The NATO summit in Riga last November approved a political directive in which ‘Contributing to peace and stability in Afghanistan is NATO’s key priority.’ The final declaration, moreover, underlined the determination to ‘build a stable, democratic and prosperous society, free from terrorism, narcotics and fear . . .'⁽¹⁾ A splendid ambition, but its implementation will not be easy, because of the complexity of historical, geopolitical and above all military factors.

Historical Factors

Afghanistan’s history shows us that over the last two centuries, this very special country has on every occasion reacted with fierce and determined opposition to any military intervention. There were the three Anglo-Afghan wars, in 1838-42, 1878-80 and in particular 1919, when the British would have liked to create a Middle Eastern Empire, a chain of vassal states stretching across the vast territory between the Nile and the Hindu Kush–a plan with much the same configuration as George W. Bush’s ‘Greater Middle East’ at the beginning of the twenty-first century. More recently, Afghan tribesmen did not hesitate to oppose the Red Army, despatched on the fatal and regrettable decision of a team of octogenarians at the end of the 1970s. Resistance to Soviet occupation had major consequences: it marked the beginning of a tendency towards the political fragmentation which still weighs heavily on Afghanistan today. Because the local militias, for nearly two decades, constituted the backbone of resistance, the local tribal chiefs and commanders were able to reinforce their power at the expense of Kabul.

The First Battlefield of the Global War on Terror

In 2001, the Bush administration selected Afghanistan for the opening campaign of its Global War on Terror (GWOT). The hostilities in Operation Enduring Freedom were of two very different types. The first phase was crowned by the remarkable success of the aerial bombardment as well as the equally surprising success of the Northern Alliance’s offensive. However, the second phase exposed two distinct realities: the extent of the control over the country by the government installed in the wake of this operation was limited to the capital, whilst the rest of the country was once again under the control of the all-powerful Afghan tribal chiefs (nowadays called warlords), each of whom has his own army made up of fighters absolutely devoted to their commanders.