Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

The United States scored one of its biggest Cold War victories by helping the Afghan resistance to defeat the Soviet Army. Soon after Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, however, the United States withdrew from active involvement in Afghan affairs. Recently, after years of neglect, Washington has been forced to address a long-simmering set of national security and foreign policy problems emerging from a traumatized and radicalized Afghanistan. The August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan-based terrorist network made it impossible for American foreign policy to continue to ignore Afghanistan. Yet as the world's leading exporter of terrorism, Islamic revolution, and opium, Afghanistan still does not receive the attention it should.

The Clinton Administration has publicized the hunt for Osama bin Laden and made his capture a high priority. By focusing narrowly on bin Laden, however, the Administration has failed to grasp the extent to which he is a byproduct of the revolutionary upheaval in Afghanistan. The war-torn country is a breeding ground for Islamic radicalism, terrorism, and drug smuggling, all of which are spreading to Afghanistan's neighbors and throughout the region.

The United States needs to develop a coherent long-term policy for building a stable and peaceful Afghanistan that will no longer serve as a safe haven for international terrorists, drug smugglers, and Islamic revolutionaries. This will require a major shift in U.S. policy. Since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the United States has all but ignored Afghanistan, a poor landlocked country slightly smaller than Texas. The absence of American involvement weakened and demoralized moderate Afghan groups and allowed Pakistan to support the radical Taliban ("Islamic students" or "seekers") movement. This ultra-fundamentalist Muslim group, unknown before 1994, now dominates Afghanistan politically and militarily and provides support to a wide spectrum of radical Islamic groups, including bin Laden's terrorist network.

The United States must end its passive neglect of Afghanistan. Rather than focusing narrowly on bin Laden, Washington should develop a broad regional strategy to uproot the Taliban regime that protects and sustains him. It should push for broad-based international sanctions on trade and arms to reduce the Taliban's ability to repress the Afghan people and export terrorism. The United States should adopt a more aggressive strategy, in cooperation with Afghanistan's neighbors and Afghan opposition groups, to contain the Taliban regime, cut off its external support, bolster internal Afghan opposition to its radical policies, encourage defections from its ranks, and build an inclusive Afghan government willing to live in peace with its neighbors.

Specifically, the United States should:

• Maximize international pressure on the Taliban, including additional United Nations sanctions, to halt its support of terrorism.

• Pressure Pakistan to end its support of the Taliban.

• Provide military, diplomatic, and economic support to the anti-Taliban opposition.

• Forge a regional coalition to support the anti-Taliban opposition and support an Afghan peace settlement.

• Build an internal Afghan consensus for peace.

• Designate the Taliban as a terrorist organization to set the stage for declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism if it continues to support the Taliban.

• Provide humanitarian aid to non-Taliban areas of Afghanistan.

• Appoint a special envoy for Afghanistan to raise the priority of Afghan policy within the U.S. government and coordinate U.S. policy with other governments.

• Allow the Afghan opposition to reopen the Afghan embassy in Washington, which has been closed since 1997.

• Revive bipartisan congressional activism on Afghanistan similar to the broad coalition that supported aid for the Afghans during the Cold War.

America's neglect of Afghanistan for the past decade has had the unintended effect of allowing the extremist Taliban to emerge as the dominant force in this war-torn country. Only by adopting these measures can the United States hope to help build a stable and peaceful Afghanistan that no longer harbors terrorists, drug smugglers, and revolutionaries.

James Phillips is a Research Fellow in Middle Eastern affairs in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation.