The Foreign Service Journal, December 2005

Saudis anticipated problems if he returned to the kingdom, and stripped him of his citizenship. Neither Jordan, Egypt nor Algeria was willing to open its borders to him, so Taliban-controlled Afghanis- tan was the only option. We missed the chance to intercept his flight to Kandahar in March 1996, where he arrived with two planeloads of wives and children. In July 1999, a military coup in Pakistan brought General Pervez Musharraf to power. Although not religious (scotch was acceptable according to his reading of the Quran), the new president needed the support of extreme religious par- ties to bolster military rule. This translated into a sharp increase in aid to the Taliban. An important addi- tional inducement for Pakistan was the opportunity to train their own “freedom fighters” in Tali- ban-controlled camps in Afghanis- tan to harass Indian forces in Kash- mir. With a minimal investment by Pakistan, these guerrillas kept half a million Indian troops tied down. As for the U.S., our policy contin- ued to focus on containing Iran and Iraq and on maintaining Saudi coop- eration — or, more accurately— cheap oil. We were not about to take on the Saudis for funding Islamic rad- icals in Afghanistan or anywhere else. Four Big Problems This brings us to the current situa- tion in Afghanistan, which in many ways is hopeful. Hamid Karzai was elected president in December 2004 and has proven an adept and moder- ate leader. Parliamentary and provin- cial council elections — the first in 30 years — were successfully held this past September, despite Taliban intimidation. About three million refugees have returned from Iran and Pakistan, and over two million girls are in school. A constitution was approved last year that guarantees the rights of religious minorities. However, it also declares that “No law can be contrary to the sacred reli- gion of Islam.” One can only surmise how these provisions would be inter- preted by a post-Karzai, hard-line government. Despite these positive develop- ments, the country’s prospects are clouded by four mutually reinforcing problems: security (or, more accu- rately, the lack thereof), drug traffick- ing, the slow pace of reconstruction, and Afghanistan’s historic decentral- ization. A start has been made on disarm- ing private militias, but gunholders still control much of the countryside. Most Afghans rank disarming the warlords as a higher priority than eliminating all remnants of the Taliban, even as the latter forces show signs of resurgence four years after having been driven from power. Our decision to siphon off resources to go after Saddam Hussein, before the Taliban were convincingly defeated, is certainly a factor in their ability to regroup. So is the fact that they benefit from staging areas in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan. In the lead-up to the fall parliamentary elections they showed they were well-organized and armed with rock- et-propelled grenades and other weapons. They appear to have no shortage of volunteers willing to fight; and, if need be, blow them- selves up like their counterparts in Iraq and elsewhere. A general upturn in violence — bombings, assassinations, rocket attacks and kidnappings — has claimed the lives of more and more NATO and U.S. forces, and Afghan soldiers and civilians. More U.S. sol- diers died in 2005 than at any time since 2001, and the cumulative toll is now more than 200. Attacks on civil- ians are also at a four-year high. The forces in place to deal with such threats are inadequate. Some 8,000 men under NATO command patrol mainly within the capital, while U.S. forces, currently around 19,000, are scattered around a country the size of Texas with 28 million inhabi- tants. By comparison, there are 40,000 NATO troops in Bosnia, a country one-tenth the size of Afghanistan and considerably less volatile. American forces are training an increasingly effective Afghan National Army, with plans for a significant expansion. However, the U.S. is foot- ing most of the bill, raising doubts about how long we will sustain that commitment. The booming opium trade, the country’s largest economic sector, threatens the stability and viability of the country itself. Where the war on extremists and the war on narcotics intersect, drugs are winning. How could it be otherwise in a poverty- stricken land where the returns from poppy cultivation — which requires little water or care — are 20 times that of wheat, cotton or rice? In the nationwide lawlessness that followed the Taliban’s ouster, acreage devoted to poppies (whose opium is the raw material for heroin) increased dra- matically. The U.N. estimates that in 2004, the drug trade was respon- sible for at least half of Afghanistan’s 58 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 In many ways, the current situation in Afghanistan is hopeful.