Letter of the Month of February - The Battle against Taliban

Warlords, big bosses of drug-trafficking, Taliban, unsuperable mountains and deserts : in Afghanistan, the international community - under the leadership of the United States - is engaging tens of thousends of soldiers and billions of dollars to bring the country to more democracy. But the soldiers have to fight more and more often to save their own lives.

We would like to bring these thoughts to the knowledge of our allies and of other visitors of this column. And we would appreciate your comments.

Afghanistan and German Security Policy – A Few Thoughts to Remember

The Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan has now lasted more than eight years, longer even than the entire Second World War. The Afghanistan crisis, which reached its first climax with the expulsion of the Taliban and the al-Qaida terrorists, has in the meantime turned into a crisis of Western policy towards Afghanistan and – parallel to the German Bundestag election of 2009 – into a crisis of German security policy. In addition to the terrible and growing loss of military and civilian lives in Afghanistan itself, it has taken its toll in Berlin, too, with the victims being a German minister of defense, the Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr and a state secretary – this is not dreadful, but symptomatic of our insecure security policy.

The reasons for the escalation of force and the near-failure of Western strategy are manifold. It all began with the American decision in the year 2002 to ignore Afghanistan and invade Iraq instead. This tied down U.S. military assets. The first result was a loss of standing, in particular in the Muslim world, that even today has not yet been overcome. In early 2010, shortly before the London Afghanistan Conference, U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke put the current dilemma of the NATO mission in a nutshell: "While the troops are in Afghanistan, the hard core of our core enemy is next door [i.e. in Pakistan]." And the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, made a statement warning the Western nations of mission failure, which still awaits a response.

Why are we still down there, anyway? Not even this question finds a clear answer in Berlin. It is certainly not enough to keep repeating Peter Struck’s sentence that Germany’s security must be defended at the Hindu Kush. Why, really, since the place to look for terrorists is Pakistan rather than Afghanistan now, and tomorrow perhaps Yemen? However, not even the original reason given for the German mission, i.e. solidarity with the United States as a NATO partner that had been attacked, carries conviction anymore. We must in fact come up with our own explanations why German and European alliance interests require this mission. The nation-building ideals that various German politicians set forth occasionally, which relate to human rights, women’s rights, social or democratic aspects, are not enough. The Bundeswehr cannot invade the frightfully high number of states where these ideals are trampled on.

Considering the precarious security situation at the beginning of the year 2010, there can only be one substantial and convincing justification for our continuing commitment in the region: Neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan must become "failed states," states which are disintegrating and provide refuge to terrorist groups or even allow them to seize power. In the case of Pakistan, a nuclear nation, the consequences for international security and order would be completely unforeseeable.

In Germany, the new German government set up a special Cabinet committee whose task was to ensure that Germany’s policy towards Afghanistan would be streamlined and homogeneous. Last November, this committee indeed presented a position paper titled "Afghanistan – on the way to a responsible hand-over." However, there is still a lot of haggling going on between the coalition partners. Various proposals to make German security policy crisis-proof, both with a view to its organization and concepts, by raising the status of the Federal Security Council – a measure long overdue – have so far fallen upon deaf ears in Berlin. At the same time, the reproach of having misled the public additionally weakens the acceptance of the Afghanistan mission, precarious as it is already. The head of the German Protestant Church, Bishop Margot Käßmann, recently put it quite bluntly, stating that "all these strategies have for a long time kept us from seeing that it is simply a fact that soldiers employ weapons and civilians get killed, too.…." The reproach of willful deception is absurd – but can it be that political discussions in Berlin have after all for too long shied away from the cold fact that there is a fundamental difference between committing the Bundeswehr and a police mission? It is time for parliament and the government to deal with the strategic and tactical aims and options in Afghanistan instead of focusing their energies on the investigations into the events at Kunduz, trying to score points on the home front.

It would therefore be helpful to call to mind some of the experience in politico-military crisis management of the last two decades:

Firstly: Each and every ISAF soldier killed in Afghanistan, just like every Afghan civilian, is, in principle, one victim too many – except if the operational aims explicitly justify such victims. If Afghanistan was a plain and simple case of international terrorism, it might be possible to justify what is referred to as "collateral damage" as the truly terrible price of a successful counterterrorist campaign. By now, however, there is almost uniform agreement about the Afghanistan mission being a "non-international armed conflict" with the aim of fighting insurgents. But a corresponding strategy must make a much greater effort at winning the population’s support than an "anti-terrorism strategy," otherwise it is doomed to failure. Therefore, victims among the civilian population are pure poison, and this is why "Kunduz style" aerial bombardment does not fit into the strategic concept at all – only as a last resort to prevent the imminent loss of own troops. By now, the United States of America too share this point of view – late, but hopefully not too late.

If, however, massive air attacks are not appropriate at all, shouldn’t the logical consequence be to have more ground forces available, both in order to avoid losing control and for specific missions against identified Taliban groups? Getting control of the province of Kunduz, at any rate, now has become impossible with the troops available at the moment. Due to a lack of military personnel, ISAF can hardly protect the population in the villages anymore. Considering this, President Obama’s troop surge makes sense.

Secondly: Is there actually anything like a German "McChrystal Report"? Why do politicians in Berlin keep debating for weeks about the strategic recommendations made by a U.S. general to the U.S. government without a comparable German military paper having been submitted to the Federal Chancellor and the German government, e.g. by the Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, as their most senior military adviser? Or at least a strategy paper by the responsible German ISAF general? The only known public recommendation on the future role of the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan came from a high-ranking German officer at NATO Headquarters. Berlin’s response to his concrete proposal of a moderate reinforcement of the German contingent: droning silence. This may possibly change with the appointment of a new Bundeswehr Chief of Staff who has plenty of experience in Afghanistan. And it indeed has to change: It is not tax discussions we are dealing with here, where everybody may join in the political concert without causing major damage. For our soldiers, this is a matter of life and death. Wanting to make political decisions without real military expertise would be gross negligence.

Thirdly: The question: "More troops – yes or no, and if yes, how many?" can be answered by applying what is referred to as the "Scowcroft Doctrine," named after Brent Scowcroft, President George Bush senior’s national security adviser. It is easy to remember: Rather send in too many than too few troops, which means that if the reinforcement is too small, the entire strategic approach may fail, whereas too generous an augmentation as a rule will not do any harm.

Fourthly: Committing the Bundeswehr is not the same as employing police, the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) or firefighting personnel. The Bundeswehr is employed within the framework of a mandate by the UN Security Council to support the Afghan government. This mandate forces it to fight the insurgent Taliban, if necessary. "To fight" initially means "to deter" – but it also means to shoot and to kill, should deterrence fail. The responsibility for this mandate is borne by both the German government and the German Bundestag – and together, they must tell the German population the plain truth.

Fifthly: Military means serve to cope with military challenges; political crises, however, require political approaches in order to be solved. The German government rightly has promoted a "networked approach" for some time now, an overall concept combining military, political, development policy-related and financial/politico-economic elements. Berlin may pride itself on the fact that these ideas have had a lasting influence on the entire NATO strategy in Afghanistan. It would, however, be wrong, if within the framework of such an overall concept, military aspects were neglected. If the Croatian military had not made territorial gains in Bosnia-Herzegovina with the support of the United States in the summer of 1995, the Dayton peace talks could not have resulted in the successful negotiation of peace accords, for the Serbs would never have conceded territory without military pressure at the negotiating table. NATO’s aerial intervention in 1999, which lasted several months, was the decisive factor that caused Milosevic to relent in the Kosovo crisis – all attempts at political negotiations had failed miserably before. Employing military power as part of a strategic overall concept often creates the very prerequisite of what is referred to as a "political solution." Those who demand more imagination for peace should not ignore such experience.

Sixthly: A "political solution" of the Afghanistan crisis will have to be the result of negotiations, yes: also with the Taliban. But successful negotiations with the Taliban on a local or regional level will be the more unlikely the greater the Taliban’s confidence in being able to reach their goals also without making concessions at the conference table. An effort at successful negotiations will only be made by those who can be made to understand that they will not gain victory anyway. Therefore it is so important to develop a "hand-over strategy" with determination, but not a hurried "withdrawal strategy" that would prevent peace from being achieved in negotiations. And therefore, a lot of time, money and instructors as well as soldiers will have to be invested before self-sustained security develops. Exit strategies have similarities with war – as soon as it starts, all plans are in vain. Not a single military peacekeeping or combat mission of the past decades could be ended precisely according to the respective exit strategy: In 1995, Bill Clinton talked about an operation in Bosnia that would last exactly one year, not longer. As is well known, foreign troops are in Bosnia even today, just like in Kosovo. These missions are not unsuccessful – but success frequently only comes after a number of years. Therefore, plans for a prospective exit should be in place, but please, without publicly specifying concrete withdrawal dates, which would only make planning easier for the Taliban and which could not be observed, anyway.

Seventhly: Efforts at finding an approach based on political negotiations must not focus on Kabul alone. Afghanistan is not France, where all decisions are taken in Paris; Afghanistan is an ethnic and power-political patchwork quilt. Therefore, the search for local negotiation partners or holders of positions of responsibility, also among the Taliban, should be intensified.

On the other hand, the regional approach should be strengthened, and regional and global powers should be involved. This includes Pakistan, but also Russia, India, China – and Iran. There is hardly another country which has such a massive interest in containing the streams of refugees and the enormous influx of drugs from Afghanistan as Iran. Already years ago, during the Petersberg Conferences, Iran had shown its willingness to cooperate constructively – this is something that can be built on.

Eighthly: Its opium crops make Afghanistan a particularly difficult case. Today, 92 per cent of the heroin produced worldwide has its origin in this country. The Taliban and warlords protect the cultivation of opium and its processing into heroin. The commercial proceeds are enormous. Drug cartels and the Taliban form an alliance of mutual benefit. Therefore, any future strategy must attach major importance to the connection between drug farming and the country’s development opportunities. On August 11, 2009, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations stated: "The Taliban cannot be defeated and good government in Afghanistan cannot be established without cutting off the money generated by Afghanistan’s opium industry."

Ninthly: Muslim governments are quick to criticize Western military presence in Afghanistan, Westernization is castigated, and one demands a say. The Muslim side having a say: Why not, really? Why not urge for a greater participation of Muslim partners in the international presence in Afghanistan? Why not have Indonesian and Arab force contingents? Not only in order to relief our own troops, but also to refute the reproach that the West once again is occupying an Islamic country. And why is there nobody in Brussels or Berlin to take up the proposal by the British foreign minister to think about a kind of Marshall Plan for Pakistan? Especially as everybody agrees that Pakistan’s drowning in a chaos of violence and fundamentalism would represent a much bigger threat to us all than the Taliban’s hospitality to al-Qaida in Afghanistan!

Tenthly: Germany’s Afghanistan debate needs a stronger strategic component. What consequences would a failure in Afghanistan and the disintegration of Pakistan have for the relationship between China and India? And what would become of the role of the United States in Asia then? If Europe has ambitions of developing into a global player, shouldn’t we be interested in an active role of our own in Asia? Would a European withdrawal from Afghanistan not only be a disaster for NATO, but also a decisive step towards the global strategic irrelevance of Europe? If this is not in the European interest, what follows from that?

Such questions are asked too rarely in our country. They do, however, deserve answers – as part of a German and European debate on security policy that thinks in strategic terms and provides more than hasty and short-lived responses to daily events. This is the only way we will be able to cope with the threefold crisis.