The Pakistani Solution
“You want Afghanistan — you've got Afghanistan. Congratulations!”

October 17, 2001 2:55 p.m.

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.