NATO's Success Uncertain

How do you view the present situation in Afghanistan? Is the NATO mission there a failure?

There is no doubt that we -- the West -- felt that we had to go into Afghanistan after 9/11. There was a broad consensus on that, albeit there were some Muslim citizens of western European countries that didn't feel that way and divisions opened up over the issue internally in various countries, but I'm certain that the western powers underestimated the consequences of regime change. After all, the victory was relatively easily won in conventional military terms, but it is always difficult to decide what to do next, and as a result we have become committed to the long haul in Afghanistan.

Whereas in Iraq Saddam Hussein's party was relatively easily dislodged, in Afghanistan the overturned regime has actually managed to fight back. Unless we are prepared to stay there for a very long time, there will be some possibility of it coming back to power in certain parts of the country -- perhaps it already has.

So it's certainly not a failure yet, but it could be. If the objectives were to remove the Taliban, then clearly there was success in the first instance. But the perspective has to be much longer. If the objective is to turn Afghanistan into some kind of democratic haven, then I'm afraid that was a naive objective in the first place.

People talk about the "Iraqization" of the situation in Afghanistan as far as the situation on the ground is concerned. Do you agree with this view?

What I suppose is meant is that there is an increasing cross-fertilization between the two problems in that al Qaeda and its sympathizers see both Afghanistan and Iraq as a common front in the struggle against the West. That is true, but I would've thought the circumstances on the ground facing the military are rather different in Iraq.

You clearly have a guerrilla campaign of various kinds going on, with many different communities using the occupying forces as a sort of football to kick around and create problems for each other and for the project to stabilize Iraq. With Afghanistan you have, on the whole, much more intensive fighting involving guerrilla warfare in extremely difficult conditions.

My understanding is that the British forces, in particular in the last three to six months, have been involved in some of the most intense fighting they have experienced in the post-1945 period. And this is a very serious matter, because very few of the nations supporting the (International Security Assistance Force) mission in Afghanistan have either the technical or political capability to cope with such high-intensity warfare.

What can or should be done to turn the situation around or at least improve it in political or strategic terms, but also militarily?

Nobody is considering the zero option, which is that of complete withdrawal, accepting that the Taliban may come back to power in parts of Afghanistan or even in all of it.

The position that the Taliban will be deterred from encouraging al Qaeda again to launch assaults outside Afghanistan on Western targets by the threat of the extreme retaliation is probably a purely abstract option in the sense that Western governments are not going to consider it. Even if they did, it might not work. Massive bombing of civilian targets create just as many problems of a different kind.

I imagine that the only realistic option is to continue to support the pacification of the North and West, which appears to have gone relatively well, and to engage in damage limitation in the South and the East. I'd have thought we simply don't have the troops and the political support to engage in high-exposure, proactive military campaigns over a long period in very difficult circumstances. Already we've heard unprecedented complaints on the part of the British army personnel who've taken the brunt of it -- which I've never heard in my experience watching British foreign and defense policy

How should British foreign policy change on Afghanistan?

What certainly should happen -- and it appears that the political classes are coming round to the view that the military has been pushing for some months -- is that we cannot fight two wars at the same time. Even a superpower that has always had this as its basic strategic position -- the capacities to fight two major wars simultaneously -- is finding it extremely difficult. Britain will have to withdraw from Iraq if it wants to do better in Afghanistan.

Recently there has been discussion of Germany's role in the South of Afghanistan. Should Germany get involved there?

I certainly don't think it's particularly helpful to have great public rows about who is going to do what because it makes it evident to the adversary that the West is deeply divided and that they can play on political divisions.

It's always been clear that Germany has been in a particularly sensitive situation -- not just in Afghanistan, but the whole question of the use of military force abroad, even after the Constitutional Court ruling in 1994, which made it easier to use troops out of area for not immediately defensive purposes.

But in the long run, there is no doubt that one medium-range power, i.e. Britain, or even two, including France, cannot be expected to take on the whole range of front line fighting if the Europeans wish to have a significant global role. Maybe, at the very least, all European countries should consider whether there is tension between their security strategy and their rhetoric about making a difference to global politics and their ability to actually take the pain in terms of lives and money. I think everybody understands the domestic difficulties in Germany over this issue.

It's also the case that German troops do not have the experience of hand-to-hand fighting in the way the British do, so it's not wholly desirable that armed forces without great experience with high-intensity activity should be plunged into the frontline. But over the long period there's got to be some greater willingness to go down this line if this is the policy to be pursued. It may be we are overreaching ourselves in policy terms.

Christopher Hill is the director of the Center of International Studies and the Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations at Cambridge University.