The Safe Haven Myth and Other Dubious Assumptions Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at FP.com, Stephen Walt has an excellent take down of the Al Qaeda safe haven myth, which has become the dominant rationale for maintaining the US presence in Afghanistan. While many of Walt's arguments are similar to ones that I've made here - he does the all-important job of exposing many of the fallacies and dubious assumptions in the safe haven argument. For example:

While it is true that Mullah Omar gave Osama bin Laden a sanctuary both before and after 9/11, it is by no means clear that they would give him free rein to attack the United States again. Protecting al Qaeda back in 2001 brought no end of trouble to Mullah Omar and his associates, and if they were lucky enough to regain power, it is hard to believe they would give us a reason to come back in force.

It's worth a read.

While we're on the subject of dubious assumption, Bernard Finel, who has been yeoman's work writing about COIN and Afghanistan, offers a takedown of Stephen Biddle's "Is It Worth It?" article from the American Interest. I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but Finel reminded me of something that I had forgotten to mention in my initial analysis - this argument from Biddle:

If the Taliban regained control of the Afghan state, their ability to use the state’s resources to destabilize the secular government in Pakistan would increase the risk of state collapse there. Analysts have made much of the threat that Pakistani Taliban base camps pose to the stability of the government in Kabul, but the danger works both ways: Instability in Afghanistan also poses a serious threat to the secular civilian government in Pakistan. This is the single greatest U.S. interest in Afghanistan: to prevent it from aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an al-Qaeda nuclear-armed sanctuary there.

I have to admit, I don't understand this argument at all. One of the big takeaways from reading Seth Jones new book on Afghanistan was that in the years after the Taliban was dislodged from power and took up safe haven in Pakistan they received support and protection from the Pakistani government. Indeed, perhaps the greatest impediment to stopping the Taliban insurgency is the failure of the Pakistani government to crack down on Taliban sanctuaries - a point raised by the New York Times in July:

Obama administration officials . . . express frustration that Pakistan is failing to act against the full array of Islamic militants using the country as a base. Instead, they say, Pakistani authorities have chosen to fight Pakistani Taliban who threaten their government, while ignoring Taliban and other militants fighting Americans in Afghanistan or terrorizing India.

The United States maintains that the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, leads an inner circle of commanders who guide the war in southern Afghanistan from their base in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan. American officials say this Taliban council, known as the Quetta shura, is sheltered by Pakistani authorities, who may yet want to employ the Taliban as future allies in Afghanistan.

According to Biddle's argument the Pakistani government should at least be theoretically concerned about a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. But if they are, they're not showing it. It sure seems as though without active Pakistani support the Taliban insurgency would be much weaker than it is today. I got to say, if your key rationale for maintaining a robust troop presence in Afghanistan is to prevent "aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems" wouldn't it be helpful if the Pakistanis had the same view?

In fact, back in July the Pakistanis were complaining that the US war in Afghanistan risked doing the exact opposite and destabilizing Pakistan by forcing Taliban across the border into Baluchistan.

Pakistani officials have told the Obama administration that the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

Pakistan does not have enough troops to deploy to Baluchistan to take on the Taliban without denuding its border with its archenemy, India, the officials said. Dialogue with the Taliban, not more fighting, is in Pakistan’s national interest, they said.

Now I think we can agree that the Pakistanis have the troops to take on the Taliban - but the fact that they choose not to do so should speak volumes about Biddle's argument. Pakistan has long viewed Afghanistan as a sort of strategic reserve depth - that certainly was the case in the 1990s and their support for the Taliban then.  While it seems hard to imagine they necessarily want to a return to a pre-9/11 situation it's even harder to buy the notion that we need to be in Afghanistan in order to protect Pakistan.

At the very least, we haven't done a good job of convincing Pakistan.

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