A Chance for Peace in Afghanistan: The Taliban's Days Are Numbered

If the post-Taliban leadership is wise, it will steer Afghanistan away from the Islamist crusade of Pakistani, Arab, and other foreign extremists attempting to export militant Islam to Central Asia and other parts of the Muslim world. Afghanistan has more than enough problems of its own. Internal stability and reconstruction will take years of domestic cooperation and hard work to achieve. The Taliban's replacements should realize that the international community will not be willing to assist them if foreign Islamists continue to divert Afghanistan toward violent campaigns abroad while its problems fester at home.

The most acute threat to a stable, peaceful, and neutral Afghanistan will continue to come from Pakistan, even though nearly all of Afghanistan's other neighbors also support their own Afghan proxies. Just as the Soviets tried saving their communist asset in Kabul by invading Afghanistan, Islamabad has been funneling more troops and military resources to save its own asset, the Taliban. More than 10,000 Pakistanis (and one "brigade" of radical Muslims from Arab states) now fight alongside Taliban forces in what many Afghans describe as a "creeping" Pakistani invasion of Afghanistan. The ISI, the JUI, Arab extremists such as Osama bin Ladin, and the Taliban leadership all cooperate closely. The ISI has long orchestrated this Islamist coalition; its continuing support for the Taliban is the biggest obstacle to a political settlement in Afghanistan.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

American policy today is inadequate to deliver on U.S. interests in Afghanistan. U.S. foreign-policy makers must craft a more forceful, creative, and effective approach to address America's geostrategic concerns, the soaring Afghan opium trade, massive Taliban violations of human rights, and the return of the largest refugee population in the world. The current U.S. emphasis on bin Ladin's arrest is a necessary objective. It should, however, be part of a larger regional policy framework geared toward achieving U.S. goals.

The chief danger to U.S. interests is the rising tide of Islamist militancy and international terrorism emanating from bases in Afghanistan. The Afghan springboard for Islamist militancy endangers other pro-Western governments in the Muslim world, including Saudi Arabia, where a turn toward extremism would severely set back U.S. interests. Afghanistan is the documented training and inspirational base for worldwide militant Islamist operations ranging from American soil to the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and the Philippines. Muslim extremists are menacing Russia's southern periphery, providing ammunition for Moscow's antidemocratic, ultranationalist advocates of regimentation at home to defend against enemies from abroad. The greater the influence of radical Muslims in the Central Asian republics, the more tempted the governments of those republics will be to seek Russian military assistance, further undermining their independence. This has already occurred in Tajikistan, which is now virtually a Russian protectorate.

A more energetic American policy should discreetly encourage the Afghan consensus process now underway. It should also advocate a fresh beginning for the lagging international negotiations on Afghanistan by replacing the nonproductive "Six-Plus-Two" U.N. forum that even Secretary-General Kofi Annan has criticized as ineffective. U.S. diplomacy must focus on removing Afghanistan as an arena of competition among Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. The 1955 State Treaty on Austrian Neutrality can serve as a useful precedent; it led to the withdrawal of Western and Soviet forces from Austrian territory and produced the first major "thaw" in the Cold War, when the contending outside powers agreed not to extend their spheres of influence to Austria.

The United States should continue to demand that Islamabad change its course on Afghanistan. It can appeal to the military leadership's own self-interest, pointing to the strategic, political, and economic benefits Pakistan stands to gain in an Afghan settlement: Pakistan's desperate search for overland trade routes to Central Asian, European, and Chinese markets will not be realized until the Afghan population recognizes its leadership as legitimate, not imposed. A formal international treaty respecting Afghanistan's neutrality and sovereignty would permit Islamabad's military leaders to discontinue -- with honor -- their blatant and extensive interference in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Rashid correctly observes that "until the United States demonstrates that it has the determination to mobilize an international effort for ending outside interference, Afghanistan's chaos will only spread." Recent political developments, such as the failed Taliban offensive in the north, international sanctions on the Taliban, doubts in Pakistan about its Islamist-centered Afghan policy, the military coup in Pakistan, intra-Afghan initiatives toward a Grand Assembly meeting, and other regional powers' concerns about the Taliban have opened the door for America to make an informed, diplomatic push on Afghanistan. But real progress toward ending the Afghan nightmare will be possible only if the United States creates a policy more congruent with American interests in Afghanistan and the surrounding region. A promising opportunity for a peaceful settlement of the Afghan conflict is emerging out of the Taliban's decline. The United States should seize it.

Peter Tomsen is Professor of International Studies and Programs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He served as Special Envoy to the Afghan Resistance, with the rank of ambassador, in 1989-92.