Afghan nation-building is a long shot

Troops at Nato headquarters in Kabul can buy T-shirts with a blunt message for the folks back home: “While you were chilling, we were killing.”

Over the next year in Afghanistan, there is likely to be a lot more killing – or “kinetic activity” as Nato's top brass prefer to call it. The Americans are sending 17,000 more troops to bolster Nato's fight against the Taliban insurgency.

Butthe new conventional wisdom is that, as Joe Biden, US vice-president, puts it: “There is no military solution.” Instead western leaders are talking about a “comprehensive approach” that, alongside fighting, must include economic development, improved government, regional diplomacy and peace feelers to elements of the Taliban.

A new approach is clearly much needed. Seven years after western troops arrived, the Taliban insurgency is gaining strength. Many in the west are tempted to give up and get out.

That would be a mistake. The country would slip back into civil war, with terrible consequences for the Afghans. Western interests would also suffer. The Taliban might win outright control of Afghanistan or regain unchallenged command of large parts of the country – so Nato would have failed to ensure it could never again be a base for Islamist terrorism.

But, while the new “comprehensive” strategy needs to be tried, there is no guarantee that it will work. In fact, there are many reasons for thinking that it is likely to fail.

Delivering development and economic growth in the middle of an insurgency is difficult. In Logar province, 40km south of Kabul, Colonel David Haight has just arrived with about 3,000 fresh American troops. Col Haight, a veteran of Iraq, says: “My skill set is very kinetic.” His units are fighting regular battles to resecure the highways to the capital and push back the Taliban.

They are also simultaneously trying to protect a team of Czech civil engineers and social workers who are building infrastructure in the area. The Czechs are very proud of a new police station and footbridge they have constructed. But it is not encouraging that visitors can inspect these good works only if they travel in a mine-resistant armoured car and are ringed by machine-gun toting US troops.

Local Afghans find it easier to do development work. But there is still a huge shortage of skilled labour in a country that has gone through 30 years of war and has illiteracy rates of about 70 per cent and little rural electricity. Mohammed Ehsan Zia, Afghanistan's development minister, complains that the few Afghan engineers and teachers he can find are often luredby western charities or governments offering better money. In Logar, Col Haight is nostalgic for the modernity of Baghdad. “It's biblical out there,” he says, gesturing towards the Afghan mountains.

The west has belatedly discovered the virtues of nation-building in Afghanistan, but there may be no real nation to build. After several years in the country, one senior Nato officer concludes that, for most Afghans, loyalty to the nation is much less powerful than loyalty to the family, the tribe and Islam. The rise of the narco-economy has created another powerful countervailing force to the national government.

And yet the west's exit strategy rests on building up the national government, army and police to take over the jobs of security, justice and development. The Afghan army, in particular, is being expanded rapidly. But, ominously, it is having huge trouble recruiting in the Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is strongest.

The fact that the Taliban has safe havens across the border in Pakistan is also a huge problem for Nato's nation-builders. The American military are already expecting an intensification of fighting, as their newly arrived troops clash with Taliban forces crossing over from Pakistan for their traditional spring offensive in Afghanistan.