The 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) during its recent Chicago summit confirmed plans to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and to leave behind a training mission.
Plans for handing over command of all combat missions to Afghan security forces by the middle of 2013 were also ratified as Nato leaders declared that the transition process was irreversible.
This roadmap was initially agreed upon in an earlier Nato summit in 2010 and, according to its leadership, was on course. It essentially means putting Afghan forces in charge by mid-2013 for conducting all combat operations and ensuring security in the war-torn country. This would allow the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to gradually shift its focus from combat to support until the complete drawdown by December 2014.
For the weak Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai, the assurance given by the Nato leadership that it would not abandon Afghanistan even after the 130,000 foreign combat troops have pulled out was far more important.
The leaders of the 61 nations, including non-Nato members, at the two-day summit also began taking practical steps to show their commitment towards Afghanistan by pledging money for the training and upkeep of the Afghan security forces.
Though the Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said it wasn’t a pledging conference, some of the countries made public their funding commitments in response to the demand by Karzai for $4.1 billion a year to fund his forces.
However, France under its new socialist President Francois Hollande not only refused to back down from its recent decision to pull its 3,300 troops out of Afghanistan this year, a year ahead of schedule, but also showed reluctance to provide $200 million for the Afghan security forces.
There was concern that France’s unilateral move could prompt other countries to prematurely withdraw their forces from Afghanistan and jeopardise Nato’s transition plans.
Another important Nato decision that the Afghan government will find reassuring was to mutually work out the establishment of a new post-2014 mission of a different nature to train, advise and assist the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), including the elite special operations troops. Though the Nato leadership termed it as one of its non-combat missions, it was obvious that the western military alliance would be able to maintain physical presence in Afghanistan by undertaking this task beyond 2014 as the planning, trainers and resources for the mission would be provided by the US and its allies.
It is obvious that most of the Nato calculations post-2014 for Afghanistan are centred on the ANSF, whose strength has gradually increased to more than 300,000 and was recently praised by the Nato military commanders for performing well in tackling the Taliban suicide bombers who launched coordinated attacks in Kabul.
Conflicting views
The eventual ANSF strength has been a matter of conflicting views as the US wants it to be curtailed to 230,000 while the Afghan government reluctantly agreed to this figure after arguing that the force needed to be expanded in view of the challenge posed by the armed opponents backed by certain neighbouring countries.
One frequent observation about the ANSF has been that its strength has increased quantitatively but not qualitatively. There have been claims that the ANSF is now a more ethnically balanced, professionally led force and its rate of desertions has been cut down.
However, the real challenge for the force would be to operate independently and tackle the resurgent Taliban and the smaller militant group of former mujahideen leader Gulbaddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami once the Nato forces are gone.
Another challenge would be to curb the political ambitions of the ANSF generals because in the past Afghan military officers carried out coups in 1973 and 1978 or joined hands with scheming politicians and non-state armed groups to capture power.
With the focus of attention on the military aspects of the situation in Afghanistan, the political dimensions of the Afghan conflict have been generally neglected.
Though US President Barack Obama didn’t talk of victory in Afghanistan at the Chicago summit as the Nato no longer expected to defeat the Taliban after having failed to do so in the past 10 years, there wasn’t any mention of a political roadmap except the usual reference to engaging with the reconcilable sections of the armed opposition in peace talks.
The Nato goal now is to prevent the Taliban from capturing power and the Afghan government from collapsing. A long-term commitment by the US towards Afghanistan through its recent bilateral strategic partnership agreement with Kabul and also from the Nato platform were intended to send a message to the Taliban that they shouldn’t hope of waiting out the foreign forces and recapturing power.
Unfortunately for Afghanistan, the nascent peace process is going nowhere following the collapse of the Taliban talks with the US in Qatar and that of Hezb-i-Islami with the Afghan government. One of the major reasons for the armed opposition ending peace talks was the US-Afghan strategic peace agreement, which is believed to pave the way for permanent American military presence in Afghanistan.
The Nato summit reiterated faith in the West’s plans for Afghanistan, but there was no real input from its two most important neighbours, Pakistan and Iran, in shaping the Afghan endgame. Without their help, it won’t be easy to stabilise Afghanistan.
Rahimullah Yusufzai is a senior journalist based in Peshawar.
