US retreat from
Syria, Afghanistan
Rashed Rahman
In typical
Trumpian style, the US President has suddenly decided to withdraw the 2,000 US
troops from Syria and 7,000 of the 14,000 US troops in Afghanistan. These
decisions were announced without any consultation with allies. They flew in the
face of senior White House aides’ advice, two of whom, Defence Secretary James
Mattis and Special Envoy to the anti-Islamic State coalition, Brett Mcgurk,
have resigned. As a result, US allies in Europe and Asia were left stunned. Some
described it as a watershed moment for the US’s relations with the world. Others
thought the alliance with Washington was crumbling or just no longer there.
The Kurdish YPG
forces in Syria felt they had been thrown to the Turkish wolf. President
Erdogan has already started massing troops on the Syrian border with the
declared intent to wipe out the YPG that he considers an offshoot or ally of
the Kurdish PKK that has been waging a struggle in southeast Turkey since the
1980s. The government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani tried to put a brave
face on the withdrawal announcement but privately officials felt shocked, betrayed
and fearful of what the future may hold.
Not everyone was
displeased with Donald Trump’s precipitate decisions though. Russia, Turkey,
China praised it. The Afghan Taliban welcomed it as the partial conceding of
their demand for all foreign forces to leave. Russia was pleased because its
intervention on Syria alongside Iran and Hezbollah had turned the tide in
favour of President Bashar al Assad. Turkey saw the withdrawal of US troops
from Syria as removing the only obstacle in its path to an extermination
campaign against the YPG. China felt the US retreat from these conflict-ridden
regions signalled a better position for it over the recent aggressive US naval
presence in the Taiwan Straits. The Afghan Taliban were chuffed because Trump
had eroded if not hollowed out Zalmay Khalilzad’s ongoing negotiations with
them for a peace deal.
Naturally state
and non-state players affected positively or negatively by Trump’s decisions
weighed them through the prism of their own interests. Pakistan’s establishment
can barely hide its glee that its covert ‘resistance’ to US aims in Afghanistan
through the Taliban proxies seems finally to be succeeding. Foreign Minister
Shah Mahmood Qureshi is on a four-country tour to Afghanistan, Iran, China and
Russia, ostensibly as part of the agenda for peace but in the light of the new
developments more focused on how regional powers will now position themselves
vis-à-vis the Afghan endgame. But before we start popping the champagne corks,
perhaps a sober assessment in the event of a Taliban victory in Afghanistan may
be in order. Such an assessment might make the oft-repeated claim by Pakistan
that it has limited influence over the Afghan Taliban come true with a
vengeance. Reflect on how the Taliban government in 2001 resisted Pakistani advice
after 9/11 to find ways to mollify an enraged Washington in their own interest.
The Taliban government’s refusal to entertain any notion of surrendering their
‘guest’ Osama bin Laden to the US to face charges of being responsible for 9/11
led to the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the overthrow of the
Taliban government and the fleeing of the Taliban to safe havens across the
border in Pakistan, from where they have mounted a guerrilla campaign ever
since. The strategic stalemate between superior US and its allies’ forces and
the Taliban guerrillas shifted in favour of the latter when former US President
Barack Obama pulled out the bulk of US troops. In the intervening years, the
battlefield situation has increasingly played out in favour of the insurgents
through territorial gains and inflicting a casualty rate on the Afghan
government forces that is described as ‘unsustainable’. Now halving the US
troops in Afghanistan, even if they are only in an advisory and training role,
and the possible pull back of US air power that has helped slow down what might
otherwise have by now become a runaway victory juggernaut for the Taliban, can
only work in the insurgents’ favour. To them it must seem that they are tantalisingly
close to their strategic goal of waiting out an increasingly exhausted US
commitment.
Now in the event
of a seemingly inevitable Taliban takeover sooner or later in Afghanistan, some
consequences could follow. If the second Taliban regime to come were to return
to its first government’s strict imposition of its version of sharia, it could
once again trigger a fresh round of refugees fleeing into Pakistan, already
still carrying the decades-long burden of the remaining millions of Afghan
refugees. If Pakistan were to attempt to advise the Taliban future regime to
moderate this policy, would the Taliban be inclined to listen? Would continued
insistence on Pakistan’s part persuade them to consider ‘flirting’ with the
Pakistani Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ensconced in the poorly controlled
Afghan border areas adjacent to Pakistan? Could that lead to a resurgence of
the TTP and its attacks inside Pakistan? Imponderables, imponderables.
As far as Syria
is concerned, it will likely see more bloodshed but with a changed cast of
characters. The Kurdish YPG must be ruing the day it trusted Washington’s word.
France and Britain are now scratching their heads on their forces’ role in
Syria after the US withdrawal. Similar thoughts may be racing through their
minds vis-à-vis their involvement in Afghanistan. The implications of these
strains amongst western allies go far beyond the two theatres of conflict
mentioned.
Serious
questions have arisen whether the post-WWII global order painstakingly created
under US leadership is crumbling. That order consisted of an anti-communist
western military alliance NATO and similar military alliances in Asia (CENTO
and SEATO). To prevent economic crises triggering wars (consider the outcome of
WWI, the Great Depression of the late 1920s and their contribution to the outbreak
of WWII), the Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank and IMF were created
to mitigate the worst effects of such past global crises and prevent conflict. Voicing
his slogan ‘America First!’, US President Donald Trump is impatiently chipping away
at this 70-year old global structure. What may follow is an unpredictable
multi-polar world that may or may not be able to reconstruct the old or a new
structure to ‘manage’ the world’s problems. One need not have been an
unreserved fan of the post-WWII power divisions and their mechanisms for
mitigating the worst outcomes to argue in the emerging circumstances and trends
that an era of instability and frightening conflict looms. Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s warning of the danger of nuclear conflict drawing closer
because of Washington’s cancellation of the medium range nuclear missile
restraint treaty may not be too far off the mark in this context.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
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