Friday, Jul 4, 2008
The White House calls Afghanistan a success story. But the failure to commit needed resources has left it a chaotic, increasingly dangerous country where violent warlords run amok. Are we going to repeat our mistake in Iraq?
Apr 10, 2003 | President George W. Bush signed the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act into law last Dec. 4, authorizing $3.3 billion in economic, political, humanitarian and security assistance for Afghanistan over the next four years. The next month, Bush submitted the 2003 budget authorization to Congress but requested slightly less than that.
As in: $0.00.
"The administration anticipated that Congress would put it in," explains a sympathetic congressional source. "So they low-balled it."
That's for sure. Congressional staffers quickly penciled in $295 million, but that still wasn't enough. "The request in the administration's appropriations bill does not come near fully funding the bill that we passed in [the Senate Foreign Relations] Committee and the president signed into law," the bill's chief author, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., tells Salon. "It does not come near it."
As we consider reconstruction plans in Iraq, and the administration promises to democratize the country, it's worth taking a look at our "liberation" of Afghanistan. A year later, many of the atrocities we thought we'd stopped still continue, and even Bush's allies in the Senate and Afghanistan think we have undercommitted to efforts that could truly change that country for the better.
Afghanistan's experience "doesn't bode very well for the upcoming one," says Steven Bourke of the Center for International Conflict Resolution, at Columbia University, who just returned from 16 days in Afghanistan in early March. "It's a country that needs attention and commitment, but there's been an inclination to withdraw."
This follows the lofty rhetoric from the White House, before our attack on that country, of the Afghanistan to come. The White House spoke of "an Afghanistan that is prosperous, democratic, self-governing, market friendly and respectful of human rights." Similar promises are being made right now to Iraq. "Iraq's greatest long-term need is a representative government that protects the rights of all Iraqis," Bush said just over a week ago at Camp David. "The people of Iraq deserve to stand on their feet as free men and women -- the citizens of a free country," Bush said to the men and women in uniform at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., late last month.
But even Hamid Karzai, the normally deferential president of the Transitional Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, recently revealed his fears about the depth of the U.S. commitment. "Don't forget us if Iraq happens," he pleaded at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Feb. 26.
His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who represents the government in southern Kandahar, was much blunter to an AP reporter on Monday. "It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem," he said "What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing ...There have been no significant changes for people." Ahmed Karzai says he doesn't "know what to say to people anymore."
If the U.S. government's new charge is finding nations oppressed by horrific regimes that pose a security risk to the U.S., bombing that country, and creating a new democracy, then Afghanistan -- our first experiment -- stands as an example. Regrettably, as of now, it is an example of how not to do it.
First off, no one seems to have a clear idea of how many troops will be needed in postwar Iraq. On NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, host Tim Russert posed that question to his two guests, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Gen. Peter Pace, vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- after the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, had estimated 200,000 troops. Wolfowitz called that figure "wildly off the mark," and Pace used Afghanistan as a comparison, noting that "the U.S. coalition forces there is around 10,000," even though it has a larger population than Iraq. When Russert said that "the only secure place is actually Kabul," Pace disagreed. "The only part that's really insecure is the part in the southeast border area," he said.
Pace ought to consult more with the U.S. State Department, which on April 2 issued a travel advisory, declaring the whole country to be dangerous -- including Kabul. "The security threat to all American citizens in Afghanistan remains high. Remnants of the former Taliban regime and the terrorist Al-Qaida network, and other groups hostile to the government, as well as criminal elements, remain active," it read. Visitors risk being victimized by "land mines, banditry, armed rivalry among political and tribal groups, and the possibility of terrorist attacks, including attacks using vehicular or other bombs."
The ugly reality of postwar Afghanistan will no doubt hurt the United States in future campaigns; it surely hurt us with plans for Iraq. After speaking with defense and foreign ministers from France and Germany, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware -- the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- was quoted as saying that "the one thing that was most often raised with me was, 'All right, we think you should go, but when it goes, what are you going to do? Are you going to do what you did -- or you're doing -- in Afghanistan?'"
Nonetheless, plans for post-Saddam Iraq are underway. In Kuwait, retired Gen. Jay Garner, director of the newly formed Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, is putting together his staff and making plans. The Pentagon is awarding rebuilding contracts. Debates are being held within the administration about what is next.
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