The Afghanistan Saga: Should We Stay or Should We Go?

2 oktober 2009

Prime Minister Balkenende belongs to the lucky few who got a kiss from Michelle Obama when he visited the White House this summer. Minister Verhagen twittered his excitement away when he walked down the red carpet with Hillary Clinton at the big tent meeting on Afghanistan in The Hague. American politicians and generals don't make it a secret that the Dutch 3-D approach is exemplary and Dutch troops should stay in Afghanistan. The question "to stay or to go" divides Dutch politicians to the core. Welcome to the petty politics of an aspiring G-20 member. Every two years, Dutch politicians wreak havoc debating whether to go or to stay in Afghanistan. In an emergency debate initiated by the opposition Green Left on Wednesday, coalition Labour and Christian Union parties submitted a motion against larger coalition partner the Christian-Democrats warning that the government should take into account prior commitments, in particular the decision to pull all Dutch troops out of Uruzgan in 2010. Prime Minister Balkenende advised against the motion. A rather unique event in Dutch parliamentary history. More embarrassing yet, within the Christian Democrats, Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen, publicly discarded Prime Minister's Balkenende's commitment to stop speculating about Dutch involvement in Afghanistan after 2010. Defiantly he said that pulling out Dutch troops could have a snowball effect and that we should think beyond the prior decisions. The Green Left party answered this provocation by moving a motion to remove all Dutch troops from Uruzgan by 2010. Every time when the Dutch troop commitment is about to end, we start feeling guilty about leaving. It happened in 2007, when Minister of Defence, van Middelkoop, expressed his preparedness to stay in Uruzgan beyond 2008. Perhaps he gained the moral high ground but internationally it looked quite silly: other potential troop contributing countries leaned back and relaxed. The Dutch would stay. In 2007 the government decided that Holland would "end its role as lead nation in Uruzgan in 2010." The intention was clear: Dutch troops would not extent their mission in Uruzgan beyond 2010. Now that we are getting close, the decision appears open to multiple interpretations. If it was not so serious it would be laughable. But the absurd outcome of this political wrangling might be to leave Uruzgan to please the Labour Party and to stay in Afghanistan to appease the Christian Democrats. That would be a complete waste of Dutch efforts in Uruzgan. The question is whether Minister Verhagen would accept that. On Friday, he refuted the suggestion that he would step down if the motion would be adopted. Why would he? The other rumour has it that Balkenende is about to depart for Brussels and Verhagen is the runner-up for Prime Minister. The core argument is not part of the debate. The core issue is that we matter internationally because we are in Afghanistan and that we are in Afghanistan because we want to matter internationally. There is nothing inherently wrong with that; it's power politics. And we don't matter only because of our Taskforce Uruzgan. It is our F-16s, our helicopters and our marines that operate outside of Uruzgan that really matter. For now, nothing prevents their future deployment.

What is wrong is that the debate is not about Afghanistan but about our politicians. Eight years into the war, the international community lacks a coherent strategy and a convincing narrative. Public support for the military option is waning in most troop contributing countries. Our military efforts and our sacrifices have not made Afghanistan a more secure place nor have we built a government the Afghans can trust. President Obama is undecided to authorize an American troop-increase requested by his top-commander. The fraudulent elections are a disaster for a credible exit-strategy. There is simply no-one to hand over to if we leave. We should think twice before deciding whether we should stay or go.