The Afghan National ArmyIt’s Role in Internal Security Lt Gen ® Asad Durrani Foreign forces are likely to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014. It is unlikely that the Taliban led insurgency would have been defeated by then, or the efforts to reconcile them with Kabul made any headway. Security in the country in that case would understandably be the responsibility of the Afghan National Army- possibly assisted by the residual US/NATO forces. If the ANA was now to become the lynchpin for peace and stability that has eluded Afghanistan for over three decades, its potential to do so needs a dispassionate discourse. In principle, security is not a military only affair. The armed forces play a role, however important, in an overarching political framework. When employed within the country, the cover is all the more critical. For example, in counter-insurgency the role of the military is specified, and limited, by the political objective: pacification, reintegration, or elimination of the insurgents; all depending on the environment. Force will be required to create favourable conditions and win time for the political leadership and the civil society to address genuine or perceived grievances of own people. These “Grundnorms” are also applicable to Afghanistan- especially in view of the country’s configuration. Toynbee described this region as the “Eastern Crossroads of History”. Before 1747, the year Ahmed Shah Abdali united its tribes and factions to constitute today’s Afghanistan, the armed, even unarmed, hordes criss-crossed it at will. After becoming a country, this trespassers’ highway became for them a quagmire. If Toynbee was not an historian he might have called it the “Eastern Bermuda Triangle”- only this one sucks in empires and armies. For this outcome alone, the founder of the country deserved to be remembered as Ahmed Shah ‘Baba’. Anyone halfway familiar with Afghanistan would understand the algorithm of this transformation. The country has all possible fault lines: geographic; demographic; tribal; even sectarian and cultural. It became a political entity through a grand bargain between its components. It is best held together with the broadest possible consensus, and cannot be dominated unless all the major centres of resistance were overpowered. That explains the logic of consulting an all inclusive assembly, the Jirga, when deciding matters of national import. And that also explains the pattern we are now so familiar with: foreign invaders face no resistance from the conventional armies of Afghanistan, but they fail to subdue tribesmen who wage unconventional warfare in their respective territories. The fallout of the Soviet invasion and the predicament of the still unfinished American misadventure continue to resonate. I however find the fate of the first British expedition in 1842 more illustrative. When it reached Kabul, the Khan of Kalat famously quipped: “and how would it get out of there”. That one didn’t, not because any “army” reduced it to one man. It died a slow death inflicted upon it by the local militias. Of course, the sole superpower of that time had to save face. It took “revenge” by undertaking another incursion and bribed its way to Kabul and back. One may well argue that whereas the intruders fail due to the Afghan penchant to defend their freedom, a national force with its indigenous credentials need not suffer the same fate. But then one only has to recall the post-Soviet plight of the PDPA Army-- much better equipped, trained and led than the ANA’s hired guns. It is true that the Mujahideen could not dislodge the regulars from their entrenched positions (a lesson they learnt at considerable cost at Jalalabad), or, that they had to buy their victory at Khost as the elder Haqqani did. But then it is also true that the PDPA was confined to a few big cities while the resistance controlled the countryside. As any military strategist would know; the side that enjoys freedom of manoeuvre ultimately wins the war. Incidentally, contrary to the common belief, Najeeb’s Army did not vanish because the Soviets ceased their support. His regime collapsed when allies like Dostum deserted him after his fateful statement that he would abdicate in favour of a Mujahideen led government. Indeed, it is the unity of command all the way to the national leadership that makes an army functional. A dysfunctional government in Kabul may be just one, even if the more serious, of the handicaps the ANA would face. The ethnic divide that has aggravated a great deal during the last two decades may be equally disabling. Maintaining a healthy ethnic mix is a national army’s compulsion. Given a mutually acceptable arrangement it may also work. In the present environment it is a recipe for disaster. Employed against the Taliban, many of its Pashtun soldiers would desert, some of them after using their weapons and skills against their non-Pashtun officers. And just in case the ANA was needed to quash a revolt in the North, one better be mindful of the massacres committed by the Taliban in Mazar-e-Sharif and the systematic asphyxiation carried out by the former Northern Alliance post 9/11. I do not know the extent of Taliban ingress in the ANA’s ranks, but one can reasonably assume that after all the multicoloured assaults- green over blue and red over whatever- loyalty of many Pashtun soldiers would be suspect. The ANA as an institution would also carry a baggage; at least for a time. The Mujahideen used to pejoratively name the PDPA Army a “communist tool”. The ANA too is likely to be seen as an imperial instrument, especially when operating under the US/ NATO cover. One may well argue, as someone has, that how come the Pakistan Army, a legacy of the Raj, was not similarly labelled? I am not sure if I have the correct or the whole answer, but I think that a people’s psyche is strongly influenced by its historical experience. In the Subcontinent the force of arm has always been feared, even respected; and in the “marshal areas” it is envied and eulogised. I do not know of many other countries where the soldiers proudly wear emblems touting that their unit, when serving a foreign power, massacred its own people. I believe the Afghans, though pragmatic when dealing with power, are too proud to worship it. A question one can legitimately ask, “if the above makes any sense, why has the US sunk billions of dollars in a project that had no chance to deliver?” The honest answer again must be, “I do not know, but can try to rationalise”. A few years back I met a retired American general at the Kabul Airport. He said he was heading a company training the Afghan Army. Now, one has heard about representatives of defence industry running introductory courses on new weapon systems, but never of private companies imparting basic skills to armies preparing for war. These soldiers of fortune are more interested in making money. Their Taliban (students), if not well trained, would be a great help in getting their contracts extended- and thus in making more money. Defence contractors training, equipping and building barracks for the Afghan military have a huge stake in the continued build-up of the ANA. Exhausting all options- as Churchill said was the American wont before they got it rightmay be another reason. Having experimented with democracy, nation building and degrading the Taliban- none of them succeeding to the desired extent- handing over Afghanistan to a national army might help Obama proclaim “mission accomplished”. Another possibility is not so benign. The former Vice-President Dick Cheney reportedly said that turmoil in certain regions was good for America. Indeed it is. It serves the sole surviving superpower retain leverage with one or the other side- at times with both- and it keeps its powerful military industrial complex well oiled. Turmoil in Afghanistan also has other benefits. It would justify maintaining a strong military presence in a resource rich region, restrain “rogue” nuclear or wannabe nuclear powers in the neighbourhood, subvert Beijing’s strategic goals in Pakistan, and who knows one day the US might even realise its New Silk Road project. An ANA unable to enforce peace and stability in Afghanistan provides the right pretext to maintain the desired foothold. Or, there may be yet another reason! Till recently I had believed that the US was too smart not to know about the ANA’s limits and was pumping it up as a ruse. But since an American friend of mine who is a keen observer of the Afghan scene is convinced that the ANA could carryout its mission with some help from its mentors, it is quite possible that Washington too has faith in this role. Another friend of mine from across the Atlantic suspects that the Pakistanis, especially from the military, are fearful of a strong Afghan army in the belief that it would be an unfriendly force and could spoil Islamabad’s designs to influence policies in Kabul. I must admit that I had never given much thought to the type of threat the Afghan military could pose to Pakistan’s real or perceived goals in the region, but I do recall the role of the Afghans and their Security Forces during our two wars against India. The message from Kabul both in 1965 and 1971 was that we could move all our troops from the Durand Line to the eastern borders where we needed them more. We did precisely that and the Afghans ensured that for the duration of the crises there was all quiet on the western front. The two countries have their good neighbourly troubles but then their stakes in each-other’s security and stability are so high that neither would do anything deliberately to hurt the other’s core interests. Every country has the right to keep an army; if for no other reason than as a symbol of its sovereignty. Afghanistan too will have one to suit its own needs. But to expect the ANA in its present shape, or even when it has become an effective fighting force, to ensure security in the absence of a broadly accepted dispensation in Kabul, runs counter to a fundamental principle as well as to the genesis of the Country. My American friend, the keen observer of the Afghan scene, once told me that before 1977, except for the Panjshir uprising of 1975, it was the local authority that kept peace in the Country. My Foreword for “Whose Army; Afghanistan’s Future and the Blueprint for Civil War”; a book by Musa Khan Jalalzi, published by Algora Publishing, New York, 2014.