| | Running out of options in Afghanistan The Guardian
09/09/2010
By Julian Borger
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The departure of Britain's special envoy reflects a loss of momentum behind political and diplomatic efforts to end the war
This is the second time Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles's departure as the UK's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan has been announced.
On the first occasion, back in June, he informed the new foreign secretary, William Hague, that he barely had a job any more. It involved little more than a weekly conference call to compare notes with the American diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, and his counterparts from other western capitals. It could just as easily be done part-time by someone else in the cabinet office or at the foreign office's South Asia desk.
Hague asked for time to think reflect while Cowper-Coles left for several months leave he was owed after three years service on Afghanistan, including two stints as ambassador in Kabul.
By Tuesday this week, when the diplomat went back in to see Hague, the foreign secretary had come round to his point of view. So with a few short paragraphs of foreign office prose, the role invented 18 months ago to embody Britain's joined-up thinking about Afghanistan and Pakistan, was unceremoniously wound up. The search for stability in the region might be a foreign policy priority, but there is plainly not enough legwork involved to employ a top-flight diplomat one day a week. It is hard to think of a clearer illustration of paralysis.
That policy is founded on - and stuck on - support for the Kabul government of Hamid Karzai, which goes through the motions of reform and reconciliation with alienated Pashtun tribes, but has done little to change the status quo. Last week, Karzai set up a High Peace Council to pursue reconciliation, but in reality it has no mandate to negotiate. Likewise, the parliamentary elections due this month promise to be as riddled as fraud as last year's presidential poll, hardening the Kabul establishment's corrupt and self-serving image in the countryside.
Cowper-Coles spent most of his energy over the past few years pushing for a political approach to the Taliban. But both Washington and Kabul have been unwilling to lead that approach and are anyway deeply distrusted by the other side.
The window for talks may now be closing. In the absence of clear military progress from the military surge, there are growing calls in the West for a retreat from the counter-insurgency in southern Afghanistan. In Washington, a self-styled Afghanistan Study Group, made up of academics, former officials and ex-officers, has issued a call for a drastic rethink.
Noting that Afghanistan is now the longest war in American history, costing $100 billion a year, the group argues for an end to combat operations in the south and a focus instead on power-sharing and political reconciliation, in tandem with counter-terrorist operations narrowly targeted on al-Qaida.
Writing in Politico, one of the authors, Steve Clemons, says:
US armed forces have fought bravely and well. Their dedication is unquestioned. But we should not ask them to make sacrifices unnecessary to our core national interests -- particularly when doing so threatens long-term needs and priorities both at home and abroad.
It sounds a lot like the strategy set out over a year ago by Vice President Joe Biden, but eventually over-ruled by the president. It may yet re-emerge as a fall-back position if the surge fails, but it leaves open a lot of questions, like what to do if a retreat triggers all-out civil war? And why should the Taliban sit down to talk if they know the Americans are going to withdraw anyway?
Nato may yet turn to the UN to help it square the circle and escape Afghanistan. The idea of a newly-empowered UN envoy, such as the veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, is gaining ground. He could be a mutually acceptable front man for talks and bring in the regional players, without whom there can be not enduring settlement. But until such hard new decisions are made, there is precious little real work for diplomats like Sherard Cowper-Coles.
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