AfPak Channel editor and New America Foundation senior
fellow Peter Bergen is testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
this afternoon at 2:30pm at a hearing
entitled "Confronting al Qaeda: understanding the threat in Afghanistan and
beyond." Peter's prepared testimony
draws a distinction between al Qaeda's threat to the U.S.
homeland and to U.S.
interests and allies abroad:
Today the al Qaeda organization no longer poses a direct
national security threat to the United States itself, but rather poses a
second-order threat in which the worst case scenario would be an al Qaeda-trained
terrorist managing to pull off an attack on the scale of something in between
the 1993 Trade Center attack, which killed six, and the Oklahoma City bombing
of 1995, which killed 168. While this, of course, would be tragic, it would not
constitute a mass casualty attack sufficiently large in scale to reorient
American national security policy completely as the 9/11 attacks did.
Today the al Qaeda the organization continues to pose a
substantial threat to US interests overseas and could still pull off an attack
that would kill hundreds of Americans as was the plan during the ‘planes plot'
of 2006. No Western country is more threatened by al Qaeda than the United Kingdom, although a spate of arrests and
successful prosecutions over the past four years have degraded the terrorist's
group's capability in the UK.
Peter notes several factors that are putting pressure
on al Qaeda: "ramped-up American drone
attacks in the tribal regions of Pakistan where the group is headquartered; far
better intelligence on militants based in those tribal areas; increasingly
negative Pakistani public and governmental attitudes towards militant jihadist
groups based in Pakistan; and similar sentiments among publics and governments
around the Muslim world in general."
Peter also points out al Qaeda's four strategic problems which he assesses will lead
to its "long-term destruction": al Qaeda keeps killing Muslims civilians; has
not created a genuine mass political movement like Hizbullah; has no positive
vision of the future; and its leaders have constantly expanded their list of
enemies.
New America
Foundation president Steve Coll testified before the SFRC as well last week about
Afghanistan's impact on Pakistan
and observed the following about the Obama administration's options in the
region.
If the United
States signals to Pakistan's military command that it intends to abandon
efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, or that it has set a short clock running on
the project of pursuing Afghan stability, or that it intends to undertake its
regional policy primarily through a strategic partnership with India, then it
will only reinforce the beliefs of those in the Pakistani security
establishment who argue that nursing the Taliban is in the country's national
interests.
To the extent that
U.S. actions in Afghanistan reinforce this view within the Pakistani security
services, it will contribute to instability in Pakistan and weaken the hand of
Pakistani political parties and civil society in their long, unfinished struggle
to build a more successful, more durable constitutional system, modeled on the
power-sharing systems, formal and informal, that prevail today in previously
coup-riddled or unstable countries such as Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines,
Argentina and Brazil.
If the United
States undertakes a heavily militarized, increasingly unilateral policy in
Afghanistan, whether in the name of "counterinsurgency," "counterterrorism," or
some other abstract Western doctrine, without also adopting an aggressive
political, reconciliation and diplomatic strategy that more effectively
incorporates Pakistan into efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, then it will also
reinforce the beliefs of those in the Pakistani security establishment that
they need the Taliban as a hedge against the U.S. and India.
If the United
States adopts a "counterterrorism-only" policy in Afghanistan and substantially
withdraws from Afghanistan, it will risk deepening instability along the
Pakistan-Afghan border, and it will reinforce the narrative of its failed,
self-interested policies in Pakistan during the Musharraf period and in earlier
periods, undermining the prospects for a Pakistan that evolves gradually toward
internal stability and a constructive regional role.
On the other hand,
if the United States signals to Pakistan's military command that it intends to
pursue very long-term policies designed to promote stability and prosperity in
South Asia and Central Asia, and that it sees a responsible Pakistan as a
decades-long strategic ally comparable to Turkey and Egypt, then it will have a
reasonable if uncertain chance to persuade the Pakistani security establishment
over time that the costs of succoring the Taliban and like groups outweigh the
benefits.
Between withdrawal
signals and blind militarization there is a more sustainable strategy, one that
I hope the Obama Administration is the in the process of defining. It would
make clear that the Taliban will never be permitted to take power in Kabul or major cities. It
would seek and enforce stability in Afghan population centers but emphasize
politics over combat, urban stability over rural patrolling, Afghan solutions
over Western ones, and it would incorporate Pakistan
more directly into creative and persistent diplomatic efforts to stabilize Afghanistan
and the region.
That is the only
plausible path to a modernizing, prosperous South Asia.
It is a future within reach and it is a model for evolutionary
political-military success already established in other regions of the world
that recently suffered deep instability rooted in extremism, identity politics,
and fractured civil-military relations, such as Southeast Asia and Latin
America.
Both Peter Bergen and
Steve Coll are longtime observers of the region, and I encourage you to peruse
their testimonies carefully.
Update: I live-tweeted the hearing today; check it out here.
UT-Austin, Kabul, 1892
