Training | 2009.11.22
A dream, not an exit plan | Peter Preston
Hopes of a strong Afghan army are unrealistic. Just look at the efforts of one devious ruler in Pakistan
It is the old chicken and egg question, posed in its most recent incarnation by that Cesare Borgia of Pakistani military dictators, Zia ul-Haq . Which comes first, the nation or the "national army"? And Barack Obama, not to mention a suddenly eloquent Gordon Brown, had better find a convincing answer pretty damned quickly. You can\'t have an Afghanistan exit strategy if there is no exit (or strategy).
Come back to the Pakistan of the 70s and 80s, when General Zia, having disposed of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had to give his illicit regime the sheen of respectability – which meant transforming the army. It couldn\'t be the force of yesteryear, the lofty, middle-class voice of Punjabi officers leading faithful Punjabi troops into battle. Things needed to be broader-based: to attract more Pashtun recruits from the North-West Frontier, to shed any leftover Brit officer-class image, to swell ranks from dusty villages and townships. There was an imperative to become – yes! – a more truly "national" force, fit for purpose against Indian threats or Red Army menace. Fatally, too, that force had to speak for Islam, because what else could a military Muslim "pure state" talk about?
So everything went to hell on a Peshawar handcart. Afghan refugees in tent cities on the road to the Khyber Pass became the first Taliban. Intelligence officers and Osama bin Laden, using American and Saudi cash, fuelled the ragtag militias who would humble the Soviet Union. And, for decades, Pakistan\'s army refused to confront the cancer it had helped grow. Terrorist groups could spread virtually unchecked.
Zia was too devious by half, of course. He changed the whole nature of Pakistan\'s military might. The army was not what it was; it was tricky, fragmented, conniving. Which is where today\'s Kabul comes in. This is the fourth time in its history that somebody has tried to build a national army for Afghanistan. In between those ephemeral efforts, factions and warlords have raised militias and run their own patches. Afghanistan has not pulled together. It has fallen apart. And if you consider a wreck of a country made up of Pashto, Tajik, Dari and Uzbek speakers (among others) surrounded by lands where those tongues predominate, you see the problem. If it doesn\'t fall apart, someone will always give it a tug.
So: the Afghan army has about 100,000 operational fighters. The Oval Office would like at least to triple that before it calls the boys home. Gordon Brown, heartened by the progress of Nato\'s trainers, wants to build on this at provincial and district levels (cutting President Karzai out of the action). But hang on a moment. Nobody doubts that many Afghans are warriors improved by training. Nobody doubts that what matters on the ground is essentially local, critically affected by race, allegiances, languages, geography. The problem is that, without a respected president and government to call the shots, there can\'t be a truly national army – merely an agglomeration of brigade headquarters paying lip service to a discredited centre, and basically doing their own thing.
Afghans have been here before. It\'s fragmentation as usual. And – see Zia\'s example of an army changed ethnically and politically by recruiting policies – the 350,000 troops the Pentagon wants to leave behind will bear scant relationship to the 100,000 in place now, especially if Brown\'s hopes of binding Taliban factions into the mix get under way.
Afghanistan isn\'t even Iraq. Nationhood is mist-shrouded, a bloody trail of disappointment. Consider how politics changed the Islamabad army; then think what may happen here. A united national military, able to take the strain of western withdrawal? It\'s a dream, not a solution. If General Zia were around today, he might – looking back with rueful experience – whisper that to his fair-weather friends in the west.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]15/afghanistan-army-exit-dream
