Economist editorial: Price of NATO's failure in Afghanistan

The spectre of comparisons
The Economist
February 5, 2012

RELISHING their country’s reputation as the graveyard of empires, Afghans are proud of having vanquished all the foreign armies that have ventured onto their soil. Yet the Soviet army, the most recent, was not exactly defeated: it withdrew in 1989 because it had wearied of an unpopular war that it struggled to justify to the people at home. Nearly 25 years later, America and its allies risk a similar failure of nerve and will.

This week Leon Panetta, America’s defence secretary, has aired hopes that NATO soldiers in Afghanistan can finish their combat mission as much as 18 months early—by the second half of next year, rather than the end of 2014 (see article). He has also raised doubts that the outside world can afford to stick to its plans to pay for a permanent 350,000-strong Afghan security force. Such a shift has obvious attractions. Operations in Afghanistan cost a fortune and take precious lives. It does not help that some of the killers are NATO’s supposed partners: rogue Afghan soldiers murdered four unarmed French trainers last month and an American marine just this week.

It is estimated to cost $1m to keep an American soldier in Afghanistan for a year—and some 90,000 are there, along with a further 40,000 from nearly 50 other countries. At a time when money is short, this is a huge sum. Moreover, the Obama administration has other strategic priorities. It wants to “pivot” eastward, to soothe maritime nerves jangled by China’s rise (see Banyan). And then there are elections, in France, America and elsewhere. Incumbents want to campaign as the men who are bringing the boys home.

For three reasons, however, succumbing to such electoral temptations, by even voicing the possibility of an early drawdown, is a mistake. First, limiting NATO’s combat role and the strength of Afghan forces threatens the “transition” to a counter-insurgency war almost entirely waged by locals. This has been bearing fruit: violence is down in Helmand and Kandahar provinces; better-trained Afghan troops are proving their mettle against the Taliban; surveys of Afghan opinion suggest that the Taliban’s popularity has fallen dramatically. Even so, the deadline of 2014 was always going to be difficult to meet. Nothing suggests that it can safely be brought forward, or that Afghanistan can get by with fewer troops.

Second, 2014 is a crucial year in Afghan politics. Foreign forces will be needed to secure the vote for a successor to the president, Hamid Karzai. Their absence might even tempt him to renege on his promise not to seek an (unconstitutional) third term. And third, just as progress has been made in bringing the Taliban into peace talks, whispers of an early withdrawal will only encourage their intransigence. They have always said that the foreigners have the watches, but they have the time. Pakistan, whose continued clandestine support for the Taliban was catalogued in a leaked NATO report this week, will have little incentive to turn against its old partners-in-jihad.

The price of failure

An early transition may mean that the West will leave Afghanistan without completing its first, limited goal—to stop the country providing a base for al-Qaeda and its fellow jihadis. Moreover, Afghanistan is at greater risk of becoming a swamp that festers regional rivalries—especially that between India and Pakistan. These would soon become America’s business. Lastly, the whole sorry story will send a chilling message everywhere about the worth of Western commitments.