Hazara Nation

While opposing the war in Iraq during the US presidential campaign, Barack Obama underlined his determination to pursue the war in Afghanistan with greater vigour. His argument was that the US intervention in Afghanistan was a case of self-defence while Iraq represented an example of pre-emptive war.

It is, therefore, no surprise that as Obama prepares to enter the White House, Afghanistan jumps up the US foreign policy agenda.
However, a case could be argued that Afghanistan no longer deserves the kind of attention that Obama claims he would bestow on it. Any further escalation of US intervention could prove to be counter productive to both American and Afghan interests.

In intervening in Afghanistan in 2001, the US had three key interests. The first was to show that it could not be attacked with impunity. The US had a second interest in invading Afghanistan: destroying the bases from which terror had been exported to the US and, where possible, capturing or killing the masterminds.

The US' third interest was to help Afghans create a government of their choice in the hope that it would prevent the re-emergence of terrorist bases. By 2005, all those objectives had been achieved.
By the end of 2005, the US would have been able to declare victory in Afghanistan and start reducing its military footprint in preparation for full disengagement. However, American policy pursued several illusions.

The first was that Afghanistan could develop a system of highly centralised government headed by a US-style president and a strong executive. The system developed in Afghanistan since 2002 has gone in the opposite direction.
The Afghan president today has powers that no Afghan king ever dreamt of. The problem is that these powers cannot be used without provoking violent resistance from a majority of Afghans.

In Afghanistan, the US and its allies have been dragged into a multi-layered civil war in which the new elite led by Hamid Karzai is fighting to preserve its power against a variety of rivals from the Pushtun community that, accounting for some 40 per cent of the population, constitutes the country's largest ethnic component.

A majority of the Tajiks, some 32 per cent of the population, and the Uzbeks, some 10 per cent of the population, and the Hazara Shiites, another 10 per cent, have decided to stay on the sidelines if only because they have no dog in this race.

They see no reason why they should fight for the Karzai regime that, using US power, has marginalised them.
The trouble is that the new ruling elite, including the bloated and corrupt bureaucracy and the slick-looking but inefficient military is also reluctant to do the dirty work necessary, leaving all that to the Americans and their Western allies.
The new elite has developed a room-service mentality, persuaded that all it needs to do is to ring the bell for the Americans to do the job.
The backbone of the current insurgency in Afghanistan consists of Pushtun tribes, especially in the southwestern provinces that have been excluded from power. These tribes would have fought any central government that ignored their voice.
Thus their campaign should not be seen as part of an anti-American resistance. The US and its allies cannot win this war because the Karzai clan lacks the tribal support needed to defeat the insurgency.

While the Taliban provide leadership for part of the insurgency in some sectors of the Pushtun heartland, it would be wrong to ignore other groups and clans involved in this power struggle.

Ethnic revolt
The Pushtun ethnic revolt and its ideological manifestation through the Taliban is only part of the insurgency. Iran is also using a number of Pushtun groups under the umbrella of Hizb Islami (The Islamic Party) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to divide the Pushtuns and weaken Karzai's US-backed administration.

The Pakistani military intelligence, the ISI, is also running a number of armed Pushtun tribes in the hope that, once the Americans have left, Islamabad will not be left without a lever to influence Afghan politics.
To complicate matters further, we also have a number of freelance Mujahedeen, such as the group led by Mullah Jalaluddin Haqqani, now ill and believed to be dying.

A third strand to the insurgency is represented by a dozen or so armed gangs recruited and financed by the drug barons in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Often, these groups use the label of Taliban to secure tribal and/or religious legitimacy. It is obvious that the US, or indeed any other outside power, cannot win a clear-cut victory against groups capable of waging low intensity war on small budgets for decades.
The US has been dragged into yet another war, this time with an international dimension. In 2001 Afghanistan sheltered scores of Islamist terror organisations from more than 40 countries across the globe. These had no specifically anti-US agendas but ended up targeted by the American-led coalition in Afghanistan.

To be sure, the US cannot just pull the plug and walk away. But it can make its continued presence conditional to the implementation of a political strategy. This should include constitutional changes to decentralise power in Afghanistan, perhaps by developing a loose parliamentary system similar to the one that has succeeded in Iraq.
That would enable the Pushtun malcontents, including segments of the Taliban, to receive a share of power. Pakistan should also be reassured that it will not be excluded from the Afghan scene and that old Afghan chauvinism will not be used against it.
All the nations that have benefited from the destruction of terror groups in Afghanistan should be asked to make proper contributions backed by the assertion that the US is not prepared to fight their wars forever.

Amir Taheri's new book 'The Persian Night' will be published next week.