A war that needs a definition of victory

By Philip Stephens

The question that western donors to Afghanistan might have asked themselves at this week’s Paris conference was an obvious one: why are we there? In the event it was easier to write the cheques. Winning in Afghanistan is perhaps the most consistent mantra of western security policy. As long, that is, as no one defines what is meant by winning.

President Hamid Karzai knows what he wants: another $50bn (€32bn, £26bn) in foreign development assistance to create something resembling a modern state. He will not get that much, not least because it is beyond the capacity of his government to spend it honestly. The money, though, will keep flowing. The west sees no other choice.

Afghanistan is the good war – a conflict fought in self-defence and one, unlike Iraq, blessed from the outset by the international community. No dodgy intelligence here. Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for the coming US presidential election promising to pull out US troops from Iraq. He wants a bigger effort in Afghanistan.

Mr Obama is not alone. I have given up counting how often in recent months I have heard politicians and policymakers, leftwing and rightwing, Americans and Europeans, say the west cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan. I am still unsure as to what constitutes winning. So, I think, are they.

You catch the confusion in public statements and interviews as well as private conversations. The west is there to defeat the Taliban, one European leader will say. Nato is defending the elected government of Mr Karzai, another will offer. The international community is helping to build democracy in the Muslim world, a foreign ministry expert will add.

Al-Qaeda, hiding out in the frontier badlands of Pakistan, must be denied the bases that allowed it to attack New York and Washington: this is an objective that Mr Obama can sign up to every bit as much as President George W. Bush. The west, though, also says it is safeguarding the rights of women: girls are back at school, women assured a role in politics.

Then, of course, there are drugs. There was a big fuss this week about the successful seizure of a cache of cannabis worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A drop in the ocean. Afghanistan’s opium crop supplies 90 per cent of global heroin demand. It also finances the Taliban. Western self-interest does not end there. Millions of Afghanis have returned home since 2002, easing immigration pressures in Europe.

When the questioning gets tough, the fall-back is as much about the west as about Afghanistan. The Nato alliance must be re-engineered to face new threats: cross-border terrorism, the proliferation of unconventional weapons, failing states. Afghanistan is the test. Failure would spell the beginning of the end for the world’s foremost military compact.

There is nothing ignoble about these aims. The strategic significance of Afghanistan is obvious enough. As the west discovered during the 1990s, benign neglect is not an option. Yet while governments are sincere about the cost of defeat, they are unwilling to invest enough to win. The fragmentation of effort holds up a mirror to confusion about objectives.

I find it curious that western military commanders cite the Taliban’s increasing resort to suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices as evidence of impending victory. Another way of looking at the insurgents’ shift in tactics is to say they are adept at adapting to circumstances. This week a suicide bomber took to 100 the toll of British fatalities in the conflict.

That said, things are better than they were. A year or so ago it seemed that vast tracts of the country might well slide back into the hands of Taliban fighters. Nato forces have now pushed them back from their strongholds and forced an effective military stalemate in the south.

The military points to other advances. France’s willingness to commit more troops to Afghanistan and Italy’s to lift the caveats on deployment of its forces have eased, for the time being, some of the tensions within Nato. Successful US strikes against al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan have greatly inhibited its offensive capabilities.

All this may be true, but in candid moments diplomats and military commanders will admit that these are tactical rather than strategic gains. The bigger picture is one of a government whose writ extends barely beyond Kabul, of competing warlords and high-level corruption, and of conflicting tribal loyalties.

The inadequacies of the west’s security and development effort have been well documented. The military still lacks vital equipment as well as boots on the ground. Can it really be true that Europe has no more helicopters? Reconstruction projects are divided between legions of national and multilateral aid agencies; much of the funding goes to foreign consultants.

The latest spat between Washington and Islamabad – over the killing of Pakistani soldiers during hot pursuit operations against the Taliban – was a reminder that a coherent strategy also demands the co-operation of Afghanistan’s neighbours.

In recent years America and its allies have had a policy towards Pakistan centred almost entirely around President Pervez Musharraf – a Musharraf policy, I have heard it called. They need a Pakistan policy. Six years ago Iran was an ally against the Taliban. Now it seeks to destabilise western forces. I recently heard a senior European diplomat ask, rhetorically: when did a government defeat an insurgency without control of its own borders?

Things can be fixed, albeit some more easily than others. If Nato, the United Nations and the European Union and the rest cannot better co-ordinate their efforts, they deserve to lose. A new president in the White House will have the opportunity to recast the US relationship with Pakistan and, hopefully, with Iran.

A less ideological US administration might also accept that it is impossible to kill every Taliban fighter. Some will have to be won over. Europe in such circumstances might be shamed into contributing more troops to the vital task of building security.

All this, though, is irrelevant unless there is agreement on what constitutes winning. It should not be so hard. Afghanistan is not about to become a shiny new democracy. Any political system must pay its respects to history, geography and culture. The ambition should be for an Afghan government strong enough to defend the country’s borders and to deny havens to terrorists, and sufficiently honest and pluralist to guarantee fundamental rights. That should be the aim of the international effort.