John Rapley
FOUR YEARS ago, Afghanistan braced for an American invasion in the wake of 9/11. This weekend, American soldiers will perform a very different task: providing security at polling stations as Afghans elect their Parliament.
Four years on, the results of the American war on terror are mixed. Certainly, the United States has achieved much more in Afghanistan than it has in Iraq. The news from Iraq only gets worse.
Rather than removing a front in the war on terror, the Bush administration has arguably created a recruiting-mill for Islamic terrorists. Several divisions of American troops are bogged down in a conflict that shows few signs of ending. Recent claims by the new Iraqi president, notwithstanding, there is little reason to believe a serious troop withdrawal could take place soon.
SOME SUCCESS
In Afghanistan, by contrast, a much smaller American force - some 20,000 - have enjoyed much greater success in pacifying a war-torn country. Despite a recent flare-up of violence in the south and east of the country, U.S. troop casualties pale next to those in Iraq.
There is even a reasonable prospect that a draw-down of U.S. troops may begin as early as next spring. The U.S. is negotiating with its NATO allies to pick up some of the slack of fighting the insurgency.
STILL SOME DISCONTENT
That is not to say that all is well in Afghanistan. There remains a lot of discontent with the U.S. presence, and U.S. operations have all too often been indiscriminate. Moreover, the country's stability has been bought at a price.
While Afghans elected their own president last year, his control still does not extend very far outside Kabul. To a considerable extent, the country has once again been carved up by regional warlords, who are likely to frustrate any progress the new government will want to want to make in establishing its authority over the country.
In consequence, there remains a receptive environment for the Taliban in their southern strongholds. Although the volume of insurgent attacks appears not to have increased, their intensity and effectiveness have. Audacious assaults, like the apparent downing of a U.S. helicopter, have raised the American death toll to levels not seen since the war in 2001.
The insurgents are not likely to succeed in their goal of derailing this weekend's elections.
Afghans appear eager to embrace their new democracy, no matter how ineffective their government might be. To that extent, the Afghan insurgency is proving less troublesome to the Americans than the Iraqi one.
Nonetheless, the Taliban operate freely in the southeast. Moreover, their erstwhile patron and arch-enemy to the Americans, Osama bin Laden, remains at large and, by most accounts, somewhere in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
DENIES SUPPORT
The Afghans maintain that the Pakistanis are backing the Taliban. They say that as Afghanistan looks ahead to a new government, and to a reduction in the U.S. presence, Islamabad wants to maintain a counterweight to a newly emergent regime in Kabul.
The dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan over their shared border goes back for decades, and it is true that the Pakistanis have in the past patronised rebel movements that served their interests in Afghanistan.
This was once the case with the Taliban (with, at one time - it must be said - a wink and nod from Washington).
Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf denies that his government is still supporting the Taliban. It is often said that the region straddling the Pakistan-Afghanistan border lies largely beyond the control of any government.
It is, therefore, surmised that the Taliban is able to move freely there, since codes of honour among its Pashtun inhabitants stipulate that they must give their brethren sanctuary at any cost.
On the other hand, as it did in recent military operations, Islamabad has shown that when it wants to operate in the borderlands, it can. Moreover, it is possible that there are elements in the Pakistani government - particularly in the military - who are backing the Taliban without approval from the top.
Therefore, it seems safe to say that while these elections will represent a milestone of sorts, nevertheless, the low-intensity Afghan conflict will continue. But - cold comfort though it may be to the Americans - it is a picnic compared to what is happening in Iraq.
John Rapley is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
