Kabul, Zabul! Democratic Consent for this war

In October, Britain commits more troops to Afghanistan and European defense ministers give an enthusiastic hearing to General McChrystal, the U.S. commander there, as he advocates expanded military operations by NATO. But at the time of writing this piece, the United States is still thinking about it. President Obama had paused when many hoped he would surge.
Then comes a leaked resignation letter from September – from a U.S State Department official in Zabul who steps down based on his lack of conviction about “why and to what end” we are “pursuing this war”. Zabul province of 270,000 people, one of Afghanistan’s remotest regions, is not of course a household name among the families of the soldiers serving in Afghanistan. But why not?
The resignation letter makes strong and seemingly convincing arguments that expose big holes in the U.S. public justification for the war and the strategy being pursued. The letter gives good reasons why the U.S, allies should consider withdrawing from Afghanistan.
But the letter – a mere four pages – does not (could not) capture the totality of the picture. Similarly, the leaked version of the McChrystal report, a review by him of military and civil strategies, also seems to omit important strategic and political considerations.
Where do we look for the complete picture? Who should we believe? What are our shared goals in Afghanistan? How should we achieve them?
John Kerry, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on 26 October gave a convincing justification to the Council on Foreign Relations why Obama was right to pause when so many voices, including McChrystal, were asking him to surge. But little has been said in the past two months in NATO countries to address one of the most serious mistakes of the Allied campaign so far.
This is the failure to secure democratic consent to continue fighting the war in Afghanistan and its region. To be meaningful, democratic consent can only be based on wide disclosure of facts around all key issues, followed by parliamentary debate on a meaningful set of decisions taken to a vote, and grass roots community consultations of some kind on the decision issues.
Democratic consent is not a one-time event. A vote in 2001 to overthrow the Taleban and root out Al Qaeda is not a mandate for the eighth year of the ensuing war.
The United States strategy, like that of its allies, needs to reflect an explicit democratic consensus or, after the eighth year of war, face the collapse of political support at home.
This is a not a call to abandon the fight against violent extremists in Afghanistan and its region. On the contrary, that struggle is a necessary policy. This is a call to use the securing of democratic consent quickly and effectively in supporting countries as a foundation to continue the war, albeit with a sharply reworked strategy.
It is probably the case that this process of democratic consent would take the Allied strategy into a very different direction from that proposed by McChrytsal. At one level, more Americans and Europeans need to start knowing about places like Zabul.
At a deeper level, the resignation letter mentioned above gives some good clues about where to look for a new strategy – but the answer cannot be the same as either the unhappy U.S. official or General McChrystal have concluded. Two new approaches will be key to success in continuing to be able to fight. First, reduce the foreign troop presence, bias its force composition toward highly mobile special forces, and minimize its political visibility. Second, help the Afghan people in their own communities deliver local governance with considerable autonomy from Kabul, but recognize that it will be neither liberal nor just by Western standards.
The popular will in Afghanistan and inside the countries fighting there makes such choices inescapable – sooner or later.