As far as realpolitik Afghanistan is concerned, with or
without a deal, the US military want to stay in what is a priceless Greater
Middle East base to deploy hybrid war techniques
Nearly two decades after the invasion and occupation of
Afghanistan post-9/11, and after an interminable war costing over $ 2 trillion,
there’s hardly anything “historic” about a possible peace deal that may be
signed in Doha this coming Saturday between Washington and the Taliban.
We should start by stressing three
points.
1- The Taliban wanted all US troops
out. Washington refused.
2- The possible deal only reduces US
troops from 13,000 to 8,600. That’s the same number already deployed before the
Trump administration.
3- The reduction will only happen a
year and a half from now – assuming what’s being described as a truce holds.
So
there would be no misunderstanding, Taliban Deputy Leader Sirajuddin Haqqani,
in an op-ed certainly read by everyone inside
the Beltway, detailed their straightforward red line: total US withdrawal.
And Haqqani is adamant: there’s no peace deal if US troops stay.
And Haqqani is adamant: there’s no peace deal if US troops stay.
Still,
a deal looms. How come? Simple: enter a series of secret “annexes.”
The
top US negotiator, the seemingly eternal Zalmay Khalilzad, a remnant of the
Clinton and Bush eras, has spent months codifying these annexes – as confirmed
by a source in Kabul currently not in government but familiar with the
negotiations.
Let’s
break them down to four points.
1-
US counter-terror forces would be allowed to stay. Even if approved by the
Taliban leadership, this would be anathema to the masses of Taliban fighters.
2-
The Taliban would have to denounce terrorism and violent extremism. That’s
rhetorical, not a problem.
3-
There will be a scheme to monitor the so-called truce while different warring
Afghan factions discuss the future, what the US State Dept. describes as
“intra-Afghan negotiations.” Culturally, as we’ll see later, Afghans of
different ethnic backgrounds will have a tremendously hard time monitoring
their own warring.
4-
The CIA would be allowed to do business in Taliban-controlled areas. That’s an
even more hardcore anathema. Everyone familiar with post-9/11 Afghanistan knows
that the prime reason for CIA business is the heroin rat line that finances Langley’s
black ops, as I exposed in 2017.
Otherwise,
everything about this “historic” deal remains quite vague.
Even
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was forced to admit the war in Afghanistan is
“still” in “a state of strategic stalemate.”
As
for the far from strategic financial disaster, one just needs to peruse the
latest SIGAR report. SIGAR stands for Special
Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. In fact virtually nothing in
Afghanistan has been “reconstructed.”
No real deal without Iran
The
“intra-Afghan” mess starts with the fact that Ashraf Ghani eventually was
declared the winner of the presidential elections held in September last year.
But virtually no one recognizes him.
The
Taliban don’t talk to Ghani. Only to some people that are part of the
government in Kabul. And they describe these talks at best as between “ordinary
Afghans.”
Everyone
familiar with Taliban strategy knows US/NATO troops will never be allowed to
stay. What could happen is the Taliban allowing some sort of face-saving
contingent to remain for a few months, and then a very small contingent stays
to protect the US embassy in Kabul.
Washington
will obviously reject this possibility. The alleged “truce” will be broken.
Trump, pressured by the Pentagon, will send more troops. And the infernal
spiral will be back on track.
Another
major hole in the possible deal is that the Americans completely ignored Iran
in their negotiations in Doha.
That’s
patently absurd. Teheran is a key strategic partner to its neighbor Kabul.
Apart from the millenary historical/cultural/social connections, there are at
least 3.5 million Afghan refugees in Iran.
Post
9-11, Tehran slowly but surely started cultivating relations with the Taliban –
but not at a military/weaponizing level, according to Iranian diplomats. In
Beirut last September, and then in Nur-Sultan in November, I was provided a
clear picture of where discussions about Afghanistan stand.
The
Russian connection to the Taliban goes through Tehran. Taliban leaders have
frequent contacts with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Only last year,
Russia held two conferences in Moscow between Taliban political leaders and
mujahideen. The Russians were engaged into bringing Uzbeks into the
negotiations. At the same time, some Taliban leaders met with Russian Federal
Security Service (FSB) operatives four times in Tehran, in secret.
The
gist of all these discussions was “to find a conflict resolution outside of
Western patterns”, according to an Iranian diplomat. They were aiming at some
sort of federalism: the Taliban plus the mujahideen in charge of the
administration of some vilayets.
The
bottom line is that Iran has better connections in Afghanistan than Russia and
China. And this all plays within the much larger scope of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization. The Russia-China strategic partnership wants an
Afghan solution coming from inside the SCO, of which both Iran and Afghanistan
are observers. Iran may become a full SCO member if it holds on to the nuclear
deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, until October – thus still not
subjected to UN sanctions.
All
these actors want US troops out – for good. So the solution always points
towards a decentralized federation. According to an Afghan diplomat, the
Taliban seem ready to share power with the Northern Alliance. The spanner in
the works is the Hezb-e-Islami, with one Jome Khan Hamdard, a commander allied
with notorious mujahid Gulbudiin Hekmatyar, based in Mazar-i-Sharif and
supported by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, more interested in restarting a civil
war.
Understanding Pashtunistan
Here’s
a blast from the past, reliving the context of
the Taliban visit to Houston, and showing how things have not changed much
since the first Clinton administration. It’s always a matter of the Taliban
getting their cut – at the time related to Pipelineistan business, now to their
reaffirmation of what can be described as Pashtunistan.
Not
every Pashtun is a Taliban, but the overwhelming majority of Taliban are
Pashtuns.
The
Washington establishment never did their “know your enemy” homework, trying to
understand how Pashtuns from extremely diverse groups are linked by a common
system of values establishing their ethnic foundation and necessary social
rules. That’s the essence of their code of conduct – the fascinating,
complex Pashtunwali. Although
it incorporates numerous Islamic elements, Pashtunwali is in total contradiction with
Islamic law on many points.
Islam
did introduce key moral elements to Pashtun society. But there are also
juridical norms, imposed by a hereditary nobility, that support the whole
edifice and that came from the Turko-Mongols.
Pashtuns
– a tribal society – have a deep aversion to the Western concept of the state.
Central power can only expect to neutralize them with – to put it bluntly
– bribes. That’s what passes as a sort of system of government in Afghanistan.
Which brings the question of how much – and with what – the US is now bribing
the Taliban.
Afghan
political life, in practice, works out from actors that are factions,
sub-tribes, “Islamic coalitions” or regional groups.
Since
1996, and up to 9/11, the Taliban incarnated the legitimate return of Pashtuns
as the dominant element in Afghanistan. That’s why they instituted an emirate
and not a republic, more appropriate for a Muslim community ruled only by
religious legislation. The diffidence towards cities, particularly Kabul, also
expresses the sentiment of Pashtun superiority over other Afghan ethnic groups.
The
Taliban do represent a process of overcoming tribal identity and the
affirmation of Pashtunistan.
The Beltway never understood this powerful dynamic – and that’s one of the key
reasons for the American debacle.
Lapis Lazuli corridor
Afghanistan
is at the center of the new American strategy for Central Asia, as in “expand and
maintain support for stability in Afghanistan” coupled with an emphasis to
“encourage connectivity between Central Asia and Afghanistan.”
In
practice, the Trump administration wants the five Central Asian “stans” to bet
on integration projects such as the CASA-1000 electricity project and
the Lapis Lazuli trade corridor, which is in fact
a reboot of the Ancient Silk Road, connecting Afghanistan to Turkmenistan,
Azerbaijan and Georgia before crossing the Black Sea to Turkey and then all the
way to the EU.
But
the thing is Lapis Lazuli is already bound to integrate with Turkey’s Middle Corridor, which is part of the New Silk
Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, as well as with the China-Pakistan Economic
Corridor Plus, also part of Belt and Road. Beijing planned this
integration way before Washington.
The
Trump administration is just stressing the obvious: a peaceful Afghanistan is
essential for the integration process.
Andrew Korybko correctly argues that
“Russia and China could make more progress on building the Golden Ring between themselves, Pakistan,
Iran, and Turkey by that time, thus ‘embracing’ Central Asia with potentially
limitless opportunities that far surpass those that the US is offering or
‘encircling’ the region from a zero-sum American strategic perspective and
‘forcing’ it out.”
The late Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard”
Brzezinski’s wishful thinking “Eurasian Balkans” scenario may be dead, but the
myriad US divide-and-rule gambits imposed on the heartland have now mutated
into hybrid war explicitly directed against China, Russia and Iran – the
three major nodes of Eurasia integration.
And
that means that as far as realpolitik Afghanistan is concerned, with or without
a deal, the US military have no intention to go anywhere. They want to stay –
whatever it takes. Afghanistan is a priceless Greater Middle East base to
deploy hybrid war techniques.
Pashtuns are certainly getting the
message from key Shanghai Cooperation Organization players. The question is how
they plan to run rings around Team Trump.
