Afghanistan War: remembering the beginning

Milton Bearden played a key role in the US support of the Muslim terrorists brave mujahideen freedom fighters in Afghanistan during the Soviet war in that country during the 1980s as the CIA's section chief in Pakistan 1986-89. John Prados in Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (2006) describes Bearden as the CIA's "field commander for the Afghan project" of supplying the mujahideen during that period. He was known as "Uncle Milty" in the CIA. Prados writes of Bearden's role:

Bearden never solved the problem of the [Afghan] warlords. He could have had some impact there - Uncle Milty had originally impressed [CIA chief William] Casey as station chief in Nigeria, then the Sudan, both nations riven by tribal differences, and he should have been sensitive to this issue. Bearden made some moves toward creating a rebel central command, only to be undermined by the Pakistanis. He left it at that. Field officers pushed for aid to Massoud, whom all agreed had the best troops and the most finely honed political sense. But that meant tangling with the ISI [Pakistani intelligence service]. Of course, with the huge expansion of aid the CIA might have demanded a revised distribution formula [for the aid], but Bearden shied away from that too. He felt his orders were to beat the Russians, not quibble over which warlords were the most fundamentalist. Citations of the percentages of weapons given to rebel groups from the early and late war periods indicate shipments to the more radical groups actually increased. Bearden focused on sharpening the rebels' fighting edge. [my emphasis]

Uncle Milty had advice for the Cheney-Bush administration in an article originally published in Foreign Affairs Nov/Dec 2001, "Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires"; the essay also appears in a somewhat different form in the Counsel of Foreign Relations collection of essays called How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War, 2001). He argued that to be successful in countering jihadist terrorism in Afghanistan, the Arab and other Islamic states would have to play the leading role. And that the fight would be more of a police/intelligence matter than conventional or counterinsurgency military operations:

It probably could not be otherwise, but how this first engagement in the new U.S. war on terrorism is conducted will be crucial to all that follows. The coalition being carefully constructed will function differently from that built for the Gulf War a decade ago. The bulk of the military tasks in that brief war against Iraq were intended from the outset to be carried out by the Americans, the British, and the French. The participation of the Arab states was not crucial to the fighting, though it was crucial to the U.S. ability to operate from bases near Iraq. In this new conflict, the roles will, in many ways, be reversed. The coalition partners from the Arab and Islamic states will have specific, front-line operational roles. They will serve as force multipliers for the usual alliance of American and European intelligence and security services and special operations forces. If the terror network is to be dismantled, it will be with help from the security services of Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, and a few others, not from the exclusive efforts of the United States or its European allies.

Although this appeared in the Nov/Dec 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs, it was evidently written before the war in Afghanistan had begun. At that point, not many people outside the top levels of the administration knew what they were planing to do there. We certainly didn't know that key players in the decision-making process were determined to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to invade Iraq. Or that the administration's anti-terrorism perspective still still stuck in the Cold War model of terrorism as an issue of state-sponsorship and a problem to be combated by "regime change".

Bearden also warned:

As the Bush administration balances its military and political goals, plans to send U.S. troops into Afghanistan to seize bin Ladin should be weighed carefully for their practicality and political implications. Strident calls to add the overthrow of the Taliban regime to the list of American objectives maybe attractive in terms of human rights, but that objective, too, must be weighed against the goal of making certain that the events of September 11 are not repeated. [my emphasis]

In other words, getting Bin Laden and his core forces was a more important goal than dislodging the Taliban government. If they had made a real judgment that ousting the regime was necessary for the fight against Bin Laden's Al Qa'ida - which it may well have been - then it made sense. But, in practice, "regime change" was basically the only thing Cheney could imagine doing in those situations.

And for Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neocons at the Pentagon, regime change in Iraq was what they really cared about.

Bearden also warned in particular about pursuing the course of regime change through support of the Northern Alliance, which was the course the administration actually selected. And, given their notions of terrorism as a problem of state sponsorship and of "regime change", combined with Rummy's fond illusions about the magic power of the air-war based approach known by the now-obsolete term "revolution in military affairs", backing a Northern Alliance takeover of the national government was basically the only strategy they knew how to take. Bearden wrote:

Some have called for arming and forming an alliance with Afghanistan's now-leaderless Northern Alliance. This grouping of commanders, meticulously pulled together in shifting alliances by the late Ahmed Shah Masoud, now holds about ten percent of Afghan territory. Already the recipient of military and financial support from Russia and Iran, it seems a logical partner in the U.S. quest to locate and neutralize the bin Ladin network and replace the Taliban regime.

But that is not a wise course - not simply because of the cold irony of allying ourselves with the Russians in any fight in Afghanistan, but because it is not likely to achieve either goal. It is more than doubtful that the Northern Alliance forces could capture bin Ladin and his followers, and there is no reasonable guarantee that they could dislodge the Taliban. On the contrary, the more likely consequences of a U.S. alliance with the late Masoud's fighters would be the coalescing of Afghanistan's majority Pashtun tribes around their Taliban leaders and the rekindling of a brutal, general civil war that would continue until the United States simply gave up. The dominant tribe in Afghanistan, which also happens to be the largest, will dominate; replacing the Pashtun Taliban with the largely Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance is close to impossible. The threat of providing covert assistance to the Northern Alliance might be a useful short-term strategy to pressure the Taliban, if it is handled delicately, but any real military alliance to Masoud's successors will backfire. [my emphasis]

Bearden's estimation about the Northern Alliance's ability to replace the Taliban regime in Kabul proved wrong in the short run. But the Karzai regime that replaced the Taliban sounds far less able to maintain itself without the direct support of American and NATO troops than the regime that the Soviets left behind was. And in reference to the problem that Pakistan had raised in the late 1980s about support to the Northern Alliance, Pakistan today views the Karzai/Northern Alliance regime in Kabul as pro-India, and not without some reason. Being pro-India is definitely not a good thing from the Pakistani government's viewpoint.

Bearden concluded his article with a warning about the limitations of outside powers to determine the regime in Afghanistan: "If anyone is to replace an emir in Afghanistan, it will have to be the people of Afghanistan themselves. Any doubters should ask the British and the Russians."

Now, seven years after coming to power as a result of the American-directed military action of the Norther Alliance, Hamid Karzai's government controls little outside Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul. And even that control appears to be slipping.

And Obama has said he wants to escalate the American/NATO war in Afghanistan. I hope he rethinks that notion very carefully. Because it's a bad idea, unless it's part of a genuinely temporary "surge" that is part of a near-term exit strategy.

Of course, no US administration is going to say it has decided to "simply gave up", in Bearden's words. But, in fact, giving up on US/NATO participation in the protracted civil war in Afghanistan and western Pakistan is what the US needs to do.

One of my favorite quotes the last several years is from a column written by Congressman McGovern and former Sen. George McGovern (no relation). In it, they quote a saying that was also a favorite of Lyndon Johnson, who had some direct experience in the matter: "Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." (Withdraw from Iraq Boston Globe 06/06/05)

And Obama will find that to be true in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The sooner he puts exit strategies in place for both wars, the more likely it will be that he can successfully implement them. Continuing protracted war in either place is an idea with no good future.

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