Afghanistan War Update, 2015: More Fighting, But Negotiations Coming

Afghanistan has been largely forgotten (including by me) as the rest of the middle east has erupted, in large part because Afghanistan is in a surprisingly "stable" stalemate--not that the country has stabilized, but that there isn't much movement one way or another.

I decided to finally get back to writing about Afghanistan after reading that the US is now planning to keep troops in Afghanistan through 2016--right up until President Obama leaves office.

The decision seems to come in response to two things:

• Fighting with the Taliban is up big time in 2014, with the most civilian casualties on record.
• Obama claims to have great faith in president Ghani, who seems to be less of a strongman and less corrupt than Karzai.

The good news, at least through 2013, is that the total Taliban deaths per year--as well as their percentage of total combat deaths--increased steadily...

...even as the NATO coalition pulled out and got less involved in operations (and thus its casualty rate has dropped precipitously). This means that, indeed, the Afghanistan National Army is getting comparatively stronger and more capable compared to the Taliban. Unlike the Iraqi army forces, there isn't much worry of the Afghans simply splitting and running.

The bad news is that corruption is still a major problem, and that opium production has gone through the roof since the British withdrawal--it's higher than it's ever been. This means lots of money for the Taliban and a sign of very little government control in southern Pashtun regions (Helmand/Kandahar).

In the end, I hold by my 2013 prediction (it's a bloody good article--go read it) that in 2015 the Taliban will attempt an offensive, fail to take over the country, and negotiate.

Those negotiations are coming, in large part due to Ghani's charm offensive to get Pakistan to pressure the Taliban into making the talks happen. I think this is the real reason Obama wants to keep some troops around--to apply pressure during the negotiations. I don't think it's because of just blind faith that Ghani is going to make the situation better before Obama is out of office--that would be naive in the face of recent history.

In the end, Afghanistan is a comparatively simple story of an ethnic (largely Pashtun) insurgency...

caused in large part by arbitrary colonial boundary-making (the infamous Durand Line).

This means, I think, that it'll end as most of these do: slowly, painfully, and with an awkward peace deal that'll have many hiccups down the line. The good news for the Afghan army is that even though fighting is intensifying (to be predicted as NATO troops withdraw and Taliban forces try to use the opportunity to beat up the ANA and win bargaining power), the Taliban are consistently losing in these fights 4:1 or 5:1. That continued losing means they are likely hurting and more eager for a deal.

The rest of the middle east may remain such a mess that the Taliban will be considered almost reasonable by comparison once they make a peace deal. I'm not kidding.

Some other interesting notes:

• There are over 100 ISIS/ISIL fighters in Afghanistan--20 of them have been killed by the Taliban, who apparently want nothing to do with them. No surprise--at best, they're competitors for power (as they want to make Afghanistan part of the Caliphate and the Taliban are ultimately a nationalist/ethnic insurgency). I doubt they'll gain a major foothold.
• The number of Afghan children attending school has increased 7x since 2001, including now 3.2 million girls (versus 5 million boys), up from 10,000 girls.

The Afghani Election So Far

The Afghan elections did not meet the catastrophic failure of total disruption and violence that many officials feared. That hurdle, at least, was cleared, and most people are carefully avoiding entertaining the idea that most of the Taliban (remember they are not always a united front) did not care too much about the elections. That is not to say that there was not violence; there were rockets, there were roadblocks, there were mortars. But they were sporadic and isolated--had the Taliban been bent on preventing the elections from happening, much more noise would have been made.

But that's only one hurdle. Turnout was apparently significantly lower than the last election, especially in the south, probably due largely to Taliban intimidation tactics. This southern area is dominated by Pashtuns, where Karzai seeks much of his support to beat Abdullah. Whether this disparity in turnout will affect the election, and whether it will call legitimacy into question, is unclear.

Other problems include complaints of ballot-stuffing or other issues of corruption. Karzai's power over Afghani bureaucracy is massive, and has led to a great deal of corruption and graft in normal government functions, and is almost certainly going to leak into the election, even if Karzai himself does not intend to cheat.

Beyond that, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has to deal with inflated versions of normal election problems, like hanging chads.

But the votes are indeed being counted. Both Abdullah and Karzai have claimed victory, but the IEC has said that it's too early to tell. A Voice of America survey of three polling districts in Kabul put Karzai ahead in 2 of them, and Abdullah ahead in one, and neither with a majority. Ghani and Bashardost were in 3rd and 4th--Bashardost was unable to leap past fourth place even in his own district of Kabul.

Karzai will fare better in the south, and Abdullah better in the north. Karzai's primary disadvantage will be the low Pashtun turnout, but he makes up for this by a number of deals cut with warlords and other local leaders in the north. It should be a close race, and I think a runoff is likely.

Unfortunately, a runoff will be a logistical nightmare of the same magnitude as this election. The Taliban will be able to pose a similar threat, the US will probably have to spend another $250 million on it. If Karzai or Abdullah win outright, there will at least be a sigh of relief that the mess is over for a few years. That said, an outright Kazrai win would likely lead to a number of calls of corruption, irregularity, etc, and hinder reconciliatory efforts across the country.

Should a runoff occur, the two big bargainers will be Bashardost and Ghani, whose support should be able to deliver key slices of vote. I predict that they'd be more likely to support Abdullah, who shares their anti-corruption message, but Karzai is a great negotiator with a lot of power, and could sway them to his side. Should Karzai lose, his supporting warlords will have also lost, and will have little in the way of loyalty to the new government. Whether Karzai can or will convince them to get in line will be worth keeping an eye on.

More updates as we get them.

(P.S.: Congratulations and thanks in particular to the US and UK troops that have, for the past two months, helped prepare southern Afghanistan for an at least semi-functional voting experience. The impact on the local population is likely to be critical.)

Perils in Placing Too Much Hope in Afghan Elections

A low-order analysis of the coming Afghan election (which is about the best you'll be getting out of me today) suggests that no likely result is going to have particularly positive outcomes for the anti-Taliban coalition, despite the increasingly bulky bunch of eggs being stuffed into the election basket by the ISAF.

Recent polls put Karzai in a decisive lead with 44%, though failing to get 50% would lead to a runoff. In second is former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah with 26%; in third, Ramazan Bashardost with 10%; and in fourth, Ashraf Ghani with 6%.

So let us first assume that the vote goes relatively smoothly, despite Taliban attempts to disrupt it. If Karzai wins, Afghanistan has a status quo problem. He is not a terrible president, but he is often arbitrary, his government is corrupt and dysfunctional, and he has apparently alienated much of his former Pashtun support in the south (he is the only all-Pashtun major candidate). Worse, he is being seen as selling out women's rights: he is executing the implementation of a law that allows Shiite men to deny food to their wives, should their wives not be satisfying them sexually (among other things). The implementation of the law is likely to boost his support among some of the 20% Shiite population of Afghanistan. Once the golden boy of the anti-Taliban movement and its Western allies, Karzai has fallen to the point of receiving but an exhausted shrug from those former allies with whom he is not currently cutting deals. Communication difficulties throughout Afghanistan and other barriers to entry for other candidates are probably large contributors to Karzai's current poll popularity.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah is half-Pashtun, but spent the Taliban regime fighting with the Northern Alliance, and is therefore unlikely to win over many fence-sitting Taliban supporters simply by being elected. His current campaign mimics that of President Obama in rhetoric, and he has clearly set himself up as a sortof "change" candidate, with governmental corruption being his highest campaign issue ("security" is not listed as an official issue, but this may in large part be due to the fact that Abdullah knows better than to think it is a simple lack of will to fight that is keeping the Afghani security forces from winning). He is certainly likely to take Mr. Karzai to a runoff, but whether he'll win is unclear even to pollsters. And whether he can pull Afghanistan together is equally unclear. He does not have the loyalties of many tribes and warlords that Karzai does--and if they cannot be kept in line as the Afghan state develops, they will become as dangerous as the Taliban. And while a change in face might bring some temporary honeymoon to negotiations with the Taliban, they are unlikely to balk on their demand that negotiations occur only after foreign troops have left the country.

The other two candidates are very unlikely to make it to the runoff, which is a shame, because they're quite incredible men. They're both very well-educated technocrats that have detailed plans on how to create structures and incentives to eliminate corruption. Bashardost and Ghani have both won my heart: Bashardost's campaign office is a small tent outside of Kabul's parliament, and he's got a reputation as a charismatic, hot-headed crusader for transparency and political rights. Ghani is talkative and is apparently at times overbearing, but this is largely because he has so many intelligent things to say that he must say them quickly, lest he run out of time. As the former planning and finance ministers, respectively, their attention to detail grossly outstrips their more strongman-style rivals. But, again, they are very unlikely to win.

And, again, this assumes that the Taliban's relative quiet over the past few weeks has not been in preparation for a devastating and coordinated attack on the elections. Should the elections be significantly disrupted, the winner will face incredible legitimacy problems, despite the best of possible intentions. Thursday shall be a tense day. But the Taliban have largely let election commission workers set up and prepare without harassment, which means they may well not try to disrupt the elections themselves. The Taliban are more interested in gaining popularity for themselves than instilling temporary chaos. 90% of polled Afghans declared their intention to vote, which means a significant disruption would likely stir anger amongst otherwise-friendly Afghan people. The Pakistani Taliban's PR disaster has probably taught the Afghani Taliban that discretion is often a key aspect of a winning strategy.

We'll keep you updated on how things go on Thursday when we know.