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 nstead
of trying ourselves to cobble together a loya jirga somewhere
in Afghanistan to hammer out the political future of the country,
we should consider an easier approach. Maybe we should just say
to the Pakistanis: "You want Afghanistan — you've got
Afghanistan. Congratulations!"
I don't know
whether it is one of Don Rumsfeld's rules, but it probably should
be: If you have a problem, delegate it. The job of wrestling with
all of Afghanistan's warring factions would seem perfect make-work
for the Pakistanis, while we get about the business of destroying
the Taliban military and al Qaeda.
There are many
advantages to this approach. First of all, it could be played as
a great U.S. concession to Pakistani sensitivities, a nice reward
for Pakistan's good behavior, a crucial recognition of Pakistan's
security needs. We could send a bottle of champagne to President
Musharraf along with this offer.
Another advantage
is that the Pakistanis understand the area better than we do —
it's their equivalent of Latin America. The Pakistanis, after all,
already have impressive experience in meddling in Afghani politics,
since it's what they have been doing for 15 years or so.
The other important
benefit of this approach is that there would be someone we can hold
accountable if things go wrong in Afghanistan. There would be an
address to which we could send our complaints rather than trying
to chase down the latest misbehaving Afghani warlord.
Could we trust
the Pakistanis with such a task? Not really — we would have
to watch them very closely. And it might be better to consider this
proposal less as an offer to run Afghanistan, than a frank demand
— do a decent job of it, or else. In general, however, Musharraf's
recent firing of Taliban-allied security officers was a sign that
he is anxious to play ball.
Our standards
needn't be particularly high for the Pakistani-installed regime:
It just couldn't be a radical Muslim one, it would have to include
a fairly broad range of Afghan ethnicities (including elements of
the Northern Alliance), and would have to provide a wide berth and
orderly environment for U.S. military operations.
Otherwise,
we don't much care about the long-term fate of good government in
Afghanistan. Basically all that anyone in the region — the
Pakistanis, the Uzbeks, etc. — wants in Afghanistan is stability,
which is one reason that the Pakistanis turned to the Taliban in
the first place.
The biggest
objection to the arrangement would probably come from India, which
figures that a chaotic Afghanistan keeps Pakistan helpfully preoccupied.
In general, India is disturbed by our new relationship with Pakistan.
We will have to find some way to soothe its feelings
But at the
very least the Indians should be pleased at the purging of the more
radical elements of the Pakistani security service prompted by U.S.
pressure, and at the way we should be able to tamp down on Pakistan's
fostering of terrorism in the region.
This Pakistani
solution could still be very messy. It's going to be difficult to
bridge the gap from the Taliban to whatever the new government is.
But we can't afford to allow the Taliban to stay in power too much
longer under our attack, or our credibility and momentum —
in other words, our power — begins to diminish in the region.
And then it
could become more difficult to force countries in the region to
do things that we want — like run Afghanistan.
What
Planet is He On?
My colleague Ramesh Ponnuru points out one of the more outrageous
paragraphs from Brent Scowcroft's Washington Post op-ed
yesterday. Scowcroft still can't admit that he got the end of the
Gulf War wrong:
It's interesting
to speculate, in the light of our current circumstances, how the
situation might now be different had we added occupation of Iraq
and removal of Saddam Hussein to those objectives. Our Arab allies,
refusing to countenance an invasion of an Arab colleague, would
have deserted us, creating an atmosphere of hostility to the United
States in the region.
Sure glad that
didn't happen.
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