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Where lies the real enemy in Afghanistan ?
Patrick Porter
May 7, 2012
For 10 years, Australia has been wading deeper into an uncertain mire.
THE conflict in Afghanistan has been Australia's longest war. Measured in time and complexity - if not in blood - it has been one of the hardest. But who or what have we been fighting?
According to Julia Gillard, it has been a struggle against the Taliban, an Afghan theocratic movement that gave haven to terrorists. The problem, allegedly, is the Islamist extremism that found a host in the world's poorest land. The solution is to empower this broken nation to govern and secure itself.
For 10 years we have tried to combat poverty, corruption and state failure by birthing a strong Afghan government. Not an easy task in a country hard to govern from the centre, and where our favoured regime is an unloved kleptocracy.
As Canberra looks to extricate Australia from this long hard slog, it declares victory of sorts, presenting its phased withdrawal as a successful handover to indigenous security forces.
But Afghanistan is not the centre of this war. This is primarily a war over - and against - Pakistan.
Announcing Australia's accelerated withdrawal, Gillard identified Pakistan as ''critical to Afghanistan's stability''. Diplomatically, she defined this in terms of Pakistan being a strategic partner.
Yet the picture is darker than that. The brutal truth is that for the past decade, the war has been difficult precisely because we have been entangled in a proxy war against Pakistan. Or rather, our strongest adversary has been a powerful institution within that country, the Inter-Service Intelligence Agency.
The most obvious symptom of this war is the combat in Pakistan. The US takes the war deep into Pakistan's sovereign territory with a killing program via drone strikes and special operations, often without asking for a hunting licence. And, through its proxies in Afghanistan, Pakistan returns fire.
And we cannot understand the conflict without grasping its central logic: that Pakistan simultaneously feeds and fights the Islamist beast.
Through its army, Pakistan has been at the sharp end in fighting insurgents. But its security services have been instrumental in supporting, funding and giving sanctuary to those same adversaries.
When the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, it left behind armed mujahideen, seasoned militants created with Western backing. It has been turbulent there ever since. After 9/11, the West struck hard into the region. By doing so, it unwittingly stepped into the complex politics of that world.
Pakistan is a nervous state. It faces a large, nuclear and increasingly wealthy adversary to its east. It fears being encircled by the creation of an Indian client state in Kabul to its west. It fights proxy wars against India in the contested territory of Kashmir. It has its own religious militants, which Islamabad accommodates and uses as a tool of policy, yet which also threaten it.
It walks a tightrope in its relations with the US, receiving millions of dollars in foreign aid and providing logistical and fighting support and in hunting al-Qaeda, while also giving sanctuary and support in its tribal belt to Taliban leaders and allies.
Thanks to Pakistan, this war became internationalised from early on.
Thus our war is one of contradictions. The more we strive to stabilise and strengthen Afghanistan, the more this clashes with Pakistan's determination to deny India a strong ally, and the more Pakistan balances against it.
''Fixing'' Afghanistan would entail not only costly nation building, but somehow resolving an ongoing struggle between other parties.
Projecting power has ironic results. Just to operate there, we rely on the logistical supply lines from Karachi through Pakistan. Yet by paying double-dealing security firms to protect transport, we unwittingly inject cash into the insurgency.
The reality of allies-as-spoilers is uncomfortable. But hypocrisy, and hedging, is the stuff of politics. The logic of helping and hindering allies, or using some-time enemies also as tools, is an old one that those great experts in survival, the Byzantine emperors, would recognise.
It is familiar in wars waged in others' backyards, especially in countries where neighbouring states perceive a conflicting interest.
This matters because we will try to learn lessons from Afghanistan.
Sympathisers regard Afghanistan as a ''good war'' badly waged. They complain that with the Taliban overthrown, the US-led coalition missed opportunities in that golden hour to invest and build, to get nation-building right. The task was then neglected because of the diversion in Iraq. They emphasise things we could control.
We are used to interpreting problems in terms of our behaviour - where to fight, how to fight, who to support - with the enemy's active role as a sideshow. But Afghanistan is hard not only because of errors of design or execution. It is hard because other players want us to fail, and flex their muscles accordingly.
We wanted the war in Afghanistan to be about fighting one enemy within those borders. But we got an aggregation of other conflicts that spilled across borders, beyond our power to resolve.
This may be the hardest lesson of all. Often the wars we want are not the ones we get.
Patrick Porter
May 7, 2012
For 10 years, Australia has been wading deeper into an uncertain mire.
THE conflict in Afghanistan has been Australia's longest war. Measured in time and complexity - if not in blood - it has been one of the hardest. But who or what have we been fighting?
According to Julia Gillard, it has been a struggle against the Taliban, an Afghan theocratic movement that gave haven to terrorists. The problem, allegedly, is the Islamist extremism that found a host in the world's poorest land. The solution is to empower this broken nation to govern and secure itself.
For 10 years we have tried to combat poverty, corruption and state failure by birthing a strong Afghan government. Not an easy task in a country hard to govern from the centre, and where our favoured regime is an unloved kleptocracy.
As Canberra looks to extricate Australia from this long hard slog, it declares victory of sorts, presenting its phased withdrawal as a successful handover to indigenous security forces.
But Afghanistan is not the centre of this war. This is primarily a war over - and against - Pakistan.
Announcing Australia's accelerated withdrawal, Gillard identified Pakistan as ''critical to Afghanistan's stability''. Diplomatically, she defined this in terms of Pakistan being a strategic partner.
Yet the picture is darker than that. The brutal truth is that for the past decade, the war has been difficult precisely because we have been entangled in a proxy war against Pakistan. Or rather, our strongest adversary has been a powerful institution within that country, the Inter-Service Intelligence Agency.
The most obvious symptom of this war is the combat in Pakistan. The US takes the war deep into Pakistan's sovereign territory with a killing program via drone strikes and special operations, often without asking for a hunting licence. And, through its proxies in Afghanistan, Pakistan returns fire.
And we cannot understand the conflict without grasping its central logic: that Pakistan simultaneously feeds and fights the Islamist beast.
Through its army, Pakistan has been at the sharp end in fighting insurgents. But its security services have been instrumental in supporting, funding and giving sanctuary to those same adversaries.
When the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, it left behind armed mujahideen, seasoned militants created with Western backing. It has been turbulent there ever since. After 9/11, the West struck hard into the region. By doing so, it unwittingly stepped into the complex politics of that world.
Pakistan is a nervous state. It faces a large, nuclear and increasingly wealthy adversary to its east. It fears being encircled by the creation of an Indian client state in Kabul to its west. It fights proxy wars against India in the contested territory of Kashmir. It has its own religious militants, which Islamabad accommodates and uses as a tool of policy, yet which also threaten it.
It walks a tightrope in its relations with the US, receiving millions of dollars in foreign aid and providing logistical and fighting support and in hunting al-Qaeda, while also giving sanctuary and support in its tribal belt to Taliban leaders and allies.
Thanks to Pakistan, this war became internationalised from early on.
Thus our war is one of contradictions. The more we strive to stabilise and strengthen Afghanistan, the more this clashes with Pakistan's determination to deny India a strong ally, and the more Pakistan balances against it.
''Fixing'' Afghanistan would entail not only costly nation building, but somehow resolving an ongoing struggle between other parties.
Projecting power has ironic results. Just to operate there, we rely on the logistical supply lines from Karachi through Pakistan. Yet by paying double-dealing security firms to protect transport, we unwittingly inject cash into the insurgency.
The reality of allies-as-spoilers is uncomfortable. But hypocrisy, and hedging, is the stuff of politics. The logic of helping and hindering allies, or using some-time enemies also as tools, is an old one that those great experts in survival, the Byzantine emperors, would recognise.
It is familiar in wars waged in others' backyards, especially in countries where neighbouring states perceive a conflicting interest.
This matters because we will try to learn lessons from Afghanistan.
Sympathisers regard Afghanistan as a ''good war'' badly waged. They complain that with the Taliban overthrown, the US-led coalition missed opportunities in that golden hour to invest and build, to get nation-building right. The task was then neglected because of the diversion in Iraq. They emphasise things we could control.
We are used to interpreting problems in terms of our behaviour - where to fight, how to fight, who to support - with the enemy's active role as a sideshow. But Afghanistan is hard not only because of errors of design or execution. It is hard because other players want us to fail, and flex their muscles accordingly.
We wanted the war in Afghanistan to be about fighting one enemy within those borders. But we got an aggregation of other conflicts that spilled across borders, beyond our power to resolve.
This may be the hardest lesson of all. Often the wars we want are not the ones we get.
