Robert D. Blackwill
Why a De Facto Partition Is the Least Bad Option
Current U.S. policy toward
Nor, with an occupying army largely ignorant of local history, tribal structures, languages, customs, politics, and values, will the alliance win over large numbers of the Afghan Pashtuns, as counterinsurgency doctrine demands. In
The quality of governance emanating from Karzai's deeply corrupt government will not significantly improve, and without a comprehensive reform of the Afghan government, U.S. success is virtually impossible. As the counterinsurgency expert
The Afghan National Army will not be ready to hold its own with the Taliban or take over major combat missions from ISAF in southern and eastern
The Pakistani military, driven by its perception of
And public opinion in
With all these individual elements of
U.S. President Barack Obama's repeated statements that
At the same time, however,
In short, President Obama should announce that
WITHDRAW IN ORDER TO STAY
After so many years of faulty U.S. policy toward
The Afghan Taliban would be offered a modus vivendi in which each side agreed not to seek to enlarge the territory it controlled, so long as the Taliban stopped supporting terrorism -- a proposal that they would probably reject.
As the policy analyst
Such a change in U.S. strategy would make clear to all that
Accepting a de facto partition of
One alternative, for example, would be to stay the counterinsurgency course in
Another alternative would be for
A third alternative would be to try to achieve stability in
But what about the potential problems with the de facto partition option? If the Afghan Taliban were allowed to control the south and the east, would they not invite al Qaeda fighters back into the country and restore the pre-9/11 situation? Not necessarily. Last October, then National Security Adviser James Jones said that the U.S. government's maximum estimate was that al Qaeda had fewer than 100 members in
If they did not, however,
What if the Afghan Taliban did not adhere to the rough boundaries of a de facto partition and sought to reconquer the entire country? They might well try, but they would be prevented from achieving their goal by the continued military might of ISAF and the growing capabilities of the Afghan National Army. Accepting a de facto partition would not lead to a civil war; such a conflict is already being fought. What partition would do is help stabilize the situation by making clear which side holds what territory.
What about the islands of non-Pashtun peoples in the south and the east, the women of those areas, and any Pashtun tribal forces that want to resist the Taliban -- would not this course abandon them? Unfortunately, the answer is essentially yes. But this would be a tragic consequence of local realities that are impossible for outsiders to change in any reasonable time frame and with justifiable amounts of blood and treasure sacrificed.
Might this course lead to the emergence of an irredentist Pashtunistan and undermine the stability of
Would this course lead to a proxy war in
Whatever their views on
The analogy most commonly cited to justify the current
These Pashtun insurgents, furthermore, have been winning their civil war for the last several years, not losing it. In
Changing policy so dramatically after a decadelong effort will be difficult. Explaining why a counterinsurgency strategy will not work within any acceptable time frame, acknowledging that many brave men and women have died for areas that will now be ceded to the enemy -- these would be major political challenges for President Obama. Still, as painful as it would be, Western leaders would be strategically and morally deficient if they continued to pursue a strategy that has not worked in the past and is not going to work in the future.
Decades from now, historians will puzzle over why President Obama, despite his deep agonizing, as described in
Foreign Affairs, January/February 2011
ROBERT D. BLACKWILL is Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as U.S. Ambassador to India in 2001-3 and as Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Planning in 2003-4.
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