The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2008

institutional memory, as well as the question of how well “quick-impact projects” fit into the framework of the Afghan National Development Strat- egy of 2006 and the broader Millen- nium Developments Goals. The ongoing insurgency in south- ern Afghanistan has taxed the will of a number of NATO members. This is especially the case in parliamentary systems where force deployments may enjoy the support of, at best, a fickle and fragile majority. Some of this opposition amounts to no more than knee-jerk anti- Americanism, but in other cases it reflects a genuine con- viction that military force cannot resolve the problems of Afghanistan. Others believe that the war is unwinnable because Afghan nationalism will always lead to successful popular mobilization against foreign forces. These con- victions may be ill-grounded, but they are nonetheless part of the political environment with which the U.S. and its NATO allies must deal. The conflict in Iraq has complicated this problem. Deeply unpopular with European publics, it has the potential to drain support from the Afghan theater of operations, as well. In July 2007, White House Homeland Security Adviser Frances F. Townsend described the struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan as “clearly a single con- flict by a single determined enemy who is looking for safe haven.” To European publics this is not a claim calculat- ed to boost support for operations in Afghanistan; the most recent Transatlantic Trends survey, conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States in 2007, found that only 30 percent of European respondents sup- ported combat operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan. A delinking of the two situations would help to make the case for sustaining the commitment more marketable. In a Feb. 8 interview, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered a nuanced defence of involvement in Af- ghanistan, noting that lingering anger in Europe over the U.S. invasion of Iraq explained why some allies were reluc- tant to heed U.S. calls for more combat troops in Afghani- stan. It remains, however, to be seen how much the allies will deliver in response to the call for greater assistance to Afghanistan that was contained in the declaration of NATO members at the April 2008 Bucharest Summit. Through Afghans’ Eyes NATO’s involvement is controver- sial not only in Europe, but in Afghanistan as well. Civilian casual- ties are one key problem. The arrival of international forces was celebrated in Afghanistan, where the Taliban remain deeply unloved. But any for- eign force can outstay its welcome if it loses sight of the local population and its needs. Here, the problem of “col- lateral damage” is extremely serious. Every civilian casualty has the poten- tial to create new enemies, and great care needs to be taken to avoid them if at all possible. Another weighty problem relates to the cultivation of opium poppies, an industry in which over two million Afghans are now entangled, many as poor wage-labor- ers. For the wider world, the temptation to deal with this problem through simple eradication may be consid- erable. But fear that this will happen is becoming a major recruiting tool for the Taliban, probably of greater significance to their insurgency than the cash that they may be able to derive from the drug trade. The issue of eradication has also become a point of friction between various NATO members and the gov- ernment of Afghanistan. To some, the opium poppy is a curse which helps fund Taliban operations and should be eliminated with maximum expedition. To the Kabul government, this is profoundly naïve, given the number of poor Afghans who are dependent on some income from opium in order to eke out a meager living, and for whom “alternative livelihoods policies” remain a remote chimera. What has been largely lost in the dust sur- rounding this dispute is the complexity of the narcotics problem in Afghanistan, which is underpinned by diverse incentive structures, has multiple local variants, and is also significantly transnational in character. Dwarfing these issues, however, is the threat posed by the Taliban’s external sanctuaries. As a threat to Afghanistan’s stability, this is vastly more serious than the occasional cache of arms of Iranian origin. In August 2007, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made a very candid statement about this problem while addressing a so-called “Peace Jirga” in Kabul: “There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistani soil. The problem that you have in your region is F O C U S 38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 The ongoing insurgency in southern Afghanistan has taxed the will of a number of NATO members.