Endgame in Iraq and Afghanistan

The endgame has begun for American and other western military involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Decisions in Washington and London are being taken that will dramatically transform both of these conflicts.

Here are some straws in the wind:

* Today Gordon Brown, formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer, replaced Tony Blair as Britain’s Prime Minister. The Scottish politician, who made a famous deal in 1994 not to oppose Tony Blair’s run for the leadership of the Labour Party, now takes charge of Britain’s foreign engagements. The war in Iraq, and to a lesser extent the mission in Afghanistan, has been intensely unpopular with the British people, especially with Labour Party members and supporters.

While Brown endorsed Blair’s support for the U.S. initiated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, his priorities as he prepared to take over as Prime Minister have been on domestic policy. Brown is certainly pro-American, but he has no intention of developing a close personal relationship with George W. Bush of the kind that Blair had. Brown knows that to win the next British general election---it must be held by 2010, but Brown could call it as early as the summer of 2008---he must not be labeled “Bush’s New Poodle”. There have been stories in the British media speculating that Brown intends to bring most British troops home from Iraq over the next twelve months. While he is unlikely to castigate Blair’s wars, in which he is also implicated, winding down the mission in Iraq would send a very clear message to the British electorate and to the beleaguered Bush administration in Washington.

* In Washington, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, delivered a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate yesterday that was harshly critical of the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq. The Senator, who has been a staunch Bush loyalist said: “The costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved….Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.”

Lugar told reporters that President Bush had limited time to change the course of the war because of the 2008 presidential campaign.

“We’re heading into a very partisan era,” he said. “The president has the opportunity now to bring about a bipartisan foreign policy. I don’t think he’ll have that option very long.”
Lugar’s message was abundantly clear even though the White House is publicly ignoring it: it is time to make a deal in Iraq and to start bringing American troops home. When someone like Richard Lugar abandons his support for the Bush stay-the-course strategy in Iraq it means that the American political establishment has reached a consensus that the war has failed and has to be brought to an end.

* A few days ago, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai blasted the U.S. and NATO forces for their indiscriminate killings of civilians and demanded a change in military tactics. Karzai, who has long insisted that a deal needs to be made with the factions of the Taliban that are made up of Afghans as opposed to those tied to Al Qaeda, is as good at reading the tea leaves as anyone else. He knows that Western missions in Afghanistan don’t enjoy much public support in their own countries. He wants a deal, and he wants it soon.

* Last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper mused that for Canada to continue its mission in Afghanistan after February 2009, there would have to be a broad political consensus in favour of the refitted mission. Harper knows that Canadians have no appetite for a continuation of their military role in southern Afghanistan beyond February 2009. He’s been on the wrong side of public opinion on the war from day one, which is a major reason his party is stuck with about 33 per cent of voters telling pollsters they would vote Conservative. Harper is softening the message so he can get back on track to the 40 per cent range he needs to win a majority of seats in the next election. If a conservative spear-carrier like Harper has figured out that change is in the wind, it is a sure sign that even those in the lower ranks of decision-making within the Anglo Sphere have been brought into the picture.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been sold to the public as struggles in the world-wide War on Terror and as theatres in the combat between freedom and the enemies of freedom. In fact, both struggles have been imperial wars, launched by Washington, with the support of the coalition of the willing in Iraq and NATO in Afghanistan, to secure control of strategic resources and territory. In both cases, the Bush administration’s strategy has imperiled the U.S. position in the region and in the world. The American political establishment has had enough. For the sake of the ability of U.S. petroleum companies to operate in the Middle East, and to sustain the U.S. strategic position in the region, the war in Iraq has to be wound up. In Afghanistan similarly, the U.S. establishment has concluded that the war is not worth the risk of a showdown with Pakistan, which would be needed to defeat the Taliban. The Pakistani regime of Pervez Musharraf is already imperiled for domestic reasons and Washington cares much more about Pakistan than it does about Afghanistan.

The U.S. is likely to wind down its operations in Iraq following a political deal with Iraqi and non-Iraqi players that will allow the Americans to save face and to pull out most of their troops. That does not mean that armed struggle over the future shape of Iraq will end, just that the American military occupation will conclude, perhaps with U.S. military bases left behind in the country, and certainly in neighbouring Kuwait.

In Afghanistan, the likeliest outcome is a deal between the Karzai regime, regional warlords, and elements of the Taliban to create a more broadly based government. With this, the American, NATO and Canadian missions in Afghanistan will be transformed and most western troops will go home. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the end of the Western missions will not terminate armed struggle over the future shape of the country.

For the sake of Western pride, the settlements in both wars can be expected to include a few undertakings about human rights, the rights of women in particular, commitments almost certainly not worth the paper they will be written on.