America's Sudoku Wars

Beware misinterpreting Obama. Afghanistan is an asset and the US won't be leaving any time soon

By Simon Tisdall
Sunday 6 December 2009 18.23 GMT
Courtesy of The Guardian

At Durulaman, west of Kabul, beneath the ruined, shell-pocked palace of Afghanistan's vanquished kings, stands Camp Dubs, home to the US army's counter-insurgency training centre. The base is named after Adolph Dubs, America's former ambassador to Kabul, who was kidnapped by Islamists in 1979. After a brief hostage siege, Dubs was shot and killed.

As the US discovered in Iraq, it's easier to get into a war than get out – and to a significant degree, Washington, like the hapless Dubs, is now held hostage in Afghanistan. At the same time, the US is here because it wants to be. Believing it will just up and leave any time soon is plain wishful thinking.

Iraq and Afghanistan are America's sudoku wars. Put simply, by occupying blank or vacated spaces, Washington gets a handle on the nextdoor squares. It's a geostrategic numbers game. Thus what follows, in logical sequence, are Pakistan and Iran. In this continuing gambit to "shape the security environment", as US planners say, Afghanistan is an irreplaceable asset.

Barack Obama's West Point speech, setting a July 2011 "timeline" for the start of an American withdrawal, was widely misinterpreted. It is true, the speech was no call to arms. In domestic terms, it could be termed political damage limitation. But it is not surrender.

Within hours, defence secretary Robert Gates was telling Congress the 18-month target marked merely the beginning of a "gradual, condition-based process" of transferring security responsibilities in key areas to Afghan forces. Addressing Nato last Friday, Hillary Clinton fudged further. In point of fact, there is no deadline for withdrawal, and none is in prospect.

Far from winding down, the American presence here is widening and deepening. The build-up is measured by more than additional combat brigades. It entails direct political interference, systemic institutional meddling, extended financial leverage and accelerating regional influence exercised via sprawling satrapiessuch as giant Kamp Holland and Forward Operating Base Ripley in Tarin Kowt, Uruzgan, abutting Helmand.

The idea this momentum will somehow be slowed, and the process thrown into reverse in 18 months' time, is risible. What's happening is not the "Afghanisation" espoused by Gordon Brown. It's Americanisation.

The US evidently believes it cannot leave quickly even if it wanted. One reason is that, in Obama's words, it has yet to "disrupt and dismantle" al-Qaida and its extremist allies, and may not do so in 18 months or even five years. "If we're to succeed here, we need a deeper understanding of Afghanistan's history and culture. We have to convince people of an idea – freedom. It's a Herculean task. But if we don't, we're in deep trouble," said Camp Dubs counter-insurgency expert Terry Tucker.

Disdaining fatuous timelines, President Hamid Karzai's corrupt, discredited government keeps US wrists tied. Karzai knows Washington, lacking viable alternatives, needs him and his warlord cronies. The US has a responsibility, says independent MP Daoud Sultanzoy, to stay and help create more law-abiding, democratic governance. He predicts it will take eight or 10 years at least.

Afghan Lt-General Sher Mohammad Karimi, unable to deliver security self-sufficiency nationwide, pulls a different lever. Having invaded Afghanistan, "Obama has an obligation to protect our country and help us stand on our feet," he says. "The international community has only begun to take Afghanistan seriously in the past three years. We need a lot of time and a lot of people."

Abandoned to civil war and Taliban oppression after the Russians left, Afghans have grown cynical about their western-backed government and western promises, said an aid worker with 20 years' experience of the country. "Nato's in denial about how unpopular it is... They are trying to be gentler, to give more control to the Afghans," he said, but it may already be too late. US and allied commanders believe it isn't – hence General Stanley McChrystal's military-civilian surge.

Powerful geostrategic reasons dictate that the US won't leave soon as a matter of deliberate choice. These concern the prospective next moves in Washington's strategic sudoku.

An increasingly destabilised Pakistan, more important in security terms than Afghanistan, is already in play. It cannot presently beattacked, occupied or otherwise subjugated by military force since it is, ostensibly, a democratic ally. But it can expect to bestrong-armed, pressured, suborned and manipulated in the coming, wider, shifting fight against al-Qaida and the jihadis.

In Pakistan, the US-inspired offensive in Waziristan and the retaliatory Taliban bombing campaign are a taste of more turbulent times to come. Meanwhile, in the context of America's developing confrontation with Iran, its continuing presence in Afghanistan has exceptional value. Sources in the western city of Herat say US special forces already have a free rein along the Afghan-Iranian border. It's uncertain what they do there; Tehran says it's certainly subversion.

Returning from the second Anglo-Afghan war in 1880, General Frederick "Little Bobs" Roberts made a modern point: "The best thing to do is leave it [Afghanistan] as much as possible to itself. It may not be very flattering to out amour propre, but I feel sure I am right when I say the less the Afghans see of us, the less they will dislike us."

The powers that be didn't listen then. And as the first Afghan-American warrapidly escalates, they're not listening now.