Afghanistan and realpolitik

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your gawd like a soldier

Thus spoke Rudyard Kipling about Afghanistan. The British are having a tough time over there once again, and it’s not just because they don’t have enough choppers or the right kind of body armour. The Americans seem not have fared much better and the other NATO contingents stay out of harm’s way as much as possible. Maybe they’ve seen the writing on the wall.

Obama has announced a troop surge. In a way he didn’t have a choice. During his presidential campaign he said that Afghanistan was a war of necessity, whereas Iraq was a war of choice. He became trapped by his own words.

The voices calling for complete and immediate withdrawal of NATO forces (or at least British ones, regardless) are growing louder. The argument comprises many of the following: we cannot ‘win’; we have failed to subdue the Taliban; Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires; our very presence is the source of the conflict; we are seen as invaders/imperialists; the 2001 invasion was unjustified in the first place; the campaign is immoral; it’s not worth the price in lives and money; it’s a quagmire; he Afghan government we are propping up is corrupt; and that the best thing for everyone will be to get out.


Before commenting I should spell out the reality that I have never been to Afghanistan. Nor am I an expert on the country. Neither, I suspect, are 99% of all commentators. Being an armchair strategist (or general) always carries the risk of wishful thinking, naivety, ignorance and myopia. No matter how I try, I cannot see things from the point of view of an Afghan – because I’m not one! But unlike some commentators, I don’t have an agenda.


First, a statement of some principles. I am in favour of liberal interventionist policies, but only when the overall strategy into which they fit is logical, the outcomes defined and achievable and the strategy into which they fit is governed by old-fashioned realpolitik. This is for the simple reason that if these conditions aren’t met, the mission to save the starving or the downtrodden will fail.


The invasion of Afghanistan, although not authorised by the UN, seems to me to have been justified because there was no doubt at all that the government of Afghanistan – effectively the Taliban – had indeed harboured people who proclaimed themselves to be members of Al-Q’aida. Now


I think we should be in that country doing nation-building but only if we are prepared to stay for 30 years and see it through. . The problem with these 'failed' states is they never leave you alone, even if you leave them alone - they export their problems, failings, ideologies and violence. It all depends on America anyway - if they don't want to do it, it's academic. The real reason Britain is there is because we're embarrassed by our relationship with the US and feel we have to pull our weight to justify our relationship with them. It's sad really. But given that the US military is the only organisation capable of undertaking, or at least leading, this task, we should judge the case for intervention on is own merits.


I think there's a middle ground - we could keep an eye on the country and prop up a friendly government without being overly-ambitious and unrealistic and trying to turn it into a model democracy like Sweden, or even Turkey. The country is too backward and under-developed socially, politically, economically to achieve that. The population has loyalties to tribes and ethnic groupings, not central Government. The government itself is corrupt and trying to change that is like trying to turn round an oil tanker. So why try and change that in such a short timescale? No-one thinks Afghanistan is a 'training camp' (whatever that means) for terrorists now. So we've accomplished our immediate aims. Just let them get on with it in their own way, intervene when necessary, provide education and aid and focus on narrow security objectives and promoting good governance. Seems to me we're trying to do way too much with far too little. And other NATO countries don't want to get involved, which is making it harder. And the Afghan locals are reliant on money from opium to survive so they'll never play along with our strategy of destroying their crops.


A better strategy would be to decriminalise opium and heroin in this country and buy up Afghanistan's entire crop. Use it to produce cheap pharmaceuticals for us. In Afghanistan the Taliban would lose a large slab of their income. Their farmers would want to work with us. Over here the illegal heroin trade would collapse. Addicts wouldn't need to steal and rob, they could go to NHS centres for fixes and alternatives and treatment. We did that in this country prior to 1971 and it worked very well.





You can't persuade a country to go from burquas to miniskirts overnight. We need a bit of old-fashioned 'realpolitik' over there - making alliances of convenience, safeguarding our own interests and respecting other countries' traditions and customs. Not nation-building - that feels (to them) like old-fashioned imperialism. You can't just say: "we'll only deal with people who are nice". None of the power-brokers in Af'stan are nice. They're all either venal, corrupt, violent, barbaric or psychopathic. The best we can do is push support for those leaders in Afghanistan who are – by the standards of their own country – honest, transparent, respect human rights and don’t subscribe to extreme ideology.