With Washington, its partners, and interested neighbors gearing up diplomatic efforts over Afghanistan, I’d like to remind readers what George Shultz wrote in his memoirs about the previous Afghan “settlement.” The 1988 Geneva accords, reached under the auspices of the United Nations, took six years of tortured negotiations. As Secretary Shultz recounted in Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (1993):
If Pakistan signed, it agreed to ‘prevent within its territory the training, equipping, financing and recruiting of mercenaries from whatever origin for the purpose of hostile activities against the other High Contracting Party [Afghanistan].’ But that was precisely what it had been doing and what we insisted on continuing as long as the Soviets continued to supply [their favorite Afghan boss] Najibullah.
After some discussion through our embassies, two phone calls were arranged. First, Pakistani Prime Minister Junejo called me to urge us to sign the accords and to pledge that regardless of the language the Pakistanis would agree to, they would continue to provide a home to the mujaheddin and to be a place through which U.S. arms and other supplies would flow to them. Several hours later, President Zia, the truly authoritative figure in Pakistan, called President Reagan with the same message. I heard the President ask Zia how he would handle the fact that they would be violating the agreement. Zia replied that they would ‘just lie about it. We’ve been denying our activities there for eight years.’ Then, the president recounted, Zia told him ‘Muslims have a right to lie in a good cause.’
The longer version of the language referenced above can be found in Annex I, Article II, Section 8. It obligated the High Contracting Parties, Pakistan and Afghanistan,
to prevent within its territory the training, equipping, financing and recruitment of mercenaries from whatever origin for the purpose of hostile activities against the other High Contracting Party, or the sending of such mercenaries into the territory of the other High Contracting Party and accordingly to deny facilities, including financing for the training, equipping and transit of such mercenaries.
A new Afghan settlement, if one is reachable, may also include core obligations that have a short shelf life. Much official and expert commentary is based on a different assumption – that the United States has sufficient military capabilities and diplomatic influence to engineer less-than-temporary outcomes. My skeptical view was offered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in testimony given last May:
If a lasting political settlement can be found in Afghanistan, it will require extraordinarily difficult internal and regional deal making. I doubt whether this heroic undertaking is worthy of an annual U.S. military commitment in excess of $100 billion dollars. Deal making will continue to be pursued at a fraction of this cost and sacrifice. The results may well be modest or ephemeral, no matter how much we spend there.
[h/t to Janet M. Simons for finding the link. -Ed.]
Joe Collins, a retired Army Colonel and a traveling companion to the Soviet Union, has been thinking quite a bit about Afghanistan, a natural consequence of teaching cadets at West Point and serving in the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations. I recommend Joe’s new book, Understanding War in Afghanistan (2011). His bottom line:
There will be no end to the problems of Afghanistan unless there is a functioning government in Kabul that is linked into the provinces and districts and able to perform the basic security and welfare functions of a state. A modicum of nation-building in Afghanistan is in the interest of the United States and its coalition partners.