National security maven Stefan Halper proposes a two-prong strategy for Afghanistan to extricate American & its NATO allies from what appears to be a (yes, the Vietnam Word) "quagmire": (1) contain the Taliban to prevent them from exporting terror to the West; (2) buy the opium crop from farmers ot deny profits to the Taliban:
Progress on the opium issue was made last June when the Group of Eight foreign ministers met in Japan and created a coordinating body to oversee the provision of some $4 billion in aid to the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their purpose is to improve police and military training and anti-drug trafficking programs. The anti-drug trafficking program is modeled on the Nixon-Kissinger program in Turkey that used product licensing to encourage Turkish farmers to sell their illegal opium crops to pharmaceutical companies to make legal medicine. This program would encourage Afghan farmers to sell their opium produce to an NGO that would pay them the same or more than they would get from the Taliban. The NGO would then sell it to hospitals worldwide to help address the global shortage in morphine. Clearly, this would cost less than fighting the Taliban and it would have the effect of cutting off the revenue the Taliban use to purchase weapons. (Moreover, there is some indication Tehran would be sympathetic to such an initiative that might provide the platform for expanded discussions to, eventually, include nuclear issues.)
Secondly, the Taliban and al Qaeda could be denied bases and training facilities by fully deploying the highly mobile strike capacity created by the U.S. military over the past decade. Continuing, and unpredictable, strikes by these forces would make Taliban/al Qaeda attack planning difficult if not impossible. Such U.S./NATO units would be deployed with the acknowledgment of Kabul and Pakistani authorities where necessary, and would avoid: (1) the greater cost of deploying large number of troops to permanent bases in-country, (2) tensions with our allies over troop commitments, (3) the need to generate broad public support for yet another "war."
Suppressing the Taliban and separating it from its main source of financial support would render tribal authorities more approachable by the Karzai government. Finally, this approach accepts that neither we nor our allies fully understand the technology of nation building—and that this is not a nation-building effort—but we are prepared to join the international community in providing humanitarian assistance and stabilization measures at the request of the Kabul government.
Tribal areas in Afghanistan are, it seems, irremediably atavist. Islam expert Dr. Walid Phares debunks the "two Talibans" (naughty & nice) myth in a crisp piece. We should be modest in our aspirations for changing their lives. Let's buy the drugs, and sell geography by ceding tribal areas while securing the more civilized parts; we can still use Predator drones & special ops to conduct military strikes at targets of opportunity. Also, let us hope national security maven George Wittman is wrong when he warns that President 44 may repeat JFK's coup mistake and press to dump Hamid Karzai on grounds of corruption--that would be rich coming from a White House rife with Chigaco pols, including 44 himself.
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