Afghanistan: From Nation-Building to Governance and Back Again

There is a disconnect between the prospects of the military surge, which will reach its apogée and then decline starting in mid-2011, and the civilian surge, which would take decades to produce meaningful results.
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In measured and carefully chosen words, yet devoid of the usual diplomatic blandness, Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has laid out the case for American involvement in that faraway region of the world. Speaking on March 4th at the Harvard Kennedy School's JFK Jr. Forum, Ambassador Holbrooke asserted, in categorical terms, that Vietnam (where he had served as a State Department official) was not a threat to the national security of the United States. What he seemed to be saying was, in effect, that it was not necessary for the United States to have engaged there, because the Viet Minh/Viet Cong did not threaten the U.S. directly.Turning to Afghanistan, the veteran diplomat declared that it was, by contrast, a threat to the national security of the United States. He pointed out that a terrorist attack had been launched against the U.S. homeland, and that it had its origin in Afghanistan. Moreover, the threat could re-emerge if the same terrorist group -- al-Qaeda -- was allowed to regain sway there.It is a dubious assertion. The Afghan Taliban organization is a homegrown one. It has not, and does not, threaten directly the security of the United States homeland. Its leader, Mullah Omar, has indicated obliquely that al-Qaeda would not be allowed to operate in Afghanistan should the Taliban return to power there (whatever such a statement is worth).At the same time, it should be acknowledged that, although al-Qaeda is essentially no longer in Afghanistan but in Pakistan, there is a certain collusion that is taking place between the various insurgent groups in the region. The recent attack against the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, carried out by the Jordanian double agent Badawi, was a joint operation mounted by al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, with the probable collusion of the Haqqani network, a former Mujahadin group that fought against the Soviets and which is a power in the Khost area.Nevertheless, the bottom line is, as Paul Pillar, former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, asserted at the recent Camden (ME) conference: al-Qaeda is not in Afghanistan; the Afghan Taliban are only a surrogate enemy; the Afghan Taliban are not an international terrorist group; and Afghans are not numerous among international terrorist groups. In sum, the stakes in Afghanistan are not sufficient "to warrant the expense of blood and treasure" there.As Pillar also pointed out, if the Taliban were to seize power again in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda might not also come back. And, as I noted in a previous blog ("A Toilet in Somalia," Huffington Post, December 8, 2009), al-Qaeda doesn't need "training camps" in Afghanistan to carry out terrorist operations, which can be mounted from safehouses anywhere -- in Yemen, in Somalia, or other places. Ambassador Holbrooke is not one to sit idly on his mandate. He has assembled an impressive and numerous personal staff. He plans to carry out a "civil surge" in Afghanistan that will increase the numbers of U.S. civilians there from the 300 who were in-country at the beginning of 2009 to 900 at the end of 2010. (Over the same period, he said, the U.S. military strength will go from 31,000 to 100,000). Holbrooke stated that the main priority of the surge is the development of Afghan agriculture, which at one time in the past was quite prosperous. Although one refrains from calling it as such, the civilian surge, under the rubric of improving Afghanistan's governance, is beginning to look more and more like...nation building. In sum, there is a disconnect between the prospects of the military surge, which will reach its apogée and then decline starting in mid-2011, and the civilian surge, which would take decades to produce meaningful results. Editor's Note: Charles Cogan was the chief of the Near East South Asia Division in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA from August 1979 to August 1984. It was from this Division that was run the covert action operation against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He is currently an Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School.

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