Everyone knows the storm in the making. There's absolutely no evidence a strong central government will emerge in Kabul after April's elections. Not even minimally as strong as the Afghan government that survived for almost three years after the Soviet withdrawal 25 years ago.
There are the so-called "Afghan security forces" which totally depend on Western money and weapons. The Afghan government simply cannot afford them. Who will pay them? A consortium of Europeans, Russians and Chinese?
And then there's the game Pakistan will play. Pakistan's Afghan policy has always been "strategic depth," as in controlling a weak Afghan state. This implies, in a nutshell, a "friendly" government; too weak in military terms to question the Durand line -- the 2,500-kilometer artificial border "invented" by the British empire; and absolutely incapable of raising the intractable Pashtunistan issue, which is at the heart of the border controversy. Every each way we look at it, Islamabad sees Pashtun nationalism as an existential threat.
The Obama administration couldn't care less -- not to mention the Pentagon and the whole Beltway for that matter. The only thing that matters is to keep those prime real estate morsels in the Empire of Bases -- especially Bagram, which Karzai defined as a "Taliban factory." These military bases are essential to survey, harass or simply intimidate both Russia and China -- thus key assets in the ever-evolving New Great Game in Eurasia.
The pretext used to be al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda relocated to Libya and the Levant. The fight against the Taliban can't qualify as a pretext anymore as Karzai himself is trying to clinch a deal with them, and NATO will be out of Afghanistan before the end of the year. As nasty as they can be the Taliban played, and keep playing, a very long game; they want to dictate the terms of post-American Afghanistan.
So what's left to Washington after an interminable, multi-trillion-dollar war that ends with a monumental whimper -- for all practical purposes a hardcore Pashtun victory? Not to abandon the battlefield entirely, as in Saigon 1975 (Gromov crossing the Friendship Bridge 25 years ago would pale in comparison). The solution is to leave a "residual" force of at least 10,000 that will keep enabling the CIA drone war in the Pakistani tribal areas, which will go on as long as Islamabad cannot clinch a deal with the Pakistani Taliban.
No powerful regional actors want this state of affairs, from Iran to Russia and China, not to mention the AfPak consortium. Throughout 2014, expect Iran, Russia, China and India to weigh heavily toward an Afghan solution without the Americans. Yet the "residual force" will remain the Pentagon's wet dream. If they can't have Full Spectrum Dominance, even partial spectrum will do. That certainly beats crossing the Amu Darya back to Uzbekistan with a Saigon taste in their mouths.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
