Welcome to the AfghanWire Podcast, a discussion of the major news from Afghanistan, bringing together a single digestible package containing exclusive interviews and in-depth analysis.

 

 

Iraq and Afghanistan

 

He spoke from Washington first on the importance of focusing attention on Afghanistan at this moment, even at a time when Iraq is spiralling out of control.

 

“It’s important to focus on Afghanistan now, in a way precisely because things in Iraq are unwinding so swiftly.  If the United States is in effect going to lose the war in Iraq, it really cannot afford to lose the war in Afghanistan as well.  I mean at that point, one might as well just wrap up the war on terror and go home.  The other thing is that if Afghanistan is allowed to drift for another two or three years until America has extracted itself from Iraq, then the situation in Afghanistan may become simply unsaveable.  The security situation will be so bad in the Pashtun areas of the country that no development will be possible.  Most of the Europeans will have gone home.  The effect on relations with Pakistan may be such as to render turning Pakistan into a useful player in this regard impossible.  At the moment – thank God – things have not yet got so bad.  There are possibilities of doing something positive about Afghanistan.  And therefore we ought to do it.

 

“Indeed we have to do it because the Taliban are on the offensive.  Now, this can be exaggerated.  The number of casualties they’ve been able to inflict has been relatively small.  But, it could be entirely within their power over time.  Not of course to defeat the United States, or even perhaps Britain, but to drive the European allies of the United States and Britain out of Afghanistan.  That, by the way, in turn will have a shattering effect on the transatlantic alliance.

 

 

The Opium Economy

 

Given that Afghanistan now produces the lion’s share of opium worldwide, we asked Anatol how he saw the opium economy interacting with the central government.

 

“Well, the opium economy is the central government.  But then the opium economy is also the Taliban as well.  The opium economy is such a large part of the Afghan economy, and above all of course of the Afghan cash economy – the non subsistence economy in Afghanistan – that frankly it influences just about everything.  It is, as has been said, extremely important financially to the Taliban’s struggle.  It is also extremely important personally to several key members of the Karzai administration.  Equally important, of course, by providing a reasonably decent living standard to millions of ordinary Afghans, and certain elements of a commercial economy.  Yes, I mean it contributes to, you could say some degree of basic political stability in Afghanistan.  

 

“That, however, of course, is only true until the West – I mean the US, Britain, NATO, whoever – start really attacking that economy, at which point of course that economy becomes naturally our enemy and start supporting forces hostile to us.  I mean when I was in Afghanistan talking to poppy farmers in Nangarhar province that was precisely what they said.  You try to destroy our only source of income, of course we will become your enemy.  And they had no belief whatsoever – and I fear quite rightly – that given the weakness of western structures in Afghanistan and given the weakness and corruption of Afghan government structures, they didn’t think that they would ever see any kind of serious compensation for giving up their poppy crops or if they were destroyed.”

 

Pakistan’s Role

 

We then asked how he saw Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan, and whether we should be expending equal time and effort on Pakistan?

 

“In my view we should be giving even greater time to Pakistan.  Pakistan, in my view, is the vital country in that region, and to some extent even in the Muslim world as a whole.  I mean I’m speaking here perhaps particularly as a Brit, because of the importance of the Pakistani diaspora in Britain.  But then, if you’re looking at serious terrorist threats to the West, then the importance of that diaspora goes far beyond Britain, because of course with British passports, as members of the European Union, radical members of that diaspora can travel much more easily than people coming from Muslim countries themselves.  And so there is a particular terrorist threat.

 

“But also all the obvious other things.  Pakistan has six times the population of Afghanistan.  Pakistan has nuclear weapons.  Pakistan has a huge army.  And my fear is that what we’re doing is to some extent contributing to the destabilisation of Pakistan for the sake of Afghanistan, which is in my view to get things absolutely back-to-front.  Look, I mean to some extent Pakistan is in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is in Pakistan.  Because of the Pashtun ethnicity, which spans the border.  Remember that the Afghan state and government do not in fact recognise legally that border precisely because they always did think that they had the right – the moral and historical right – to include all Pashtuns in their territory.  So, I mean, in a funny way, the non-existence of that border in real terms has always been recognised by the Afghan state as well.

 

“The truth of the matter is that the Taliban now represent an insurgency, a popular insurgency, which has not go majority support, but very substantial popular support in the Pashtun ethnicity on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border.  And Pakistan is obviously, therefore, crucial in the end, to…I don’t know whether one can defeat this insurgency…but certainly to containing it.  The question is how best to do that.

 

“The Pakistanis of course have been proceeding by basically old-style British approaches – indirect rule, trying to play the tribes off against each other, not just the tribes against each other, but different groups in the tribal areas against each other, trying to mobilise local Pashtun sentiment against the foreign jihadi fighters, all this kind of thing.  Now of course in many ways that’s very unsatisfactory.  But then again when they tried to actually go in and crush the Taliban supporters by force, it was a disaster.  They got a very bloody nose indeed.  And I certainly don’t think it is in our interest to actually promote a massive rebellion and civil war in Pakistan for the sake of short term gains in Afghanistan.

 

“What I would say the most hopeful thing in the long-term is gradually to integrate the tribal areas into the Pakistani state as a whole.  But of course this has to be accompanied by really serious economic development in those areas, funded above all by the West.  So a long term political/development strategy for me makes the most sense.”

 

The Taliban as a tribal phenomenon?

 

Some claim that the Taliban in its current incarnation is best understood through the prism of local and tribal affairs.  We asked Anatol whether he thought this was the case.

 

“I’d say you need a local and tribal understanding.  But in a way they’re not either a Pakistan or an Afghan creation.  They’re a Pashtun creation.  Now of course the Pakistani state and secret service played a huge part in creating them in the first place, and there may well be close links now between at least some of the Taliban and the secret service, but in the end what is keeping the Taliban going is the Pashtuns, or at least a sufficient number of Pashtuns.  That’s a very uncomfortable thing for everybody to recognise, and even the Pakistanis don’t much like recognising that in public either.  Of course the Afghans don’t want to recognise it, and Western experts also shy away from recognising this because it suggests that the Taliban are a much stronger historical force than we would like to recognise, and that the Afghan state is a much weaker and more ambiguous force – as by the way is the Pakistan state in the Pashtun areas.  But the problem is that this does just happen to be the incontrovertible truth.”

 

Impact of foreign troops

 

We asked what he thought the impact of the significant numbers of foreign troops in Afghanistan from major European countries, coupled with a renewed media interest, was.

 

“When you say significant number of European troops, it depends what you mean by significant.  I mean (a) American and European troops together and perhaps the Candians are still not much more than one third of the number of troops that the Soviets had in Afghanistan.  And of course the Soviets they never lost outright any more than we will lose outright, but essentially they were fought to a standstill.  You know, it became apparent that they would basically have to stay there forever, and the Soviet Union was not prepared to do that.

 

“But secondly, I mean, what is significant?  Significant numbers of troops are troops who can actually fight.  Can the Europeans do that?  Well at the moment explicitly not.  They’re not allowed to fight.  And so in the end what good do they do?  My fear is that their main purpose could be a negative one in that if the Taliban ever manage to get at them, which admittedly is difficult – especially if they don’t go out to try to fight…but if it could get at them and inflict enough casualties it could force them out of the country, at which point the whole NATO alliance there would begin to unravel.”

 

Ordinary Afghans

 

This renewed interest, he said, had yet to impact on the lives of ordinary Afghans.

 

“Ordinary Afghans in the non-Pashtun areas are still, it would seem, on the whole – I mean at least they’re glad no longer to be under the Taliban, even if they’re very disappointed with the West’s record in bringing them development.  In the Pashtun areas, it’s not that the Taliban enjoy majority support, but undoubtedly anger with the US and the West is much higher, and disappointment with the lack of development is even greater.  In the end, the West simply has to be able to show ordinary Afghans that the Western presence is really visibly improving their lives…but if it can’t do that then…the thing is, look…I don’t think the Taliban will ever again be able to conquer the whole of Afghanistan because the resistance in other areas will be so great and this time they will be strongly backed by the west as well.  But if we cannot find a way of visibly improving the lives of people in the Pashtun areas, then all that’s left to us is basically like the Soviets – an endless campaign of military occupation and anti-guerilla warfare.  I mean, the Soviets stood that for 10 years, and maybe America will stand it for 20 years, but I don’t think that the Europeans will stand it that long.”

 

Recommendations

 

 

“I’ve always strongly advocated the need for a measure of reconciliation with Iran for the sake of development in Afghanistan, apart from anything else.  Iran is absolutely critical for the development of Afghanistan.  Indeed, I don’t believe that you can develop Afghanistan without a strong Iranian role, in terms of transport links, in terms of Iran being by far the strongest regional economy, in terms of Iran – if only we could use it – having this enormous pool of, of course, Farsi-speaking engineers, doctors, architects…you know, people we could be using to develop Afghanistan, at a tiny fraction of the cost of employing Western companies and experts.  But nobody in America is thinking in these terms.  It’s just a thought that is never mentioned.

 

“Secondly, I certainly favour basically the approach of the democrats, which is to get out of Iraq in order to concentrate more on Afghanistan.  Except that, you know, the Democrats combine this with a strategy of getting much tougher with Pakistan and even the latest Democrat advocacy of greatly boosting the number of American ground forces is justified partly in terms of the possibility of having to intervene in Pakistan, which would be a catastrophe that would dwarf that of Iraq.  After all, the only people in Iraq who are implacably opposed to the US presence have been the Sunnis who are only about 5 million.  In Pakistan, you know, you’d be talking about basically all the Punjabis and the Pashtuns, and a considerable number of muhajirs as well.  The thing is, we should concentrate on Afghanistan, and we should tailor our regional strategy accordingly.  However, we’ve got to concentrate on Afghanistan in the right way, in terms of a new strategy for the war on drugs, in terms of prioritising the security of Pakistan and with Pakistan, in terms of a quite different strategy for the economic development of the Pashtun areas, in terms of serious attempts at political negotiation with at least some of the Taliban, and so forth and so on.”