The Afghan transition: from frying pan to fire?

Analysis
by Ben Nimmo

NATO is desperate to pull its troops out of the frying pan of Afghanistan, but it might well be jumping into an even worse fire by doing so.
NATO leaders at a summit in Lisbon last weekend formally agreed that ‘transition’ - the process of stepping back to let Afghan soldiers lead the fighting - should start next year. But analysts warn that the process could degenerate into a run for the exit, and leave Afghanistan alone to face its foes.
‘The risk is that as the strategy to transfer control to the Afghan authorities continues, this gives some countries a very handy opportunity to draw down their forces,’ said Dr Jonathan Eyal, head of international security studies at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute think tank.
NATO’s basic rule for combat missions is ‘in together, out together’: allies start the mission at the same time and only put their weapons down when it is all over.
The Afghan declaration stresses that point, saying that the handover will begin in 2011 and, all being well, end in 2014. NATO officials say that as the more peaceful provinces are handed over, NATO troops will therefore move to other combat missions, training duties with the Afghan army, or go home.
But that is a pledge which is easier to make than to keep. Many NATO troop contingents operate under ‘caveats,’ national rules which limit them to certain parts of Afghanistan - usually the safer ones.
‘It’s too simple to say that you can thin out the troops everywhere else in Afghanistan and deploy them to (the main trouble spots of) Kandahar or Helmand. That won’t work,’ said Markus Kaim, head of international security studies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
Indeed, NATO’s Lisbon pledge comes as a number of key allied states - Britain, Canada, Poland and the Netherlands - have already announced their plans to leave Afghanistan.
‘We already have a fragmented withdrawal. ‘In together, out together’ may be the political message, but it looks hard to keep allies to that on the ground,’ Kaim said.
That prospect alone is likely to render NATO’s Afghan handover politically explosive. But worse still could come if Afghanistan’s militants manage to inflict a major defeat on the Afghan army.
NATO officials say that transition ‘must be irreversible,’ and that its troops will only hand over to Afghan forces when they are ready to take control. But analysts warn that there is no way of guaranteeing that that will be the case on every single occasion.
‘The assumption behind the whole transition idea is that we will have a continually improving or stable security situation. But if we see a deterioration ... NATO nations will have no choice but to declare transition regardless of the situation,’ Kaim said.
That, in turn, would risk calling into question NATO’s other key summit commitment, to provide Afghanistan with support after 2014.
‘If there is genuine progress in Afghanistan, then the commitment will be rather sincere,’ Eyal said. ‘But what is much more likely to happen is that there is no progress, the Afghan government is not able to control its territory and it remains deeply corrupt. Under those circumstances, it would be much more difficult to maintain.’
And even if NATO’s Afghan proteges do manage to hold their own against the insurgents, the alliance will still be caught between the security need to prop up the Afghan government, and the need to beat the economic crisis by cutting costs wherever it can.
‘Given the pressure not to abandon Afghanistan after the withdrawal, as the Soviets did, there will be a momentum towards providing continued development assistance and civilian resources,’ Kaim said. ‘But given the financial crisis and limited budget means, that is likely to only happen for a couple of years.’
That leaves Afghanistan to hope that NATO allies will continue to send their men and money into the frying-pan of the Hindu Kush battlefields - and not leave it to fall into the fire.
‘I would expect quite a number of the commitments made in haste in Lisbon to be repented at leisure later,’ Eyal said.
- DPA