NEW DELHI – With the stage set for secret talks in Qatar between the United States and the Taliban, US President Barack Obama’s strategy for a phased exit from war-ravaged Afghanistan is now being couched in nice-sounding terms that hide more than they reveal. In seeking a Faustian bargain with the Taliban, Obama risks repeating US policy mistakes that now haunt regional and international security.
Since coming to office, Obama has pursued an Afghan strategy that can be summed up in three words: surge, bribe, and run. The military mission has now entered the “run” part, or what euphemistically is being called the “transition to 2014.”
The central objective is to cut a deal with the Taliban so that the US and its NATO partners exit the “graveyard of empires” without losing face. This approach – aimed more at withdrawing forces as soon as possible than at ensuring enduring peace and regional stability – is being dressed up as “reconciliation,” with Qatar, Germany, and the United Kingdom getting lead roles in facilitating a settlement.
Yet what stands out is how little the US has learned from the past. In critical respects, it is beginning to repeat its own mistakes, whether by creating or funding new local militias in Afghanistan, or by striving to come to terms with the Taliban. As with the covert war that the US waged in the 1980’s in Afghanistan against Soviet military intervention, so, too, have short-term interests driven US policy in the current overt war.
To be sure, any leader must work to extricate his country from a protracted war, so Obama is right to seek an end to this one. But he was not right in laying out his cards in public and emboldening the enemy.
Within weeks of assuming office, Obama publicly declared his intention to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, before he even asked his team to work out a strategy. A troop surge that lasted up to 2010 was designed not to rout the Taliban militarily, but to strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. Yet, even before the surge began, its purpose was undercut by the exit plan, followed by a publicly announced troop drawdown, stretching from 2011 to 2014.
A withdrawing power that first announces a phased exit and then pursues deal-making with the enemy undermines its regional leverage. It speaks for itself that the sharp deterioration in US ties with the Pakistani military has occurred since the drawdown timetable was unveiled. The phased exit encouraged Pakistani generals to play hardball. Worse, there is still no clear US strategy on how to ensure that the endgame does not undermine Western interests or further destabilize the region.
The US envoy to the region, Marc Grossman, has already held a series of secret meetings with the Taliban. Qatar has been chosen as the seat of fresh US-Taliban negotiations in order to keep the still-skeptical Afghan government at arm’s length (despite the pretense of “Afghan-led” talks), and to insulate the Taliban negotiators from Pakistani and Saudi pressure. Meanwhile, even as a civil-military showdown in Pakistan compounds Washington’s regional challenges, the new US push to contain Iran threatens to fuel greater turbulence in neighboring Afghanistan.
In truth, US policy on the Taliban, at whose birth the CIA played midwife, is coming full circle for the second time in little more than 15 years. The Clinton administration acquiesced in the Taliban’s ascension to power in 1996 and turned a blind eye as that thuggish militia, in league with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, fostered narcotics trafficking and swelled the ranks of Afghan war alumni waging transnational terrorism. With the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, however, the chickens came home to roost. In declaring war on the Taliban, US policy came full circle.
Now, US policy, with its frantic search for a deal with the Taliban, is about to complete another orbit. Indeed, the Qatar-based negotiations highlight why the US political leadership has deliberately refrained from decapitating the Taliban. The US military has had ample opportunities (and still has) to eliminate the Taliban’s Rahbari Shura, or leadership council, often called the Quetta Shura because it relocated to that Pakistani city.
Yet, tellingly, the US has not carried out a single drone, air, or ground strike in or around Quetta. All of the US strikes have occurred farther north, in Pakistan’s tribal Waziristan region, although the leadership of the Afghan Taliban and of its allied groups, like the Haqqani network and the Hekmatyar band, is not holed up there.
Like the US occupation of Iraq, the NATO war in Afghanistan will leave behind an ethnically fractured country. Just as Iraq today is, for all intents and purposes, ethnically partitioned, it will be difficult to establish a post-2014 government in Kabul whose writ runs across Afghanistan. And, just as the 1973 US-North Vietnam agreements were negotiated after the South Vietnamese regime was shut out of the talks, the US today is shutting out the Afghan government, even as it compels President Hamid Karzai to lend support and appears ready to meet a Taliban demand to transfer five incarcerated Taliban leaders from Guantánamo Bay.
These negotiations, in which the US is seeking the creation of ceasefire zones to facilitate its forces’ withdrawal, can only undercut the legitimacy of the Karzai government and bring the Quetta Shura back to center stage. But Afghanistan is not Vietnam. An end to NATO combat operations will not mean the end of the war, because the enemy will target Western interests wherever they may be. America’s fond hope to contain terrorism regionally promises instead to ensure that Afghanistan and Pakistan remain a festering threat to regional and global security.
Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the
Center for Policy Research in New Delhi
and the author of Asian Juggernaut.
Brahma Chellaney: 無法從帝國的墳墓脫身
新德裡——隨著美國和塔利班在卡塔爾籌備秘密會談，美國總統貝拉克•奧巴馬從飽受戰爭蹂躪的阿富汗分階段撤離的戰略現在使用了悅耳的措辭，其隱含的意思比表明的意思要多。為了與塔利班達成浮士德式的交易，奧巴馬有可能再犯美國在當今地區和國際安全方面的政策錯誤。
自執政以來，奧巴馬追求的阿富汗戰略可以概括為三個詞：增兵、賄賂、撤離。軍事任務現在進入了“撤離”階段，委婉一點就是“2014年之前的轉型期”
核心目標就是與塔利班簽訂協議，這樣美國及其北約的盟友就可以撤出“帝國的墳墓”，又不丟面子。這種做法——與其說是為了確保長期和平和地區穩定還不如說是為了部隊盡快撤離——披上了“和解”的外衣，卡塔爾、德國和英國在牽頭促成協議。
然而，引人注目的是美國竟然好了傷疤就忘了痛。在關鍵領域，美國開始重蹈覆轍了，比如在阿富汗組建或資助本土的武裝組織、努力與塔利班達成協議等。20世紀80年代，出於短期的利益，美國在阿富汗發動了秘密戰爭，應對蘇聯的軍事干預，但是在當前這場眾人皆知的戰爭中，引導美國政策的還是短期的利益。
當然，任何領導人都必須努力讓自己的國家從曠日持久的戰爭中脫身，因此奧巴馬試圖結束這場戰爭無可厚非。但是他在公眾面前攤牌，為敵人壯膽，這是不對的。
執政才幾個星期，奧巴馬就公開宣布他打算讓美國部隊從阿富汗撤離，此前他甚至沒有要求他的團隊制定相關戰略。拖到2010年才出台的增兵戰略並不是為了擊潰塔利班軍隊，而是為了在與敵人達成政治協議時處於優勢地位。然而，增兵還未開始，撤退計劃就使增兵的目的大打折扣了。隨后，奧巴馬又公開宣布，2011至2014年期間，美國軍隊將逐步撤離阿富汗。
這個正在衰退的大國先是宣布分階段撤離的計劃，接著又努力與敵人達成協議，這降低了其在該地區的影響力。自撤退時間表公布以來，美國與巴基斯坦軍方的關系顯著惡化就是明証。分階段撤離的計劃促使巴基斯坦的將軍強硬起來。更加糟糕的是，該如何確保在不損害西方利益或導致該地區更加動蕩的情況下結束阿富汗戰爭，美國還沒有清晰的戰略。
美國該地區的特使馬克•格羅斯曼已經與塔利班舉行了一系列會談。美國和塔利班新一輪談判的地點選在了卡塔爾，一來是為了防范仍然持懷疑態度的阿富汗政府（盡管談判假裝由阿富汗領導），二來是讓塔利班的談判人員免受來自巴基斯坦和沙特阿拉伯的壓力。與此同時，雖然巴基斯坦文官和軍方之間的攤牌會使美國面臨的地區挑戰更加復雜，但是美國遏制伊朗的新行動會導致阿富汗的鄰國更加動蕩不安。
實際上，中情局催生了塔利班，在短短15年內，美國針對塔利班的政策重復了一遍。1996年，克林頓政府默許塔利班獲得了執政地位，這個殘暴的軍政府與巴基斯坦的三軍情報局合作，助長了毒品走私，壯大了阿富汗戰爭暴徒的隊伍，任由他們發動國際恐怖襲擊。然而，2001年9.11事件發生後，美國開始自食其果。向塔利班宣戰，美國政策完整地實施了一遍。
如今，美國竭力與塔利班達成協議，美國政策將再完整的重演一遍。實際上，在卡塔爾舉行的談判突出表明了美國的政治領導層故意放過塔利班的原因。美國軍方曾有（現在還有）大量的機會消滅塔利班的領導委員會，通常又稱為“基達領導委員會”，因為該委員會搬到了這個巴基斯坦城市。
美國從未在基達周圍進行過無人機轟炸，也沒有進行過陸空襲擊，這很能說明問題。所有美國的襲擊都發生在偏遠的北部，巴基斯坦部落的瓦齊裡斯坦地區，盡管阿富汗塔利班及其哈卡尼組織和希克馬蒂亞爾組織等盟友沒有隱藏在那裡。
與美國佔領伊拉克一樣，北約在阿富汗的戰爭將留下一個種族四分五裂的國家。如今，由於各種各樣的意圖和目的，伊拉克的種族四分五裂，與伊拉克類似，阿富汗人都知道，2014年后，喀布爾將成立新政府，但是這很難實現。此外，正如1973年，美國和北越在南越沒有參與的情況下協商達成協議一樣，如今美國也把阿富汗政府拒在了門外，盡管美國還要求哈米德•卡爾扎伊總統提供支持，似乎准備滿足塔利班的要求，釋放關在關塔那摩監獄的五名塔利班領導人。
美國想通過這些談判創造停火區，促進其部隊撤離，但是這些談判隻會削弱卡爾扎伊政府的合法性，讓塔利班的領導委員會回到中心位置。但是阿富汗與越南不同。北約的作戰行動結束並不意味著戰爭的結束，因為敵人總是會針對西方的利益。美國最希望遏制地區的恐怖主義，但這反而確保了阿富汗和巴基斯坦仍然將進一步威脅地區和全球安全。
Brahma
Chellaney，新德裡政策研究中心戰略學教授，著有《亞洲主宰世界》。
