The Regional Dimensions to Security

Other Sides of Afghanistan

Aglaya Snetkov, S. Aris

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137330048
• eBook ISBN: 9781137330055
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica asiatica

This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the perspective and approaches to Afghan security taken by the states bordering and in close proximity to Afghanistan, and the transnational dynamics that interconnect these states with Afghanistan and one another.

Part I

Introduction and Background

1

Introduction: Including the Other Sides of Afghanistan

Aglaya Snetkov and Stephen Aris

Since 9/11 the security situation in Afghanistan has been among the highest, or the most significant, priorities on the global security agenda, and a prominent issue on many regional and national security agendas. To begin with, this attention was centered on the US-led operation to eliminate al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban, before it switched to the state-building process in the wake of the initial success of these military operations. From the mid-2000s, however, an increase in military resistance from a rejuvenated Taliban and other groups led to a concentration on the counterinsurgency operations of the US and International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) troops. With the United States (U.S.) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) setting a deadline of 2014 for the withdrawal of the majority of their troops, the generalized security situation in post-2014 Afghanistan, and how the Afghan state and national army will cope with full responsibility for managing and counteracting instability, has become the prime consideration. This drawdown and the ongoing insecurity and insurgency within Afghanistan have brought to the fore questions about how Afghanistan’s neighboring states and the proximate regional powers relate to Afghan security.

This sudden and deliberate refocusing in perspective, from a narrow geospatial and geopolitical focus on Afghanistan to a wider one encompassing the area surrounding Afghanistan, reveals that for most of the last decade the regional nature of many of the underlying security dynamics in Afghanistan and the role played by neighboring and regional states have been largely ignored. This increased discussion of the wider regional space around Afghanistan has often centered on how, in the absence of the U.S. and NATO, these actors can contribute to the long-term management of security and stability in Afghanistan. In terms of policy, this has manifested itself in calls by the U.S., NATO and international actors for “regional solutions” to post-2014 Afghan security.

Proceeding from this starting point, this book focuses on the regional dimension to security in Afghanistan. It surveys, and accounts for, the wide range of contextual factors and perspectives that determine the patterns and nature of security across this wider regional space. On this basis (see Map 1.1), it considers the prospects for and likely nature of regional cooperation on Afghanistan following the US and ISAF drawdown.

Map 1.1 Afghanistan and its neighbors

Source: Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, 2013.

From “Enduring Freedom” to a “regional solution”

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a US-led coalition launched Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 to remove the Taliban and root out al-Qaeda terrorist cells. This action was accompanied by promises of long-term contributions toward state-building in Afghanistan, in order to stabilize the state and prevent it from functioning as a hub of terrorist activity.¹ Following the quick success in removing the Taliban from Kabul and breaking up of terrorist training camps causing their operatives to flee, the December 2001 Bonn Agreement established the Afghan Interim Authority (AIA) as a temporary government in Afghanistan. The unanimous adoption of United Nations Security Council resolution 1386 authorized the creation of an “International Security Assistance Force to assist the Afghan Interim Authority in the maintenance of security in Kabul and its surrounding areas.” After NATO took permanent command of the ISAF in October 2003, its mandate was expanded territorially, from its initial focus on the area around Kabul to encompass the rest of Afghanistan. Furthermore, its goals were expanded to cover the maintenance of security, the aiding of reconstruction and development and the facilitation of good governance.

Toward the end of the 2000s, however, it became increasingly clear that the US and ISAF operations had had limited success in achieving their wide-ranging, and at times competing, goals.² Even though much of the al-Qaeda stronghold was eradicated, Taliban forces were not only returning to Afghanistan but were also increasing their presence and control over large areas of the country.³ Against this background, the commander of US forces and ISAF, General Stanley McChrystal, concluded in a report to the US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, on 30 August 2009, which was leaked to the media, that “failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity matures – risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”⁴ On the basis of this recommendation, on 1 December 2009, US president Barack Obama announced what has been termed a “troop-surge” strategy, stating that “it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan.”⁵ A coalition of NATO members contributed a further 1,000 troops to this “troop surge.”

While, on the one hand, this represented a renewed effort by the US and its NATO allies to bring security and stability to Afghanistan, on the other, it marked the beginning of the process toward the withdrawal of their troops. In Obama’s “troop-surge” speech, he outlined that “[a]fter 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.”⁶ At its November 2010 summit, NATO set a target date of the end of 2014 for the cessation of military operations in Afghanistan, by which time “full responsibility for security across the whole of Afghanistan” would be handed over to the Afghan National Army (ANA).⁷ This was followed by Obama outlining a more concrete timetable for an accelerated phased withdrawal of US troops from 2011 until 2014,⁸ with the majority of the other NATO members contributing troops to the ISAF following suit and declaring their own intentions to draw down their troops, with each government setting different paces and timetables for withdrawal. At its May 2012 summit in Chicago, NATO formally accepted the Obama timetable for withdrawal, noting that the “irreversible transition of full security responsibility from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is on track for completion by the end of 2014.”⁹

Ever since the US and NATO outlined plans to draw down their military presence,¹⁰ they have asserted that certain key steps need to take place to ensure the stability of Afghanistan after this deadline. All of these steps are supposed to contribute to the development of Afghan state capacity, and enhance its ability to undermine the activities of antistate, anti-regime and antidemocratic forces, most notably the Taliban, who attempt to destabilize this process. In short, the aim is to propel the capacity of the Afghan state to that of a “stable and established” state within the international system, via a state monopoly over violence, peaceful transitions of governments and a statewide national identity project. One side of this equation is the US and NATO efforts to build the capacity of the ANA and the granting of commitments to provide financial and military resources after 2014, a broad framework for which was laid down in the US–Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement of 1 May 2012.¹¹ Indeed, a discourse is now emerging from the US and NATO that this side of the equation is almost successfully complete,¹² although many are extremely critical of such assertions.¹³

The other side relates to US and NATO assertions of the importance of encouraging a “regional solution.” In this context, a “regional solution” is articulated both as a mechanism for stabilizing Afghanistan internally, particularly in relation to its weak and porous borders, and also as a tool for guaranteeing stability in and around Afghanistan following the final withdrawal of US and ISAF-led troops. Initially this focused on the “Af-Pak” strategy, which treated “Afghanistan and Pakistan as two countries, but as – with one challenge in one region.”¹⁴ Subsequently, this has been taken to mean a wider regional perspective, as exemplified by the Istanbul Process on Regional Cooperation¹⁵ and the New Silk Road strategy,¹⁶ to compensate for, and legitimate, the withdrawal of the majority of US and NATO military troops. An increasingly wide range of regional actors have been included into both academic and policy discussions on the prospects of bolstering a regional solution in Afghanistan, such as India, Central Asia and even Russia, albeit with somewhat less focus placed on the role that actors such as China and Iran would play in this shifting landscape.¹⁷

As a result, while much neglected over the last decade, the regional dimension is now asserted by policy practitioners, analysts and scholars alike as vital and inextricably linked to the security landscape in and surrounding Afghanistan.¹⁸ An illustration of this was the UN-sponsored London Conference on Afghanistan’s communiqué, which

underscored that regionally owned and steered initiatives stood the best chance of success and welcomed a number of recent initiatives that showed the need for neighboring and regional partners to work constructively together.¹⁹

The need to foster greater regional cooperation has been largely accepted within the international community as one of the primary elements for the stabilization of Afghanistan.

Hence, even if the proposed US and NATO withdrawal does not occur to the extent envisaged, existing Western operations and state-building programs will have to increasingly be coordinated with regional and neighboring states as part of the normalization process of the Afghan state, and in order to share some of the burden of the rebuilding process. Thus, with the prospect of an end to active Western-led military operations over the course of the next few years, the role and influence of regional powers and neighboring states is returning to the top of the agenda, as they will be forced, and expected by the U.S. and NATO, to contribute to post-2014 security and stability in Afghanistan.

Aims of the book

This study has two primary research objectives: first, to analyze the views of the neighboring and regional states about Afghanistan and how they approach the current security situation (what role they see themselves playing and how they want to address their concerns), and how they are reacting to the prospect of a Western withdrawal; second, to assess the prospects for and likely nature of a regional mechanism for managing Afghan security and stability. To these ends, this book adopts an approach that is both comprehensive, covering intrastate, interstate and extra-state dynamics, and contextually informed, bringing together a wide variety of knowledge, information and perspectives on these different states and regions.

To address the first objective, the book devotes chapters to the perspectives and approaches of the states in close proximity to Afghanistan, and how they view the security situation in both Afghanistan and the wider space surrounding it, and the prospects for regional cooperation. To ensure a common frame of analysis between these various perspectives, all authors address a common set of questions. Each chapter is therefore divided into three categories:

• Conceptions of history: Background to relations with Afghanistan and the region

• Contemporary relations with Afghanistan and the region – 9/11 to 2014

• Security and regional solutions

In each of these sections, the authors address the issues and themes most relevant to the perspectives and approaches of contemporary political debate on Afghanistan within the respective neighboring states and regional powers in close proximity. These chapters thus provide a contextually informed account from which cross-regional debate can proceed.

In addition to these case studies, there are three chapters addressing wider transnational thematic issues – multilateral countermeasures against the illegal narcotics trade, regional economic cooperation and regional security frameworks. These chapters bring into focus the non-state dynamics and interdependencies that, alongside interstate relations, shape the security space in and around Afghanistan.

The book thus utilizes contextually based knowledge from all perspectives of the wider space surrounding Afghanistan and adopts a comprehensive approach that crosscuts the existing area studies and disciplinary divides. In so doing, it seeks to provide a comprehensive academic study on the regional dimension to security in Afghanistan, combining case studies on all of Afghanistan’s neighbors (Pakistan, Iran, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) and proximate regional powers (India and Russia), as well as of Afghanistan itself and the interconnections between the contexts (Central Asia, South Asia, Middle East) surrounding Afghanistan, including in terms of transnational networks (economic, political institutional and illegal narcotics trafficking networks).

Position in the literature

In line with policy debates within the US and its NATO allies, most academic studies on Afghanistan since 2001 have concentrated on the nature, and success or otherwise, of the US/ISAF operation,²⁰ peace-building and state-building models within Afghanistan²¹ and the new Afghan political system.²² However, there are relatively few systematic assessments of the regional dimension to Afghan security or of the position of the sta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Part I: Introduction and Background
• Part II: Neighboring and Regional States’ Perspectives
• Part III: Regional Interdependencies and Strategies
• Index