Ian Bancroft
Talks about the status of Kosovo are scheduled to end on December 10, and the Troika of Russia, the EU and the US will report back to the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. Several EU members oppose the independence for Kosovo that the US strongly supports, while Russia is promising to veto any imposed settlement. Should Kosovo Albanians unilaterally declare independence on or after December 10, the ramifications would be felt not only in the western Balkans, but within the EU's own borders and beyond.
As the European Security Strategy concluded in 2003, the credibility the EU's foreign policy "depends on the consolidation of our achievements" in the Balkans. In order to prevent further losses of credibility, Europe to clearly define the core of its fledgling Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). To do so, the EU must look inwards and project externally those innovations in autonomy and sovereignty that have facilitated the evolution of the European model.
After its failure to contend with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the EU's CFSP is once more challenged by events in the region. Speaking about collective security failures in the early 1990s, Chris Patten, the former EU Commissioner for External Relations, observed: "As Yugoslavia broke into bits, Europe was largely impotent because it was not united. Some member states wanted to keep Yugoslavia together at all costs, some wanted to manage its break-up, and others still felt we should stay out of the whole mess."
These words remain apt with respect to Kosovo. Several EU member states, particularly Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia refuse to endorse even conditional independence, each fearing that the precedent established will have damaging implications for their own internal politics. For instance, the Basques and Catalans in Spain, Cyprus and its unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and Romania and Slovakia with their respective Hungarian minorities. While the notion of "constructive abstention" in the EU Council of Ministers bypasses the stated need for unity in EU foreign policy matters, these divisions undermine the power of Europe's voice. The absence of a UN security council resolution on Kosovo's independence will only ferment further dissent and division.
These European divisions have already been exploited by Russia to re-emphasise the negative repercussions a pro-independence decision could have on the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia and Moldova's breakaway region of Transdniestria. Though Russia's stance is motivated more by geopolitical, regional and domestic considerations, and despite the repeated insistence by diplomats that Kosovo is a unique case without future precedent, it is difficult to see how independence will do anything other than fuel greater tension throughout the region. As Eastern Europe becomes an ever greater sphere of interest for the EU, its ability to mediate conflicts there will be affected by the decisions it takes with respect to Kosovo.
Regionally, there are fears that a pro-independence decision will further destabilise the western Balkans, most notably the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRM), where tensions between the Albanian and Macedonian communities continue to escalate in spite of the widely touted 2001 Ohrid Agreement, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. While diplomats continue to insist that Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina are separate issues, with Bosnia and Herzegovina's High Representative, Miroslav Lajcak, dismissing the artificial linking of the two, a pro-independence decision will only serve to antagonise the questions of autonomy and self-determination in the western Balkans, with serious implications for regional stability and security. The claim that Kosovo is the last unresolved territorial issue in the western Balkans may prove somewhat aspirational. Having played a decisive role in the birth of a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), as major element of the CFSP, the western Balkans could instead now play a crucial role in its demise.
According to Javier Solana, the EU's High Representative for the CFSP, the CFSP "is about the European Union being able to project its values and its interests, the core of its political identity, effectively beyond its own borders". The development of the EU is marked by a number of integrative innovations that have redefined and challenged prevailing understandings of sovereignty and autonomy. Parallel to Europe's integration and the spread of the idea of "Europeanisation" has been the growth of regionalism throughout Europe; of a "Europe of the Regions", of "Unity in Diversity". Throughout the evolution of the EU, regions and regional policy have been central to promoting greater social, political and economic cohesion, underpinned by the principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and necessity. The European Economic Area Agreement, meanwhile, which allows Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein to participate in the EU's internal market while not being member states, highlights the flexibility of the EU to establish integrative relationships with outside parties.
If the EU's CFSP is to be an external projection of the "core of its political identity" as Solana insists, then it is the EU's capacity for innovation in accommodating and integrating diversity that must be projected "effectively beyond its own borders". Only then can Europe galvanise support among its member states, particularly those with legitimate and understandable concerns about the precedent of independence for their own territorial integrity, and build a platform from which to mediate in future conflicts.
With respect to Kosovo, discussions over independence must be replaced by discussions over broad autonomy and special relations with the EU - including the deployment of a ESDP Mission to assist "in the development of effective, fair and representative rule of law institutions" - thereby reaffirming the EU's commitment to complex, multiple layers of shared and limited sovereignty.
Applying these principles with respect to Kosovo will reinforce peace and stability throughout the region, while reinforcing the fatigue-threatened enlargement process. Though the countries of the western Balkans remain prospective members of the EU, the lure of membership itself is insufficient to make people and politicians forget or ignore the issues of autonomy and self-determination. Supporting Kosovo's independence from Serbia while concurrently insisting that both have a common European future seems somewhat contradictory and inconsistent. In the absence of a security council resolution granting independence, a unilateral declaration by Kosovo Albanians would have to be recognised by countries on a bilateral basis. As such, Kosovo's status would remain in limbo; recognised by some, but not by others.
What events relating to Kosovo have highlighted is the prevailing weakness of the EU's CFSP. Divisions over the status of Kosovo have undermined this crucial aspect of the European project, further damaging the reputation of the EU in foreign affairs. If the EU is to avoid the impotency of which Chris Patten speaks, then it must define its foreign policy in terms of the "core of its political identity". In this sense, Kosovo has the potential to be a defining issue for Europe's CFSP. If Europe is to reassert itself as a credible global player, then its CFSP must reflect and project those integrative innovations in autonomy and sovereignty that have defined and facilitated the evolution of the European model. In relation to Kosovo, this means advocating broad autonomy and a special relationship with the EU. Decisions taken over Kosovo will go a long way to determining whether a CFSP for Europe is an aspiration or reality, rhetorical or active, symbolic or explicit.
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_bancroft/2007/11/the_kosovo_test.html
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
ANTI-AMERICAN ISLAMIC NATIONALISM IS BEHIND PAKISTAN CRISIS
By Graham E. Fuller
WASHINGTON — Washington is now confronted with an essentially no-win situation in Pakistan. We are witnessing the culmination of many years of ad hoc American policies based on an abiding faith in the power of U.S. military force coupled with ignorance of the strategic, cultural and psychological realities of the region. At heart is an incompatibility of American strategic interests with those of Pakistan, particularly as perceived by the country’s strategic elite. Powerful popular forces of Pakistani and Islamic nationalism intensify this divide.
Washington wants what Pakistan will not deliver, or cannot deliver except to a modest degree. Bush wants to destroy al-Qaida in the Pak-Afghan region, a goal shared by Gen. Pervez Musharraf. But while al-Qaida lacks native roots in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden is still the object of sympathy by huge numbers in Pakistan and beyond. Humbled Muslim societies everywhere see bin Laden as one of the few figures in the Muslim world willing to stand up with honor and bravery to the American colossus and defy its imperial ambitions. That makes bin Laden more popular than Bush or Musharraf, even if most of the population does not share bin Laden’s vision of violent global jihadi struggle.
But Washington’s demands cut still closer to the Pakistani bone. Bush wants Pakistan to cut off cross-border contact between Pakistan and Afghanistan, to deny Pakistan as a safe haven for the Afghan Taliban.
Musharraf and his generals will pay lip service to this goal, but they will not ultimately do it. The reasons are not complex. As distasteful a symbol of primitive Islamic practice as the Taliban have been, today they represent essentially the major vehicle for Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan, the single biggest ethnic group and much under-represented in the U.S.-backed Karzai government. More important, there are twice as many ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan itself as there are in Afghanistan. The cross-border ties are inextricable: clan, family, history, culture, language, religion. This ethnic organism will not be sundered by the arbitrary and unpopular borders between the two countries. Pashtuns can, do and will casually ignore this artificial divide. Indeed, the Taliban as a political and ideological movement is growing more powerful within Pakistan itself.
Pakistan already has one powerful enemy on its eastern flank — India. It cannot afford to have a hostile Afghanistan on its western side. Every Pakistani strategic thinker knows this. Yet under the Karzai government in Afghanistan, the enemies of Pakistan — the anti-Pashtun Northern Alliance, and a strong Indian political and intelligence presence — have grown strong. Pakistan’s primary voice and influence inside Afghanistan comes mainly via the Taliban, supported behind the scenes by the Pakistani military on strategic grounds. Washington may rail at this, but it cannot change these facts on the ground.
Pakistan’s government is meanwhile still heavily influenced by powerful feudal rural landholders with regressive social and economic policies.
The country desperately needs agricultural and social reform. But reform will undercut the powerful feudalists, a key pillar of power. Benazir Bhutto, for all her Western polish, herself represents those very landowning powers in her native Sindh region. The kind of deep social reform required is not in the offing, neither with Musharraf nor with Bhutto. She has been tested — twice — and found wanting.
Washington wants a compliant Pakistan that will dutifully play its assigned role in the U.S. regional hegemonic vision. Washington will take it any way it can get it, with or without democracy. So U.S. calls for democracy are now issued in panic and ring hollow after six years of support for the Musharraf dictatorship. Pakistani liberals condemn the U.S. for supporting the Pakistani military dictatorship for so long in the name of an unpopular “war against terror” and perceive U.S. confrontationalism as only serving to inflame the militant jihadists.
Nor can the crisis in Pakistan be viewed in isolation. It is of a piece with the war in Afghanistan, and is inextricably linked as well to broader convulsions across the Middle East. Islamic “nationalism” is a growing force as activists push back against American “boots on the ground” — a Pentagon term more revealing than the Pentagon realizes. It is the U.S. military presence and strategy across the region that is seen to rob Muslims of their dignity and sovereignty, in what increasingly is understood as an American war against Islam — bolstered in Washington by neo-con calls for a “World War IV against Islamofascism.” U.S. policies have helped forge a unity of vision across a Muslim world that under more normal circumstances would be far more focused on distinctive local concerns.
The military remains the single most important force in Pakistan. It will most likely ensure that the country does not fall apart. Yet it incorporates many who sympathize with the Islamist agenda and the need to protect the country against outside domination. As radical Islamist power grows across the country, the military will not likely confront it directly; it will seek to divert it, placate some of it, accommodate large elements into the system where possible. We may even witness some bloodshed as militants clash with the military. But the military knows these forces cannot basically be destroyed by force. Meanwhile, the center of gravity is shifting toward the many Islamists who have joined hands with a few liberals against Musharraf. Any new political accommodation will likely be far less congenial to Washington.
Today the U.S. military presence is perhaps the single most inflammatory element in politics across the region. The American military response to this regional challenge only serves to exacerbate it. Sadly, Pakistan is now swift on the heels of Iraq and Afghanistan in heading toward increased civil strife and bitter anti-American emotions.
A “made in Washington” settlement in Afghanistan — the heart of the problem — is not going to work. It only generates increasing hostility as thousands more Lilliputians swarm the helpless Gulliver, drawing hostile Pakistani Islamists more deeply into the equation as well. In this sense bin Laden is winning. The region will only calm down following a withdrawal of U.S. forces from its confrontation with “Islam” and the development of a regional approach to the Afghan issue — one that acknowledges the deep interests of the main regional players who also seek stability in the region: Pakistan, Iran, Russia, China and India. Yet this reality is anathema to the hegemonic global strategy of the Bush administration.
Graham E. Fuller, a former vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, is currently an adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and the author of "The Future of Political Islam."
And so the arc of Islamic crisis continues to swell.
Source: New Perspective Quarterly
http://www.digitalnpq.org/articles/global/219/11-08-2007/graham_e._fuller
WASHINGTON — Washington is now confronted with an essentially no-win situation in Pakistan. We are witnessing the culmination of many years of ad hoc American policies based on an abiding faith in the power of U.S. military force coupled with ignorance of the strategic, cultural and psychological realities of the region. At heart is an incompatibility of American strategic interests with those of Pakistan, particularly as perceived by the country’s strategic elite. Powerful popular forces of Pakistani and Islamic nationalism intensify this divide.
Washington wants what Pakistan will not deliver, or cannot deliver except to a modest degree. Bush wants to destroy al-Qaida in the Pak-Afghan region, a goal shared by Gen. Pervez Musharraf. But while al-Qaida lacks native roots in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden is still the object of sympathy by huge numbers in Pakistan and beyond. Humbled Muslim societies everywhere see bin Laden as one of the few figures in the Muslim world willing to stand up with honor and bravery to the American colossus and defy its imperial ambitions. That makes bin Laden more popular than Bush or Musharraf, even if most of the population does not share bin Laden’s vision of violent global jihadi struggle.
But Washington’s demands cut still closer to the Pakistani bone. Bush wants Pakistan to cut off cross-border contact between Pakistan and Afghanistan, to deny Pakistan as a safe haven for the Afghan Taliban.
Musharraf and his generals will pay lip service to this goal, but they will not ultimately do it. The reasons are not complex. As distasteful a symbol of primitive Islamic practice as the Taliban have been, today they represent essentially the major vehicle for Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan, the single biggest ethnic group and much under-represented in the U.S.-backed Karzai government. More important, there are twice as many ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan itself as there are in Afghanistan. The cross-border ties are inextricable: clan, family, history, culture, language, religion. This ethnic organism will not be sundered by the arbitrary and unpopular borders between the two countries. Pashtuns can, do and will casually ignore this artificial divide. Indeed, the Taliban as a political and ideological movement is growing more powerful within Pakistan itself.
Pakistan already has one powerful enemy on its eastern flank — India. It cannot afford to have a hostile Afghanistan on its western side. Every Pakistani strategic thinker knows this. Yet under the Karzai government in Afghanistan, the enemies of Pakistan — the anti-Pashtun Northern Alliance, and a strong Indian political and intelligence presence — have grown strong. Pakistan’s primary voice and influence inside Afghanistan comes mainly via the Taliban, supported behind the scenes by the Pakistani military on strategic grounds. Washington may rail at this, but it cannot change these facts on the ground.
Pakistan’s government is meanwhile still heavily influenced by powerful feudal rural landholders with regressive social and economic policies.
The country desperately needs agricultural and social reform. But reform will undercut the powerful feudalists, a key pillar of power. Benazir Bhutto, for all her Western polish, herself represents those very landowning powers in her native Sindh region. The kind of deep social reform required is not in the offing, neither with Musharraf nor with Bhutto. She has been tested — twice — and found wanting.
Washington wants a compliant Pakistan that will dutifully play its assigned role in the U.S. regional hegemonic vision. Washington will take it any way it can get it, with or without democracy. So U.S. calls for democracy are now issued in panic and ring hollow after six years of support for the Musharraf dictatorship. Pakistani liberals condemn the U.S. for supporting the Pakistani military dictatorship for so long in the name of an unpopular “war against terror” and perceive U.S. confrontationalism as only serving to inflame the militant jihadists.
Nor can the crisis in Pakistan be viewed in isolation. It is of a piece with the war in Afghanistan, and is inextricably linked as well to broader convulsions across the Middle East. Islamic “nationalism” is a growing force as activists push back against American “boots on the ground” — a Pentagon term more revealing than the Pentagon realizes. It is the U.S. military presence and strategy across the region that is seen to rob Muslims of their dignity and sovereignty, in what increasingly is understood as an American war against Islam — bolstered in Washington by neo-con calls for a “World War IV against Islamofascism.” U.S. policies have helped forge a unity of vision across a Muslim world that under more normal circumstances would be far more focused on distinctive local concerns.
The military remains the single most important force in Pakistan. It will most likely ensure that the country does not fall apart. Yet it incorporates many who sympathize with the Islamist agenda and the need to protect the country against outside domination. As radical Islamist power grows across the country, the military will not likely confront it directly; it will seek to divert it, placate some of it, accommodate large elements into the system where possible. We may even witness some bloodshed as militants clash with the military. But the military knows these forces cannot basically be destroyed by force. Meanwhile, the center of gravity is shifting toward the many Islamists who have joined hands with a few liberals against Musharraf. Any new political accommodation will likely be far less congenial to Washington.
Today the U.S. military presence is perhaps the single most inflammatory element in politics across the region. The American military response to this regional challenge only serves to exacerbate it. Sadly, Pakistan is now swift on the heels of Iraq and Afghanistan in heading toward increased civil strife and bitter anti-American emotions.
A “made in Washington” settlement in Afghanistan — the heart of the problem — is not going to work. It only generates increasing hostility as thousands more Lilliputians swarm the helpless Gulliver, drawing hostile Pakistani Islamists more deeply into the equation as well. In this sense bin Laden is winning. The region will only calm down following a withdrawal of U.S. forces from its confrontation with “Islam” and the development of a regional approach to the Afghan issue — one that acknowledges the deep interests of the main regional players who also seek stability in the region: Pakistan, Iran, Russia, China and India. Yet this reality is anathema to the hegemonic global strategy of the Bush administration.
Graham E. Fuller, a former vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, is currently an adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and the author of "The Future of Political Islam."
And so the arc of Islamic crisis continues to swell.
Source: New Perspective Quarterly
http://www.digitalnpq.org/articles/global/219/11-08-2007/graham_e._fuller
Inside Track: A Tale of Two Client States
by Anatol Lieven
Every empire—indeed, every state that wishes to project dominant influence beyond its borders—sooner or later runs into the question of how to manage client states: states which imperial powers can closely influence without having to incur the expense, risk and unpopularity of occupying and ruling them directly. Empires like Rome, China, the Netherlands and Britain have all used a strategy of clientism as well as direct rule. For the U.S., this is the core of America’s entire global project, since in the vast majority of cases direct empire is ruled out both by democratic ideology and sheer lack of manpower.
While cheaper in every way than direct empire, client states have however always been extremely tricky to manage. If they are too strong, they will either escape from your influence altogether—or on the other hand use that influence to pursue their own local ambitions, which may have nothing in common with your interests. If they are too weak, they will collapse in the face of their external or internal enemies, leaving the imperial state with the agonizing choice of either accepting a serious geopolitical defeat or stepping in and ruling these states directly, with everything that this entails.
An extra complication is that quite often, it is precisely the influence of the imperial state which is responsible for weakening the client state: whether externally, by embroiling it in wider geopolitical conflicts with more powerful neighbors or internally, by demanding various forms of tribute that weaken its domestic prestige and infuriate powerful sections of its population. This may be through the provision of military help, agreement to unfavourable terms of trade, official conformity to the imperial religion or unpopular domestic reforms. These are dilemmas that have faced one great power after another. Two of the most disastrous examples of mismanaging a collapsing client state were the U.S. in Vietnam in the 1960s and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
If you take “democracy” (albeit often of a very thin and formal kind, better described as “democratism”) as the official religion of the contemporary American empire, then every one of these factors and problems applies to present U.S. efforts to exert predominant influence in various parts of the world. At the present moment, they are dramatized by the travails of two very different American clients, Pakistan and Georgia. The similarities and differences between them illuminate wider issues in America’s current global strategy.
The first, and most obvious, is the difference between essential and non-essential clients. Pakistan is obviously in the former category, both because Pakistan is vital to America’s interests as presently defined, and because—occasional gibberings like recent ones by Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon notwithstanding—a U.S. invasion and occupation of Pakistan is simply not an option. Even a more limited military intervention in Pakistan’s tribal areas or to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be fraught with truly appalling risks. In other words, however unsatisfactory the relationship from America’s point of view, it has to remain a relationship of influence, not direct control.
If the U.S. is to remain engaged in the Muslim world at all, then Pakistan is vital to U.S. interests: Most immediately, because of its critical impact on developments in neighboring Afghanistan; more generally, because its sheer size and extensive diaspora (especially in Britain) make it a vital potential prize for enemies of America (with six times the population of Afghanistan or Iraq, Pakistan is well over half the size of the entire Arab world); and finally, because of the apocalyptic threat of terrorists getting their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons—a threat which is far less real than it can appear from much Western analysis and reporting.
The opposition that Musharraf’s administration is facing from within the Pakistani elite is due partly to his own mistakes and partly to certain inexorable patterns of Pakistani politics, which eventually doom every regime to failure because it cannot satisfy the incessant demands for jobs and other patronage from its own supporters.1
As far as the Pakistani masses are concerned, however, by far the most important reason for the steep fall in his popularity has been his subservience to the demands of the U.S. in the “war on terror”, which most Pakistanis detest. But while the U.S. might modify its policy somewhat in this regard, as long as the U.S. remains heavily present on the ground in Afghanistan and committed to the Karzai “administration” there, it obviously cannot afford to let any Pakistani administration off the hook over this—quite apart from the need for Pakistani help in pursuing international terrorists based in Pakistan and breaking up plots aimed at the U.S., or more frequently Britain.
The U.S. now finds itself in the embarrassing position of either backing to the bitter end a man who has after all undertaken immense risks in order to help the U.S., or ditching him in the name of “democracy”—which would send a pretty discouraging signal to U.S. allies elsewhere in the region. Washington thinks that it has a replacement candidate available in the person of Benazir Bhutto, but if she misgoverns Pakistan as she did twice before, and also fails to do more to crack down on Islamist extremism, then in a few years time the U.S. may find that it does not have many options. Washington would either have to back a return to full military dictatorship—which would leave America’s official religion in tatters—or accept an Islamist presence in a ruling coalition, which would raise risks that much of the Washington establishment would find completely unacceptable.
The U.S. has to confront these extremely difficult dilemmas in the case of Pakistan because it has no choice but to do so. But Georgia, on the other hand, presents a set of dilemmas which are lesser in scope, which have a smaller impact on U.S. policy because of the willingness of much of the U.S. media to ignore developments in Georgia which do not suit dominant U.S. paradigms and ambitions. Of course, objectively speaking, the geopolitical risks and moral embarrassments involved in supporting the Saakashvili regime in Georgia should be condemned more than those involved in supporting Musharraf because they are to a great extent gratuitous: they are not compelled by truly vital U.S. interests.
The risks for the U.S. in Georgia are essentially twofold. The first is already occurring: the Saakashvili administration could become so authoritarian at home that it will reduce the entire U.S. democracy promotion agenda in the former Soviet Union to a farce. The second is much more serious: It is that faced with growing domestic discontent, Saakashvili will seek to rally the nation behind him through an attack on one of the two Russian-backed separatist territories, Abkhazia or (more likely) South Ossetia. The president could gamble that faced with the humiliation of seeing a favored client crushed by Russia, the U.S. will feel impelled to come to Georgia’s aid.
If Saakashvili ever does make that grave decision, it will be the last one he makes as Georgian president. For in practical military terms, there is almost nothing that the U.S. could or would do to help Georgia in these circumstances. Nonetheless, this would indeed represent a humiliation for the U.S., as well as a very great and totally unnecessary crisis in U.S.-Russian relations. It would also have serious implications for Russian behavior in other areas of truly vital U.S. interest, like Iran.
Fortunately, in the case of Georgia the danger of this happening is to some extent mitigated by the fact that—at least judging by the remarks of European officials—recent events have made it much less likely that Georgia will join NATO. Therefore one reason for Russian hostility to Georgia will fade, or at least not grow further.
Above all, Georgia illustrates a fundamental historical truth about client states: a great power should only adopt them when it has no other choice to defend vital interests, or when they are strong enough to act as an effective buffer against a real enemy. Pakistan meets the first of these criteria; Georgia meets neither. Georgia might qualify as at least an important interest if there were a real chance of the energy of Central Asia (and not just Azerbaijan) flowing through Georgia to the West. But for a long time to come, a mixture of geographical reality, legal ambiguity, and Russian, Iranian and Chinese power seems almost certain to prevent this from happening.
In the case of Pakistan, the U.S. needs to maintain its influence by increasing but redirecting its aid, as recommended in an interesting paper last week by Senator Joseph Biden. If necessary, Americans need to be asked to make the kind of sacrifices to help Pakistan that they made to strengthen European and Asian states against Communism. In the case of Georgia, U.S. policymakers should take a hard look at what aid and influence in that country really bring to the U.S. at all.
Professor Anatol Lieven is chair of international relations at King’s College London and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book, Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World (co-authored with John Hulsman), is published in paperback this month by Vintage Books.
Source: National Interest
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16130
Every empire—indeed, every state that wishes to project dominant influence beyond its borders—sooner or later runs into the question of how to manage client states: states which imperial powers can closely influence without having to incur the expense, risk and unpopularity of occupying and ruling them directly. Empires like Rome, China, the Netherlands and Britain have all used a strategy of clientism as well as direct rule. For the U.S., this is the core of America’s entire global project, since in the vast majority of cases direct empire is ruled out both by democratic ideology and sheer lack of manpower.
While cheaper in every way than direct empire, client states have however always been extremely tricky to manage. If they are too strong, they will either escape from your influence altogether—or on the other hand use that influence to pursue their own local ambitions, which may have nothing in common with your interests. If they are too weak, they will collapse in the face of their external or internal enemies, leaving the imperial state with the agonizing choice of either accepting a serious geopolitical defeat or stepping in and ruling these states directly, with everything that this entails.
An extra complication is that quite often, it is precisely the influence of the imperial state which is responsible for weakening the client state: whether externally, by embroiling it in wider geopolitical conflicts with more powerful neighbors or internally, by demanding various forms of tribute that weaken its domestic prestige and infuriate powerful sections of its population. This may be through the provision of military help, agreement to unfavourable terms of trade, official conformity to the imperial religion or unpopular domestic reforms. These are dilemmas that have faced one great power after another. Two of the most disastrous examples of mismanaging a collapsing client state were the U.S. in Vietnam in the 1960s and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
If you take “democracy” (albeit often of a very thin and formal kind, better described as “democratism”) as the official religion of the contemporary American empire, then every one of these factors and problems applies to present U.S. efforts to exert predominant influence in various parts of the world. At the present moment, they are dramatized by the travails of two very different American clients, Pakistan and Georgia. The similarities and differences between them illuminate wider issues in America’s current global strategy.
The first, and most obvious, is the difference between essential and non-essential clients. Pakistan is obviously in the former category, both because Pakistan is vital to America’s interests as presently defined, and because—occasional gibberings like recent ones by Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon notwithstanding—a U.S. invasion and occupation of Pakistan is simply not an option. Even a more limited military intervention in Pakistan’s tribal areas or to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be fraught with truly appalling risks. In other words, however unsatisfactory the relationship from America’s point of view, it has to remain a relationship of influence, not direct control.
If the U.S. is to remain engaged in the Muslim world at all, then Pakistan is vital to U.S. interests: Most immediately, because of its critical impact on developments in neighboring Afghanistan; more generally, because its sheer size and extensive diaspora (especially in Britain) make it a vital potential prize for enemies of America (with six times the population of Afghanistan or Iraq, Pakistan is well over half the size of the entire Arab world); and finally, because of the apocalyptic threat of terrorists getting their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons—a threat which is far less real than it can appear from much Western analysis and reporting.
The opposition that Musharraf’s administration is facing from within the Pakistani elite is due partly to his own mistakes and partly to certain inexorable patterns of Pakistani politics, which eventually doom every regime to failure because it cannot satisfy the incessant demands for jobs and other patronage from its own supporters.1
As far as the Pakistani masses are concerned, however, by far the most important reason for the steep fall in his popularity has been his subservience to the demands of the U.S. in the “war on terror”, which most Pakistanis detest. But while the U.S. might modify its policy somewhat in this regard, as long as the U.S. remains heavily present on the ground in Afghanistan and committed to the Karzai “administration” there, it obviously cannot afford to let any Pakistani administration off the hook over this—quite apart from the need for Pakistani help in pursuing international terrorists based in Pakistan and breaking up plots aimed at the U.S., or more frequently Britain.
The U.S. now finds itself in the embarrassing position of either backing to the bitter end a man who has after all undertaken immense risks in order to help the U.S., or ditching him in the name of “democracy”—which would send a pretty discouraging signal to U.S. allies elsewhere in the region. Washington thinks that it has a replacement candidate available in the person of Benazir Bhutto, but if she misgoverns Pakistan as she did twice before, and also fails to do more to crack down on Islamist extremism, then in a few years time the U.S. may find that it does not have many options. Washington would either have to back a return to full military dictatorship—which would leave America’s official religion in tatters—or accept an Islamist presence in a ruling coalition, which would raise risks that much of the Washington establishment would find completely unacceptable.
The U.S. has to confront these extremely difficult dilemmas in the case of Pakistan because it has no choice but to do so. But Georgia, on the other hand, presents a set of dilemmas which are lesser in scope, which have a smaller impact on U.S. policy because of the willingness of much of the U.S. media to ignore developments in Georgia which do not suit dominant U.S. paradigms and ambitions. Of course, objectively speaking, the geopolitical risks and moral embarrassments involved in supporting the Saakashvili regime in Georgia should be condemned more than those involved in supporting Musharraf because they are to a great extent gratuitous: they are not compelled by truly vital U.S. interests.
The risks for the U.S. in Georgia are essentially twofold. The first is already occurring: the Saakashvili administration could become so authoritarian at home that it will reduce the entire U.S. democracy promotion agenda in the former Soviet Union to a farce. The second is much more serious: It is that faced with growing domestic discontent, Saakashvili will seek to rally the nation behind him through an attack on one of the two Russian-backed separatist territories, Abkhazia or (more likely) South Ossetia. The president could gamble that faced with the humiliation of seeing a favored client crushed by Russia, the U.S. will feel impelled to come to Georgia’s aid.
If Saakashvili ever does make that grave decision, it will be the last one he makes as Georgian president. For in practical military terms, there is almost nothing that the U.S. could or would do to help Georgia in these circumstances. Nonetheless, this would indeed represent a humiliation for the U.S., as well as a very great and totally unnecessary crisis in U.S.-Russian relations. It would also have serious implications for Russian behavior in other areas of truly vital U.S. interest, like Iran.
Fortunately, in the case of Georgia the danger of this happening is to some extent mitigated by the fact that—at least judging by the remarks of European officials—recent events have made it much less likely that Georgia will join NATO. Therefore one reason for Russian hostility to Georgia will fade, or at least not grow further.
Above all, Georgia illustrates a fundamental historical truth about client states: a great power should only adopt them when it has no other choice to defend vital interests, or when they are strong enough to act as an effective buffer against a real enemy. Pakistan meets the first of these criteria; Georgia meets neither. Georgia might qualify as at least an important interest if there were a real chance of the energy of Central Asia (and not just Azerbaijan) flowing through Georgia to the West. But for a long time to come, a mixture of geographical reality, legal ambiguity, and Russian, Iranian and Chinese power seems almost certain to prevent this from happening.
In the case of Pakistan, the U.S. needs to maintain its influence by increasing but redirecting its aid, as recommended in an interesting paper last week by Senator Joseph Biden. If necessary, Americans need to be asked to make the kind of sacrifices to help Pakistan that they made to strengthen European and Asian states against Communism. In the case of Georgia, U.S. policymakers should take a hard look at what aid and influence in that country really bring to the U.S. at all.
Professor Anatol Lieven is chair of international relations at King’s College London and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book, Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World (co-authored with John Hulsman), is published in paperback this month by Vintage Books.
Source: National Interest
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16130
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Pakistan: the world's most dangerous country
By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent
If the greatest threats to global security come from terrorism, nuclear weapons and the spread of failed states, Pakistan stands at the nexus of all three phenomena. The political fortunes of this vast country of 165 million people could scarcely be of greater importance.
Whoever emerges from the present political maelstrom to lead Pakistan will have to deal with the country's unofficial status as al-Qa'eda's heartland. The seven autonomous Tribal Areas lining the north-west frontier have been havens for al-Qa'eda's core leadership since the Taliban's downfall in Afghanistan in 2001.
From these strongholds, Islamist fighters have steadily penetrated the rest of Pakistan and revived the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan. Armed militants have recently taken over enclaves of the once placid Swat Valley in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, only a few hours drive from the capital, Islamabad.
advertisementGen Pervez Musharraf has never succeeded in controlling all of Pakistan's national territory. Instead, the Pakistani state is so weak that armed Islamist groups, some linked to al-Qa'eda, have free rein over large areas.
Elsewhere, an ethnic insurgency is underway in the south-western province of Baluchistan, where local separatists are fighting for their own state. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and the commercial capital, is run by a ruthless political machine linked to organised crime. Another major city, Peshawar, is a hotbed of Islamist zealotry.
A state which wields little control over its own cities is plainly in the throes of disintegration. Last year, "Foreign Policy" magazine gave Pakistan ninth place in a global league of "failed states".
Throw in the fact that Pakistan possesses between 40 and 60 nuclear warheads and all this becomes even more worrying. America has helped install a sophisticated command-and-control structure to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
The warheads are controlled by a highly sensitive body called the Strategic Planning Division led by Gen Khalid Kidwai. Because Gen Musharraf can trust so few people with this job, he kept Gen Kidwai in his post even when he officially retired earlier this year.
In 2004, Abdul Qadeer Khan, formerly the head of Pakistan's nuclear programme, was exposed as the mastermind of a global proliferation network. Mr Khan, who is now under house arrest, ran a "nuclear supermarket", supplying key components to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Pakistan is a failed state hosting both nuclear weapons and al-Qa'eda's core leadership. This unique combination makes it arguably the world's most dangerous country.
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/06/wpak306.xml
If the greatest threats to global security come from terrorism, nuclear weapons and the spread of failed states, Pakistan stands at the nexus of all three phenomena. The political fortunes of this vast country of 165 million people could scarcely be of greater importance.
Whoever emerges from the present political maelstrom to lead Pakistan will have to deal with the country's unofficial status as al-Qa'eda's heartland. The seven autonomous Tribal Areas lining the north-west frontier have been havens for al-Qa'eda's core leadership since the Taliban's downfall in Afghanistan in 2001.
From these strongholds, Islamist fighters have steadily penetrated the rest of Pakistan and revived the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan. Armed militants have recently taken over enclaves of the once placid Swat Valley in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, only a few hours drive from the capital, Islamabad.
advertisementGen Pervez Musharraf has never succeeded in controlling all of Pakistan's national territory. Instead, the Pakistani state is so weak that armed Islamist groups, some linked to al-Qa'eda, have free rein over large areas.
Elsewhere, an ethnic insurgency is underway in the south-western province of Baluchistan, where local separatists are fighting for their own state. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and the commercial capital, is run by a ruthless political machine linked to organised crime. Another major city, Peshawar, is a hotbed of Islamist zealotry.
A state which wields little control over its own cities is plainly in the throes of disintegration. Last year, "Foreign Policy" magazine gave Pakistan ninth place in a global league of "failed states".
Throw in the fact that Pakistan possesses between 40 and 60 nuclear warheads and all this becomes even more worrying. America has helped install a sophisticated command-and-control structure to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
The warheads are controlled by a highly sensitive body called the Strategic Planning Division led by Gen Khalid Kidwai. Because Gen Musharraf can trust so few people with this job, he kept Gen Kidwai in his post even when he officially retired earlier this year.
In 2004, Abdul Qadeer Khan, formerly the head of Pakistan's nuclear programme, was exposed as the mastermind of a global proliferation network. Mr Khan, who is now under house arrest, ran a "nuclear supermarket", supplying key components to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Pakistan is a failed state hosting both nuclear weapons and al-Qa'eda's core leadership. This unique combination makes it arguably the world's most dangerous country.
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/06/wpak306.xml
Musharraf doesn't need any more enemies
By Con Coughlin
It is never a clever idea to upset the world's leading superpower, particularly when you are supposed to be a key ally fighting a common enemy. General Zia al-Huq, the military dictator who seized control of Pakistan from 1977 to 1988, worked closely with Washington to evict the Soviet army from Afghanistan.
But shortly after Zia dismissed the government and threatened the imposition of martial law, he was killed when the C-130 flying him to Islamabad mysteriously exploded in mid-air.
Hamid Gul, the head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency at the time, later accused the CIA of causing the crash, even though it also killed Arnold Raphael, the US Ambassador to Pakistan. Whatever the cause, with Zia out of the way, Pakistan undertook yet another awkward transition to democracy.
advertisementNo one is suggesting that the Asian desk at the CIA is working overtime studying the Pakistani military's presidential flight schedules.
But, by the same token, General Musharraf should be under no illusion about the anger he has provoked within the Bush Administration over his decision to impose martial law and round up hundreds of political activists.
It's not as if President Bush does not have enough on his plate, prosecuting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear programme and negotiating with the Turks over their threat to invade Iraq.
Now Mr Bush must grapple with the prospect of a civil war erupting in a country whose support is regarded as vital to defeating al-Qa'eda.
Gen Musharraf has a reputation for living dangerously, and by ignoring Washington's advice and in effect staging a coup against himself, he has incurred America's wrath.
The mounting political instability in Pakistan has been worrying Washington policy-makers since the summer, when Gen Musharraf ordered the army to end the siege of Islamabad's Red Mosque, which had been seized by Islamic militants.
The fear that the country might ultimately fall into the hands of extremists led the Bush Administration to press him to restore the country to something approaching democracy, and back the return of the pro-Western former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Pakistan, it should be remembered, is the father of the Islamic atom bomb and, given its proximity to Iran, and its murky history of co-operation on Iran's nuclear programme, the prospect of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling under the control of Islamic fundamentalists is truly alarming.
Gen Musharraf will no doubt argue that, by imposing martial law, he is curtailing the activities of Pakistan's militant Islamists, who last month caused carnage when two suicide bombers attacked Miss Bhutto's procession in Karachi, even though his primary motivation was to pre-empt a decision by Pakistan's Supreme Court on whether he could remain president for another five years.
But when Gen Musharraf first intimated to America and Britain last month that he was considering such a drastic course of action, he was told that what Washington and London really wanted to see was the return of Pakistan's democratic process, starting with the national elections scheduled for January.
A senior US official involved confirmed yesterday that the Bush Administration's disapproval of the imposition martial law was made clear when Admiral William Fallon, who runs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, met the Pakistani president last Friday.
"Far from giving him a green light, Fallon told Musharraf that all we were interested in was the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, not the implementation of martial law," the official said. "We still expect the elections to take place in January."
If Washington is seething at Gen Musharraf's double-cross, the Administration's frustration is all the greater because there is precious little it can do to restore the status quo ante.
Immediately after the martial law declaration, there were mutterings that the State Department might withhold the billions of dollars in aid that goes to support Gen Musharraf's regime each year.
But as most of the money is used to equip the Pakistani military, such action would be self-defeating: the Administration's main priority in supporting Pakistan is to defeat the Taliban, and Washington could hardly expect Islamabad to intensify its campaign against Osama bin Laden's cohorts on the North-West Frontier while at the same time cutting its financial lifeline.
Nor is there any great confidence in the West that restoring democracy will necessarily lead to greater political stability.
Democratic government in Pakistan has a chequered history, and both Miss Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the other opposition leader who was unceremoniously deported to Saudi Arabia by Gen Musharraf on his return to Pakistan in September, had their respective terms of office as prime minister curtailed amid allegations of corruption and unbecoming constitutional conduct.
Gen Musharraf might be forgiven for thinking he was outwitted his American paymasters. But however much Washington needs the general as an ally to defeat the Islamist menace, he might still be well-advised to think twice before boarding his next flight.
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/11/06/do0602.xml
It is never a clever idea to upset the world's leading superpower, particularly when you are supposed to be a key ally fighting a common enemy. General Zia al-Huq, the military dictator who seized control of Pakistan from 1977 to 1988, worked closely with Washington to evict the Soviet army from Afghanistan.
But shortly after Zia dismissed the government and threatened the imposition of martial law, he was killed when the C-130 flying him to Islamabad mysteriously exploded in mid-air.
Hamid Gul, the head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency at the time, later accused the CIA of causing the crash, even though it also killed Arnold Raphael, the US Ambassador to Pakistan. Whatever the cause, with Zia out of the way, Pakistan undertook yet another awkward transition to democracy.
advertisementNo one is suggesting that the Asian desk at the CIA is working overtime studying the Pakistani military's presidential flight schedules.
But, by the same token, General Musharraf should be under no illusion about the anger he has provoked within the Bush Administration over his decision to impose martial law and round up hundreds of political activists.
It's not as if President Bush does not have enough on his plate, prosecuting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear programme and negotiating with the Turks over their threat to invade Iraq.
Now Mr Bush must grapple with the prospect of a civil war erupting in a country whose support is regarded as vital to defeating al-Qa'eda.
Gen Musharraf has a reputation for living dangerously, and by ignoring Washington's advice and in effect staging a coup against himself, he has incurred America's wrath.
The mounting political instability in Pakistan has been worrying Washington policy-makers since the summer, when Gen Musharraf ordered the army to end the siege of Islamabad's Red Mosque, which had been seized by Islamic militants.
The fear that the country might ultimately fall into the hands of extremists led the Bush Administration to press him to restore the country to something approaching democracy, and back the return of the pro-Western former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Pakistan, it should be remembered, is the father of the Islamic atom bomb and, given its proximity to Iran, and its murky history of co-operation on Iran's nuclear programme, the prospect of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling under the control of Islamic fundamentalists is truly alarming.
Gen Musharraf will no doubt argue that, by imposing martial law, he is curtailing the activities of Pakistan's militant Islamists, who last month caused carnage when two suicide bombers attacked Miss Bhutto's procession in Karachi, even though his primary motivation was to pre-empt a decision by Pakistan's Supreme Court on whether he could remain president for another five years.
But when Gen Musharraf first intimated to America and Britain last month that he was considering such a drastic course of action, he was told that what Washington and London really wanted to see was the return of Pakistan's democratic process, starting with the national elections scheduled for January.
A senior US official involved confirmed yesterday that the Bush Administration's disapproval of the imposition martial law was made clear when Admiral William Fallon, who runs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, met the Pakistani president last Friday.
"Far from giving him a green light, Fallon told Musharraf that all we were interested in was the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, not the implementation of martial law," the official said. "We still expect the elections to take place in January."
If Washington is seething at Gen Musharraf's double-cross, the Administration's frustration is all the greater because there is precious little it can do to restore the status quo ante.
Immediately after the martial law declaration, there were mutterings that the State Department might withhold the billions of dollars in aid that goes to support Gen Musharraf's regime each year.
But as most of the money is used to equip the Pakistani military, such action would be self-defeating: the Administration's main priority in supporting Pakistan is to defeat the Taliban, and Washington could hardly expect Islamabad to intensify its campaign against Osama bin Laden's cohorts on the North-West Frontier while at the same time cutting its financial lifeline.
Nor is there any great confidence in the West that restoring democracy will necessarily lead to greater political stability.
Democratic government in Pakistan has a chequered history, and both Miss Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the other opposition leader who was unceremoniously deported to Saudi Arabia by Gen Musharraf on his return to Pakistan in September, had their respective terms of office as prime minister curtailed amid allegations of corruption and unbecoming constitutional conduct.
Gen Musharraf might be forgiven for thinking he was outwitted his American paymasters. But however much Washington needs the general as an ally to defeat the Islamist menace, he might still be well-advised to think twice before boarding his next flight.
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/11/06/do0602.xml
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Borderline Insanity
Thinking Big about Afghanistan
Ronald Neumann
In recent months, as Pakistani politics have hit the boiling point and the security situation in much of Afghanistan has deteriorated, it has become clear that the long-standing border dispute between these two countries has seriously compromised NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. Because of the border problem, the enemy enjoys a refuge in Pakistan that NATO forces cannot attack without jeopardizing the stability of a government that is, on balance, a net asset to U.S. regional policy.
[credit: www.archeographics.com]
[The] Durand line . . . of 1893 is a valid
The problem itself is not new, but the context is. For sixty years, successive governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan have nurtured mutual suspicions about the other’s intentions, the border issue being both the preeminent symbol and a major contributing element to the problem. For many years, too, U.S. diplomats have lectured Afghans and Pakistanis on how to get along with one another, and have suggested a raft of confidence-building exercises to practice what we—and even they—have preached. So well practiced in this are U.S. and international officials that they can perform these rituals in their sleep. Such measures have never worked, but the price U.S. diplomacy paid for this futility was low, and there were arguably no interests compelling us to do more.
That is no longer the case. The United States and its allies are now paying dearly for the Afghan-Pakistani dispute as we fight an insurgency in Afghanistan and seek to make the region immune to deadly forms of extremism. The Afghan-Pak border, 1,610 miles along generally forbidding terrain, is today the most dangerous “gray zone” on earth. It is not just that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have taken root in and to some measure control parts of Pakistan’s tribal areas, and that their ability to regroup and hide their most senior commanders from NATO and U.S. strikes complicates the military mission in Afghanistan. Much worse is the fact that the lawlessness of the region guarantees that the larger problem of extremism will continue to threaten both states. If the political conditions that stimulate radicalism are not addressed, we could fight for decades, win every discrete engagement, and still not achieve anything remotely resembling victory.
The U.S. government should therefore lead a new effort at political resolution. Only the United States can leverage the necessary influence and incentives to broker a solution that will necessarily involve major pain for each protagonist. It will not be easy, for shaping a stable solution will require the participation of several parties beyond the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan: Iran and Russia, because each has interests in a solution and each can act to spoil one; and the European Union and the United Nations, to smooth U.S.-Russian-Iranian sensitivities, to underwrite the necessary guarantees, and to augment the financial incentives to induce compromise. Whatever the role of others, however, it is clear that the United States will have to make the most expensive and politically difficult commitments to get Afghanistan and Pakistan to make their own difficult choices. All this will take years to accomplish, and still more years to protect.
The United States should never lightly assume difficult tasks in far-away places, and it should never risk its reputation for marginal gains. The problem of Afghan-Pakistan relations, however, is not marginal. It is a structural impediment to stabilizing both countries, and thus it stands in the way of defeating al-Qaeda. A solution constitutes a central and vital American interest, for as long as the malign dynamic along that frontier persists, we can never finally and decisively defeat Islamist extremism in the region. We therefore have no choice but to employ the most powerful weapon in our national arsenal to deal with it: diplomacy.
History of a Big Mess
The Afghan-Pak frontier problem is often referred to as the Durand Line issue, after the 1893 British signatory of the agreement, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand. Durand’s opposite was the Afghan Amir, Abdur Rahman Khan, and the two agreed to establish the limits of Afghan and British Indian control. Whether the agreement was really a border agreement or only established a sort of non-interference zone is still disputed. Whether the agreement was made voluntarily in return for compensation or as a result of British pressure and intimidation is disputed as well. The Pakistani position was established in 1947, in tandem with its independence:
[The] Durand line . . . of 1893 is a valid international boundary subsequently recognized and confirmed by Afghanistan. . . . Pakistan is a successor state to British India . . . and has all the rights and obligations of a successor state.
The Afghan government immediately rejected this position. It held that Pakistan was a new and not a successor state, voted against its entry into the United Nations, and refused to recognize the border. A great assembly of Afghan tribes, a loya jirga, called by the Afghan government at the time of Pakistan’s independence, did likewise. Although Afghanistan subsequently withdrew its opposition to Pakistan’s UN membership, it has never accepted the border, and it would be extremely difficult for any Afghan president or government to do so without convening another loya jirga for that purpose. That would be an undertaking, in turn, whose outcome would be chancy at best, given the multiplicity of views and interests that would inevitably be present, and probably downright dangerous to the convener.
The ethno-demography of the region is the key to understanding why the two governments have taken and maintained their respective positions over the years. Afghanistan is a multiethnic state, but its demographic and political center of gravity is and has always been Pashtun. Pashtuns make up roughly 42 percent of Afghanistan’s population of nearly 32 million, or about 13.5 million Pashtuns (but note that all population estimates are guesses disputed by every ethnic group). There are nearly twice that many Pashtuns in Pakistan, about 25.4 million, but Pashtuns make up only about 15 percent of Pakistan’s 169 million people.
This situation has led Pashtun irredentism to emanate from Afghanistan. For at least sixty years, Pashtuns in Afghanistan have aimed to join their comrades to the Afghan state, their lands just across the Durand Line with them. Pakistan has always feared Pashtun nationalism and the implicit threat of dismemberment it poses—a dismemberment that would seriously compromise Pakistan’s security vis-à-vis India. Indeed, Pakistan and Afghanistan nearly went to war in 1954 over the “Greater Pashtunistan” issue. This peculiar political demographic explains why no Afghan government has ever recognized the border, and why every Pakistani government has striven to influence Afghan politics away from ethnic-based Pashtun identification.
A 1958 Afghan stamp promoting “Greater Pashtunistan Day” [credit: ] Both countries see the conflict as existential. Afghanistan’s Pashtuns are loath to ratify a situation in which the majority of their brethren live as a minority in another state. Pakistani Pashtuns have great influence within Afghanistan and would react strongly to any changes made without their consent. Vast numbers of Afghans believe that Pakistan is deliberately undermining Afghanistan. Consequently, Afghan leaders have repeatedly found it impossible to discuss the border and convenient to blame all troubles there on Pakistan to divert public passion. They can lower the boil for short periods, but to formally compromise would invite protests from border tribes and from powerful Pashtun tribal elements in Pakistan, as well.
Pakistan, also a multiethnic state, fears that further dismemberment (East Pakistan split off to become Bangladesh in 1971) might spell the end of the Pakistani state altogether. It certainly would undermine the formative sectarian rationale for its existence as a Muslim state. Like Britain before it, Pakistan has sought to use negotiations, tribal arrangements and collective pressures to bring civil order to the Pashtun tribal areas. It has never tried to govern them on the same terms as the rest of the country for fear of revolt. The arrangement is essentially colonial, and some charge that it is not in accord with conventional judicial norms. The charge is probably true, but that fact pales next to the reality that the current arrangement is collapsing. Many governments, including our own, have urged Pakistan to exert more control in the tribal areas than has heretofore been the case, but with Taliban agents and al-Qaeda running around, the Pakistanis are hard-pressed to get back to the historical norm without triggering a guerrilla war they might well lose.
When one takes the full measure of the situation, it becomes clear why standard confidence-building forms of diplomacy can never solve the problem. Some progress has been made recently in the military Trilateral involving Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO, formed in 2003, but these achievements have not significantly reduced cross-border infiltration. More significantly, the Trilateral has in no way altered public opinion, and neither has the minimal progress of a joint Pak-Afghan economic commission created in 2004. Border raids and suicide bombs stir Afghan accusations of Pakistani complicity; Pakistan charges in turn that India and Afghanistan are stirring up Pashtun and Baluch separatism. In a climate of life-and-death struggle, confidence-building measures are to this problem what band-aids are to gaping gunshot wounds.
The international community, including the U.S. government, has long avoided taking a clear position on the border issue, but its ambivalence is beginning to change. The states fighting and paying to stabilize Afghanistan want Pakistan to control all its territory, and they have increasingly supported a Pakistani policy of using development, roads and education, combined with force, to accomplish this control. The result is that international policy is shifting from no stance on the border to de facto recognition of Pakistani authority.
Presidents Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf understand all this quite well, and both are afflicted by a profound ambivalence. President Karzai knows he needs a stable Pakistan, but, having seen years of Pakistani manipulation of the Afghan resistance, he remains convinced that Pakistan could do far more to shut off the insurgency if it wanted to, and knows that he would face huge domestic pressure if he ceased to blame Pakistan for Afghanistan’s plight. President Musharraf knows he and Karzai face a common extremist threat, but he is personally insulted by Afghan attribution of blame to Pakistan and remains deeply suspicious of Afghan-Pashtun irredentism.
Alas, distrust between the two states runs so deep that cooperation fails no matter how well both leaders grasp the common threat. The inability of either side to secure its frontier allows extremism to grow stronger, and both stand to lose. They know they need to cooperate; they have tried repeatedly and as repeatedly failed to sustain the effort on their own—and that is why the friendly intervention of outsiders is essential to breaking the deadlock. Clearly, the only state with sufficient weight to intervene is the United States. This is both because of U.S. diplomatic clout in the region and because the United States alone can credibly offer financial and political guarantees of a size and duration no one else can match.
Elements of an Agreement
If the need for U.S. involvement is clear, so is the need for a new concept. Eleven elements describe what such a concept might look like; the first six concerning the two principals, the last five the United States and the rest of the international community.
(1) Both sides must agree that the current frontier is not to be modified without the consent of both governments and their peoples. Perhaps someone will invent a better phrase, but we must find an acceptable way to express a middle ground between the Pakistani demand for Afghan legal acknowledgement of the frontier and the inability of weak Afghan governments to compel its people to accept division. This formula makes the border essentially permanent by officially recognizing what is, after all, the real situation, but it stops short of asking for a final and formal Afghan concession to Pakistan. Acceptance of this or similar language would be a compromise by both sides.
(2) Each side will work to stop hostile cross-border movements of insurgent elements and arrest such elements on its territory. This is not just about the Taliban; it also sets up a requirement for Afghanistan to expel or move against Baluch leaders in Afghanistan, a key Pakistani concern. Neither side could fully implement this provision now, but agreement would set the stage for the future and make it clear that playing insurgent cards against each other is no longer an acceptable part of the game.
(3) Free passage of resident families and people (tribes) in the border area. How this is phrased in an agreement could be a stumbling block, but the reality is that tribes and even families live on both sides of a border they have never recognized. Some own land on both sides. The ability of the local populations to maintain their historic family, social and economic linkages is essential to having any agreement accepted by the tribesmen on the ground. How to allow civilian passage of some of the world’s most independent individuals while stopping terrorists and insurgents is, of course, the rub. That leads to the next point.
(4) Pakistan must provide direct government of the frontier areas. The old tribal structures can no longer maintain order, much less prevent the growth of extremism. The latest effort to negotiate a return to the old order—the 2006 North Waziristan Agreement—failed to prevent continued infiltration into Afghanistan or to bring order to the area, and it has now collapsed. The movement of radicalism out of the tribal areas and into more settled ones has continued.
The integration of the area into Pakistani state control needs to be explicit policy. The questions will be whether Pakistan has the money and the force, and whether they can offer the political incentives necessary to succeed where past efforts have failed. Outsiders can provide money, but Pakistan needs to accept the need for a new political approach. It can no longer be allowed to assert that the frontier is an internationally recognized border without taking responsibility for what happens on its side of it.
A Pakistani soldier gazes across the mountains of North Waziristan. [credit: Getty Images] (5) In return for the tribes giving up their historic autonomy, Pakistan must offer residents of the tribal areas the same rights enjoyed by other Pakistanis. Ideally, this would include full democratic participation. At a minimum, it must include the ability of legal political parties to organize and field candidates, access to the full administrative procedures of the state, the removal of 19th-century legal codes, and eventual integration into the normal judicial system. Tribal opposition may be fierce; certainly the Taliban, al-Qaeda and associated groups will fight against integration. The offer of new political rights therefore needs to go hand in hand with economic development and lawful use of force to have even a chance of success. Bringing the tribal areas under state control could be made consistent with residual degrees of autonomy, but these must attach to the territory and not, as is now the case, to the people even when they reside elsewhere.
(6) Pakistan must therefore deliver on its desire to make a hugely expanded economic effort. Roads, education and infrastructure are essential to providing an alternative to the prevailing war economy. A similar developmental effort should be expanded on the Afghan side, although much of that is already in train and needs only better security to expand rapidly.
The six points laid out thus far ask each side to make major concessions. Afghanistan must recognize a status quo which it has resisted for sixty years and which has provided an excuse for rebellions and coups. Pakistan must change its internal character by dissolving the separate tribal status and taking full responsibility for what happens in the territories. This effort could change the political balance within the Pakistani state and increase democratic participation, but it could involve significantly increased fighting, as well. These are big steps that neither state can carry out without sustained foreign support. Thus, key outsiders have to make major decisions, too, to do what it takes to forge a settlement and make it stick.
(7) The international community, led by the United States, must guarantee the agreement on the border. Up to now the international community has stayed away from the dispute. Its guaranteeing a resolution and recognizing it would help ensure the long-term certainty of Pakistan’s territorial integrity. And it would send a clear message to Afghanistan that it may no longer raise the Greater Pashtunistan issue without finding itself isolated internationally and under serious pressure.
(8) The United States should lead by making a long-term financial commitment in the hundreds of millions of dollars to both states. Afghanistan and Pakistan need assurance of our long-term commitment. Afghans are terrified that they will again be abandoned, as they were after the Soviet withdrawal in 1988. Pakistanis remember the years of sanctions and warily view improving U.S. relations with India. To undertake compromises and commitments of the magnitude suggested here, each needs solid, long-term commitments of funding and support.
Such commitments are hard for the United States to make. Congress is historically resistant to multiyear funding, and the U.S. Constitution precludes the Executive Branch from spending funds not appropriated by Congress. The guarantees of the March 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Agreement got around this difficulty by using “on the basis of available funds” language and through other legal workarounds. That agreement has held up for more than two decades and continues to function as intended. It constitutes a viable model for the U.S. financial component of an Afghan-Pakistani agreement. Succeeding in Afghanistan and turning back extremism in Pakistan is worth a similar expenditure. Dollars are cheaper than blood, and don’t forget: We are talking here about American blood—of our soldiers abroad and, potentially, of our citizens at home.
(9) The United States and NATO must make clear that they will fight as long as necessary to prevail in Afghanistan. Pakistan and Afghanistan both need to know that a diplomatic initiative is not a cover for withdrawal. If there is any doubt about our will to continue—militarily and financially—the value of our long-term commitments will be nil. If diplomacy appears to be a substitute for force, rather than an adjunct to it, the insurgents will be encouraged to fight harder.
(10) Cross-border trade must be liberalized. If donors are to commit to long-term financial assistance, they have a right to demand that everything possible be done to expand Afghanistan’s own economy and its ability to fund itself. Current Pakistani restrictions on Afghan trucking lead to massive spoilage of Afghan agricultural products, block access to markets, and diminish investment possibilities. Conversely, the Afghan government’s willingness to overlook the multibillion dollar cross-border trade in imported consumer goods from its territory into Pakistan encourages smuggling in illicit goods, mainly drugs. The current standoff deprives both countries of considerable tax revenue. Pakistan does have legitimate security concerns, and procedures would need to be developed to address them. U.S. or perhaps EU diplomatic mediation will be vital to solving these commercial issues.
(11) We should establish the principle of creating a multilateral commission to investigate charges of non-compliance by either state. Currently, no such commission could function given the security situation. All parties would have to consider whether the long-term value of a commission mechanism outweighs the risk of agreeing to a stillborn idea that could deteriorate into a forum for hurling abuse. If properly constituted, however, such a commission could ultimately play a constructive role.
Problems
This proposal will elicit skepticism, not confetti. As President Karzai and many other senior Afghan leaders have made clear to me, no president or government of Afghanistan can formally renounce Afghan claims to a role in all Pashtun affairs without the broad consent of the Pashtun tribes. Of course, this runs directly contrary to the Pakistani view that theirs is a successor state to British India with a fixed international border, within which Afghanistan should have no say. Finding a way to balance these irreconcilable claims will require extreme delicacy, and the balance proposed here is likely to face initial rejection by both sides.
On the other hand, negotiations have a way of generating their own dynamic. When leaders are involved in a negotiation, they experience the problems directly and are more willing to defend the inevitable compromises required to reach a settlement. When they are not part of the negotiation, they almost invariably condemn the result in comparison with an ideal concept that cannot be achieved. After an agreement is reached it is extremely difficult to overcome such criticism, and equally difficult to reopen negotiations.
Creating a bond between Afghan and Pakistani leaders through a negotiation is critical for preparing them both to confront domestic opposition to any change in the status quo. The status quo is ruinous to most but not all people in the region. The tribal areas in both states, but especially on the Pakistani side, are not simply remote areas living on subsistence agriculture, after all. They are tied into the global economy in two ways. One is remittances: Large numbers of tribesmen live outside the tribal areas—in Karachi, in the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere—and they send back money. Beyond remittances, those in the tribal areas are involved in global trade through the dynamic of a war economy. The unsettled situation promotes a trading economy in which drugs are manufactured and shipped, mainly in return for weapons. The locals also smuggle a variety of goods based on the differences in tax policies between the two states, neither of which can control the frontier.
These are economically rational responses whose debility is that they are all illegal. An agreement would give both governments the means to stop this wartime commerce, even as NATO tries to win, and thereby stop, the war itself. Doing so would generate resistance, naturally. The war economy, after all, enriches thousands of people well beyond the drug barons and the militia and tribal leaders at the top of the heap. If state control is to come to the tribal areas, the war economy must give way to something more positive. Hence, there must be investment by private as well as government sources, but that can only happen when infrastructure is developed and sufficient law is in place to make investments secure. And that, in turn, requires political normalization of some kind between Kabul and Islamabad.
The approach outlined here is big, long-term and expensive, with many interlocking parts, each part itself being hard to fashion. It asks a lot of Afghanistan. It asks a lot of Pakistan. It asks a lot from donor countries, for whom commitments of the size and duration suggested here are politically difficult and extremely rare.
It asks a lot of the United States, too, which has to lead but nevertheless cannot act unilaterally. As noted at the outset, Iran and Russia are likely to see any major U.S. effort as a threat to their interests, so their suspicions must be allayed by inviting them inside the tent. This will be distasteful to many, but not to do so would invite them to take up the role of spoiler. Given the strained U.S. relationship with both Iran and Russia, we would be well advised to involve the UN Secretary General and the European Union from the start of negotiations. Both would also add legitimacy to any eventual result, even if dealing with them adds ineluctably to the diplomatic burden.
Beyond the challenge of dealing with multiple actors is the challenge of integrating the multiple parts. Precisely because every part is difficult for someone, all the parts need to be brought together as a package, so that commitments can balance and sustain each other. That’s the only way to solve this problem, the only way to de-fang the terrorist threat incubating in this critical part of the world.
Finally, it is evident that the current U.S. administration, weakened and with only 14 months left in office, cannot bring such a diplomatic effort to fruition. All the more reason to begin discussing new ideas now. At present, U.S. policy is tilted heavily toward military policy instruments. Those instruments are, of course, a necessary piece to a strategy for victory in Afghanistan. But military means alone cannot achieve victory, and by themselves represent the proverbial hell of half measures. The time has come to think whole thoughts about Afghanistan and its neighbors; the time has come to think big.
The American Interest Online
http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=348&MId=16
Ronald Neumann
In recent months, as Pakistani politics have hit the boiling point and the security situation in much of Afghanistan has deteriorated, it has become clear that the long-standing border dispute between these two countries has seriously compromised NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. Because of the border problem, the enemy enjoys a refuge in Pakistan that NATO forces cannot attack without jeopardizing the stability of a government that is, on balance, a net asset to U.S. regional policy.
[credit: www.archeographics.com]
[The] Durand line . . . of 1893 is a valid
The problem itself is not new, but the context is. For sixty years, successive governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan have nurtured mutual suspicions about the other’s intentions, the border issue being both the preeminent symbol and a major contributing element to the problem. For many years, too, U.S. diplomats have lectured Afghans and Pakistanis on how to get along with one another, and have suggested a raft of confidence-building exercises to practice what we—and even they—have preached. So well practiced in this are U.S. and international officials that they can perform these rituals in their sleep. Such measures have never worked, but the price U.S. diplomacy paid for this futility was low, and there were arguably no interests compelling us to do more.
That is no longer the case. The United States and its allies are now paying dearly for the Afghan-Pakistani dispute as we fight an insurgency in Afghanistan and seek to make the region immune to deadly forms of extremism. The Afghan-Pak border, 1,610 miles along generally forbidding terrain, is today the most dangerous “gray zone” on earth. It is not just that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have taken root in and to some measure control parts of Pakistan’s tribal areas, and that their ability to regroup and hide their most senior commanders from NATO and U.S. strikes complicates the military mission in Afghanistan. Much worse is the fact that the lawlessness of the region guarantees that the larger problem of extremism will continue to threaten both states. If the political conditions that stimulate radicalism are not addressed, we could fight for decades, win every discrete engagement, and still not achieve anything remotely resembling victory.
The U.S. government should therefore lead a new effort at political resolution. Only the United States can leverage the necessary influence and incentives to broker a solution that will necessarily involve major pain for each protagonist. It will not be easy, for shaping a stable solution will require the participation of several parties beyond the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan: Iran and Russia, because each has interests in a solution and each can act to spoil one; and the European Union and the United Nations, to smooth U.S.-Russian-Iranian sensitivities, to underwrite the necessary guarantees, and to augment the financial incentives to induce compromise. Whatever the role of others, however, it is clear that the United States will have to make the most expensive and politically difficult commitments to get Afghanistan and Pakistan to make their own difficult choices. All this will take years to accomplish, and still more years to protect.
The United States should never lightly assume difficult tasks in far-away places, and it should never risk its reputation for marginal gains. The problem of Afghan-Pakistan relations, however, is not marginal. It is a structural impediment to stabilizing both countries, and thus it stands in the way of defeating al-Qaeda. A solution constitutes a central and vital American interest, for as long as the malign dynamic along that frontier persists, we can never finally and decisively defeat Islamist extremism in the region. We therefore have no choice but to employ the most powerful weapon in our national arsenal to deal with it: diplomacy.
History of a Big Mess
The Afghan-Pak frontier problem is often referred to as the Durand Line issue, after the 1893 British signatory of the agreement, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand. Durand’s opposite was the Afghan Amir, Abdur Rahman Khan, and the two agreed to establish the limits of Afghan and British Indian control. Whether the agreement was really a border agreement or only established a sort of non-interference zone is still disputed. Whether the agreement was made voluntarily in return for compensation or as a result of British pressure and intimidation is disputed as well. The Pakistani position was established in 1947, in tandem with its independence:
[The] Durand line . . . of 1893 is a valid international boundary subsequently recognized and confirmed by Afghanistan. . . . Pakistan is a successor state to British India . . . and has all the rights and obligations of a successor state.
The Afghan government immediately rejected this position. It held that Pakistan was a new and not a successor state, voted against its entry into the United Nations, and refused to recognize the border. A great assembly of Afghan tribes, a loya jirga, called by the Afghan government at the time of Pakistan’s independence, did likewise. Although Afghanistan subsequently withdrew its opposition to Pakistan’s UN membership, it has never accepted the border, and it would be extremely difficult for any Afghan president or government to do so without convening another loya jirga for that purpose. That would be an undertaking, in turn, whose outcome would be chancy at best, given the multiplicity of views and interests that would inevitably be present, and probably downright dangerous to the convener.
The ethno-demography of the region is the key to understanding why the two governments have taken and maintained their respective positions over the years. Afghanistan is a multiethnic state, but its demographic and political center of gravity is and has always been Pashtun. Pashtuns make up roughly 42 percent of Afghanistan’s population of nearly 32 million, or about 13.5 million Pashtuns (but note that all population estimates are guesses disputed by every ethnic group). There are nearly twice that many Pashtuns in Pakistan, about 25.4 million, but Pashtuns make up only about 15 percent of Pakistan’s 169 million people.
This situation has led Pashtun irredentism to emanate from Afghanistan. For at least sixty years, Pashtuns in Afghanistan have aimed to join their comrades to the Afghan state, their lands just across the Durand Line with them. Pakistan has always feared Pashtun nationalism and the implicit threat of dismemberment it poses—a dismemberment that would seriously compromise Pakistan’s security vis-à-vis India. Indeed, Pakistan and Afghanistan nearly went to war in 1954 over the “Greater Pashtunistan” issue. This peculiar political demographic explains why no Afghan government has ever recognized the border, and why every Pakistani government has striven to influence Afghan politics away from ethnic-based Pashtun identification.
A 1958 Afghan stamp promoting “Greater Pashtunistan Day” [credit: ] Both countries see the conflict as existential. Afghanistan’s Pashtuns are loath to ratify a situation in which the majority of their brethren live as a minority in another state. Pakistani Pashtuns have great influence within Afghanistan and would react strongly to any changes made without their consent. Vast numbers of Afghans believe that Pakistan is deliberately undermining Afghanistan. Consequently, Afghan leaders have repeatedly found it impossible to discuss the border and convenient to blame all troubles there on Pakistan to divert public passion. They can lower the boil for short periods, but to formally compromise would invite protests from border tribes and from powerful Pashtun tribal elements in Pakistan, as well.
Pakistan, also a multiethnic state, fears that further dismemberment (East Pakistan split off to become Bangladesh in 1971) might spell the end of the Pakistani state altogether. It certainly would undermine the formative sectarian rationale for its existence as a Muslim state. Like Britain before it, Pakistan has sought to use negotiations, tribal arrangements and collective pressures to bring civil order to the Pashtun tribal areas. It has never tried to govern them on the same terms as the rest of the country for fear of revolt. The arrangement is essentially colonial, and some charge that it is not in accord with conventional judicial norms. The charge is probably true, but that fact pales next to the reality that the current arrangement is collapsing. Many governments, including our own, have urged Pakistan to exert more control in the tribal areas than has heretofore been the case, but with Taliban agents and al-Qaeda running around, the Pakistanis are hard-pressed to get back to the historical norm without triggering a guerrilla war they might well lose.
When one takes the full measure of the situation, it becomes clear why standard confidence-building forms of diplomacy can never solve the problem. Some progress has been made recently in the military Trilateral involving Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO, formed in 2003, but these achievements have not significantly reduced cross-border infiltration. More significantly, the Trilateral has in no way altered public opinion, and neither has the minimal progress of a joint Pak-Afghan economic commission created in 2004. Border raids and suicide bombs stir Afghan accusations of Pakistani complicity; Pakistan charges in turn that India and Afghanistan are stirring up Pashtun and Baluch separatism. In a climate of life-and-death struggle, confidence-building measures are to this problem what band-aids are to gaping gunshot wounds.
The international community, including the U.S. government, has long avoided taking a clear position on the border issue, but its ambivalence is beginning to change. The states fighting and paying to stabilize Afghanistan want Pakistan to control all its territory, and they have increasingly supported a Pakistani policy of using development, roads and education, combined with force, to accomplish this control. The result is that international policy is shifting from no stance on the border to de facto recognition of Pakistani authority.
Presidents Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf understand all this quite well, and both are afflicted by a profound ambivalence. President Karzai knows he needs a stable Pakistan, but, having seen years of Pakistani manipulation of the Afghan resistance, he remains convinced that Pakistan could do far more to shut off the insurgency if it wanted to, and knows that he would face huge domestic pressure if he ceased to blame Pakistan for Afghanistan’s plight. President Musharraf knows he and Karzai face a common extremist threat, but he is personally insulted by Afghan attribution of blame to Pakistan and remains deeply suspicious of Afghan-Pashtun irredentism.
Alas, distrust between the two states runs so deep that cooperation fails no matter how well both leaders grasp the common threat. The inability of either side to secure its frontier allows extremism to grow stronger, and both stand to lose. They know they need to cooperate; they have tried repeatedly and as repeatedly failed to sustain the effort on their own—and that is why the friendly intervention of outsiders is essential to breaking the deadlock. Clearly, the only state with sufficient weight to intervene is the United States. This is both because of U.S. diplomatic clout in the region and because the United States alone can credibly offer financial and political guarantees of a size and duration no one else can match.
Elements of an Agreement
If the need for U.S. involvement is clear, so is the need for a new concept. Eleven elements describe what such a concept might look like; the first six concerning the two principals, the last five the United States and the rest of the international community.
(1) Both sides must agree that the current frontier is not to be modified without the consent of both governments and their peoples. Perhaps someone will invent a better phrase, but we must find an acceptable way to express a middle ground between the Pakistani demand for Afghan legal acknowledgement of the frontier and the inability of weak Afghan governments to compel its people to accept division. This formula makes the border essentially permanent by officially recognizing what is, after all, the real situation, but it stops short of asking for a final and formal Afghan concession to Pakistan. Acceptance of this or similar language would be a compromise by both sides.
(2) Each side will work to stop hostile cross-border movements of insurgent elements and arrest such elements on its territory. This is not just about the Taliban; it also sets up a requirement for Afghanistan to expel or move against Baluch leaders in Afghanistan, a key Pakistani concern. Neither side could fully implement this provision now, but agreement would set the stage for the future and make it clear that playing insurgent cards against each other is no longer an acceptable part of the game.
(3) Free passage of resident families and people (tribes) in the border area. How this is phrased in an agreement could be a stumbling block, but the reality is that tribes and even families live on both sides of a border they have never recognized. Some own land on both sides. The ability of the local populations to maintain their historic family, social and economic linkages is essential to having any agreement accepted by the tribesmen on the ground. How to allow civilian passage of some of the world’s most independent individuals while stopping terrorists and insurgents is, of course, the rub. That leads to the next point.
(4) Pakistan must provide direct government of the frontier areas. The old tribal structures can no longer maintain order, much less prevent the growth of extremism. The latest effort to negotiate a return to the old order—the 2006 North Waziristan Agreement—failed to prevent continued infiltration into Afghanistan or to bring order to the area, and it has now collapsed. The movement of radicalism out of the tribal areas and into more settled ones has continued.
The integration of the area into Pakistani state control needs to be explicit policy. The questions will be whether Pakistan has the money and the force, and whether they can offer the political incentives necessary to succeed where past efforts have failed. Outsiders can provide money, but Pakistan needs to accept the need for a new political approach. It can no longer be allowed to assert that the frontier is an internationally recognized border without taking responsibility for what happens on its side of it.
A Pakistani soldier gazes across the mountains of North Waziristan. [credit: Getty Images] (5) In return for the tribes giving up their historic autonomy, Pakistan must offer residents of the tribal areas the same rights enjoyed by other Pakistanis. Ideally, this would include full democratic participation. At a minimum, it must include the ability of legal political parties to organize and field candidates, access to the full administrative procedures of the state, the removal of 19th-century legal codes, and eventual integration into the normal judicial system. Tribal opposition may be fierce; certainly the Taliban, al-Qaeda and associated groups will fight against integration. The offer of new political rights therefore needs to go hand in hand with economic development and lawful use of force to have even a chance of success. Bringing the tribal areas under state control could be made consistent with residual degrees of autonomy, but these must attach to the territory and not, as is now the case, to the people even when they reside elsewhere.
(6) Pakistan must therefore deliver on its desire to make a hugely expanded economic effort. Roads, education and infrastructure are essential to providing an alternative to the prevailing war economy. A similar developmental effort should be expanded on the Afghan side, although much of that is already in train and needs only better security to expand rapidly.
The six points laid out thus far ask each side to make major concessions. Afghanistan must recognize a status quo which it has resisted for sixty years and which has provided an excuse for rebellions and coups. Pakistan must change its internal character by dissolving the separate tribal status and taking full responsibility for what happens in the territories. This effort could change the political balance within the Pakistani state and increase democratic participation, but it could involve significantly increased fighting, as well. These are big steps that neither state can carry out without sustained foreign support. Thus, key outsiders have to make major decisions, too, to do what it takes to forge a settlement and make it stick.
(7) The international community, led by the United States, must guarantee the agreement on the border. Up to now the international community has stayed away from the dispute. Its guaranteeing a resolution and recognizing it would help ensure the long-term certainty of Pakistan’s territorial integrity. And it would send a clear message to Afghanistan that it may no longer raise the Greater Pashtunistan issue without finding itself isolated internationally and under serious pressure.
(8) The United States should lead by making a long-term financial commitment in the hundreds of millions of dollars to both states. Afghanistan and Pakistan need assurance of our long-term commitment. Afghans are terrified that they will again be abandoned, as they were after the Soviet withdrawal in 1988. Pakistanis remember the years of sanctions and warily view improving U.S. relations with India. To undertake compromises and commitments of the magnitude suggested here, each needs solid, long-term commitments of funding and support.
Such commitments are hard for the United States to make. Congress is historically resistant to multiyear funding, and the U.S. Constitution precludes the Executive Branch from spending funds not appropriated by Congress. The guarantees of the March 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Agreement got around this difficulty by using “on the basis of available funds” language and through other legal workarounds. That agreement has held up for more than two decades and continues to function as intended. It constitutes a viable model for the U.S. financial component of an Afghan-Pakistani agreement. Succeeding in Afghanistan and turning back extremism in Pakistan is worth a similar expenditure. Dollars are cheaper than blood, and don’t forget: We are talking here about American blood—of our soldiers abroad and, potentially, of our citizens at home.
(9) The United States and NATO must make clear that they will fight as long as necessary to prevail in Afghanistan. Pakistan and Afghanistan both need to know that a diplomatic initiative is not a cover for withdrawal. If there is any doubt about our will to continue—militarily and financially—the value of our long-term commitments will be nil. If diplomacy appears to be a substitute for force, rather than an adjunct to it, the insurgents will be encouraged to fight harder.
(10) Cross-border trade must be liberalized. If donors are to commit to long-term financial assistance, they have a right to demand that everything possible be done to expand Afghanistan’s own economy and its ability to fund itself. Current Pakistani restrictions on Afghan trucking lead to massive spoilage of Afghan agricultural products, block access to markets, and diminish investment possibilities. Conversely, the Afghan government’s willingness to overlook the multibillion dollar cross-border trade in imported consumer goods from its territory into Pakistan encourages smuggling in illicit goods, mainly drugs. The current standoff deprives both countries of considerable tax revenue. Pakistan does have legitimate security concerns, and procedures would need to be developed to address them. U.S. or perhaps EU diplomatic mediation will be vital to solving these commercial issues.
(11) We should establish the principle of creating a multilateral commission to investigate charges of non-compliance by either state. Currently, no such commission could function given the security situation. All parties would have to consider whether the long-term value of a commission mechanism outweighs the risk of agreeing to a stillborn idea that could deteriorate into a forum for hurling abuse. If properly constituted, however, such a commission could ultimately play a constructive role.
Problems
This proposal will elicit skepticism, not confetti. As President Karzai and many other senior Afghan leaders have made clear to me, no president or government of Afghanistan can formally renounce Afghan claims to a role in all Pashtun affairs without the broad consent of the Pashtun tribes. Of course, this runs directly contrary to the Pakistani view that theirs is a successor state to British India with a fixed international border, within which Afghanistan should have no say. Finding a way to balance these irreconcilable claims will require extreme delicacy, and the balance proposed here is likely to face initial rejection by both sides.
On the other hand, negotiations have a way of generating their own dynamic. When leaders are involved in a negotiation, they experience the problems directly and are more willing to defend the inevitable compromises required to reach a settlement. When they are not part of the negotiation, they almost invariably condemn the result in comparison with an ideal concept that cannot be achieved. After an agreement is reached it is extremely difficult to overcome such criticism, and equally difficult to reopen negotiations.
Creating a bond between Afghan and Pakistani leaders through a negotiation is critical for preparing them both to confront domestic opposition to any change in the status quo. The status quo is ruinous to most but not all people in the region. The tribal areas in both states, but especially on the Pakistani side, are not simply remote areas living on subsistence agriculture, after all. They are tied into the global economy in two ways. One is remittances: Large numbers of tribesmen live outside the tribal areas—in Karachi, in the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere—and they send back money. Beyond remittances, those in the tribal areas are involved in global trade through the dynamic of a war economy. The unsettled situation promotes a trading economy in which drugs are manufactured and shipped, mainly in return for weapons. The locals also smuggle a variety of goods based on the differences in tax policies between the two states, neither of which can control the frontier.
These are economically rational responses whose debility is that they are all illegal. An agreement would give both governments the means to stop this wartime commerce, even as NATO tries to win, and thereby stop, the war itself. Doing so would generate resistance, naturally. The war economy, after all, enriches thousands of people well beyond the drug barons and the militia and tribal leaders at the top of the heap. If state control is to come to the tribal areas, the war economy must give way to something more positive. Hence, there must be investment by private as well as government sources, but that can only happen when infrastructure is developed and sufficient law is in place to make investments secure. And that, in turn, requires political normalization of some kind between Kabul and Islamabad.
The approach outlined here is big, long-term and expensive, with many interlocking parts, each part itself being hard to fashion. It asks a lot of Afghanistan. It asks a lot of Pakistan. It asks a lot from donor countries, for whom commitments of the size and duration suggested here are politically difficult and extremely rare.
It asks a lot of the United States, too, which has to lead but nevertheless cannot act unilaterally. As noted at the outset, Iran and Russia are likely to see any major U.S. effort as a threat to their interests, so their suspicions must be allayed by inviting them inside the tent. This will be distasteful to many, but not to do so would invite them to take up the role of spoiler. Given the strained U.S. relationship with both Iran and Russia, we would be well advised to involve the UN Secretary General and the European Union from the start of negotiations. Both would also add legitimacy to any eventual result, even if dealing with them adds ineluctably to the diplomatic burden.
Beyond the challenge of dealing with multiple actors is the challenge of integrating the multiple parts. Precisely because every part is difficult for someone, all the parts need to be brought together as a package, so that commitments can balance and sustain each other. That’s the only way to solve this problem, the only way to de-fang the terrorist threat incubating in this critical part of the world.
Finally, it is evident that the current U.S. administration, weakened and with only 14 months left in office, cannot bring such a diplomatic effort to fruition. All the more reason to begin discussing new ideas now. At present, U.S. policy is tilted heavily toward military policy instruments. Those instruments are, of course, a necessary piece to a strategy for victory in Afghanistan. But military means alone cannot achieve victory, and by themselves represent the proverbial hell of half measures. The time has come to think whole thoughts about Afghanistan and its neighbors; the time has come to think big.
The American Interest Online
http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=348&MId=16
Friday, October 26, 2007
Analysis: time for tough decisions on Kosovo running out
David Charter, Europe Correspondent of The Times
October 26, 2007
Vladimir Putin called for patience over Kosovo’s fate before today’s EU/Russia summit, but time is running out for tough decisions on the future of the breakaway Serbian province.
The Russian leader solidly backs Serbia’s strong opposition to Kosovan independence but the tide of opinion is against him as international talks near their December 10 deadline.
There seems to be little room for compromise between Kosovan demands for independence and Serbian arguments that the territory, while 90 per cent inhabited by ethnic Albanians, contains some of its key historical sites and must remain under Belgrade's authority.
But Kosovo’s determination to win the same rights as other former Yugoslav states such as Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro has ramifications far beyond its borders.
For a start, radical Serb nationalists are already talking up the possibility that the Bosnian Serb half of Bosnia-Herzegovina could vow allegiance to Serbia and break away if Kosovo gets fed up with international deadlock and decides to declare independence unilaterally.
That could trigger another period of upheaval and bloodshed in the Balkans, where the worst fighting in Europe since the Second World War took place during the 1990s.
Moreover, the province of two million people, which is currently under United Nations supervision with a devolved local government, has become the focus of international power play between Russia on the one hand and the EU and United States on the other.
Its importance as a touchstone for EU/Russian relations was emphasised by the Kremlin, which made it the key foreign policy issue for today’s summit in Portugal, ahead of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Mr Putin is worried about setting a precedent for other breakaway regions under Russian governance, saying yesterday: “Why upset the principles of international law by encouraging separatism in Europe?”
But he has frustrated attempts to draft a United Nations resolution while the international talks on Kosovo’s future have dragged on beyond several deadlines. December 10 is widely viewed as a last chance to broker a compromise but it seems almost impossible and the US has already indicated that it would support a unilateral declaration of independence.
Wolfgang Ischinger, the EU mediator for Kosovo, acknowledged that UDI was a real possibility but said that Kosovan leaders knew it was “not good enough to lead them into paradise”.
He added: “The two sides have to realise they cannot get 100 per cent of their demands. They have to realise that if they settle for just 50 per cent, it is a much more desirable outcome for both than no agreement at all.
“They do not live on an island in the Pacific. Where will they be, for example, if the day after independence Serbia decides to close its border with Kosovo? This is why an agreement is important for Kosovo’s prosperity.”
Source: The Times online
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2746678.ece
October 26, 2007
Vladimir Putin called for patience over Kosovo’s fate before today’s EU/Russia summit, but time is running out for tough decisions on the future of the breakaway Serbian province.
The Russian leader solidly backs Serbia’s strong opposition to Kosovan independence but the tide of opinion is against him as international talks near their December 10 deadline.
There seems to be little room for compromise between Kosovan demands for independence and Serbian arguments that the territory, while 90 per cent inhabited by ethnic Albanians, contains some of its key historical sites and must remain under Belgrade's authority.
But Kosovo’s determination to win the same rights as other former Yugoslav states such as Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro has ramifications far beyond its borders.
For a start, radical Serb nationalists are already talking up the possibility that the Bosnian Serb half of Bosnia-Herzegovina could vow allegiance to Serbia and break away if Kosovo gets fed up with international deadlock and decides to declare independence unilaterally.
That could trigger another period of upheaval and bloodshed in the Balkans, where the worst fighting in Europe since the Second World War took place during the 1990s.
Moreover, the province of two million people, which is currently under United Nations supervision with a devolved local government, has become the focus of international power play between Russia on the one hand and the EU and United States on the other.
Its importance as a touchstone for EU/Russian relations was emphasised by the Kremlin, which made it the key foreign policy issue for today’s summit in Portugal, ahead of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Mr Putin is worried about setting a precedent for other breakaway regions under Russian governance, saying yesterday: “Why upset the principles of international law by encouraging separatism in Europe?”
But he has frustrated attempts to draft a United Nations resolution while the international talks on Kosovo’s future have dragged on beyond several deadlines. December 10 is widely viewed as a last chance to broker a compromise but it seems almost impossible and the US has already indicated that it would support a unilateral declaration of independence.
Wolfgang Ischinger, the EU mediator for Kosovo, acknowledged that UDI was a real possibility but said that Kosovan leaders knew it was “not good enough to lead them into paradise”.
He added: “The two sides have to realise they cannot get 100 per cent of their demands. They have to realise that if they settle for just 50 per cent, it is a much more desirable outcome for both than no agreement at all.
“They do not live on an island in the Pacific. Where will they be, for example, if the day after independence Serbia decides to close its border with Kosovo? This is why an agreement is important for Kosovo’s prosperity.”
Source: The Times online
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2746678.ece
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