to deliver but has not done so in view of the risks and costs involved - does not help the ANA's fighting capacity either.

To complicate the situation further, most of the ANA troops come from non-ethnic Pashtun minorities. The Pashtuns, who form about 42 per cent of Afghanistan's estimated 30 million population, and to whose particular tribe the Taliban and their affiliates belong, are substantially under-represented in the ANA. Traditionally, the non-Pashtun troops have shown a marked reluctance to fight in Pashtun-dominated provinces, which are the hotbed of insurgency along the border with Pakistan.

This is not to claim that strenuous efforts have not been made to build the ANA as an effective force. What is evident is that the ANA is nowhere near capacity to hold out on their own against the Taliban and their supporters for very long. The same, and indeed more so, applies to the Afghan Police Force, Local Police Force and Border Guard, which are riddled with corruption and have not proved to be terribly effective. The ranks of these forces and the ANA, like the Karzai government as a whole, are penetrated by the armed opposition. A result has been a dramatic increase in inside or 'green on blue' killings and assassination of government or government-associated leading figures, especially over the last two years.

This situation has ignited a debate in Washington about the number of troops the US could leave behind under a new status of force agreement with Afghanistan beyond 2014, and has confronted president Obama with serious quandaries. Whilst the US military has argued for a fairly substantial number, somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 for supporting the Afghan forces and conducting counter-terrorism operations, some political figures, including vice president Joe Biden, the newly-nominated secretary of state, John Kerry, and secretary of defence, Chuck Hagel, appear to favour either a total withdrawal or, if absolutely necessary, no more than a few thousand troops, provided that they will have complete immunity from Afghan law.

On the other hand, president Karzai - who is well aware of the weaknesses of his government and Afghan security forces, but is keen to play a nationalist card for domestic consumption - has insisted on the continuation of substantial American military, financial and economic assistance.

Yet, he is unwilling either to grant immunity to American soldiers or to engage in serious democratic and anti-corruption reforms. He has also failed to show much gratitude to Washington for all its human and material assistance over the last 11 years. Karzai continues to think that America needs him and Afghanistan more for its anti-terrorist operations against Al Qaeda and its supporters, especially in Pakistan, than vice-versa. However, in reality, he is not in as strong a bargaining position. President Obama has already demonstrated in the case of Iraq that he cannot and will not consent to the presence of American troops abroad without immunity from national laws.

Whatever the final outcome, most indications are that the US and its allies are tired of the very costly and unwinnable Afghan war, and that they want to exit from Afghanistan as soon as possible and focus on their own serious financial and economic difficulties.

Karzai had all the opportunities in the world since his political ascension in December 2001 with the full US and, for that matter, international support to build enduring state institutional foundations for a stable and secure Afghanistan. But he squandered it all by promoting such policies and practices that centred upon his interests and those of his family members and cronies around him. He could have opened a new and constructive chapter in the turbulent evolution of Afghan politics and society. Instead, he has acted like a traditional ruler, lacking in both vision and consideration for the future of Afghanistan.

Karzai's term of office is due to end in 2014, but he may leave an Afghanistan with its future very much hanging in the balance.


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