HELPING HAND: President George W. Bush is the first U.S. head of state to visit Afghanistan since 1959
Afghanistan remains part of the U.S. grand plan for the region
Afghanistan has long been a country of strategic importance, being a vital trade and transport link in Asia’s heartland for centuries.
Despite Afghanistan’s currently appearing to be playing second fiddle to the tempestuous events in Iraq, the struggling country is still very much part of the U.S. design for the region.
After the U.S. war on the radical Taliban regime in Afghanistan, it was committed to providing assistance to lift the country from its mire of ruin. But according to a Washington Post article, “U.S. Cedes Duties in Rebuilding Afghanistan,” the extent of that assistance is being reduced, amid rising concerns from some quarters.
The article, published on January 3, says funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which topped $1 billion for 2005 and has helped build highways, schools and clinics across Afghanistan during the last four years, will be reduced to just over $600 million in 2006, unless Congress appropriates more money. The tightened budgets because of heavy U.S. spending in Iraq and domestic hurricane relief are no doubt having their effects on these allocations.
On the military front, since 2004, the U.S. Army has been handing over the responsibility of security in Afghanistan to NATO. U.S. General James Jones confirmed this on March 6 and said a reduced U.S. force in Afghanistan will remain to carry out counterterrorism operations. General Jones said that a 21,000-strong NATO-led international security force is preparing to assume responsibility for security all over Afghanistan by November 2006.
Abandoning Afghanistan?
“The United States will not blow off Afghanistan in any case, due to its strategy in South Asia,” said Zhang Lijun, a researcher with the China Institute of International Studies. Afghanistan means too much to the United States, he told Beijing Review.
First, Afghanistan’s geographic location makes it of vital strategic importance to the United States in the region, and even to the world at large. Historically, the country has found itself under the influence of Russia, India, Britain and the United States. In the 1980s, Afghanistan was under Moscow’s grim control. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the mountainous country was largely ignored and became engulfed in civil war between local tribes, until the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic militia, took power in 1996. Five years later, the United States removed the Taliban from authority for having connections with the terrorist network Al Qaeda.
MANGLED MADNESS: Security men check a car destroyed in a suicide bombing in Kabul. A variety of terrorist attacks still threaten Afghanistan’s reconstruction process
In recent years, the United States has launched various strategies in Central and South Asia. The Bush administration considered Central Asian countries the frontline to contain Russia’s presence. In South Asia, U.S. strategy has mainly focused on maintaining regional peace, expanding economic benefits, and the fight against terrorism, said Zhang.
“The current situation shows that the United States is trying to combine its strategies toward Central and South Asia. Afghanistan is the intersection connecting the two regions and the White House will keep a firm hand on it,” Zhang said.
Second, as long as the United States focuses on counterterrorism and Al Qaeda exists, Afghanistan will be important. Although Pakistan is the Bush administration’s primary antiterror partner in the region, it cannot carry on the fight independently, according to Zhang.
U.S. President George W. Bush made a five-hour visit to Afghanistan on March 1. The whirlwind tour made him the first U.S. president to visit this South Asian country since 1959 and gave him a chance to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on home soil.
In a news conference with Karzai, Bush said he remained confident that Osama bin Laden, the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda and mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, would be captured, and that Taliban commander Mullah Muhammad Omar would be apprehended as well. The two are believed to be hiding in the rugged tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. Asked about the search for bin Laden, and of the president’s call for getting him “dead or alive,” Bush said the search for bin Laden and his associates continues. “It’s not a matter of if they’re captured or brought to justice, it’s when they’re brought to justice,” Bush said.
Third, Zhang said, it’s a necessary part of the U.S. Great Mideast Plan to hold up Afghanistan as a democratic image to Iraq and other countries in the region.
“It is in our nation’s interest that Afghanistan develops into a democracy,” Bush said during his Afghanistan visit. “People all over the world are watching the experience here in Afghanistan. I hope the people of Afghanistan understand that, as democracy takes hold, you are inspiring others, and that inspiration will cause others to demand their freedom.”
Afghanistan’s stability also bears on regional peace, and to some extent that of the Islamic world. The U.S. Government needs a representative to reflect its influence and stabilize the country’s situation, and that person has proven to be Karzai, Zhang added.
Sharing the load
AID DEPENDENCE: An Afghan man carries cooking oil from foreign donations
U.S. strategy on “democratizing” a country usually follows two steps. The first step is a military attack, and the second is introducing “democratic order” through reconstruction, according to Zhang.
The Bush administration has spent more than $47 billion on military efforts in Afghanistan since 2000, and the Afghan reconstruction process in the future five to 10 years is estimated to cost at least $20 billion. This has caused complaints inside the United States.
“So it is a wiser choice for the United States to gradually reduce its capital and military investment in that country and instead invite other international forces to share its burden, especially NATO, which is effectively under the U.S. leadership,” said Zhang.
“The Afghans have to have enough space to make their own decisions, even to stumble sometimes,” said U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann. “But we shouldn’t leave them without critical support before they’re strong enough,” he told the Washington Post.
In 2004, the United States began transferring some military powers to NATO forces while downsizing its troop strength. Now, there are over 10,000 NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan. Japan and Germany are also contributing capital to the Afghan reconstruction process.
However, the United States will neither extract all its forces from Afghanistan, nor give up important locations like Bagram Air Force Base, and cities of strategic significance, Zhang asserted.
Some observers also warn that the military transition could affect U.S. efforts to track down Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his followers, as well as Taliban members, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the region.
According to the Afghan Government, it will take about five years to fulfill the establishment of its police army. “We don’t want to be a permanent burden on the international community,” said Afghan Defense Minister Rahim Wardak, in a Washington Post report. “This country has been defended by us for 5,000 years. That is our duty.”
“I hope the international community, especially the United States, has learned a lesson from what happened,” he said. “I hope that history will not repeat itself this time.”
With the warning, Wardak was referring to the possibility that an abrupt U.S. withdrawal might trigger a civil war similar to what happened when the former Soviet Union pulled out in 1990, which allowed the Taliban to come to power 10 years ago.
Zhang predicted that the U.S. strategy toward Afghanistan would not change in at least the next five to 10 years, which could bring Afghanistan and Pakistan closer.