In Afghanistan, Quayum’s observation passes for a warm invitation to join forces. But from Washington last week, there was some uncertainty about what the new “twilight war” on terror might look like, and who would be part of it. At one point, President George W. Bush practically urged the Taliban’s opponents to join with America, saying the best way to bring terrorists to book is “to ask for the cooperation” of Afghans “who may be tired of having the Taliban in place.” But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer quickly amended his boss’s statement, insisting that U.S. action was “not designed to replace one regime with another regime.” Bush himself rejected any role for the United States in determining the future of the Afghan state. “We’re not into nation-building,” Bush insisted. “We’re into justice.” By week’s end, the Bush team was leaving little doubt that its goal was toppling the Taliban; it just didn’t want to be held responsible for what came next.
Whatever Washington does, Bush is not likely to be able to get the justice he so desires without doing at least some of the nation-building he so disdains. Bin Laden and his Arab-Afghan guerrillas did not emerge in a vacuum, nor did the Taliban leaders and their militant followers. Afghanistan, at war now for 22 years, was the swamp they thrived in (to borrow a metaphor from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). Yet you can’t “drain” a country. Someone is going to have to help rebuild it.
And if the new war on terror is a tru- ly global campaign, as Bush says, Afghanistan may not be the only place the United States will have to confront the challenges of failed states and how to mend them. Nation-building can take many forms, from seizing command of a capital and installing a sympathetic government to establishing a U.N. protectorate. It could even be a matter of manipulating local politics by using diplomatic pressure and financial aid. But the campaign Bush has embarked upon will test America’s skills at forcing change abroad without falling into quagmires or winning new enemies. Conceivably, it could eventually lead to action in Iraq or Sudan or even Algeria. It will require an extraordinary blend of coalition politics at home and alliance-building abroad. The challenges are acute in the Islamic world, where intervention often smacks of imperialism and where conflict can easily be cast in highly charged religious terms.
Bush likely gets some of his cautious instincts about nation-building from his father. Back in the early ’90s, the first President Bush spoke hopefully of a “new world order.” With the end of the cold war, the thinking went then, American policy no longer had to be driven by the narrow imperatives of us versus them; there was more room for just doing good. But Bush didn’t want to get involved in the Balkans, which the military considered too dangerous. So the testing ground became Somalia, where the United States hoped to launch an ambitious mission to save a nation from starvation. Initiated in the waning days of the Bush administration and taken up by Clinton, the massive humanitarian intervention evolved into a campaign to remake Somali clan politics. And it ended in a hellish, overnight street battle in which Somali gunmen killed 18 American soldiers and U.S. forces killed hundreds of Somalis, including many unarmed civilians. The public saw pictures of American soldiers dragged through the streets, and the new world order was history.
But Somalia is not a cautionary tale simply because Washington failed there; it’s also because of the lessons drawn from that failure by America’s enemies. Bin Laden, in particular, was cheered by the American retreat, which he took as a sign of weakness. (According to an indictment filed in U.S. court, members of bin Laden’s Qaeda network even participated in the Mogadishu firefight.) Although bin Laden was living in Sudan at the time, he later returned to his old stomping ground in the failed state of Afghanistan, where he first learned and honed his skills during the anti-Soviet war. Fortunately for him, the world’s attention had largely turned away from Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out in 1989. No foreign powers, in any case, had made a serious stab at nation-building. And the breakdown in order there made it an ideal home for Al Qaeda.
No one claims that nation-building is an easy or simple business, yet the fear of changing a dangerous regime carries its own risks. At the end of the gulf war, the first Bush administration (including officials now with Bush II, like Colin Powell) stopped short of toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Policymakers worried about what might come next: in the worst case, they feared that Islamic fundamentalists aligned with Iran would fill the vacuum in Baghdad. But a decade later, with Saddam still in place, many in Washington still feel that he should have been removed when American forces had the chance. The ongoing sanctions against Iraq, and scenes of suffering children, help fuel anti-American sentiment in the region. It’s not that a lot of Arabs love Saddam, but that very few can understand why Washington would wage a war against him, then leave him in power and make his people pay the price.
Afghanistan presents its own set of challenges, many of which argue against simple analogies to the past. Unlike Iraq, or even Kosovo, Afghanistan is not what military planners call a “target-rich” environment where air power pummels enemies into submission. Although Americans would be far more willing to accept casualties there than in Somalia, they also won’t have the option to retreat if things go bad. On the plus side: the United Nations has a long history in Afghanistan, and its agencies will be well funded and positioned to start rebuilding once order is restored. The lessons of the United States’ experience in Bosnia, where it helped end a war and restore some semblance of civility, could also be a useful guide.
Washington wants to be careful to get what it wants (bin Laden and his Qaeda network) without giving bin Laden and his ilk what they want (a bloody war that makes America look like a brutal aggressor). The administration certainly hopes to topple the repressive rule of the Taliban. Yet Washington also has to worry about igniting a new round of horrific battles by rival Afghan warlords, or inflaming regional rivalries or exposing any future Afghan leader to charges of being an American puppet. The ultimate concern: that the United States wins a victory in Afghanistan only to tip the balance toward Islamic radicals in neighboring Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons.
Afghanistan’s massive humanitarian crisis could work in Washington’s favor. Foreign powers are in a position to offer incentives (read: bribes) to tribal chieftains and other Taliban allies who might want to break away from the movement, and the United Nations might later be able to use the prospect of massive aid to encourage stability. But it’s equally true that foreign aid, if not administered sensibly, can also fuel conflict as rival factions fight for the spoils.
As it is, Afghanistan has many contenders for the role of kingmaker, most of them bloody rivals. These include Northern Alliance leaders, who come from minority ethnic groups and are deeply suspicious of Pakistan. At the top of some people’s list is the former king himself (interview), who lives in Rome. Some influential Afghans believe that Mohamad Zahir Shah, who hasn’t lived in Afghanistan since he was deposed in 1973, could be a unifying symbol and consensus-builder. At 86, he has no long-term ambitions, and says he doesn’t want to reinstate the hereditary throne. But can Washington really back the return of a king in Afghanistan? Well, who would have thought that Washington and Moscow would be aligned to defeat Islamic militants in Kabul? This is a strange new world, if not exactly a new world order.
