Ask a roomful of foreign policy analysts why U.S. and NATO forces remain in Afghanistan, and one is likely to receive a flurry of different responses. Defeating the Taliban, stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan, and maintaining American credibility are just a few of the several reasons given for our continued commitment.
These are all laudable goals, but as the White House concludes its strategic review of the war — one likely to produce a recommendation for additional forces — it is necessary to recall why the U.S. first committed troops to Afghanistan: to defeat al Qaeda, a movement that still threatens the American homeland eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
It can be difficult to assess the current state of al Qaeda and its affiliates. We’re told that Afghanistan has fewer than 100 al Qaeda operatives, but also that the failure of the Afghan government will lead to the group’s inevitable return to the state. The director of the National Counterterrorism Center reports that al Qaeda’s haven in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is shrinking, yet militants there have launched a spate of attacks in Pakistan over the last several weeks. And descriptions of al Qaeda’s demise are tempered by revelations of a suspected jihadist cell in New York.
Here is what we do know: Al Qaeda remains intent on attacking the U.S. and our friends and allies across the globe. The organization maintains transnational reach but is rooted in Pakistan’s semigoverned tribal areas. As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted recently, any al Qaeda attack on the U.S. is likely to emerge from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
How do these assessments relate to America’s current struggle in Afghanistan? First, they should reinforce our conviction that combating al Qaeda — and not pursuing a handful of other overly ambitious goals — must remain our strategic “anchor” in South Asia. Second, al Qaeda’s presence in northwestern Pakistan suggests that this country — and not Afghanistan — should lie at the center of U.S. interests in the region.
Reframing American interests in this fashion will lead U.S. policymakers to ask at least one important question prior to endorsing military escalation: What effect would additional troops in Afghanistan have on the stability of Pakistan?
After Sept. 11, American troops and our allies routed al Qaeda and Taliban militants but pushed their remnants out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan, which heightened terrorist activity in northwestern Pakistan. Over the last year, in particular, we have seen a mix of al Qaeda, Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militants strike Pakistani cities and military facilities with increasing frequency.
Meanwhile, the FATA haven serves as the primary base for al Qaeda’s global terrorist agenda. These developments are troubling not just because they endanger a nuclear-armed regime, but because the U.S. is largely powerless to combat the threat without Pakistani support.
Fortunately, Pakistan’s military has just begun a 30,000-troop assault on militant-controlled territory in South Waziristan — the type of campaign that U.S. policymakers have long sought. As Pakistan confronts extremism in its northwest, the Obama administration should be cautious of U.S. troop increases pushing insurgents in Afghanistan across the border. This would effectively heighten extremist activity in the FATA and make Islamabad’s mission even more difficult.
Indeed, in meetings with CENTCOM Commander Gen. David Petraeus and Sen. John Kerry last week, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani asked that U.S. and NATO forces restrict cross-border militant infiltration. In the end, any regional strategy that shores up Afghanistan while destabilizing Pakistan will detract from our goals of combating terrorism.
Calls for additional forces also risk alienating the Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), both of which have signaled deep reservations about a possible American escalation in Afghanistan. These two institutions are critical partners in U.S. efforts to combat al Qaeda and ultimately will determine the intensity of any offensive against militants. But they also fear growing American and Indian influence in Afghanistan. The Obama administration must be careful, then, to ensure that escalation does not encourage the military and ISI to view extremist militancy more as a defensive buffer against such influence than as an internal nemesis.
In the long term, securing Islamabad’s cooperation in combating terrorism will compel the U.S. to broker some kind of rapprochement between Pakistan and India. Only this type of game-changing diplomacy will allow Pakistan to spend more time confronting extremists in its northwest than preparing for war with its neighbor to the east.
This sort of regional nuance has all too often been missing from America’s involvement in South Asia. A better sense of our strategic imperatives in the region should hopefully lead U.S. policymakers to question some of the key assumptions regarding the wisdom of military escalation.
• Rick “Ozzie” Nelson is a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a former Navy helicopter pilot with more than 20 years of operational and intelligence experience, including assignments at the National Security Council and the National Counterterrorism Center. He recently served in Afghanistan. Benjamin Bodurian is an intern in the CSIS International Security Program.
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