What would an early exit from Afghanistan look like?

This week’s GPM forecaster is about what a post-NATO Afghanistan would look like. I personally think it’s an interesting topic, because the debate over whether or not we should pull out is more determined by emotional factors- not wanting to ‘lose’ and have made such sacrifices in vain- rather than practical ones such as whether the whole thing is actually ‘winnable.’ It’s starting to seem a lot like that Vietnam thing I’ve heard so much about!

Full text after the jump…

This forecaster aims to push through the rhetorical hyperbole on both sides of the Afghanistan debate, and in doing so provide an objective assessment of what an early NATO exit would entail.

Last week, NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen warned that a premature exit from Afghanistan would allow Al Qaeda to unleash a new ‘global jihad’ on the West. The alarmist tone in his statement is no doubt intended to give pause to those considering an early exit from Afghanistan. However, it is an assessment more influenced by the need to drum up a sense of urgency among NATO countries than the reality of a post-NATO Afghanistan.

The current state of the civilian government in Kabul makes civil war extremely likely in the event of an abrupt NATO exit. The Afghanistan National Army (ANA) boasts 94,000 troops, but only half of them are combat-ready and the desertion rate stands at a staggering 20%. Such high numbers of troops abandoning their posts while NATO forces are still on the ground suggests that any loyalty towards the Constitution and the government in Kabul will collapse when faced with the Taliban’s religious appeal and ability to wage a long-term guerrilla war.

The Karzai government is too corrupt, ineffective, and foreign to put up much of a fight in any Afghan civil war. The Taliban toppled the Mujahedeen government in 1996, and there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t be able to pull it off again.

If the Taliban do eventually re-take Kabul, their relationship with Al Qaeda will be a big question mark. The Taliban cannot completely wash their hands of Al Qaeda because of ideological factors- to do so would dilute the purity and appeal of their religious message. However, questions remain over a rift between Mullah Omar and Al Qaeda leading up to 9/11. According to some accounts, the Taliban were not only unaware of the impending 9/11 attacks, but would also be wholly against them because of the harm they would inevitably do to the Taliban’s national project in Afghanistan. Richard Barrett, head of the UNSC Taliban Monitoring Team, has gone so far as to characterize the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Afghanistan Taliban as ‘fragile.’

All questions of strife aside, it is almost certain that Al Qaeda would enjoy some degree of sanctuary in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. But, since the terrorist organization can already operate relatively freely in the Pakistan FATA, Somalia, and elsewhere, a new sanctuary in Afghanistan- one where it would often rain American drone strikes- would not consequently give rise to a ‘global jihad’.

A Taliban government would have incentive to drop some of its more extreme policies. Currently, the Taliban is drawing in supporters from the more moderate strata of Afghan society- people who are fed up with the civilian government in Kabul and foreign troops on Afghan soil. To keep them, the Taliban would need to succeed where Kabul has failed and provide some semblance of economic stability.

Since opium already flows out of Afghanistan, funding criminal and terrorist networks the world over, there’s not much more harm a NATO exit could do on the drug front. According to a UN report, Afghanistan’s opium production has already exceeded global demand, forcing drug traffickers to stockpile it to keep market prices high. These hidden stockpiles in the Afghan-Pakistan border could reportedly feed the world’s heroin addiction for over two years.

Interestingly, drugs are one case in which the pendulum of the Taliban’s religiosity swung two ways. In May 2001, an envoy from America’s Drug Enforcement Agency returned from Afghanistan praising the Taliban’s ban on poppy cultivation, which had almost annihilated the entire crop and opened the door for American farming aid. Ironically, it is the Taliban who has had the most success shutting down opium production in a short amount of time.

As the debate over NATO’s future course in Afghanistan continues to unfold, all participants should bear in mind the reality of the national interests at stake. A premature exit would mean civil war and the rise of a human rights violator in the same vein of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It would not however unleash of a global wave of terrorism.

Posted: November 25th, 2009 under commentary, foreign policy analysis.