Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

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Two insurgencies, one superpower, no victory
Paul Rogers
21 - 8 - 2003


This week, major acts of sabotage in Iraq were followed by a devastating assault on the UN mission in Baghdad. Meanwhile, increasingly bold guerrilla attacks in Afghanistan expose the fragility of the security situation there. The ‘war on terror’ is in trouble on two fronts

The past week in Iraq has been the worst for the United States since its occupation of the country began four months ago. In addition to the many, now routine, attacks on US troops, there have been the sabotage of the main oil pipeline, damage to the Baghdad water supply and - by far the worst - the bombing of the UN mission and assassination of its senior official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Both the sheer human cost and the symbolism of attacking a multinational body make the UN assault devastating. But its deeper significance is to reveal the faultlines in the US strategy for Iraq. The US has steadfastly avoided allowing the UN any serious power in the development of Iraq as a truly independent state. Such an outcome would be unacceptable in Washington, which requires a client regime safely installed in Baghdad, giving the US greatly increased leverage across the region as well as access to Iraq's huge oil resources.

A necessary component of this strategy is to emphasise that the United States can handle all key matters of security and political development, while limiting the UN’s role to aid and reconstruction. The bombing of the UN mission shows in an appalling way that neither part of this approach is working. The US forces are widely targeted as occupiers of the country, while the opposition is sufficiently organised to make them – on this occasion, at least - unable to ensure the security of the UN itself.

Afghanistan: how it didn’t end

The current difficulties for the Americans in Iraq look even more ominous in the light of the condition of Afghanistan, where the war was declared over more than eighteen months ago. As in Iraq, the failure to oversee the necessary processes of post-war reconstruction, despite the hard work and courage of many Afghans and assistance from some foreign governments and NGOs, has created a very fraught situation.

Four aspects of Afghanistan’s security situation have their origins in the way the US sought, and failed, to bring resolution to the conflict of late 2001. First, neither the Taliban nor the al-Qaida militia were actually defeated in the conventional military sense. Certainly, the Taliban regime was terminated and al-Qaida facilities destroyed, but most of the militias and their immediate supporters simply melted away, often with their weapons, munitions and other supplies intact and hidden for future occasions.

Second, the US terminated the regime essentially by taking the side of the Northern Alliance in the bitter civil war, using the Northern Alliance forces as ground troops and re-equipping them through an intense programme of arms supplies. One result has been a cascading of arms throughout the country to add to the huge quantities that were already present.

This, in turn, has reinforced the third aspect, the continuing power of well-armed warlords who control fiefdoms spread across much of the country, often with tacit support from the US. Their power is facilitated by the fourth aspect, namely the resolute refusal of the United States to countenance a truly multinational and effective peacekeeping force for the whole of Afghanistan.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) remains restricted to Kabul and its immediate surroundings. It has contributed effectively to aiding reconstruction and development, but in order to be truly effective its force of 5,000 troops (now under Nato control) would need to be at least six times larger and operating in a number of cities as well as securing the transport routes to be able to have an effect in the country as a whole.

Instead, many of the provinces are either in the hands of warlords or are subject to US counter-insurgency actions undertaken by the more than 10,000 US troops that remain in the country, often operating from the substantial bases near Kabul and Kandahar.

The war of the flea intensifies

It is worth saying that some recent developments in Afghanistan are both welcome and truly positive. The situation in Kabul has improved greatly, some initial repairs to key roads have at last started, and there has been a degree of reconstruction in some provincial towns and cities. Furthermore, the Hamid Karzai administration is still there, despite assassination attempts on the president (and the actual killing of some government colleagues). It is even, on some occasions, able to reign in the excess power of some provincial governors and warlords.

A process has also begun of trying to extend security assistance beyond Kabul. This currently takes the form of establishing what are termed Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTS), small groups of under 100 lightly-armed but mobile troops that are intended to assist in maintaining security during provincial reconstruction, but do not come under ISAF authority. There are only a handful of these and their effect is limited. As The Economist (subscription only) points out, the single 72-strong British PRTS contingent, currently stationed in Mazar-I-Sharif, covers an area the size of Scotland.

As in Iraq, though, the past week has seen an extraordinary spate of violent incidents across the country. On 13 August, sixty-one people were killed and large numbers injured in three separate incidents. One involved a bitter conflict between a recently-sacked official and his successor in Oruzgan province that left at least twenty-five people dead; a second resulted from a bomb being used to destroy a crowded bus in southern Afghanistan. For the government, the third incident was the most worrying: a fight between its own forces and guerrillas described as Taliban and al-Qaida supporters in Khost province in south-east Afghanistan, where five government troops and sixteen guerrillas were killed.

In scale, these incidents were exceeded by an extraordinary assault four days later. A daylight raid by about 400 guerrillas entering the country from Pakistan attacked the police headquarters in Barmal district of Paktika province. The attackers easily overran the building, killing seven police officers including the district police chief, held it overnight and then destroyed it before returning across the border with their own dead and wounded.

A few hours later, a further raid by several hundred guerrillas attacked another police compound, destroying it and taking four police officers hostage. Three government soldiers were then killed in an attack, also in Paktika province. In yet another incident, in Lowgar province, eight police officers - including the provincial security commander - were killed in an ambush.

A pattern of overstretch

The two large raids last week were probably the largest for several months, and are in contrast to the normal pattern: small groups of guerrillas, often travelling by night carefully to avoid giving the US forces any opportunity to use their overwhelming air power. The raids illustrate the guerrillas’ willingness to bring together substantial forces, and an ability to assemble in Pakistan with a degree of impunity before travelling into Afghanistan itself.

US forces seek to counter these moves, both by their own patrols and by persistent attempts to develop an Afghan National Army. The army is still little more than a shadow of what is required, numbering perhaps 5,000 trained troops. It is proving difficult to retain new recruits, and this suggests that it will need some years to build it up to a required strength.

Meanwhile, US forces are experiencing increased opposition to their presence as they seek to compensate for the absence of effective Afghan government security forces. Their very presence on patrol increases the perception of an occupying power, making it easier even for the Taliban to garner support (see Saeed Al Achakzai’s Reuters’ report, 15 August 2002).

Perhaps the most revealing feature of the situation in Afghanistan is that the United States now has to redeploy some of its most experienced special forces and intelligence professionals away from the country precisely to deal with the deteriorating situation in Iraq. According to Bryan Bender in The Boston Globe, hundreds of US special force troops have been moved from Afghanistan to Iraq, as have intelligence field operatives, in a transfer that includes a redirection of Washington-based analysts.

This move effectively diminishes the emphasis on the search for Osama bin Laden, and increases the attempts to capture or kill Saddam Hussein in the hope that this will curb the opposition the US is facing in Iraq. Perhaps this will work, but it lends support to those critics in Washington who have argued that the whole Iraq war and its aftermath has been a dangerous diversion from the "war on terror".

The crises the United States is confronting in the very different environments of Iraq and Afghanistan are thus intimately connected. It is now clear that the US is involved in attempting to control two substantial insurgencies, both of them following apparently successful regime terminations. In Afghanistan it has been developing for a year and a half and shows no sign of diminishing in intensity. In Iraq it is only four months old and is getting worse. The United States may have unparalleled military power at its disposal but, nearly two years after 9/11, the limits of that power are becoming steadily more apparent.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article-2-1448.jsp#