Nation-state nonstarter

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By Arnaud de Borchgrave

A wise veteran Arab intelligence hand said Afghanistan is now tailor-made for deals with the principal tribal chiefs designed to detach them from the Taliban they fear more than U.S. and NATO troops.

Tribal maps are more important than provincial demarcations under a despised central government. The deals would cost several hundreds of millions of dollars, he said, not the tens of billions that are being wasted on an unwinnable war.

With much experience dealing with Afghanistan when the mujahedeen guerrillas were fighting Soviet occupation troops in the 1980s, and again with the Taliban regime when it seized power in 1996 and before it got kicked out by the U.S. invasion in 2001, the former Arab intelligence chief says it may still be possible to suborn lukewarm Taliban supporters into a compromise coalition.

The 1893 Durand Line, named after the then-foreign secretary of British India, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, and co-signed by Amir Abdur Rahman Khan of Afghanistan, drew an imaginary 1,610-mile border that artificially divides the same tribes.

It was part of the "Great Game" of nations designed by the British Empire to contain Russian expansionism. The 100-year agreement expired in 1993. A more realistic division would keep the same tribes together in a long-overdue renegotiation.

This is more important than redoing the Afghan presidential election at a time when President Hamid Karzai is not only known to have stolen it, but, more seriously, has a drug-dealing brother tarred and feathered by a CIA-connection brush.

President Obama presumably has studied the history of the Vietnam negotiations. They began shortly after the February 1968 Tet Offensive, hailed as a communist victory by the Western media but seen as a defeat by the postwar memoirs of North Vietnamese generals.

Viet Cong troops attacked 27 cities and towns simultaneously but were repulsed in each case with huge losses (45,000). Hopefully, Mr. Obama has talked with John Negroponte, a Vietnamese-speaking young diplomat who pioneered the secret negotiating track as a Kissinger scout. Mr. Negroponte also was the first director of national intelligence, in charge of 16 intelligence agencies and 100,000 people, with a budget of $50 billion.

On-and-off talks took place over the next four years, interspersed with military action, e.g., the incursions into Cambodia to disrupt North Vietnam's supply lines and a major South Vietnamese offensive without U.S. involvement.

Finally, Henry Kissinger announced Oct. 26, 1972, "Peace is at hand." In an interview this reporter conducted with Ho Chi Minh's successor, Pham Van Dong, it soon became clear that North Vietnam and the U.S. read the peace accords differently.

This led to the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi, which in turn produced the revised agreements that were signed in Paris a month later on Jan. 23, 1973. Two more months saw the last U.S. soldier out of Vietnam. South Vietnam held its own for two more years - until the U.S. Congress yanked the rug out from under our allies and cut off any further military assistance.

Nor is there a fast track to peace in Afghanistan. As President Reagan's Secretary of State George Shultz said last week, "Initial military successes by the U.S. and the coalition forces were compromised by an attempt to create an Afghanistan that has never previously existed - one with a centralized government and a strong national army. Any future approach must recognize the fact that Afghanistan is a bottom-up, rather than top-down, country, and thus change must be instituted on a local rather than a national level."

With a majority of the American people against any widening of the war with more blood and treasure, the best card Mr. Obama has in hand at this time is to make deals with some of the major tribal leaders who don't approve of the way the Taliban enforces its feudal religious writ by cowing the rest of the population. Anyone suspected of cooperating with U.S. and NATO forces is dragged out and beheaded or shot in front of villagers.

The CIA and U.S. Special Forces - together 410 men - with a helping hand from Russian intelligence, liberated Afghanistan in Oct. 2001. Taliban regrouped in Pakistan's tribal areas. Bankrolled by the opium poppy trade, they rearmed and went back into Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army, under U.S. prodding, tried to dislodge Taliban from their safe havens but failed. Now, stung by Taliban's brazen attacks close to Islamabad, the army has launched a major offensive and met with initial successes.

So this is no time to be accusing the Pakistani intelligence service, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton coyly suggested on a visit to Pakistan last week, of concealing the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

This would be a propitious time, working with Pakistani intelligence, to contact major Afghan tribal chiefs and work out the kind of deals that the former Arab intelligence chief was discussing. They must be made to understand that NATO and U.S. forces are not there to occupy Afghanistan and want to leave as soon as we are reasonably certain that al Qaeda will not be allowed back. What kind of government the Afghans wish to give themselves should be no concern of Mr. Obama and the allies.

Tribal loyalties are much stronger than the shaky Afghan nation-state. The U.S. government urgently needs to upgrade its knowledge of the dominant Pashtun tribe. It was one of the keys to the Bush administration's success in 2001. It is still a key, this time for a successful exit for 42 nations that don't belong there. And to make sure al Qaeda does not return.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.