Pakistan, economic woes strain West’s Afghan resolve

The West wants to use an Afghanistan meeting on Monday to signal enduring support for Kabul as allied troops go home, but economic downturn in Europe and crises with Pakistan and Iran could stir doubts about Western resolve.
The goal is to leave behind an Afghan government strong enough to escape the fate of its Soviet-era predecessor, which collapsed in 1992 in a civil war. The country’s allies are preparing increasingly for a scenario in which there is no peace settlement with the Taliban before most foreign combat troops leave in 2014. Host Germany sought to signal Western staying power as the gathering of dozens of foreign ministers opened in the German city of Bonn. “We send a clear message to the people of Afghanistan: We will not leave you on your own. We will not leave you in the lurch,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told the opening session of the conference.
Ten years after a similar conference held to rebuild Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks and the toppling of the Taliban government, there is no shortage of worries on the horizon, in particular about the Afghan government’s ability to provide security for its own people.
But addressing matters such as how to share out the funding for the still-fledgling Afghan police and army, and how to tackle problems of governance and corruption, may have to compete for attention with brewing confrontations pitting Washington against Pakistan and Iran, two of Afghanistan’s most influential neighbours.
A RETURN TO CIVIL WAR?
Pakistan boycotted the meeting after NATO aircraft killed 24 of its soldiers on the border with Afghanistan on November 26. Some in the West are still hoping Pakistan will use its influence to deliver the Afghan Taliban, whose leadership Washington says is based in Pakistan, to peace talks.
But with embryonic contacts with the Taliban so far yielding nothing, and the government in Kabul unable to provide security and economic development, the risk is that the withdrawal of foreign troops will plunge Afghanistan back into civil war. Renewed strife might also stir more violence over the border in Pakistan, fighting its own Islamist insurgency. Iran’s confrontation with the West over its nuclear programme could also bleed into the war in Afghanistan.
“There is potentially a perfect storm of problems lying ahead for Afghanistan,” said Sajjan Gohel, international security director at the Asia Pacific Foundation in London. “Afghanistan’s security is intrinsically tied to Pakistan. If the problems inside Pakistan worsen, that will have a detrimental impact on Afghanistan. The continuing freefall in relations between the US and Pakistan makes the situation even more precarious.
“If relations between the West and Iran also worsen that may be utilised by the clerical regime (in Tehran) to cause problems in Afghanistan.”
A US official travelling to Bonn with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to play down Pakistan’s absence. “I certainly hope that we are not entering a phase with them where they play some sort of spoiler role,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters on Clinton’s plane. “We are not proceeding with that assumption at all.”