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AUSTRALIA will need to become substantially more involved in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This will inevitably mean more Australian troops for Afghanistan. This reality is mandated in part by our strategic alliance with the US. Indeed, more troops for Afghanistan may be the only way for Kevin Rudd to form the intense diplomatic relationship with Barack Obama that is sensibly a big part of his foreign policyambition.
Rudd is also determined to create with India an equivalent range and depth of strategic, economic and political consultations as Canberra has with China. Because India, unlike China, is a democracy and a de facto strategic ally of the US, the potential is there to go much further.
Rudd planned to visit New Delhi earlier this year to see the redoubtable Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but the trip was frustrated by the urgent need for Singh to undergo heart
surgery.
Rudd should persist in this effort, however. Apart from India's intrinsic importance, it is critical to the Pakistan-Afghanistan equation. The restraint, maturity and diplomatic finesse
India has displayed in the face of repeated Pakistan-linked acts of terrorism on its soil is one of the few positive factors in the Pakistan-Afghanistan equation.
But the US alliance and the Indian dimension are not the primary reasons Australia must become more involved in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Instead, it is because these two nations represent, along with the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, the most important strategic issue in the world and vitally affect our interests.
Pakistan is on the road to becoming a failed state
. This is a development of transcendent importance. For Pakistan is the first potential failed state to possess dozens of nuclear weapons.
It has always seemed that the road to success in Afghanistan had to pass through Pakistan. While ever the Afghan Taliban forces had a safe haven in the Pashtun tribal areas of Pakistan, they could not be defeated in Afghanistan, no matter how brilliant or well resourced any counter-insurgency strategy was.
However, now the reverse is also clearly the case. The West cannot preserve its essential interests in Pakistan if it experiences complete failure in Afghanistan.
This is because of the Talibanisation of significant areas of Pakistan.
This is an exceptionally complex process that involves not only religious and political extremism, but the cult of violence and the extraordinary power of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and the money it generates for the Taliban. According to Michael Beadon, a former CIA officer who worked on Afghanistan, poppy cultivation accounted for 53 per cent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product in 2008. It was worth nearly $US8 billion and made up 90 per cent of the world's illegal heroin production.
Obama is deeply personally committed to the struggle in Afghanistan and he is sensibly willing to try anything that might work. Despite the profligacy of the US economic stimulus packages, one of the biggest problems is that the global financial crisis is likely to impose severe budgetary restrictions on the US, especially in terms of overseas aid, which never has a strong constituency in Congress, least of all at a time of high unemployment at home.
Obama has appointed the veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke as his special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has said that the two countries in effect are one problem.
In some ways the appalling unravelling of Afghanistan bears out a central analytical judgment that Rudd made early in the Iraq war. That was that the coalition of the willing neglected to follow through in Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban, instead focusing all resources on Iraq. Rudd can claim the grim satisfaction of having rightly criticised the Howard government for completely ignoring Afghanistan for a number of years after the fall of theTaliban.
This coalition delinquency is the theme of Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid's riveting book Descent into Chaos. He argues that it was US and other coalition allies' effective abandonment of Afghanistan after the Taliban were deposed that convinced the then Pakistani dictator, Pervez Musharraf, that the West was not serious about stabilising Afghanistan. Instead, he concluded he needed to keep his own investment in the Taliban alive to protect Pakistan's national interests. This was a fatal miscalculation by Musharraf and I don't think the US abandonment absolves him of political and moral responsibility for the debacle he oversaw, but it is hard to argue with Rashid's general thesis.
According to Steve Coll, a US journalist with impeccable South Asia and Washington security sources, Musharraf finally began to move the Pakistani army away from sponsoring jihadist groups, but as his own political position deteriorated last year, he either switched back or lost control of his military, which is certainly back in bed with some of the jihadis. Indeed Coll even suggests that the Mumbai terrorist outrage last year may have been the Pakistani military's way of exploding peace talks between New Delhi and the ineffectual civilian Government of President Asif Zardari in Islamabad.
So, where to now?
The West, including Australia, must do two things. Whatever the perfidy of the Pakistan Government, and it is considerable, the West must move to shore up the capacity of the Pakistani state. This means more aid and essentially ensuring that the Pakistani heartland of the Punjab and Sind is secured, while perhaps making entirely different arrangements in the tribal areas.
In Afghanistan, a new effort at development assistance must go into northern Afghanistan, which is ethnically remote from the Taliban-prone south. Reward the north. Make it Afghanistan's Kurdistan.
In the Pashtun south, talking to some of the less ideological Taliban in an effort to divide them from the forces that can never be reconciled makes perfect sense.
Whatever happens, there will need to be more Western soldiers to provide minimum security. That surely includes more Australians.
Aussie surge to support Afghans | The Australian
Rudd is also determined to create with India an equivalent range and depth of strategic, economic and political consultations as Canberra has with China. Because India, unlike China, is a democracy and a de facto strategic ally of the US, the potential is there to go much further.
Rudd planned to visit New Delhi earlier this year to see the redoubtable Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but the trip was frustrated by the urgent need for Singh to undergo heart
surgery.Rudd should persist in this effort, however. Apart from India's intrinsic importance, it is critical to the Pakistan-Afghanistan equation. The restraint, maturity and diplomatic finesse
India has displayed in the face of repeated Pakistan-linked acts of terrorism on its soil is one of the few positive factors in the Pakistan-Afghanistan equation.But the US alliance and the Indian dimension are not the primary reasons Australia must become more involved in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Instead, it is because these two nations represent, along with the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, the most important strategic issue in the world and vitally affect our interests.
Pakistan is on the road to becoming a failed state
. This is a development of transcendent importance. For Pakistan is the first potential failed state to possess dozens of nuclear weapons.It has always seemed that the road to success in Afghanistan had to pass through Pakistan. While ever the Afghan Taliban forces had a safe haven in the Pashtun tribal areas of Pakistan, they could not be defeated in Afghanistan, no matter how brilliant or well resourced any counter-insurgency strategy was.
However, now the reverse is also clearly the case. The West cannot preserve its essential interests in Pakistan if it experiences complete failure in Afghanistan.
This is because of the Talibanisation of significant areas of Pakistan.
This is an exceptionally complex process that involves not only religious and political extremism, but the cult of violence and the extraordinary power of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and the money it generates for the Taliban. According to Michael Beadon, a former CIA officer who worked on Afghanistan, poppy cultivation accounted for 53 per cent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product in 2008. It was worth nearly $US8 billion and made up 90 per cent of the world's illegal heroin production.
Obama is deeply personally committed to the struggle in Afghanistan and he is sensibly willing to try anything that might work. Despite the profligacy of the US economic stimulus packages, one of the biggest problems is that the global financial crisis is likely to impose severe budgetary restrictions on the US, especially in terms of overseas aid, which never has a strong constituency in Congress, least of all at a time of high unemployment at home.
Obama has appointed the veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke as his special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has said that the two countries in effect are one problem.
In some ways the appalling unravelling of Afghanistan bears out a central analytical judgment that Rudd made early in the Iraq war. That was that the coalition of the willing neglected to follow through in Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban, instead focusing all resources on Iraq. Rudd can claim the grim satisfaction of having rightly criticised the Howard government for completely ignoring Afghanistan for a number of years after the fall of theTaliban.
This coalition delinquency is the theme of Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid's riveting book Descent into Chaos. He argues that it was US and other coalition allies' effective abandonment of Afghanistan after the Taliban were deposed that convinced the then Pakistani dictator, Pervez Musharraf, that the West was not serious about stabilising Afghanistan. Instead, he concluded he needed to keep his own investment in the Taliban alive to protect Pakistan's national interests. This was a fatal miscalculation by Musharraf and I don't think the US abandonment absolves him of political and moral responsibility for the debacle he oversaw, but it is hard to argue with Rashid's general thesis.
According to Steve Coll, a US journalist with impeccable South Asia and Washington security sources, Musharraf finally began to move the Pakistani army away from sponsoring jihadist groups, but as his own political position deteriorated last year, he either switched back or lost control of his military, which is certainly back in bed with some of the jihadis. Indeed Coll even suggests that the Mumbai terrorist outrage last year may have been the Pakistani military's way of exploding peace talks between New Delhi and the ineffectual civilian Government of President Asif Zardari in Islamabad.
So, where to now?
The West, including Australia, must do two things. Whatever the perfidy of the Pakistan Government, and it is considerable, the West must move to shore up the capacity of the Pakistani state. This means more aid and essentially ensuring that the Pakistani heartland of the Punjab and Sind is secured, while perhaps making entirely different arrangements in the tribal areas.
In Afghanistan, a new effort at development assistance must go into northern Afghanistan, which is ethnically remote from the Taliban-prone south. Reward the north. Make it Afghanistan's Kurdistan.
In the Pashtun south, talking to some of the less ideological Taliban in an effort to divide them from the forces that can never be reconciled makes perfect sense.
Whatever happens, there will need to be more Western soldiers to provide minimum security. That surely includes more Australians.
Aussie surge to support Afghans | The Australian
