It is reasonable to expect that the current constitutional government—or at least a related form of it—will survive for the immediate future upon the 2014 drawdown of U.S. and other outside troops. There are, of course, a number of threats. Most attention is focused on the prospects for a Taliban return, but this seems a low probability: the Taliban are, broadly speaking, no more than a disruptive element in the Afghan struggle for power; it’s doubtful they can claim the loyalty of a majority of Pashtuns, let alone many or any Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara or other ethnic groups or the Kabul elite. Nor is it likely that support from Pakistan or Pakistan proxies can tilt the fundamental balance of power toward the Taliban.
This assumes that the querulous anti-Taliban coalition can weather the dual storms of the upcoming election and the withdrawal of their U.S. and Western sponsors. And of those two, the biggest hurdle is probably the election, given the games that current Afghan President Hamid Karzai is playing in designating his “favorite.” An August pow-wow of Afghan power brokers produced rumors that Karzai was flirting with Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf, a died-in-the-wool Islamist and one-time buddy to Osama bin Laden. While this is certainly a case of Karzai misdirection intended to maximize his leverage with the Tajiks, a negotiating tactic and not a suicidal wish—Karzai knows he must fashion a deal that preserves the governing coalition—the Afghans’ ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory should not be undersold.
Still, even with the loss of large-scale U.S. and Western support, the balance of power favors the Kabul coalition, which may also be able to find other sponsors, particularly India. And even a small American military presence—one that shifts its focus from hunting al-Qaeda operatives with drones to maintaining a military equilibrium in Afghanistan and a modest strategic partnership with Kabul—would all but eliminate the danger of a Taliban return. The underlying Afghan coalition is a fundamentally sound structure; some American adhesive could fasten it more tightly. And then the United States could also free up forces to deal with the al-Qaeda structures that have been metastasizing while we’ve been obsessing with bin Laden, Zawahiri & Co.
