The Obama administration is growing increasingly frustrated with its alleged ally President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. He has declined to sign a Status of Forces Agreement [SOFA] that would establish the conditions for a continued American/NATO presence in Afghanistan after December 31, 2014. Yesterday, Mr. Obama let it be known that the US is drawing up plans to quit Afghanistan completely and leave the Kabul regime to its own devices. While meant as a threat to help push the SOFA through, it’s actually the right policy — get out.
The US has been the bulwark of the Karzai government ever since it was put into power in 2001. Since then, President Karzai has enriched himself and his cronies while his government never enjoyed sufficient support to get Afghans in any number to support it with their lives. In truth, he has never been more than the Mayor of Kabul with a seat at the UN.
The situation in which the US finds itself stems from the policy error made by President George W. Bush and his neo-con supporters after the attack of September 11, 201. The war should never have been about building a friendly, pro-American government in Afghanistan because that ignores the political and military realities of the region. It should only have been about destroying Al Qaeda and killing Osama bin Laden and his pals. Once the nation-building nonsense was adopted as policy, America needed a partner in Kabul. Mr. Karzai was just enough of a used-car salesman to get the job.
The trouble with the arrangement was that America wanted a lackey while Mr. Karzai wanted a sugar daddy/bodyguard. The Bush administration always operated on the premise that diplomacy was America telling other countries what to do and those other countries obeying without question. Mr. Karzai was prepared to defend the new Afghanistan to the last American, and the Afghan people knew it. The inability of the Karzai government to raise and train loyal troops explains America’s presence in his land 12 years after it began.
The US and Afghani authorities have negotiated the terms of a SOFA. A 3,000 member loya jirga (a traditional Afghan gathering of elders) has approved it. Yet, Mr. Karzai refuses to sign it. There are presidential elections in April, and Mr. Karzai wants his successor to have to make the decision. It is that cowardice that has prevented Afghans from joining his cause in any real numbers.
And so White House spokesman Jay Carney said Mr. Obama “has tasked the Pentagon with preparing for the contingency that there will be no troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014.” That is a start; however, it does not go far enough. The White House needs to state clearly that it is not a contingency. America is going to let the Afghan people decide the fate of the Kabul government. And if that means that the Taliban get to return to power, that will be on the heads of those in Afghanistan who let it happen.
Afghanistan is landlocked, with few economically recoverable resources, a trifling economy and little to offer beyond the innate talents of its under-educated people. If America wants to stay to fight for a government that doesn’t have people willing to fight and die for it, that’s strategic malpractice.
The British extracted over 300,000 men from the beaches at Dunkirk in nine days back in 1940. There’s no reason why the US government can’t pull every last trooper out of Afghanistan by January 1, 2014. And there’s no reason to stay.