Commentary

American Policy in Afghanistan in Disarray

The reports coming out of Afghanistan these days are an indication that the U.S. policy in that country is already in crisis. Despite now having thousands of troops in Afghanistan, the U.S. has clearly lost control of the situation on the ground and is either unable or unwilling to put a stop to massacres of surrendering Taliban fighters. Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance is adopting an increasingly intransigent stance towards the demands of its U.S. allies.

In the early days of the collapse of the Taliban forces, American officials expressed alarm at the fact that Northern Alliance troops entered Kabul against the express orders of the U.S. The victorious Northern Alliance also insisted that hundreds of British Special Forces leave Afghanistan immediately. The subsequent appearance of 100 elite Russian soldiers in the middle of Kabul and their apparent establishment of a Russian embassy there have raised further questions about who is actually in control of the Afghan agenda. It seems that while the U.S. was noisily dropping bombs and issuing ultimatums, the Russians were quietly arming and cultivating political alliances with many of the warlords of the Northern Alliance. Now that the conflict has entered a political stage, the Americans seem to have come up short on allies within the forces now in control of Afghanistan.

Political talks in Bonn aimed at cobbling together a unified governing council have run into the expected snags due to antagonisms and conflicting ambitions within the factions comprising the Northern Alliance. However, the United States has encountered a potentially far more serious setback with the unexpected rejection by the Northern Alliance leadership of any significant occupying force in Afghanistan, whether in the form of United Nations peacekeepers or some other force. They have declared that, at the most, they will accept only 200 UN observers.

It would be an irony of history if, after spending ten years and billions of dollars to drive the Red Army out of Afghanistan, the United States, with its vaunted display of air power, has in a few short weeks "liberated" Afghanistan from Pakistani and Saudi Arabian control, only to hand it back to the Russians.