President Obama’s decision on what to do next in Afghanistan turns on the answer to a basic question: How severe a threat does the Taliban pose to America?
Some commentators believe the answer is: very little. America’s real enemy, al Qaeda, is hiding out next door in Pakistan. The implication is that we can live with the Taliban as long as it doesn’t invite bin Laden and company back.
A corollary to this view is that both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are Pashtuns who have historically united to repel foreign invaders from their rugged heartland in the Hindu Kush. From this proposition it follows that, as New York Times columnist Nick Kristof recently argued, sending more western troops to Afghanistan will only provoke a wider nationalist uprising.
There’s undoubtedly some truth in that. But it ignores the Afghan Taliban’s roots in the madrassas. The Taliban is defined by its puritanical vision of Islam and determination to impose strict sharia law wherever it holds sway, from Afghanistan in the late 1990s to Swat Valley earlier this year.
The problem, from the standpoint of U.S. safety, is that the Taliban’s Islamist outlook (as well as the bonds forged in the 1980s struggle against Soviet invaders) engenders strong solidarity with al Qaeda. In a fascinating article in Foreign Affairs, Barbara Elias dissects the Taliban-al Qaeda relationship:
The Taliban cannot surrender bin Laden without also surrendering their existing identity as a vessel for an obdurate and uncompromising version of political Islam. Their legitimacy rests not on their governing skills, popular support, or territorial control, but on their claim to represent what they perceive as sharia rule. This means upholding the image that they are guided entirely by Islamic principles; as such, they cannot make concession to, or earnestly negotiate with, secular states.
What this suggests, of course, is that a Taliban restoration in Afghanistan could easily lead to al Qaeda’s return. It also means, according to Elias, that the Taliban probably can’t be split or co-opted the way Sunni insurgents in Iraq were.
Recall that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar ignored U.S. demands (punctuated by the Clinton administration’s ineffectual missile strike in 1998) to expel Osama bin Laden and his Arab co-conspirators. Even on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he refused, saying, “We cannot do that. If we did, it means we are not Muslims…that Islam is finished. If we were afraid of attack, we could have surrendered him the last time were threatened and attacked. So America can hit us again.”
In other words, protecting al Qaeda was more important to Taliban leaders in 2001 than holding onto power. What has changed? After eight more years of joint struggle against the U.S., how likely is it that a triumphant Taliban would bar anti-American terror groups from setting up training camps in Afghanistan?
Meanwhile, Howard Altman reports on The Daily Beast that al Qaeda picked its number three man, Mustafa abu al-Yazid, to be its chief in Afghanistan. “And in that role, he has built new and potentially deadly ties to the Taliban – forging alliances that may greatly complicate the Obama administration’s decisions about what to do in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Altman writes.
That’s exactly right. We need to learn more about the ties and mutual interests that bind the Afghan Taliban and what’s left of al Qaeda. But these reports underline the danger to U.S. security of blithely assuming that the Taliban would never again play host to America’s sworn enemies. That’s not a risk progressives should be prepared to take.
This item is cross posted at The Huffington Post.
