By RAY BONNER
Published: January 16, 2009
One lesson from Vietnam was that the United States should not go to war without broad public support. One lesson from Iraq might be that we should not go to war without a vigorous public debate in which an administrations claims are carefully examined and challenged. Yet we are on the verge of significantly expanding the war in Afghanistan, which will inevitably affect Pakistan as well. Unfortunately, there has been little or no debate about President-elect Barack Obamas plan to send in more troops.
The pros and cons of continuing or escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be gleaned from two recent books, The Search for Al Qaeda, by Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst and adviser to three presidents, and The Duel, by the Pakistani writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali. One thing they agree on and which was underscored by the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai is that Pakistan is going to be at the forefront of foreign policy concerns for the Obama administration.
Its hard to get more apocalyptic than Riedel. Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world today, where every nightmare of the 21st century terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the danger of nuclear war, dictatorship, poverty and drugs come together in one place. It is, he adds, the country most critical to the development and survival of Al Qaeda.
The importance Ali attaches to Pakistan can be found in his subtitle: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power. The United States thinks it needs Pakistan now, he says, in order to fight Al Qaeda and the insurgents who are carrying out attacks on the NATO troops in Afghanistan (a recent attack on a 100-* vehicle convoy was launched from Peshawar), just as it needed Pakistan as a base for fighting the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The two men also agree that the threat presented by Al Qaeda has been exaggerated. Its importance in the general scheme of things is greatly overstated by the West, Ali writes. It unleashes sporadic terror attacks and kills innocents, but it does not pose any serious threat to U.S. power. Although Riedel calls Al Qaeda the first truly global terrorist organization in history, he also says that it does not have a mass following in the Muslim world and that it is not on the verge of taking over even a single Muslim country.
Where the authors part company is over what to do now. Expand NATO *forces in Afghanistan, Riedel says. Withdraw all NATO forces from Afghanistan, Ali *counters.
Riedel manages to distill the essence of Al Qaeda in just 150 pages. Among other things, he notes that the Islamic fundamentalists do not hate Americas values, only its policies. For Al Qaeda theorists like Ayman al-Zawahiri, the goal of the West today is virtually identical to that of the original Crusades a thousand years ago, which is to dominate the Islamic world. But Riedels analysis creates something of a problem for him. He acknowledges that enlarging the war in Afghanistan is exactly what Al Qaeda wants, just as it wants the conflict in Iraq to continue. In its view, the bleeding wars offer the best opportunity to defeat the United States.
Alis book is more uneven than Riedels. He argues that Afghans recoil against the presence of foreigners and that even Afghans who have no truck with the Taliban will support Islamic fundamentalists over NATO. But Alis writing ranges from the poetic to polemical left-wing rant, and his detailed history of Pakistan will be hard for a non-Pakistani reader to follow. That said, his discussion of Afghanistan is highly valuable because of the questions it raises.
If the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, would that present a security threat to the United States? What if the Taliban were in power but did not allow Al Qaeda to operate in their country? (Both books make clear that they are not natural allies.) And what about the ill treatment of women? Liberating the women of Afghanistan was a justification that Cherie Blair and Laura Bush gave when the war was launched in 2001. Had this been true, Ali says sarcastically, the American invasion of Afghanistan would have been a path-breaking conflict: the first imperial war in human history to liberate women.
Ali and Riedel agree that the United States wants and needs a stable and democratic Pakistan and Afghanistan. Its called nation building. This is a laudable goal, of course, but is it achievable? Not, they say, unless the United States is prepared for a lengthy commitment. It cannot abandon the project halfway through as it did with Afghanistan and Pakistan after the Soviets were routed.
America may have succeeded in nation-building in Germany and Japan after World War II, but the task in Afghanistan and Pakistan is herculean, if not Sisyphean. Ali describes Pakistan as a dysfunctional state, adding that it has been for almost four decades. Predictably, given his left-wing views, he says the United States bears direct responsibility. At the same time, he notes that Pakistans elite and political leaders, past and present, have done almost nothing for the countrys poor. Almost a third of the population live below the poverty level. The educational system is appalling, which often means that parents send their children to madrasas, where they are indoctrinated by extremist clerics. Corruption, he says, envelops Pakistan like a sheet of water.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with one of the lowest literacy rates. It is riven by ethnic divisions that make Iraq look like a rainbow coalition just over half are Pashtuns (including the Taliban), about a quarter are Tajiks, with Uzbeks and Hazaras making up most of the rest. Warlords have led them all. These groups fight over control of the drug trade as much as they do over religion.
After seven years and billions of dollars in aid, Ali argues, nation-building in Afghanistan has produced a puppet president dependent for his survival on foreign mercenaries Alis language for NATO troops a corrupt and abusive police force, a nonfunctioning judiciary, a burgeoning criminal layer and a deepening social and economic crisis. Even allowing for hyperbole, the picture in Afghanistan is not pretty. It beggars belief to argue that more of the same will be the answer to Afghanistans problems, he writes.
Riedel, on the other hand, wants an enhanced American commitment to Afghanistan on many fronts military, political and economic. And while urging NATO to remain, he also calls for bringing in troops from Muslim countries, especially Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
Which man is right, which one wrong? Whatever the case, their books are a starting point for a much-needed debate.
Ray Bonner is a Times correspondent who writes frequently on Central Asia
