Text of Dr Maliha Lodhi's testimony on Afghanistan in US Senate

[Naveed Yaseen]

Testimony, for the record by
Dr. Maleeha Lodhi
Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center, Former Pakistan Ambassador to the US and UK,
Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
On
The Impact of Afghanistan on Pakistan
1 October 2009

Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee, I am honored to appear before you today to provide a perspective from Pakistan, not as an official, but as someone who has had long experience both as a practitioner and writer on these important issues. I speak before this Committee as a Pakistani citizen not as a spokesperson for the government.
I welcome this debate and President Obama’s commitment to a comprehensive and careful re-assessment of US strategy in Afghanistan.

There is a famous line in Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland which says: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there”. In addressing the dire situation in which the US-led coalition finds itself in Afghanistan, it is vital to identify the strategic objectives and a realistic plan to achieve these.

What are the strategic objectives that the US wants to achieve? The core objective as President Obama stated in March 2009 is to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al-Qaeda" and protect the US homeland from terrorist attack. The question is whether to attain this objective, pursuing other goals are also necessary: defeating the Taliban, undertaking "nation building" and establishing a centralized state in Afghanistan.
The challenge is how to prevent Afghanistan and its border areas with Pakistan become a hub for terrorist networks that can threaten the region and the world.

Let me at the outset state that the choice cannot be between cut and run from Afghanistan and an open-ended military engagement. Both will destabilize the region further: neither will succeed in realizing Washington’s strategic goals.

Any effort to pull out precipitously from Afghanistan would repeat the epic strategic error of the 1990s when the US abandoned that country to the chaos that in turn nurtured Al-Qaeda. But open ended military escalation risks trapping the West, in a Vietnam style quagmire: a war without end and no guarantee of success.

It is wise for this Committee to consider the impact of any option on Pakistan. I wish this had also been done in 2001 and 1989.
Pakistan’s stability has been gravely undermined by three decades of conflict and strife in Afghanistan. The twin blowback from the Soviet invasion 30 years ago and the unintended consequences of the 2001 US military intervention has created unprecedented security, economic and social challenges for Pakistan and contributed significantly to its systemic crises.

Pakistan’s involvement in the long war to roll back the Russian occupation of Afghanistan bequeathed a witches brew of problems including militancy, religious extremism, proliferation of weapons and drugs, and a huge number of refugees, 2 million of whom remain in Pakistan. Their camps continue to add to the challenges facing Pakistan today.
The consequences of the 2001 intervention included fuelling further the forces of militancy in Pakistan’s tribal areas and producing ferment among the Pashtun tribes. The ramifications of installing a government in Kabul dominated by an ethnic minority were similarly deleterious. As the Afghan war was increasingly pushed across the border into Pakistan and Islamabad took action in its frontier regions, Islamic militants turned their guns on the Pakistani state and its security forces.

It is easy to understand in this backdrop how militancy on both sides of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is interconnected. But it is also distinct in origin, goals and magnitude.

The conflict is connected first by common bonds of tribe and ethnicity; second, by the broad appeal of ideology; third, by links to Al-Qaeda and four, by the two-way cross border movement of insurgents who provide each other a degree of mutual support.
It is also distinct because; one, the origin of the Afghan Taliban is older and the movement is more entrenched with an organized command and control structure. Two, the Taliban have geographically a much broader presence in Afghanistan compared to the Pakistani Taliban whose support base is confined to part of the tribal areas, which constitute just 3% of the country’s territory and represent 2% of the population. Three, there is greater confidence among the Afghan Taliban that they will prevail and outlast what they see as a foreign occupation force.
In contrast to the ‘national objectives’ of their Afghan ‘cousins’, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a loose conglomeration of a dozen groups that primarily have local origins, motives, grievances and ambitions. It lacks central command and control. Its core group led by Baitullah Mehsud has suffered a serious reversal by his death and the Pakistan military's aggressive actions to blockade and contain his followers in South Waziristan.

Most importantly public sentiment in Pakistan has now turned decisively against the TTP, leaving the organization in a position to launch periodic suicide missions, but not expand its influence. The Pakistani Taliban today stands discredited in the country and without public backing are in no position to extend their sway. But the continuing conflict in Afghanistan and the perceived obligation to help a movement resisting an alien force provides the TTP with its main motivation, mobilizing rationale and legitimacy among its tribal support base.

Pakistan is in a better position than the coalition forces in Afghanistan to disrupt, contain and ultimately defeat its “Taliban”, by building on the success of the recent operation in Swat and the tribal area of Bajaur. Within four months of the military action launched against the Swat branch of the TTP in the northwestern part of the country the Taliban have been driven out of Malakand region, their advance into neighboring areas has been halted and the writ of the government has been re-established. Over 90% of displaced people who were forced to evacuate ahead of the fighting have returned to their homes, defying doomsday predictions. The Pakistan army has demonstrated improved tactics and counter insurgency capabilities

This reinforces the point that Pakistan has the capacity to deal with the threat of militancy by its own efforts, but without the compounding complications engendered by the fighting across its border. It is also a reminder of the most important lesson of counter insurgency: indigenous forces are better able to undertake successful missions.

On the Afghan side, US and coalition forces will face much greater difficulties against the insurgency especially if the present military and political strategies remain unchanged and also when a fraud-stricken Presidential election in Afghanistan has denuded the country of a legitimate government. The ongoing strategic review and the debate that is underway are timely and critical.

One response being proposed to this dire situation is a substantial surge of military forces. This raises the question: to what end, at what cost and with what chances of success? Although many will see the parallel as odious, history cannot be cast aside; the Soviet Union deployed 140,000 troops at the peak of its occupation but failed to defeat the resistance.
If the central objective is to disrupt and defeat Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s border region can this be achieved through a military escalation? Has the situation improved or deteriorated after previous military surges? So far the presence of more troops has increased militant activity and support for the Taliban. Even if the stated aim is to protect the population, more troops will mean intensified fighting with the Taliban.
But Al Qaeda can only be neutralized in Afghanistan and in the border region with Pakistan if it is rejected by and ejected from the Taliban “sea” in which it survives. This urges a strategy to separate the two movements by military, political and other means. A strategy of military escalation will push the two closer and strengthen their links rather than erode them.

For the purposes of the strategy review and for consideration by the members of this Committee, let me offer three possible scenarios for what could happen in Afghanistan:

1) Military escalation: This will inevitably be directed at the Taliban and will likely evoke even more hostility from the country’s Pashtun dominated areas and closer cooperation between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban thereby further impeding the core objective of eliminating Al Qaeda. Although the Taliban do not represent all Pashtuns, they do exploit Pashtun grievances and use the foreign presence as a recruitment tool.

If history is a guide in this graveyard of empires, a military solution is also unlikely to succeed for several reasons:
i) The enhanced military forces will still be insufficient to ‘hold’ the countryside: independent estimates suggest that the Taliban now have a permanent presence in over 70% of Afghanistan. If Moscow with 140,000 troops supported by a more professional Afghan army of 100,000 could not succeed against the Mujahideen, why should it be any different in a country whose people have historically united against outsiders?
ii) Escalation will inevitably lead to mounting Western/American casualties, which will erode further public support in both the US and Europe. The insurgents can absorb higher losses and fight on. Pakistan has incurred 7,500 casualties among its security personnel (dead and injured). Can western forces envision such heavy losses and still count on public support for the war ?
iii) The economic cost of the war will also escalate. Will Western Parliaments pre-occupied with economic recovery and burgeoning debt burdens agree indefinitely to defray the growing costs of an unending Afghan war?

iv) Escalation will likely intensify rivalries among the neighboring powers in a region where a subterranean competition is already in play. Pakistan’s concerns about India’s role in Afghanistan are well known. Moreover if the West's confrontation with Iran on the nuclear issue intensifies, there will be consequences in Afghanistan (and Iraq) that will have to be factored in.
v) Reliance on a surge conveys the signal that the US is only applying a military solution and is bereft of other non-military components of strategy. This is at odds with the comprehensive approach that President Obama promised to implement in March 2009.
As for the impact on Pakistan, further military escalation on its border is fraught with great risk. Far from diminishing the threat of instability this will enhance it, for many reasons. Let me list five:
i) It will likely lead to an influx of militants and Al-Qaeda fighters into Pakistan and an arms flow from across the border.
ii) Enhance the vulnerability of US-NATO ground supply routes through the country as supply needs will likely double. This will create what military strategists call the “battle of reverse front” in which US forces will have their supplies ‘located’ behind the insurgents. Protecting these supply lines will also over stretch Pakistani troops, 150,000 of which are at present engaged in border security and counter insurgency.
iii) It could lead to an influx of more Afghan refugees which can be especially destabilizing in the restive province of Balochistan.
iv) A surge in Afghanistan can be expected to produce a spike in violent reprisals in mainland Pakistan.
v) Most important, intensified fighting and its fallout, could erode and unravel the fragile political consensus in Pakistan to fight the TTP and counter militancy. Pakistan’s recent success against militants needs to be reinforced not endangered.

A second scenario is a unilateral withdrawal by US forces without a political settlement. This could be accompanied by what is being called a remote-controlled counterterrorism strategy, involving an air war focused on Al-Qaeda.

This scenario is also fraught with great danger. It will be viewed in the region and beyond as a defeat, will embolden the forces of violent extremism across the world and strengthen and even solidify the Al-Qaeda/Taliban alliance.

It is necessary to consider a third scenario: one that involves a new strategy to pursue a political solution that seeks to integrate excluded Pashtun groups and those Taliban elements into the Afghan political process that can be de-coupled from Al-Qaeda. President Hamid Karzai and American and British military commanders have frequently called for reconciliation efforts but what has been absent is a political framework in which serious negotiations can be pursued and which offers real incentives to the insurgents to abandon violence.

This will ultimately involve negotiations for a progressive reduction of Western forces from Afghanistan in return for the insurgents agreeing to a number of conditions. Fashioning a new political structure, that provides a power sharing arrangement to bring in underrepresented Pashtuns, will help to neutralize the insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
Even if the central leadership of the Taliban refuse to engage in talks this will offer a concrete way to co-opt and peel away local Taliban commanders. There are indications that the alliance between Al Qaeda and many Taliban elements is fraying. Talks will offer opportunities to test this.
Political engagement, even if it does not at first succeed, will represent a meaningful ‘hearts and minds’ effort that can also help create the conditions to isolate the irreconcilable elements among the Taliban.
A plan of action to achieve such a political solution will involve the following elements:
A. Military.
1) Hold ground in defensible military encampments. Avoid creating pockets of vulnerability that risk higher casualties. This will enable the conduct of talks from a position of some strength.
2) Restrict offensive operations except in retaliation/self defense.
3) Negotiate reciprocal ceasefires at the local level with different actors including local Taliban commanders.
4) Restrict air strikes only to terrorist targets based on verified intelligence; avoid civilian casualties.
B. Economic
5) Focus on economic development and job creation at the local level, building capacities region by region through local communities.
C. Political.
6) Launch a national reconciliation initiative to draw in more Pashtuns in to the political process. Open talks with the insurgents initially through credible intermediaries. Set out the terms of the dialogue by asking the various Taliban elements to disavow Al-Qaeda, halt hostilities and support development efforts and the buildup of Afghan security forces. This will need to be accompanied by the willingness of US-NATO forces to accept a progressive withdrawal from Afghanistan.
8) Seek to involve as many Afghan players (political and tribal leaders, local power holders) as possible in the reconciliation process.
9) Allow political parties to contest next year’s Parliamentary elections (banned at present) to ensure that the reconciliation efforts are consolidated.
10) Ensure that the expansion of Afghan security forces is not ethnically skewed. At the moment it is, to the disadvantage of Pashtuns.
11) Promote a political arrangement that once worked in Afghanistan: a loose, decentralized political and administrative order which strikes a balance between and reflects Afghanistan’s ethnic composition and protects the rights of all minority groups.

C. Regional
12) Forge a regional compact between neighboring states especially ensuring support from Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia for such a new political order in Afghanistan.
13) Promote a formal accord between Pakistan and Afghanistan that includes Kabul’s recognition of the Durand Line.
D. International
14) Consider a UN/OIC peace keeping force drawn from Muslim countries to implement an agreement once it is reached.

Achieving this outcome will neither be quick nor easy. But Pakistan’s stability will be helped not hurt by a progressive, orderly de-escalation in Afghanistan. Pakistan will be able to manage its aftermath as a negotiated end to conflict in Afghanistan will be salutary for its future stability. It will further deflate the ideological appeal and political motivations of the TTP and other militants.

Pakistan’s long term stability however will depend on a number of other factors:

1) Continuing and consolidating public support for security operations against militants. In this context US Drone attacks, tactically regarded as effective are strategically costly as they erode public support and consensus. The lesson from the use of air power in the Middle East should not be ignored where this has had an intensely radicalizing effect.
2) The capacity of the state to provide effective governance in the post-conflict regions including Swat.
3) Financial stabilization and economic revival. The US-supported IMF injections have led to a modicum of financial stability .But ensuring sustainable growth, adequate job creation, social stability and reversing militancy will require larger infrastructure and social sector investment and trade access for Pakistani products in the US and European markets. Market access through a free trade agreement can help Pakistan become a competitive producer, attract foreign investment and serve as a base for exports to the West.
4) In Pakistan’s fragile political situation US actions should not contribute to the breakdown of the national consensus against violent extremism by escalating demands on Pakistan. Efforts to determine Pakistan’s security paradigm and decide on its priorities undermine that consensus.
5) Addressing Pakistan’s security concerns vis a vis India and promoting a peaceful settlement of Kashmir.
6) The ongoing public debate in Pakistan about the benchmarking of US economic assistance to Pakistan is a reminder how such conditionalities erode much of the hearts and minds effect as they reinforce the transactional nature of the bilateral relationship that Pakistanis so resent and strengthens rather than breaks from the paradigm of treating the country as hired help rather than a valued ally.

In conclusion, it should be emphasized that the US and Western ability to isolate and eliminate Al Qaeda and violent extremism in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Arab and Muslim countries will depend critically, not so much on military strength and counter-insurgency strategy, as on the demonstration of the political will and capability to secure just solutions to the conflicts and problems in the Islamic world: the Palestine question, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Iraq.
It is this concrete commitment to justice and genuine economic cooperation in the interest of the poor and deprived in the Muslim world that will succeed in turning the tide against extremism and militancy.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/news/docs/Maleeha[1].doc