They’re right about Afghanistan. They’re wrong about the lesson.Let’s review: Gaddafi's government forces have the rebels outmanned and outgunned, but have little hope of gaining significant ground in the face of NATO and allied airstrikes. Rebel forces, on the other hand, have proved incapable of taking and holding territory without sustained air support.
Fearful of international backlash, France, Britain, the U.S. and their partners have shown little will to provide the overt support that would allow the rebels to take the offensive, which is understandable. Broadening the airstrikes could fray international support, put civilian lives in jeopardy and deny ownership of the rebellion to the people of Libya.
The best way to ensure that Libya does not fall into lawlessness – and that the murderous Gaddafi does not remain in power – is to provide arms to Libyan rebels and give them a fighting chance of taking control of their country. The example of Afghanistan, so often cited as an argument against such support, is instructive as a warning of what can happen when the U.S. turns away from its allies on the ground.
Critics argue that arming the rebels could lead to a future situation when those arms are turned against us. A crude analogy suggests this happened in Afghanistan, when the American-backed mujahideen, chief among them Osama Bin Laden, later rose against the United States. This reading of history is not only incorrect (there is no credible evidence, for example, to suggest that Bin Laden received any American aid), but also overlooks our tragic failure to provide necessary assistance to those in the region who shared our vision of a free Afghanistan.
Chief among our friends in the region was Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan freedom fighter who emerged in the ‘80s as the preferred partner of American intelligence agencies seeking to assist the Afghan resistance. Unfortunately, it was not until the end of the conflict that the CIA overcame the resistance of Pakistani intelligence and provided direct assistance to Massoud’s forces. By that point, the conservative Islamist warlords that had been his erstwhile allies, and ours, had already claimed a large stake in the post-war order.
Worse yet was the later unwillingness of the Clinton administration to offer assistance to Massoud. After the Taliban assumed power in 1996, Massoud’s Northern Alliance was the only credible force resisting the Taliban and their Al Qaeda backers. Without external assistance, the alliance remained bottled up in northeastern Afghanistan, undefeated but locked in the same type of long-term stalemate that Libya threatens to become.
In the wake of 9/11, American support of the Northern Alliance – without Massoud, who was killed by Bin Laden’s operatives two days before the attacks – allowed them to take over the country and destroy Bin Laden’s Afghanistan base of operations. However, the damage had already been done. By failing to arm Massoud's forces earlier, we lost the only reasonable chance to defeat Al Qaeda before it had the opportunity to strike, and the Afghan people were forced to endure a half decade of tyranny under the Taliban.
Let it not come to that in Libya. Sound foreign policy decisions are rarely based upon bad analogies, and the lesson of Afghanistan has been misapplied as an argument against supporting the Libyan rebels. While arming the rebels might have risks, these risks are outweighed by the risks of doing nothing and allowing the stalemate to drag on.
The lesson of Afghanistan is not what can occur when we arm those who seek freedom from tyranny, but what happens when we don’t.
Douglas Woodwell, Ph.D.Associate Professor of International RelationsUniversity of Indianapolis
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