The danger is not that revived Taliban forces will defeat NATO or U.S. forces on the battlefield; there is no chance of that. But if the Taliban’s resurgence and Afghans’ economic misery are not ended, a government capable of surviving if Western troops withdraw will never emerge in Afghanistan. And that means that the West will have to fight in Afghanistan indefinitely. Is that something the U.S. electorate will tolerate? The Taliban and Al Qaeda are betting not.
More troops and more money will not solve the problem. What’s also needed is imaginative thinking. To begin with, it is facile to treat Afghanistan as a geographical and economic island. The only hope of developing the country is to spur growth in its surrounding region. One way to do this is to create new transport links through Afghanistan from Central Asia to Pakistan and India. It is shameful that we have succeeded in rebuilding only one stretch of highway since toppling the Taliban. We ought to have finished a road network and to be well into the creation of a railway linking the South Asian and former Soviet rail systems, not least because by far the greater part of the track would traverse regions secure from Taliban attack.
A regional strategy should also involve a new approach to Iran. Up to now, the Bush administration has put massive pressure on Karzai’s government not to develop economic and other ties to Tehran. Yet, like it or not, Iran has influenced (indeed, often ruled) Afghanistan for some 2,500 years. It has the capacity to act as a spoiler, and has good reason to do so as the war of words between Washington and Tehran heats up. There is a basis for cooperation in Afghanistan, however, because key Iranian interests there are congruent with those of the United States–above all when it comes to fighting the heroin trade and preventing a return of the savagely anti-Shiite Taliban.
Within Afghanistan, we need a development program that brings tangible benefits to ordinary people. True, sustained programs to promote development are well-nigh impossible in areas–Helmand, Kandahar, Oruzgan, Zabol and Kunar provinces–where Taliban attacks are frequent. But we can pursue them far more robustly than we have in provinces, particularly in the north and west, where there is greater tranquility. Success there would create a “demonstration effect,” showing Taliban supporters the benefits they would receive by ending the violence, proving to ordinary Afghans that the United States and its allies are serious about lifting them out of poverty. Construction projects would also create jobs for migrant laborers from the Taliban provinces, who would send remittances home.
Construction is the key–not just for transport but for urban housing, and for basic rural infrastructure including schools, roads, medical clinics and sources of potable water. We will have to plan, and fund, this construction over decades if it is to be more than a Band-Aid solution. The role of international donors in building schools has been touted by the Bush administration and the Karzai government, and it is a worthy achievement. But generating large numbers of educated young males without prospects for decent employment is not only pointless, it is dangerous. As we have seen repeatedly, such graduates are ideal recruits for Islamist extremists.
With its budget deficits, inflated by bills from the war in Iraq, and with a substantial gap between the aid pledged by donors to Afghanistan and the funds actually received, the United States needs to do more with less–something that the cost overruns of projects in Iraq make all too clear. To economize, we need to employ, as much as possible, companies from the region. Indian and Turkish firms, in particular, have extensive experience with construction projects in the developing world. So do companies from the Middle East, and involving them in the business of rebuilding Afghanistan can create jobs and tap local expertise, showing in the process that America’s avowed policy of reaching out to the Islamic world consists of more than rhetoric.
Like it or not, the overwhelming majority of Afghans are conservative Muslims, and it is shortsighted to view economic development as a purely technical enterprise. For this same reason, part of the funds for building the Afghan economy should be earmarked for reconstructing the mosques and religious centers destroyed during the decades of war, particularly in major cultural and religious centers such as the western city of Herat.
These proposals will take money, time and imagination to work, and there are no guarantees of success. But quite apart from what we owe the Afghan people, we owe it to ourselves not to fail; as September 11 so cruelly demonstrated, we neglect Afghanistan at our peril.
