Warsaw Summit. Belgium Treaty Could Save Afghanistan

 

By Wahab Raofi
Huffington Post Commentator
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wahab-raofi/historic-belgium-treaty-c_b_10816128.html

World leaders and NATO allies at the 2016 Warsaw Summit can pledge their “long-term commitment to Afghanistan through the “Enduring Partnership,” but it won’t change a thing.

Afghanistan will remain a failed state unless those allies heed the advice of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and work together to give the country the kind of neutrality status that has worked so well in Belgium.

That might help Afghanistan rid itself of the Taliban, Haqqani, Al-Qaeda and other extremist cancers and move it toward becoming a peaceful, self-governing and self-sustaining country.

Otherwise, as Kissinger wrote in his latest book, World Order, “Afghanistan is likely to drag the rest of the world back into its perennial warfare.”

NATO commitments have been crucial in helping protect Afghanistan from becoming a sanctuary for Islamic extremists and drug traffickers. Since 2001, International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) deployed in Afghanistan have kept the pro-Western Afghan government in power by keeping the pro-Pakistan Taliban at bay. But their efforts have failed to vanquish the insurgency.

In the last 15 years, thousands of U.S. and allied forces have been killed or wounded in Afghanistan and billions of dollars have been spent in the conflict. Yet the situation only worsens.

An “Enduring Partnership” policy to stay the course won’t work. It will not only damage NATO’s image as a guardian of freedom and order, it will prolong the suffering of Afghans who see no progress toward sustainable peace.

For NATO to succeed, it has to come up with a new strategy where the regional powers stop using Afghanistan as their proxy battlefield and agree on a treaty of non-interference in Afghan affairs.

Belgium could be the model. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 16th century, the territory now known as Belgium was a prosperous and cosmopolitan center of commerce and culture.

But from the 16th century until the Belgian Revolution in 1830, the area was known as the “Battlefield of Europe,” in large part because of The Eighty Years War (1568–1648). Then the French Revolutionary Wars led to Belgium becoming part of France in 1795, and the Belgian Revolution of 1830-1839 fractured the region into three nations – Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

But with the Treaty of London in 1839, European powers guaranteed the independence and neutrality of Belgium, and a more than 100-year calm settled over the country – until the recent rise of Islamic extremist cells.

For most of its history, Afghanistan has been the pre-treaty Belgium of the Middle East – a battlefield for outsiders: Mongols, Greeks, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British Empire, Russians and Americans and others.

It serves as the violent chess board of other nations trying to influence or counter-influence rivals, using proxy forces in an effort to destabilize the pro-Western Afghan government.

 Iran, Russia, India and China want to keep their influence in de facto partitions of Afghanistan. As Dr. Kissinger noted in World Order, Pakistan wants to maintain influence over the Pashtun-dominated south, while Iran and Russia reportedly are supporting the Sunni Taliban to block the ISIS influence from reaching their borders.

Pakistan, envious of rival India’s influence in Afghanistan, will support any group willing to take up arms against the Afghan government.

The bulk of Afghanistan’s foreign assistance has been poured into a massive defense and security force. Yet insurgents still control a third of the countryside.

Afghanistan is pushing for more tanks, rifles, artillery and combat aircraft, but that is not the path to peace.

One key to peace in Afghanistan is keeping a delicate balance between India and Pakistan, but Afghanistan alone cannot make that happen.

The only hope lies in a regional, multilateral treaty – an agreement like the one that guaranteed neutrality for Belgium in 1839.

Afghanistan should call on the United Nations to invite Iran, China, Russia, India and Pakistan to negotiate a treaty granting Afghanistan’s sovereignty, with a binding commitment that they will not interfere in Afghanistan’s domestic affairs. In exchange, Afghanistan would disarm and limit its security forces to a couple thousand police and security officers.

The U.S. would be motivated to throw its weight behind such a treaty because it would give the Americans a clean and easy exit strategy.

Afghanistan would not pose a threat to anyone in the region. An Afghan force of “a few good fighting men” would be less expensive and more productive than the hundreds of thousands of “men unwilling to fight” that now wear the country’s uniforms.

Everybody wins. But the main beneficiaries would be Afghanistan’s neighbors. The risk to Iran, Pakistan and Russia would vanish.

The communists, Taliban, and Mujahedeen regimes all failed because of regional power rivalries, and Afghanistan is arguably in worse shape than when the ISAF forces arrived to take out the Taliban in 2001.

If NATO keeps giving us more talk and no enforceable neutrality pact, we have to assume that 15 years from now, Afghanistan will be lucky to exist at all.

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