Through the Afghan quagmire

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday February 1, 2010

THE war in Afghanistan has hardly been the walkover the US-led forces expected when they invaded in 2001. Since then, about 1500 coalition soldiers have been killed. Among Australia's 1550-strong force, 11 have died. Yet defeat of the Taliban seems as far off as ever. As this shapes up as another bloody year, an international conference of almost 70 nations gathered in London last Thursday trying to find new ways to end the morass. Called by Gordon Brown, Britain's Prime Minister, the conference was a belated recognition that the West's goals in Afghanistan will never be achieved by military means alone.The buzzwords now are reintegration and reconciliation. The former applies to a fund the conference set up to try to win young Taliban fighters away from insurgency with offers of money, jobs and development projects in their villages. About $US140 million ($157 million) has been promised for the reintegration fund, including $25 million from Australia. It may sound like bribery. Nonetheless, it may resonate in a country where bribery remains endemic. Stephen Smith, Australia's Foreign Minister, who attended in London, rejects the idea that buying off Taliban fighters is simply a case of changing the paymaster. He rightly points out that many do not necessarily see themselves as part of a global jihad. They are driven to "run with the Taliban" more by sheer lack of alternative economic opportunities.Reconciliation will be a harder task. It was the pitch of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's President, when he told the conference: "We must reach out to all of our countrymen, especially our disenchanted brothers." But America, Karzai's strongest supporter, is unlikely to risk any domestic backlash by supporting reconciliation involving approaches to Taliban leaders at this stage. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, focused in London more on promising American help for Afghan women, including finding paths into the country's political establishment. This is a fine goal in itself, and may play well in the West. Achieving it with sensitivity in such a traditional society will be a challenge.For too long, the West's focus on Iraq blinded it to any dimension other than a military one in Afghanistan. Now the irony is that attempts to find different ways of dealing with Afghanistan come just as America ramps up its military approach. The President, Barack Obama, has pledged to triple the number of American troops in the hope that crushing the Taliban's advances will give the allies a better chance to negotiate from a position of strength. Without a wider agenda, though, the record of the past eight years suggests this will be just another gamble.