No Endgame in Sight

No Endgame in Sight
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

Two years after the horror and the tragedy, the events of 9/11 appear distant, and the intensity and urgency of the 'war against terror' has been diluted by a complex of compromises, of selective or misdirected responses, and by a failure to consolidate the gains that have been secured at extraordinary cost in resources, courage and sacrifice. There have, over these two years, been many victories over terrorists; yet terrorism seems no closer to defeat.

The growing disorders of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the inability of the world's democracies to arrive at a consensus on appropriate cooperative action in these theatres, are the most visible indices of the loss of direction that the world's counter-terrorism responses have suffered. Indeed, the persistent neglect of Afghanistan, and the sphere of ambivalence into which terrorism and the powers that support it in South Asia have been allowed to slide, have ceded enormous space and power to the ideologies of hate and the supporters of terrorism.

To understand how and why this has been possible in so short a space of time since the catastrophic attacks of 9/11 put the world on notice, it is useful to look back to a peculiar attitude that characterized the approach of European colonialists who overran much of Asia in the 18th and 19th Centuries. There was a common aphorism among early British colonizers: "There are no sins south of the equator." Indeed, not only in the region 'south of the equator', but through all of Asia, the colonialists applied a morality that would be considered despicable and abhorrent in their own countries, on the argument that the values of the West could not apply to the 'inferior' cultures of the East.

Ironically, the liberal democracies of the West - led by the United States of America - are guilty, in the current 'war against terror', of putting into practice a variant, precisely, of this contemptible 'moral relativism', and it is this broad orientation that underlies much of the failure to defeat the forces of terror. It is this perverse ethic that allowed the international coalition in Afghanistan to work out deals with warlords, virtually handing over large swathes of the country and much of its population, to lawless gangs, many of whom, today, repudiate the Karzai regime's authority in their areas of influence, and at least some of whom have now linked up with pro-Taliban forces, and with Islamist renegades such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami (HeI). Perhaps the most indefensible part of these deals was the Coalition's willingness to wink at drug cultivation in the country, and to permit an unprecedented poppy crop (an estimated 3,400 tonnes) in Afghanistan within the first year after the Taliban's expulsion from Kabul. Not only will a bulk of these drugs eventually retail in the streets of Western markets, it is now the Taliban and its allies who substantially control the trade and movement of the contraband crop in Afghanistan. Opium now funds anti-Karzai and extremist activity across much of Southern Afghanistan. These factors need, moreover, to be assessed against the backdrop of near-comprehensive neglect of the imperatives of the restoration of order and the reconstruction of Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan is not that country's war alone; its outcome is crucial to the future of the entire free world. Yet, the world's commitment to this war remains abysmal. A recent CARE study compared reconstruction aid in Bosnia-Herzegovina with outlays in Afghanistan, and found that postwar international aid spent in Bosnia-Herzegovina was $326 per capita as against $42 promised for Afghans up to year 2006. Again, where there was one peacekeeping soldier for every 48 Bosnians, there was just one for every 5,380 Afghans. Bosnia constituted no appreciable international terrorist threat, but the areas of disorder in and around Afghanistan are the most significant safe-haven and breeding and training ground for the Islamist terrorists linked to, or inspired by, Osama bin Laden's malignant vision. A bulk of the 10,000 US military personnel in Afghanistan, moreover, is focused almost exclusively on the pursuit and neutralization of the Al Qaeda leadership and cadres, and has limited concern for the growing disorder that has created the spaces for the revival of the Taliban, the HeI, and the broad coalition of Islamist extremist forces in the country.

It was, again, this ethic that secured US endorsement for a rigged referendum and national election in Pakistan (European Union observers, though, openly denounced the national elections as 'deeply flawed'); and that allow continued American support to an unprincipled military dictatorship, now widely acknowledged to have directly supported and sponsored international Islamist terrorism. It is this ethic that leads America to pressure India to engage in negotiations with terrorists and their sponsors in Pakistan, even while the US continues to espouse - in its own case - a strategy of no negotiations with terrorists, and of overwhelming retaliation against both perpetrators and suspected sponsors or supporters of terrorist acts directed against the US and its citizens. The facts that over 35,000 lives have been lost in Jammu & Kashmir alone as a result of Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorism; that, on the average, over 200 lives continue to be lost each month in the State; and that the sweep of this campaign extends, and continues to intensify, across the rest of India as well, are yet to sufficiently influence or alter American perspectives and policies in the region.

It is this selective blindness on Pakistan that created the conditions for the survival and revival of the Taliban and the anti-US coalition in Afghanistan. In July this year, US troop commander General Frank 'Buster' Hagenbeck, based at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, had clearly conceded that the Taliban and its allies had regrouped in Pakistan and were recruiting fighters from religious schools in Quetta in a campaign funded by drug trafficking, and that these forces had been joined by Al-Qaeda commanders who were establishing new cells. These allegations were reiterated by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Special Envoy to Afghanistan, who declared, "We know the Taliban are planning in Quetta." President Karzai himself confirmed: "Definitely there are Taliban coming from across the border (to) conduct operations in Afghanistan." Sources also disclose that US field commanders in Afghanistan have been reporting that arrested Taliban fighters had confessed that they had received training to poison wells and carry out various acts of terrorism from Pakistani trainers in Pakistan.

Virtually the entire swathe of country along Afghanistan's southern borders with Pakistan has now been lost to the Taliban-HeI combine, and this remains true despite the current operations in the Zabul province, which have inflicted limited casualties on the Taliban forces. Indeed, the growing hold of this combine in the region is confirmed by reports that Osama bin Laden may well be hiding out in the mountains of the Kunar province. These reports, crucially, coincide with reports of increased Pakistani military presence along and activity in the province, as with the consolidation of the HeI network there. Sources indicate that the Pakistan Army has established a large number of new posts along the Afghan border in the Kunar province - and that these posts are, in fact, seen, not as a threat to HeI cadres active in the area, but by the Karzai regime as a threat to Afghanistan's territorial integrity. Significantly, the head of the Provincial Administration in Kunar is said to be a leader of the HeI, is in direct contact with Pakistani authorities, and is believed to receive support and funds from them. All Afghan commanders in the border areas in this province are also linked to Pakistan, and do not support the Karzai regime. Interestingly, the Kunar province neighbors the Pakistan controlled Chitral province in the Northern Areas, where Indian intelligence had long believed bin Laden to have been provided sanctuary by the Pakistanis. Combined with the mountainous regions of the North West Frontier Province, this entire area constitutes a vast and uninterrupted expanse of extraordinarily hostile and lightly populated terrain into which entire armies can simply disappear without detection.

What is emerging out of the chaos and neglect of this region is potentially the world's largest and most secure safe-haven for the Islamist extremist terrorists - and its consolidation is, unambiguously, the result of the ambiguous morality the world has applied to those who violate all norms of humanity and civilized international conduct in this troubled region. Unless the world invests the will and the resources to recover this entire region for democracy, these forces will grow in strength, and will, eventually, secure the delivery systems to attack, once again, the bastions of what they regard as their abiding enemies. If another catastrophe is to be averted in the US and in Europe, the world's defenses against terrorism will have to be built in Asia.

Courtesy: South Asia Terrorism Portal