When it comes to our embryonic global society, intervention is as much a political as military challenge, writes TONY KINSELLA
AS THE Obama administration weighs unattractive options on Afghanistan, armchair warriors charge into print.
Senators McCain, Graham and Lieberman used the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal of September 13th for a breathtaking demonstration of amnesiac political brass neck: “The US walked away from Afghanistan once before . . . We must not make that mistake again . . This is a must-win war.”
All were senators when the US abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. They simply omitted any reference to their active support for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. When Washington opted to attack Iraq it relegated post-Taliban Afghanistan to some back burner, where the mess has stewed.
The understandable incompetence and unsurprising corruption of the Kabul government does little to endear it to its citizens. The fact that it is built on the remnants of the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance is another barrier to its acceptance by Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group.
There are slightly more than 100,000 foreign troops on Afghan soil – divided between two different missions. The UN sanctioned International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) is tasked with supporting the Afghan government. The force has about 68,000 troops, including 32,000 from the US.
Seven members of the Defence Forces from Ireland are also serving with Isaf.
The US’s Enduring Freedom operation deploys a further 28,000 troops with the historic task of combating the Taliban and eliminating al-Qaeda.
Although the two missions are increasingly intermingled, the differing bases on which states decided to contribute remain. Berlin did not dispatch its 4,200 troops on a combat mission, and has made clear that it will neither increase its contingent nor alter its mandate.
US Gen Stanley McChrystal has requested another 40,000 troops. In his most optimistic scenario, total foreign forces in Afghanistan would rise to 120,000 – about the same size as the 1980s Soviet occupation force.
Military manuals stipulate a ratio of one soldier per 20 civilians for counter-insurgency operations. In Afghanistan this would mean over 650,000 troops. As that probably represents something close to the total number of deployable troops on our planet, the impossibility of an exclusively military solution in Afghanistan becomes apparent.
The question of failing states and international intervention is a key political challenge for our embryonic global society. It is a question that often incites political posturing rather than reasoned reflection. One where experience is ignored and lessons derided.
The island of Hispaniola basks in Caribbean sunshine, light years from the snows of the Hindu Kush. The Dominican Republic accounts for about 60 per cent of the island, The remaining 40 per cent being Haiti. Both countries are former colonies, and both experienced US invasions and fairly brutal dictatorships during the 20th century. If the Dominican Republic is now relatively successful, Haiti ranks among the most profoundly failed states we know.
Graham Greene’s novel The Comedians revealed the bizarre reality of Haiti’s Duvalier dictatorship. Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier ruled the country from 1957 to 1986, undermining its society and ruining its economy. Liberation from the Duvaliers brought questionable elections, coups, counter-coups and US pressure. Former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from office in 2004, leaving a paralysed administration and a divided country.
A central element of the international stabilisation process has been the deployment of a UN force in Haiti. It consists of a 7,000-strong military element under Brazilian command and a 2,000-strong police contingent with a significant Chinese presence. This mission, though occasionally criticised for its “muscular” actions, has succeeded in restoring order to Haiti. But the limits of intervention forces, however successful, remain tragically apparent on the streets of Port-au-Prince.
On the Indian Ocean, 5,000 ill-equipped Burundian and Ugandan troops make up the UN-approved African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Somalia. They are, in the words of the BBC’s Mark Doyle, “stuck in the middle of the belligerents with a questionable mandate and insufficient troops”.
They have managed to keep Mogadishu’s air and sea ports partially operational, thus providing a slender and inadequate lifeline for the 3-4 million Somalians dependent on international food aid for survival. Long-promised African reinforcements have yet to materialise, while questionable accounting in Bujumbura and Kampala has now starved the mission of its EU funding.
More than 3,000km (1,900 miles) inland, some 400,000 people have been killed or died from disease and starvation in the Sudanese region of Darfur since conflict erupted there in 2003. The UN Security Council authorised Unamid, a mixed UN/AU peacekeeping force of 70,000, in August 2006. Lacking troops, vehicles, helicopters and funding, the force has yet to deploy. Meanwhile, there are some 2 million refugees, and fatalities may be running as high as 10,000 a month.
A bright point in this dismal landscape of an outmoded focus on military power and patchy resources, is the EU approach under its 10-year-old defence and security policy (EDSP). Seventy thousand men and women have now been deployed in 23 EDSP missions, six military and 17 civil.
The EDSP’s role is that it varies the mix of engineers, administrators, medical teams, police, soldiers and others in a deployment. Others are now beginning to copy its approach.
If force is sometimes necessary, it can never offer a global solution. Since conflict crises are political, so too must their solutions be.
Like many things, it’s obvious if you stop to think about it.