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The End of the Afghan War: Talking with the Taliban and What Comes Next
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
With US troop withdrawals moving forward, but the war far from over, CNP President Scott Bates and our expert panel discussed what the end of the Afghan War might mean for American interests and the people of the region.
The Colombia Standard
Michael O’Hanlon, Director of Research at the Brookings Institution, perceived only a gradual improvement in the security environment. He raised the “Colombia Standard” as a possible framework for building robust state capacity amidst regional strife. Mr. O’Hanlon discussed a model wherein coalition forces restrict the insurgency to the East and South while simultaneously strengthening central institutions. This strategy, which draws on Colombia’s successful suppression of FARC, would call on 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops beyond the 2014 withdrawal date.
The Political Option
For Joshua Foust, Fellow at the American Security Project, the only reasonable means of producing a stable Afghan state, would be the result of a political, rather than armed, solution. Tracing a long history of conflict mitigation in the country, Foust contends that the withdrawal process in the region must hinge on the negotiated settlement between relevant power brokers within the larger political system.
Mr. Foust believes we are consistently overlooking the question of governance – past, present, and future – in our deliberations on how to end this war:
The war is not about the military. The war is
fundamentally a political struggle for the
future of the Afghan state…We really
overestimate the positive role that we can play
by just throwing more military forces at this
problem or even maintaining a military force
there because it doesn’t get at the fundamental
political problem that’s at the heart of this
war that we still haven’t addressed.
Security First For former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul McHale, the relative safety of Afghans is the sine qua non of any viable end-state negotiation. Accordingly, the effort to create a proficient Afghan National Security Force becomes the essential precondition for a sustainable Afghan state. McHale would realign the US force posture to focus on a train and assist mission for all Afghan security forces.
