Priorities and politics of payback
Considering that the principal Taliban war, in Afghanistan, will turn a new leaf after the US drawdown, the fate of the American-Afghan Bilateral Security Arrangement (BSA) should logically revolve around one underlying issue – the ability of the Afghan National Army (ANA) to contain the insurgency on its own. But then there is also Mr Karzai’s politics to deal with, constantly elaborated in the doubts and reservations of his sidekick/mouth piece Ahmad Faizi, about the insincerity and duplicity of all major parties to the war. All except Kabul, of course.
Interestingly, Karzai-Faizi frustrations are a rare point of US-Pakistan convergence with regard to the greater war effort. Just last summer they branded Pakistan, especially its intelligence service, a bigger Afghan enemy than the Taliban. The politics seemed to play on rivalries, and aimed at uniting bickering factions against a new enemy, one that could not possibly tap rural tribal grievances to recruit fighters. Their concerns about the porous border, too, were exposed when it emerged Afghanistan’s security service had housed Mulla Fazlullah and the like ever since they fled the ’09 Swat operation. And for all their accusations about Pakistan’s good Taliban, their patronage of the TTP, and spreading the war inside Pakistan, are clear to Islamabad and Washington alike.
But the BSA politics is different, more so because Karzai will have no say in the time it is meant to manage. The constitution bars him from a third term as president, and he will leave government some months before the Americans – zero option or otherwise – leave the country. And granted, there is some truth in his anger; the Americans have allowed themselves far too many excesses in this ugly war, and insulted Afghan pride and sensitivities far too many times to be easily forgiven or forgotten. But other than that it is trademark Karzai. First he called on the Loya Jirga to decide, and then rejected its go-ahead. Then the Americans were outraged that he was secretly talking to the Taliban. Perhaps it, too, was payback for the Americans talking to the bad guys without telling him the previous year.
Anyhow the exercise soon broke down, and now Kabul has no understanding with the Taliban, and no understanding with the Americans. And since the former have made no secret of their designs on the capital, it would seem logical that Afghanistan would require some number of American troops, however small, to train and assist local forces. At least that is what the Loya Jirga seems to have concluded. This is also the American position, or Washington would not have moved its cut-off date for the BSA ahead a couple of times. However, if Karzai will have its way, an ill-trained national army faces a strengthening insurgency, and his farewell gifts will be a more potent intelligence service (acting abroad) and a collapsing military at home.