Through Scheuer’s Eyes

Having been here less than a week, I’m hardly fully attuned to the nuances of Afghan politics. But if the American invasion of this country is really just an exercise in “Imperial Hubris,” as Anonymous author and former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer would have it, I confess that I’m entirely fooled. Scheuer’s “Seven Pillars of Truth about Afghanistan” would seem almost completely false. Let’s take them one by one:

Pillar One: “Minorities can rule in Kabul, but not for long.” The first sin of Bush administration policy, so Scheuer’s argument goes, was to ally itself with the Northern Alliance and thereby threaten the dominance of the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and its traditional rulers. But this analysis paints such an ironclad and deterministic picture of Afghan ethnic and tribal politics that it cannot imagine anything other than eternal conflict. “Unless U.S.-led foreign forces are massively increased and prepared to kill liberally and remain in Afghanistan permanently,” he writes, “the current Afghan regime [of President Hamid Karzai] cannot survive.”

While the ultimate proof or disproof of this assertion lies far in the future, the data so far don’t seem to bear it out, to say the least. American forces in Afghanistan number about 18,000, and probably fewer than half are in combat units; there’s not a whole lot of killing going on, either by us or the enemy. President Karzai has rather cleverly maneuvered the Tajiks and Uzbeks of the Northern Alliance into a secondary role; indeed, with Taliban reconciliation–really, the final collapse of the Taliban and the reintegration of all but its ringleaders–in the offing, the Pashtun majority is quite happy with the government. It’s true that minorities aren’t ruling now, but Afghan ethnic and tribal identities are proving to be complex affairs and a strength of Afghanistan’s nascent democracy–call it federalism.

Pillar Two: “The Afghans who matter are Muslim tribal xenophobes.” No one should doubt that Afghans are a very religious sort, that their social and political life is more local than national, and that they’re suspicious of outsiders. Further, given that Afghanistan has been yanked apart by proxy wars between the United States, the Soviet Union, Pakistan, Iran, and others, they’ve got plenty of reason to believe that foreigners might not necessarily have their best interests at heart.

Yet at the same time, there is a big difference between traditional and conservative Afghan religious practice and radical Islam of either the Iranian or al Qaeda variety. Indeed, these extreme practices have as many politically revolutionary implications as Western-style secular democracy. Scheuer’s contention that, “[a]s of January 2004, U.S. forces in Afghanistan face a slowly accelerating shift that will end in Afghans of all ethnic groups fighting to evict U.S.-led forces,” certainly hasn’t been borne out as of January 2005.

Moreover, the trend lines appear to be generally positive. Perhaps the springtime will bring an escalation of attacks, but the failure to disrupt the recent presidential elections is an important measure of Taliban, al Qaeda, and warlord weakness. If they’d been able to do something, they would have. There is as at least as much evidence to indicate that the “accelerating shift” here is a positive one.

Pillar Three: “Afghans cannot be bought.” They probably can’t be bought permanently, but they can be bribed fairly regularly and repeatedly. Afghan officials, despite Karzai’s leadership, still merit their reputation for corruption.

It’s interesting to note what bribery and corruption is buying, however. It’s commonly thought that it’s necessary to pay a bribe to be accepted into the Afghan National Army, for example. While that’s hardly the ideal, it is an indicator of what the Afghan market values, and being an ANA soldier is a pretty good gig–you get paid regularly, live indoors, and enjoy the benefits of electricity and plumbing. Plus, the ANA is unquestionably an instrument and a symbol of an increasingly entrenched and powerful central authority.

Pillar Four: “Strong governments in Kabul cause war.” The real truth is that bad governments in Kabul, of which there have been many varieties, cause war.

It’s also a contradiction to lampoon President Karzai as simply “the mayor of Kabul–Scheuer can’t resist repeating this very tired line–and to complain about his imperial ambitions around the country. In fact, the genius of Karzai is to walk the tightrope between asserting central control and allowing local autonomy; he’s been brilliant at it. While it’s a danger that this genius is not transferable and the habits of balancing are far from institutionalized, there is, again, a reason to be optimistic. Checking and balancing is also something that Americans can appreciate.

As Scheuer himself observes, many of the recent wars in Afghanistan are in large part products of external meddling. The U.S. goal in Afghanistan ought to be to provide a protective cocoon, limiting the influence of Pakistan, Iran, and now Uzbekistan, so as to allow the stabilization of Afghan politics. Let’s see what good–or at least improved–government in Kabul might accomplish.

Pillar Five: “An international cockpit, not an insular backwater.” Afghanistan may indeed be an “international cockpit,” but it’s far from clear that it will be a cockpit for eternal great- and not-so-great power conflict. The “playing fields of Afghanistan” have been altered, quite possibly in a fundamental way, by the serious engagement of the United States since September 11.

To be sure, the refutation of Scheuer’s postulate depends on the long-term attention of America and our insistence on patient yet persistent progress in Afghanistan. But this is precisely the thinking of U.S. military strategists. They are fully aware of how Pakistan, Iran, and others continue to play off Afghan factions, supplying them with outside support that they are losing internally. But this game of outsiders is, in all measurable ways, stacked in favor of the United States. In fact, a good deal of the gains made by other powers here were during the 1990s–the decade of American neglect.

This is especially true of Pakistan; the charge of many Afghans–and it is a fair one–is that the United States has viewed Afghanistan through a Pakistani lens. It may be the case that the Bush administration, or at least some agencies, still makes this mistake. But it is more likely that U.S. policymakers and strategists are coming to view Pakistan in a different light, if not exactly through an Afghan lens.

Certainly in the Pentagon, the “problem of Pakistan” is now a primary concern, and not only because it is a nuclear state with a terrible record of proliferation. No doubt it will take some time to fashion a coherent regional strategy, one not only internally consistent but a key part of the larger U.S. engagement with the Islamic world; that is, along with reckoning with China, the central strategic task of the 21st century. But it would be an egregious error to assume that the future of South Asia must be like the past and that the United States is simply incapable of creating order out of violent chaos. Afghanistan could be the cockpit for a more decent international order in the region, and the base from which American influence spreads to areas long ignored.

Pillar Six: “Pakistan must have an Islamist, Pashtun-dominated Afghan regime.” What Pakistan must have, and the United States must have, may be two quite different things, especially since September 11. Pakistan’s narrow conception of its strategic interests, and its ability to convince Americans like Scheuer that these were both legitimate and compatible with our own, were in large measure the explanation for the Taliban.

It’s true that the government of General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan is–what else would you expect in this region–balancing internal concerns and the continued presence of Osama bin Laden, Afghan Mullah Omar, and a host of other radical Islamists against pressure from the United States, but what is most remarkable about the past three years is the degree to which he is willing to lean in our direction. This began almost immediately after September 11 and is accelerating even now; Pakistani soldiers are adjusting U.S. artillery fire from inside Afghanistan, for example.

Like everything else in the region, Pakistan’s strategy now must take account of the continued presence of the United States. What Pakistan truly needs is a secure border area, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan proper. Whether that’s achieved through an Islamist, Pashtun-dominated regime or something more moderate built under the protection of the United States must be a secondary issue. The latter is even probably preferable to Musharraf and the Pakistani officer corps.

Pillar Seven: “There will be an Islamist regime in Kabul.” Yes, there will. The real question is whether there will be a radical regime or a traditional and conservative regime.

Consider this fact: while the phenomenon of radical and revolutionary Islam is widespread and longstanding, what has made it truly dangerous in recent years is the infusion of Arab and particularly Saudi money and effort. Homegrown, Pashtun-flavored radicalism is a unique but local strain, a regional political movement less interested in the broader aims of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. They care less about Arabia than about Pakistan and Afghanistan.

By contrast, Arab militants have concentrated their efforts against the United States and its sponsorship of what will be, come January 30, a Shia-dominated government in the heart of the Arab world. In general, jihadists would love to defeat the infidels in Afghanistan–which was, in the form of the Taliban, their lone success in actually gaining power–but they now recognize, as does President Bush, that Iraq is the central front.

Scheuer quotes Mullah Omar as declaring, “[Osama] is not going to leave us now . . . .[He] will live with us and die with us.” Osama may still be joined with his Taliban buddies, but his ability to lead the broader radical movement is ebbing. He’s still a rock star, but his confinement in the tribal areas of Pakistan has meant that others, elsewhere, have come to the fore. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a danger to Iraqis and Americans in Iraq, but not to President Karzai, Afghans, or Americans here.

It’s by no means inevitable that the United States will succeed in helping the Afghans achieve political reform and pluralism, but it’s increasingly possible. We’re doing better here than in Iraq, but we’re making mistakes and there are still plenty of Afghans with various complaints. But if this is what imperial hubris looks like, hedge your bets before you wager your mortgage against it.

Tom Donnelly is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard.