As the Obama administration increases the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, it seems also to be planning for a gradual disengagement and a more imminent NATO exit with an old friend and partner—the United Nations. Indeed, President Obama has rediscovered the United Nations, and hopes the global body can help set the stage for a graceful exit without dominating the scene.
It won’t happen, though, by replacing the 90,000 U.S. and NATO troops now committed there with another UN peacekeeping operation or by creating a new organizational unit in the Secretariat that Washington has often berated as cumbersome, top-heavy, and wasteful.
The disengagement task is entrusted instead to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) that was established after the U.S.-led military action to overthrow the Taliban regime.
Building upon the UN experience in Afghanistan since 1982—after the Soviet troop withdrawal from an inconclusive and costly war that began in 1979—UNAMA was tasked with two civilian missions in 2001: development and humanitarian issues, and political affairs. It is now headed by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special representative, Kai Eide, a veteran Norwegian diplomat who has represented his country at NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and whose appointment to this position in March 2008 was fully supported by the United States and NATO.
With a current staff of 1,500, around 80 percent of whom are Afghan nationals, UNAMA is now called upon to strike a balance between the military and civilian components of international assistance to Afghanistan by some 80 countries, 20 international agencies, and 40 non-governmental organizations (NGOs). An immediate task for UNAMA is to prepare for and ensure fair, impartial, and credible elections in Afghanistan this August.
Underlying this act of faith in the UN to secure the elections is a long overdue and more nuanced U.S. view of the nature of the global threat of terror, Al Qaeda and Taliban operations in southwest Asia, and the terroristic activities in Afghanistan.
The Bush administration saw Afghanistan as the headquarters of Al Qaeda that could be destroyed after a military ouster of the Taliban regime. It viewed Al Qaeda as a global monolith of Islamic fundamentalism with a well-defined chain of command that could be broken with superior intelligence and military action. And, of course, it wanted Osama bin Laden dead or alive—with the help of a democratically elected President Hamid Karzai after his interim installation with U.S. support.
The Obama administration sees the global terror network as less of a monolith driven by Islamic fundamentalism and more a labyrinth of organized crime, drug cartels, illicit arms traffic, contraband trade, political dissidence, and individual disaffection. It is looking at southwest Asia as the crossroads of terrorism and nuclear proliferation with a growing collusion between the ideologically driven, militant Taliban and disaffected groups opposed to the ruling regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It is also mindful that the current government in Afghanistan lacks true legitimacy. Indeed, the 2001 presidential elections in Afghanistan were boycotted by 50 percent of the electorate amidst vociferous local resentment over some voters casting their ballot twice and others supporting candidates who were encouraged to withdraw their names so that the U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai could be declared the clear winner.
Meanwhile, Washington’s reliance upon Pakistan as a major regional partner to root out cross-border support for the Afghani Taliban is facing a violent political unrest in the Punjab province which is home to portions of the Pakistani army ill at ease with the democratically elected President Asif Ali Zardari from Sindh province, and in other poorly governed parts of Pakistan, such as the Swat valley, which is now under Taliban control.
Led by Vice-President Joe Biden, the Obama team is keen to point out that a three-fold increase in terroristic activities in Afghanistan, as compared to two years earlier, is not entirely the doing of the Taliban—in fact, they control less than 10 percent of Afghan territory. Indeed, current research has shown that Chechen and Yemeni fighters are joining in the ongoing militant struggle for political control of Afghanistan by radical groups like Hezb-e-Islami, regional warlords, drug barons, local mafia, and corrupt police officials.
Fed and armed by drug money that now roughly equals the official gross domestic product (GDP) of Afghanistan, these intra-group feuds will continue far beyond the outcome of this summer’s national elections in a tribal culture where all politics is local, power still flows from the barrel of a gun, and much influence can be bought with bribery. By some estimates, an entire majority vote of the 249 member wolesi jirga, the lower house of the Afghan parliament, could be bought for less than $1 million. And $20,000 is the rumored going rate for the job of a district police chief: governorships and judgeships are also considered available for purchase.
Underlying much of these recent public disclosures is an unannounced U.S. search to find more grounds for a gradual disengagement from a seven-year-old military presence in Afghanistan. The Obama team seems to understand the limitations of military power in dealing with Afghanistan, but a credible alternative strategy is not yet on the table. What must precede all of this, however—and certainly before Osama bin Laden is captured dead or alive—is a wider political acceptance for a more nuanced U.S. view of the global nature of the threat of terror. Without this, the threat of a backlash is an enormous risk.
Among the more than 400 sleepy or active terror cells in over 60 countries, there are some that predate or are unconnected to Al Qaeda. Besides its Afghani and Pakistani operatives, taliban is a generic term for seekers of Islam much as mujahideen is for believers in jihad, as jamaat is for a class, josh for excitement, hak for entitlement, or lashkar for a battalion. In principle, not every terrorist cell whose name begins with a shared generic term in Urdu or Arabic is necessarily linked in the same chain of command held firmly by Osama bin Laden.
But, more than ever before, there is a greater risk now of unconnected terror cells coalescing to retaliate with simultaneous acts of terror against America or other nations to protest the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden. Militarily, it is a challenge made all the more daunting by NATO’s refusal to assume a combat role in Afghanistan. Politically, it is a risk that the Obama administration may not wish to take without jeopardizing the lives of innocent civilians such as those killed in Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists looking for British and American nationals.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is absolutely right to say that nobody wants an abrupt U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Certainly not countries in which terror cells harbor, many if not most of whom are in the developing world. Not in southwest Asia, which has seen a 10 percent increase in terroristic activities in the last year alone. And not in Afghanistan, of course, where 26 of the 34 provinces are now declared insecure by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Indeed, Washington needs to develop and publicize a plan for deterring the backlash that would likely result from either killing or capturing Osama bin Laden. The Obama team is conspicuously quiet on this issue. It is doubtful if it came up in the intensive consultations between the top U.S. leaders in Washington and Kai Eide, who wanted a clearer mandate for UNAMA before taking on the added tasks now entrusted to it unanimously by the Security Council on March 24, with U.S. support.
Power, in UN circles, is a matter of assertion and influence, a measure of acceptance. When it comes to Afghanistan there is an evident gap between U.S. power and influence which the UN can help to bridge by providing a proven and tested multilateral forum for diplomacy. Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, knows well that diplomacy is an art of engagement to determine the limits of power and influence. The Obama administration’s wider diplomatic engagement with the UN is a welcome turn as the military solution reaches its apex before drawing nearer to its eventual end.
Swadesh M. Rana is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and the former chief of the Conventional Arms Branch at the United Nations Department of Disarmament Affairs.