Despite threats from the Taliban and fears of corruption, Afghanistan’s elections went forward without significant incident on April 5. With President Hamid Karzai constitutionally barred from seeking reelection, new candidates such as Abdullah Abdullah, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, and Zalmai Rassoul have been jockeying for position over the past several months. The election and ensuing transfer of power is an important test of Afghan democracy, and success will help entrench and consolidate democratic gains. More immediately, however, the elections are important for shaping the future of the American presence in Afghanistan.
All of the candidates vying for Afghanistan’s top job have promised to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement with the United States. The Bilateral Security Agreement is the accord that establishes the relationship between the Afghan state and the United States after the NATO mission ends in 2014. Some of the deal’s most important provisions include statements barring the United States from conducting combat operations unless there is a mutual agreement between the two countries, as well as commitments by the United States to help build the capacities of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in areas like air power, intelligence, and logistics.
The BSA is a crucial step in allowing American troops to support and train the Afghan forces in the years going forward, thereby continuing counterterror operations against extremists in the region. Each major candidate, as well as the Loya Jirga, Afghanistan’s “grand council,” has endorsed the BSA, indicating a consensus within the Afghan political sphere in support of a continued international presence in the country. The BSA will allow the US and Afghanistan to continue to build a partnership to combat extremism and build a stable Afghan state.
Let’s Stay Together?
President Hamid Karzai’s final few months in office have been marked by significant clashes with the United States and other Western nations. Especially, Karzai has criticized NATO for the deaths of civilians that have occurred as a result of continued airstrikes against insurgents in the country. Karzai has also indicated that he is not willing to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement with the United States, at least not without significant changes that the United States is unwilling to make. This intransigence has frustrated American officials in the run-up to the end of the NATO mission at the end of 2014.
American leaders hope a new leader at the top of Afghanistan’s political apparatus will help the U.S.-Afghan relationship move past the logjam of the past few months and will sign the BSA. Along with promises to sign the BSA, two of the primary front-runners in the election, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, have publically promised that they want to expand relations with the West.
Without the BSA, all remaining American and NATO troops will leave Afghanistan at the end of the year, leaving behind a shaky state with an uncertain future. It is crucial that American troops remain for several reasons. For one, they will ensure that the ANSF continues to receive training and support on missions. This will bolster the effectiveness of the ANSF over the long-term, and help it become fully capable of defending the country from the Taliban insurgency after the complete withdrawal of the United States.
Another reason the BSA and a continued American presence is crucial is the base it will give the United States to continue to conduct counterterror operations in Afghanistan and, if necessary, in neighboring Pakistan. According to scholars at the Brookings Institution, the war in Afghanistan has been complemented by an “air war” in Pakistan using drones. While drones are a controversial weapon in the American arsenal, the end of the mission in Afghanistan will effectively eliminate all possibility of their use against legitimate terrorist targets. This will diminish pressure on extremists, making it easier for them to infiltrate between the Afghan-Pakistan border and continue to wage an insurgency against the new Afghan government, maintaining instability and chaos in the country in the coming years.
A final important aspect of the BSA and a continued American presence in Afghanistan is the psychological impact of a precipitous American withdrawal. Several analysts argue that a total American withdrawal at the end of 2014 will constitute a psychological boost for extremists. A precipitous American withdrawal from Afghanistan will be portrayed by Salafist and Islamic extremists as the second “defeat” of a superpower in the mountains of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union also precipitously withdrew its forces from Afghanistan in 1989, and the government it installed collapsed only a few years later. Regardless of the obvious differences between the American and Soviet war efforts in Afghanistan, a swift withdrawal will seem to validate the strategy of continued terrorism and violence employed by the Taliban insurgency. The “second humbling of a super power” may also embolden fighters in battlegrounds as diverse as Yemen, Syria, and Nigeria. A more gradual American withdrawal, with a set timetable and benchmarks, will dispel the effectiveness of extremist propaganda that tries to paint the conflict as an American failure. A steady drawdown emphasizes the American control over the course of the war and diminishes the view that the United States is abandoning the country after years of a frustrating Islamist insurgency.
Exit Strategy
The Afghan elections are a watershed moment in Afghanistan’s history. They mark one of the first free elections in the history of the country, and they are crucial to establishing the legitimacy of the post-Karzai government. A more stable and legitimate government, in turn, will make the final withdrawal of NATO forces much easier and more feasible.
But elections or no, the government is not yet secure. A continued American presence is crucial to building capacities of the ANSF, targeting terrorists in the region, and helping the Afghan state assert control of the whole of the country. The popularity of candidates who support the Bilateral Security Agreement and better relations with the west among the Afghan people is a positive sign for the continuing relationship going forward. The international community abandoned Afghanistan in the 1990s after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. The United States cannot afford to make a similar mistake, and the recent elections are a positive step in the right direction for Afghanistan, the United States, and the region as a whole.
Image credit: National Post, CNN
