More Sanctions Are No Substitute for Ending a War

Late last month, the U.N. Security Council again voted tougher sanctions against Afghanistan as punishment for sponsoring terrorism and harboring Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. With rare concord, the United States and Russia agreed to isolate Afghanistan to halt instability, caused by Islamic extremism, from the Caucasus to China. But in a big region marred by stubborn little wars, simple-sounding sanctions promise to turn 2001 into a very complicated year.

Set to begin Jan. 19, the sanctions, at first glance, appear more symbolic than serious. Afghanistan is already among the world’s most inaccessible places, crisscrossed by the ebb of emergency aid and the flow of refugees. But it remains a destination for the guns of war, the drugs that buy them and fighters who soldier for causes often far removed from the ills of this ravaged land. Exasperated foreign politicians who can’t stop the region’s terrorists have made Afghanistan into a diplomatic voodoo doll, swapping periodic pinpricks for the difficult work of brokering and sustaining peace.

The U.S. and Russia insist that the sanctions will be effective because they target the Taliban, not Afghan civilians. But punishing a repressive military movement will inevitably affect those living under it. Such insensitivity led U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to admonish the Security Council publicly for victimizing civilians and compromising the United Nations’ persistent, if faltering, search for peace.

The sanctions’ indirect effects in Afghanistan--the loss of life, and the loss of faith in the world’s efforts to end its war--are familiar. But the assumptions that motivated the council to impose them are, at best, inaccurate, and their consequences for the broader region are likely to be self-defeating.

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s underbelly was mapped as an “arc of crisis.” Although times have changed, the mindset has stuck: The arc of crisis is now treated like an arc of frustration. Recent reports, prepared by the Rand Corp. and the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, depict all the major regional players in Afghanistan’s war in colors of ethnic fragmentation, religious militancy and geopolitical instability. The latest Security Council sanctions stand as a monument to a wishful alchemy in which symptoms take precedence over causes, and the hard-won experience of other wars is simply ignored.

The sanctions match faulty assumption to unproved conclusion. Phrased with righteous indignation, they suggest that isolation will push recalcitrant Taliban leaders to the bargaining table but imply that such isolation will inspire Afghans to rise up against the Taliban. They set up a straw man--that sanctions might lead the Taliban toward multiparty democracy--but imply that Central and Southwest Asia can be safe from extremism only if the Taliban disappear. They assume that multiparty negotiations will lure reconstruction funds to save the struggling economies of Afghanistan’s neighbors but think little about which of the region’s autocrats and meddlers will be empowered if money floods in.

The sanctions nonetheless reflect a puzzling ambivalence toward Afghanistan’s war. Russia, Iran and Central Asia still support Gen. Ahmed Shah Masoud’s tattered Islamic Front army against the Taliban, but only enough to sustain fighting, not win a war. A strict arms and fuel embargo, applied to all suppliers and combatants, is desirable, practical and possible--but endorsed in word only. The U.S. and the European Union profess contempt for Taliban human rights abuses but have mustered little effort to correct them. Diplomatic sticks are occasionally offered as carrots: stop drug trading and we’ll resume talking; hand over Bin Laden and we’ll resume talking; treat aid workers better and we’ll resume talking.

Sounds reasonable, but it’s dead wrong. Spontaneous rebellion, bribery, enlightenment through decree--these are fantasies, not policies. It’s little wonder the Taliban misinterpret most messages. In fact, there are ways to orient the region toward peace, but no one wants to expend the effort. Wars can be stopped when guns, fuel and fighters are in short supply. But no one has stopped the thousand-mile-long arms bazaar that radiates from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Inequity, inequality and repression feed wars. But almost no one wants to invest the energy to protect human rights in Afghanistan or in its increasingly oppressive neighbors. Preaching peace through punishment can’t work if the same states that advocate sanctions continue to participate in war, even if only by proxy.

Could it be that no one really wants the war to end? Not exactly, but while Afghans are fighting one war, the world is fighting another. When there were real chances to end the Afghan war--in 1989, when Soviet troops withdrew; in 1991, when the communist government fell; and at several junctures since--no one cared enough, and fighting spread far beyond Afghanistan’s boundaries. Today, its borders are more important to large powers than Afghanistan itself. Central Asia worries about its future stability, while Pakistan is anxious about political and economic implosion. Russia, India and Iran worry about energy security and Eurasia’s endurance in a highly competitive international economy, and the U.S. is increasingly worried about being blown up by former Afghan fighters. Everyone is worrying about territorial sovereignty and tumbling dominoes; no one, it seems, is worrying about Afghanistan.

That’s why the new sanctions will fail. It took most of the world far too long to understand that what happens in Afghanistan affects all its neighbors. But the Security Council learned the wrong lesson from this, as it has from the conflicts surrounding Sierra Leone and Congo. Rather than try to stop war in Afghanistan by sanctioning the war’s suppliers in Central and Southwest Asia, it has censured the Taliban for its war’s nasty spillover. A slap on the wrist might deter the Taliban’s drab diplomacy, but it won’t fix much else. Only when the focus returns to ending the Afghan war will any chance for success emerge.

Until then, the precincts of Kabul are linked to New York’s East Side by the thin thread of an ultimatum. Men in suits will continue to dictate terms to men in shawls, and neither side will understand the other. Fighting will continue, and people will die. The fault lies with us all.