Tracey Barnett: Afghanistan may be Key's quagmire

In all the time I've been writing for the Herald, I've never got fewer responses to anything I have ever written than to a recent piece arguing against redeploying SAS troops to Afghanistan. There was a whopping total of three replies, two from family friends.

To put this in depressing perspective, a column with a link to a feminine razor commercial dubbed "Mow the Lawn" got 1600 hits before my website crashed.

There were no rebuttals - brutal or benign. Just dead silence. In my mind I saw where this would turn - the inevitable, tragic profile this paper and others will run when our first SAS casualty comes home in a body bag. The description of a life cut short, a family left to mourn - and for what?

We believe in a myth. Obama, international coalition forces [ISAF], and now John Key, have bought into the fantasy that waging this war will contain terrorism.

What else can they say? That in reality, eight years of fighting has shown that US/coalition actions have helped breed terrorism instead of contain it?

We will lose in Afghanistan. We will lose because no one - including Barack Obama - has figured out what winning realistically looks like.

What is the best-case scenario that could fit into today's ugly reality? That the corrupt Karzai puppet government becomes miraculously effective in keeping his poppy princes in line under US envoy Richard Holbrooke's tutelage?

That al Qaeda moves on to the greener pastures of say, Iraq, to fight another day? That the Taleban is contained in the Swat valley long enough to call the Afghan surge a success?

By any measure, these are ugly, pyrrhic victories. There is a reason they call Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires". The British, the Soviets, and now American/coalition troops will go down in defeat in a country that has long defied its own centralised government for disparate tribal ones.

On a recent visit to the States two weeks ago, I sat at breakfast with an American family and heard the same justification for war we've been handed for eight years. We cannot allow Afghanistan to become a haven for terrorism again.

As a world superpower, it is America and the coalition's duty to rid the world of this cancer, especially before it spills further into nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Look at the reality in front of us today. We have already lost on both counts.

Sure, al Qaeda isn't tucked under the wing of the Taleban in Afghanistan any more. They are now under the Taleban's wing in Pakistan, as they have been reportedly since early 2002.

The US's strongest case for war, to rid Afghanistan of al Qaeda's safe haven, is way out of date. Unlike the Taleban that came from poor, 28 per cent literate, ethnic Pashtuns, who are tied to their homeland in south and east Afghanistan, al Qaeda is a coalition of over 60 per cent university-educated, multinational Sunnis without an address.

Al Qaeda is just as likely to move to other weak states like Yemen, Sudan or Somalia when the war reconfigures. Coalition forces have successfully accomplished our worst nightmare, shoving the bad guys into the arms of the one truly powerful, big neighbour with nuclear arms and an already shaky Government.

Ironically, "stabilising" Afghanistan may accomplish the one thing the coalition fears most - further destabilising Pakistan. Even if this new Afghan surge is wildly successful, there is no guarantee the already fragile Pakistan Government won't fall on its own.

In the kind of story that puts chills down your back, this week Pakistan rescued children as young as 9 from a Taleban training camp said to house 1200 boys being groomed to become suicide bombers and Taleban fighters. Terrorism finds a welcome home wherever there is foreign occupation. Unlike the disparate political winds of coalition forces, the Taleban have long-term motivation to spare, seeding a new generation to die for their cause.

Majorities in Britain, Germany and Canada now oppose sending more troops. France has turned Obama down. The Netherlands is pulling out next year.

But not our Prime Minister, who is now talking about removing the nation-building troops that have been truly successful in Bamiyan - and redeploying SAS forces that are more likely than ever to be at threat.

As a small country, worldwide New Zealand troops should signal help, not harm. Keep the excellent road, school and bridge-building forces in Bamiyan, unless they are needed in our own region.

Our heavy lifting can look different and still be politically effective to get what we need from the big players. That is a better reflection of who we are.

Let's make it plain, Prime Minister. Redeploying SAS troops back into Afghanistan is about currying long-term political favour from America and Australia first and foremost. I thought we knew better.

www.traceybarnett.co.nz