Afghanistan and Declared-Defeat Syndrome

The mood in Afghanistan, like a “2014 Syndrome,” is that if foreign forces withdraw, the situation will return to how it was in the 1990s: a clash between ethnic groups.

In 2014, the U.S. will withdraw the majority of its troops from Afghanistan. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies — a Washington think tank — the more than decade-long engagement in this Central Asian country will have cost more than $642 billion. President Obama has begun this withdrawal. But what situation will the U.S. (and NATO, which is strongly engaged in the conflict) leave behind them? In NATO’s history, this is the first intervention that will have ended in what can only be described as a partial failure. Is the risk of a regime collapsing in on itself and the return of civil war so great that many Afghans, at least in their heads, are already preparing themselves for exile?

The Afghan dilemma is tragically simple. For political and financial reasons (public opinion is hostile, and the cost is too high with too little progress), the U.S. can’t and won’t stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. However, the current regime is too weak and corrupt to face alone the challenges with which it is confronted. There is nothing new about this. An expert on the region, William Dalrymple, reminds us in his latest book “Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42” of how the ghosts of Afghanistan’s past can still shed light on present realities. Supporting a political leader — as the British supported Shah Shuja ul-Mulk and as the U.S. rather ambiguously supports Hamid Karzai — discredits them in the eyes of the people. They say no one likes “jack-booted liberators,” but neither does anyone willingly accept a leader supported by a foreign power. The Afghan people are proud, and they have a long memory that includes their resentment of the colonial period and their hatred of the “other ruler.”

How to overcome this fundamental contradiction: They don’t want to be saved by us, and they can’t save themselves. They want us to give up, and they are humiliated that they can’t “stand alone.” Distancing ourselves from Karzai and his corrupt system will weaken it in an irresponsible way, given the lack of a clear alternative. Supporting him with force will delegitimize him in the eyes of the vast majority of his people.

The Afghan problem is just one example among many of a problem that has haunted the Western world for centuries: How do you make others happy without their help or, even more difficultly, when they don’t want your help at all? Our knowledge and understanding of “their” history and “their” culture is too superficial, and our objectives are too contradictory. When the U.S. started indirectly intervening in Afghanistan in the 1980s (after the U.K. and Russia), it intended to initially weaken the USSR — if necessary, to even ally with religious extremists. When the U.S. intervened directly in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, it did so in order to overthrow a regime that permitted its land to serve as a sanctuary for terrorists.

This question obviously goes beyond the U.S. When we intervene in order to change a current regime — Afghanistan — or confront the consequences of a failed state — Mali — we fully hope that these countries come as close as possible to being like “us” — that is to say, tolerant, open, democratic societies which are respectful of the rule of law. And, in the vast majority of cases, failure is inevitable. Our objectives are too ambitious; we tire too quickly, driven by our “channel-surfer” culture; we want to move on to another subject. Deep down, we are only interested in them through ourselves. The U.S. has no more right to be a “Mother Teresa” than does a business.

Today in Washington, the temptation to declare victory and withdraw — like they did in Vietnam in 1973 — is strong. Two years later, Saigon fell in the most spectacular way possible, in the spotlight of the world’s cameras. Of course, today’s Taliban is not the equivalent of yesterday’s Vietcong, and Pakistan is not China. But whatever progress has been realized in Afghanistan, particularly in education and women’s rights, is fragile and certainly not irreversible.

Can we go as far as talking about a lost decade for Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai’s rule?

So many lives were sacrificed, so much money spent. And all this for a society that has made little progress, not only in comparison to us, but in comparison to itself. What is certain is that the record of the last 10 years in Afghanistan is, at best, mixed.