Daniel Korski

In Afghanistan, more of the same won’t do

Gordon Brown says Britain must not walk away from NATO’s Afghan mission. Yet 73 percent of Britons told YouGov that they want British troops withdrawn. Even more probably think they will fail even if they are allowed to stay on.

Yet what to do if you believe, like I do, that the allies cannot simply withdraw without creating a catalytic effect on worldwide Islamist extremism and a regional vortex of violence, which will end in sectarian strife, refugee flows, President Karzai’s toppling, Pakistan’s further destabilisation and irreparable damage to NATO?

One last heave, won’t do. Clever initiative, like my own idea of creating an ANA Army Corps of Engineers, will take too long to make an impact. With Richard Holbrooke sidelined, Kai Eide seen by many as discredited, and Stanley McChrystal powerless to influence his boss, making Hamid Karzai to do anything different, let alone take on corruption, will be tough.

President Karzai is like the scorpion who hitches a ride on the tortoise’ back in Aesops’s fable. Though everyone will drown if he misbehaves, he cannot but condone corruption — it is in his nature, in the nature of the way he has and must govern to survive. So expect little real change.

In developing a new strategy, three things have to be acknowledged. First, what started out as insurgency has turned into an insurrection, which may be spearheaded by Mullah Omar’s Taliban, but has now drawn a range of powerbrokers and criminals into its loosely organised ranks. Second, the insurgency draws its strength and cohesion in part from fighting outsiders whether they are kufir, unbelievers, like NATO’s soldiers or President Karzai’s rapacious henchmen. Sure, ideology plays a role. So does money, which is used to rent insurgents. But the us-against-them narrative is a unifying glue.

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