A Small Step Forward for Afghanistan

By Dr. Larry P. Goodson

As the summer of blood and gore in the Middle East continues to demand American foreign policy attention, a looming catastrophe in Afghanistan has developed largely outside the headlines, but now threatens to undermine everything the United States has attempted to achieve there over the past thirteen years.

The problem seems deceptively simple.  The United States wants to draw down its military involvement in Afghanistan, and the Obama Administration has several times announced deadlines for troop withdrawals.  Nonetheless, and in consultation with America’s NATO allies, the U.S. government has decided that U.S. troops—in smaller numbers and in an advisory role—need to remain in Afghanistan beyond the current end-date for combat operations of December 31, 2014.  Keeping a residual presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is necessary because important U.S. interests in the region—primarily combating terrorism and maintaining regional stability—cannot be secured without some level of continuing U.S. commitment.  However, the U.S. government will not allow its troops to remain in Afghanistan without a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) that exempts U.S. military personnel from unilateral prosecution under Afghan laws.  The military needs a certain window of time (three-to-six months) to remove equipment and personnel from land-locked Afghanistan, which means that a BSA needs to be signed by the end of September at the latest.  Otherwise, the generals will have to begin a process of withdrawal that will potentially be difficult to reverse, or further delay the start of withdrawal to where it would extend well into 2015.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s presidential election this summer offered a major opportunity for a transition away from the corruption and ineptitude exhibited by the Karzai government since 2002.   Unfortunately, but predictably, the election has been a fiasco.  It is now the end of August and the election remains unresolved more than two months after the runoff between former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.  Under the Constitution of 2004, Hamid Karzai cannot continue in office, as he has finished two full terms.  Both Ghani and Abdullah head tickets that include representatives from other ethnic groups, but Abdullah primarily represents the Tajiks of the northeast who also hold many of Afghanistan’s top security force positions while Ghani represents a portion of the Pashtuns of the south and east.  Ghani led in the preliminary runoff vote count announced by the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) in July, but Abdullah has made strong accusations based on some pretty compelling evidence that substantial electoral irregularities were responsible for Ghani’s lead.  Abdullah withdrew from the 2009 runoff election against Karzai under international pressure after making similar allegations of enormous corruption and voter fraud. This time, Abdullah was nearly killed when insurgents bombed his convoy during the campaign, and his fellow Tajiks appear to be in no mood to lose quietly.  They took to the streets of Kabul to protest the IEC’s preliminary results announcement, and have threatened to protest again if the internationally-monitored election audit does not return a fair result.

Ghani probably can “win” the election just by staying the course, as his lead after the preliminary results (about one million votes) is too great to be overcome by the form of electoral audit that has been utilized thus far.  However, winning a heavily tainted election that triggers an uprising by the Tajiks, combined with the more aggressive Taliban operations observed across the country this year, would cripple the Ghani government before it even began.  This impasse led Secretary of State John Kerry to broker another deal on August 8 between the two feuding candidates who agreed in principle to form a national unity government by the September 4 beginning of the NATO Summit in Wales (after the unraveling of an earlier deal he brokered in July).

This is where the problem becomes somewhat complex.  Neither Ghani nor Abdullah actually want a unity government because both men believe they legitimately won the election—Ghani because he has more votes and Abdullah because he is convinced the election was stolen.  Meanwhile, Karzai has dragged his feet throughout the entire electoral process, apparently hoping that the election would come to be viewed as hopelessly tainted so that he or men loyal to him could step in and establish a “caretaker” government.  New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg was expelled from Afghanistan on August 24 for reporting that senior government officials were talking about putting in place an “interim government” in the face of the ongoing election crisis.

The combination of the Afghan election fiasco with the BSA delay has produced a problem that seemingly defies solution.  Yet, at a gathering last week of several of America’s leading academics on Afghanistan, I heard a solution, albeit small and transitory, to the combined election-BSA mess.  It is as follows:  have both Abdullah and Ghani sign the BSA now.  Both men have already pledged to do so as President, and both men have also publicly pledged to be part of a unity government (even if both of them would renege on the latter pledge if they could grab the prize by themselves).  Getting them to sign now, before the unity government is formed, or the “audited” election results are announced, would have several positive outcomes.  First, it would stop the ticking clock on a precipitate Western troop withdrawal and signal the Taliban and other interested parties in the region that the United States and its Western allies would see the mission through.  Second, it would firm up the expectations in both election camps that a unity government would be a reality (and if such an outcome failed in the end, at least the winner would have signed the BSA).  Third, it would signal to Karzai and his ministers that his era was truly at an end.  Finally, such a step could possibly find favor in both New Delhi and Islamabad, as both governments would appreciate their favored candidates getting at least a piece of the pie, in keeping with one of the time-honored rules of the “Great Game” of Asia, which is to “never play to win, but rather, always play not to lose.”

The current path is leading more toward a constitutional crisis, coup, interim government, or deeper civil war.  We should press Abdullah and Ghani to conclude the BSA and then resolve the electoral crisis.  Although this small step will not solve Afghanistan’s problems, if undertaken energetically, it might just help move that country a little closer to a solution.  It is also the first good idea on Afghanistan I have heard this summer.  I encourage the President to consider it very seriously.

Dr. Larry P. Goodson serves as Professor of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Army War College, where he holds the General Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security.  The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the U.S. Army War College, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.