Neither Map Nor Road

We all seek a roadmap to get us out of a hole. For Eurobonds, it was last night in Brussels. For a way out of the hornet’s nest in Afghanistan, it was a few days ago in Chicago. The major drawback of this brilliant idea that provides a foolproof guide is that it has a built-in possibility of failure. Now is the 10th anniversary of the roadmap that popularized the expression, the ultimate roadmap that should have led to peace between Israelis and Palestinians in three years, specifically in 2005. In one year, cessation of all violence, a freeze on settlements and political reforms and elections on the Palestinian side. In another year, restoration of relations between Israel and the Arab countries and an international conference to resolve all the conditions for Palestinian statehood, including economic ones. And, in a third, negotiation of final borders, West Bank settlements, Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem.

Such was the size of the failure that not even a start on the road was begun during the first year. We could try a less-used term, but if the “roadmap” repeatedly comes out of the mouths of politicians dealing with the most varied and difficult problems, it must be for a reason. One explanation could be that we talk about roadmaps precisely because we are totally confused and do not know where we are or which way to jump.

It is as if its repetition, like a prayer, would bring raining down on us maps that the citizens, and even worse, the leaders, lack. Some even say unashamedly: We are entering uncharted territory and have no idea where we are going. So, they navigate blindly, guided by election dates or popularity polls measuring the degree of acceptance or electoral chances. In singular cases, such as Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s, the pressure is more imminent, given only 24 hours because of the liquidity needs of banks or even governments that guide every move and statement, thus facing the risks and oscillations of the Ibex 36 and in no case responding to any purpose other than to be alive the next day.

To use the term roadmap in the case of Afghanistan, as Obama did in Chicago, is by equal parts pertinent and disheartening. Of the mission that sent NATO to Afghanistan, we know only one thing: It had the legal cover of the Security Council and was in response to the 9/11 attacks organized by al-Qaida from its bases in the country of its Taliban friends. Once the Taliban was ousted, as early as that very same year — 2001 — little could be said of the objectives or results over the last ten years, or even now, as they have always been confused and nobody has been able to explain them.

The current president, an opponent of the Iraq war, but in favor of Afghanistan, soon learned that — whether in one year or ten — he would get neither more stability nor a guarantee of a viable state. To declare victory and leave, which is what all presidents want to do, was impossible. Hence, the roadmap, adopted at the summit in Chicago, with no aim or purpose other than to bring about an orderly departure and leave behind those ten years of war — the longest ever fought by the United States.

It will not be easy. Pakistan was in at the beginning, and will be in at the end. In response to the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by a U.S. bombing in November, its border is now closed to supplies to Afghanistan. To withdraw the 130,000 NATO troops, and especially its huge baggage, requires roads that have suddenly increased in cost: Pakistan charged $250 per truck in tolls before the massacre and now they are demanding $5,000. There isn’t enough money to pull out, nor to leave security in the hands of the new Afghan army, which has yet to be formed. That’s what Obama asked the allies for in Chicago, but his major concern was that the premature withdrawal of France should not be the bugle sounding retreat for the other allies, all subject to some budget constraints that have diminished the will for external intervention. NATO knows, or thinks it knows, what to do in Afghanistan, but its Chicago meeting clearly ignored the slaughter in Syria. It knows nothing about that. And since it cannot speak, it’s better to shut up altogether. Thus, it seems to be an alliance guided by ideas and values cast aside quietly in blind navigation, which is usual when there is neither map nor road.