Another international conference on Afghanistan — the ninth so far, and for the first time held in Kabul — has ended with the pious refrain that Afghans should take charge of their country. Once again, it is clear there is little sincerity about it. President Hamid Karzai, whose chances of political survival without international help are slim, set a self-servingly generous deadline of 2014 for the foreign troops to withdraw. The conference, representing 70 countries, made no formal commitment to Mr. Karzai's deadline, and chose instead to endorse his call in general terms. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated the Obama administration's commitment to begin scaling down troops as promised from July 2011 — but set no firm date for complete withdrawal. Despite domestic pressure on European leaders to end the Afghan misadventure, the NATO secretary-general was vague about the timetable, stating that “conditions, not calendars” would determine when foreign troops would hand over to Afghan forces. The only acceptable deadline for foreign powers to leave that country is immediately. The longer they stay, the more appalling will be the bloodshed and the illfare. All the experimentation with ‘surges' and ‘democracy-in-a-box' has led only to increasing civilian casualties at the hands of the U.S.-led NATO forces. And each civilian death has increased support for the Taliban to a point where Mr. Karzai himself now believes there is more political traction in reaching out to the militants. Persisting with this unjust and unwinnable Afghan war is turning out to be President Barack Obama's Great Folly.
The international conference missed a real opportunity to discuss a way forward in Afghanistan — through a paradigm shift. Writing in this newspaper in September 2009, the diplomat Chinmaya Gharekhan, formerly India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, asked the international community to focus on restoring Afghanistan to its long-lost tradition of neutrality — where other countries pledge non-interference in its affairs, and it pledges non-interference in theirs — along the lines of the July 1962 Neutrality of Laos Declaration. This is an eminently sensible suggestion, considering that Afghanistan has been reduced to rubble mainly by the competing strategic objectives of international and regional players. Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, India have been only too willing to participate in these mutually undermining games. A neutrality declaration will help liberate Afghanistan from the military occupation and tutelage of foreign powers. It may also pave the way for an Afghan solution to national rebuilding — one that will hopefully reject the Taliban.
