As the decade-long mission in Afghanistan comes to an end, now might be the time to start asking what the lessons are from the Nato mission for future humanitarian intervention efforts and specifically how important it is to have an exit plan for future mission success.

Afghanistan has had a complicated history, and the current Nato mission has had its fair share of supporters as well as opponents. But one part of the mission that has been too long ignored is the exit strategy for the US-led coalition. The mission started with fairly clear objectives: to rout out Al-Qaida and prevent them from using the terror-friendly Afghan regime as a host for their global terrorist activity.

But humanitarian intervention is not a science, it’s an art. It is based on endless variables and despite what we might wish, humanitarian intervention doesn’t correlate with the level of suffering and need experienced by the innocent victims of violence. One of the reasons that humanitarian intervention doesn’t take place when and how we might like it to is that those countries who are most likely to intervene are terrified of failure, or of how the conflict might end.

In a recent Newsnight interview, David Miliband outlined three tests for military intervention: is there a humanitarian need? Is the military plan feasible? And what are the regional consequences of an intervention?

He is right, and if those questions had been applied to Afghanistan we might have seen a more engaged and proactive approach to binding Pakistan and other regional powers into a joint approach to rebuilding the state there. But is there not also a fourth question: how is this conflict going to end?

If we are serious about a responsibility to protect, then we have to start getting serious about effective planning for the eventual exits from humanitarian interventions, and a measurement of our progress towards success.

It seems to me that the withdrawal from Afghanistan is fast descending into a rout. How can we be sure that the strategic gains of the mission to date will not be squandered upon withdrawal of coalition forces, and does that inability to secure our mission objectives undermine our ability to carry out another humanitarian intervention elsewhere in the future?

There is no single recipe for ensuring a positive mission exit, but we can certainly learn from the unfolding example of draw-down in Afghanistan to pick up lessons on how not to do it in the future.

Afghanistan has taught us that it is very difficult to deal with all the challenges of state-building all at once. The descent into insecurity following the coalition invasion in 2001 was overwhelming for the fledgling Afghan state and its coalition backers. But a sudden withdrawal from the country could easily reignite that instability.

So one solution for future conflicts might be a staggered drawdown, both in terms of volume but also mission contribution. For example, peacekeepers could be used to replace combat forces, and NGOs and other agencies could take over roles carried out by the armed forces during the combat phase of the mission. This kind of phasing has been totally absent from the Afghan deployment.

Exit should not mark the end of the international community’s commitment. If it does, then you know something isn’t right. By ignoring long-term combat factors (which in Afghanistan are undoubtedly corruption and the opium economy) we risk putting the post-combat phase of the mission at real risk. I am not the only person who is expressing concern that we risk putting our 10 years of commitment to Afghan security at risk by ignoring these long-term challenges and washing our hands of the countries difficulties. The issue is dividing opinion in the US as the politics of an upcoming election make the issue even more challenging.

The success of a mission exit is naturally going to be dependent on the nature of the mission entry. The start of a mission can set the tone for the whole life-time of the deployment and if the international community is seen to have responded badly to the pressures of the mission then this will undoubtedly affect the nature of the exit.

It’s also true that a smooth mission exit relies on support and ownership of the mission objectives by neighbours and regional influencers. Pakistan, Iran, and India all have competing visions for a post-combat Afghanistan and none of them match Nato’s vision. This is a fairly clear indication that the mission hasn’t done its job properly and certainly that the exit has not been a clear feature of the US-led coalition’s strategic planning.

In its favour, Afghanistan should be able to avoid a contested transfer of power. The state is just about established enough to ensure that future elections can take place and the mere existence of the state system will not be challenged by the majority of Afghans.

But state-building is not a process that relies simply on administrative and bureaucratic processes, what matters is the politics. The failure to achieve a durable political settlement in Afghanistan – evidenced in the lack of a serious challenger to Hamid Karzai – raises the possibility of a need for an ongoing commitment from the UN or other agencies to ensure that the political freedoms that the coalition have helped establish through providing security and moderate stability can continue.

Realistically, the Nato exit from Afghanistan will be difficult and will take longer than politicians on both side of the Atlantic are admitting. But having an exit plan for future humanitarian interventions should help take out some of the uncertainty and domestic political difficulties we are seeing now over the Afghan draw-down. Which should lead to a more successful mission legacy.

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David Chaplin writes the Progressive Internationalism column for Progress

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Photo: Isaf media