Afghanistan Without America

Vanda Felbab-Brown explains the complicated logistics of getting out of Afghanistan, and concludes:

The pace and shape of the U.S. and ISAF drawdown in Afghanistan, which are yet to be fully determined, will produce far greater pressures than simply logistical ones. How many U.S. troops are left behind in Afghanistan after 2014 and what roles they retain will influence whether civil war will, in fact, materialize. Ultimately, although Pakistan is likely to continue cultivating vicious allies like the Haqqanis, an unstable Afghanistan will destabilize Pakistan, too. Resolving the logistics to get out of Afghanistan on schedule is important. But staying in Afghanistan in a sufficiently robust and wisely structured presence so that security can be strengthened and Afghan governance improved is even more crucial. The worst possible outcome would be to be rushing out of Afghanistan and then lacking even the logistical routes to do so.

The question right now is whether a U.S. withdrawal will lead to civil war. A recent New Yorker story by Dexter Filkins confronted the dangerous prospect. In particular, he discussed the massive power imbalance between the government and Afghanistan's various militias:

Together, the militias set up to fight the Taliban in Kunduz are stronger than the government itself. Local officials said that there were about a thousand Afghan Army soldiers in the province—I didn’t see any—and about three thousand police, of whom I saw a handful. Some police officers praised the militias for helping bring order to Kunduz; others worried that the government had been eclipsed. “We created these groups, and now they are out of control,” Nizamuddin Nashir, the governor of Khanabad, said. “The government does not collect taxes, but these groups do, because they are the men with the guns.”

Money quote:

Nashir grew increasingly vehement. “Mark my words, the moment the Americans leave, the civil war will begin,” he said. “This country will be divided into twenty-five or thirty fiefdoms, each with its own government.” Nashir rattled off the names of some of the country’s best-known leaders—some of them warlords—and the areas they come from: “Mir Alam will take Kunduz. Atta will take Mazar-e-Sharif. Dostum will take Sheberghan. The Karzais will take Kandahar. The Haqqanis will take Paktika. If these things don’t happen, you can burn my bones when I die.”

(Image by Seamus Murphy)