If you want a cheery look at how Afghanistan is doing, I suggest you avoid this piece from Tom’s Dispatch, which suggests that the “Afghan Army” is almost a complete illusion.
According to the author, the problems are, well, legion, from malnourished recruits, to inappropriate tactics, to Taliban infiltration. But it seems to me that the fundamental problem is encapsulated in this paragraph:
Yet one amazing thing happens to ANA trainees who stick it out for the whole 10 weeks of basic training. Their slight bodies begin to fill out a little. They gain more energy and better spirits — all because for the first time in their lives they have enough nutritious food to eat.
Better nutrition notwithstanding — Senator Levin, Senator McCain — “our” Afghans are never going to fight for an American cause, with or without American troops, the way we imagine they should. They’re never going to fight with the energy of the Taliban for a national government that we installed against Afghan wishes, then more recently set up to steal another election, and now seem about to ratify in office, despite incontrovertible evidence of flagrant fraud. Why should they? Even if the U.S. could win their minds, their hearts are not in it.
Did anyone ever think, with the ‘country’ being made up of many diverse groups of people, that maybe a robust parliamentary system of governance might do better in Afghanistan than a presidential system? I must admit I know next to nothing about the Afghan ‘government’, but having an elected President just seems stupid to me.
Barack Obama now owns this war.
He didn’t have to.
If they did think that in the current circumstances they’d be mistaken. No system of government is going to work in Afghanistan in the foreseeable future, if by work one means “marshal the indigenous and donated material and human resources available to meet basic human needs in a way that is maintainable and no less equitable than states with comparable per capita GDP and an absense of significant civilian conflict”.
Afghanistan has never been a country in any sense known to us westerners. illiteracy and innumeracy is overwhelming and in the case of at least half the populace — the women — this has been the result of malign intent. Nor is there currently any material basis within the territory for supporting in dignified condition the life chances of 33 million largely agrarian people. They don’t share a common language and feel more in common with their tribes than even others with whom they do share a language. They don’t have fixed borders, have never enjoyed anything like a stable public service bureaucracy and rightly fear their police. In short, there is simply no cultural or material basis for having a modern state, and for much the same reason they’d be unappealing as a colony of a great power. At best it might be possible for them to have a confederation of local satraps run by modernising autocrats in the Ataturk-style.
Of course, if you could, over time, displace most of them, creating a diaspora in the advanced world and perhaps supporting large swathese of them in the more resource-rich parts of the developing world, perhaps leaving no more than a couple of million in the current territory and treating it as an international protectorate, then you might, over time, manage to have the place funded by remissions and some indigenous resources — (eg royalties over the Caspian pipeline, medical heroin) and on that basis establish a stable polity.
That’s almost true Katz, but for the fact that he campaigned in part on the basis that the Iraq War was a diversion from going after the terrorists where they were — Afghanistan. he didn’t want to be seen as soft on national security.
As it turned out, if he’d kept stum and simply committed to revisiting the question if elected, he’d almost certainly have won anyway, and possibly by an even larger margin. Now, with most Americans wanting a smaller role for the US there, and the government seen as palpably corrupt and illegitimate and soft on the human rights of women, if he hadn’t committed, he could have pulled back without looking duplicitous and earned brownie points. In practice, I think he could still, since the most aggrieved will be people who won’t vote Democrat anyway.
a robust parliamentary system of governance might do better in Afghanistan than a presidential system?
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I think we may be engaging in wishful thinking if we try and get the Afghanis to enter the Bronze Age somehow.
It’s been a while since we had a love-in about everyone favourite war. Iraq war bad, Afghan war good was the mantra by a lot of people who should have known better. Are we wising up or merely embarrassed now?
Thing is the Iraq War can be justified according to the old standards of realpolitik, as in conk poor people on head steal their stuff. At least there’s a reason. Going to Afghanistan was doing exactly what bin Laden wanted.
This is the same view formed by Captain Doug Beattie, a decorated (MC) veteran of the British Army in Afghanistan. In his book An Ordinary Soldier, he describes how the ANA were almost completely useless, and whose loyalty was to the local warlord rather than the country as a whole.
Just a dumb question, if I may? Where did these Afghans learn to fight so well?
They have fended off some seriously better manned, trained and munitioned armies over the years. Presumably they have been practicing in advance? On each other, perhaps? Neighbouring warlords?
The same kind of ghastly business goes on all the time in Africa, and the rest of the world largely turns a blind eye apart from tutting to itself about the tragedy. Perhaps those guys don’t get around to bombing the US, because their beef is with their neighbours?
Perhaps neither would the Afghani warlords bother about the US, without Bin Laden and his mates? How many Afghani or Taliban were involved in 9/11? I thought they were all Arabs – Saudi or Yemeni, or some such?
They might just go back to thumping each other, if we removed Al Qaeda and then kept out of the way? Not a wonderful outcome, but then neither are most of the other alternatives.
at 9- is this a new type of confession?
Your honesty is admirable….
Elise: how about “God created Arrakis to train the faithful.”
@10 and @11, I think you guys are rather missing the point.
To be clear, I am asking why we are focussing on Afghanis rather than Bin Laden and his mates?
The Afghanis didn’t learn fighting from Bin Laden, it seems they were good at it already.
What real proof is there that Afghanis want to attack anyone except each other, and invading armies of foreigners?
What makes us think we are able to graft our system of governance onto that society? Even if it were independently verified as being A Good Thing, not just our own perspective?
Basically, what is the bloody objective now? It seems like we are losing focus on achievable goals in Afghanistan.
Fran at 4 says;
’As it turned out, if he’d kept stum and simply committed to revisiting the question if elected, he’d almost certainly have won anyway, and possibly by an even larger margin. Now, with most Americans wanting a smaller role for the US there, and the government seen as palpably corrupt and illegitimate and soft on the human rights of women, if he hadn’t committed, he could have pulled back without looking duplicitous and earned brownie points. In practice, I think he could still, since the most aggrieved will be people who won’t vote Democrat anyway.’
No Fran the most aggrieved would be the democratically minded people of Afghanistan. The real issue (for anyone that thinks themselves even vaguely left or progressive) is how to develop a strategy for winning the war rather than the hopeless position of Kevin Rudd style policies of endlessly roaming around the wilds of Afghanistan killing an endless stream of regenerating Al Qaeda and Taliban sorts drawn in from the Madrassas of the entire region.
The region is a swamp that will endlessly produce the mosquitoes how is it to be drained?
Elise is right – the Yanks completely lost sight of their objectives. The mess is, as usual, down to Bush but it’s left Obama with a choice between the disastrous (upping the ante) and the unpalatable (going home).
You can argue whether overthrowing the Taliban was the best way to deal with bin Laden (with hindsight it wasn’t but unlike the Iraq aggression you could make a reasonable case for it at the time). But once the decision was made then getting rid of those who want to let off bombs outside, rather than inside, the country should have been the overwhelming priority, and still should be. Which means looking for a deal with the local crazies to get rid of the foreign crazies and then pissing off.
Paul McGeough has a very fine piece in today’s SMH/Age showing the complications, moral and practical, of getting involved in local tribal/religious politics (the two are hard to separate). It’s right here – recommended reading.
“I think we may be engaging in wishful thinking if we try and get the Afghanis to enter the Bronze Age somehow.”
A throwaway line perhaps, but racist and pretty insulting, (as well as being inaccurate) IMHO.
I can remember when Afghanistan had (relatively) stable governance, little internal conflict, and welcomed tourists (and tourism) from all over the world. The location of some of the most beautiful cities and buildings in the world, with water reticulation systems centuries old, developed to allow survival (and prosperity) in the most inhospitable areas, and ancient and proud peoples, principally famed for their hospitality. trading, and the best hashish in the world.
The invasion by the Russians, and the subsequent(?) fostering of jihadists (mujahadeen) by the US broke down their evolving society, destroyed ancient and modern infrastructure, and “balkanised” the country, empowering the warlords and the Taliban such that the destructive (to Afghan culture and society) forces prospered to the extent that we see today.
The current “war” in Afghanistan is but a furtherance of the processes of cultural, and societal destruction begun in the 1970′s, yet, because the Afghanis continue to fight forces occupying their country (without their consent), we are encouraged to think of them as “tribal” “warlike” crazies ?
The Afghanis did not create the mess that afflicts them, and are responding as any threatened population does in such circumstances, and there is no way that they can be held responsible for what has happened to their society and culture – that responsibility lies with the Russian, US and NATO imperialists who have invaded and fostered the fundamentalist zealots and corrupt warlords currently holding power there.
There was a chance, I believe, for a different, more positive outcome for the world, and Afghanistan at the time of the latest invasion, if only the western powers and NATO had kept their commitments to pour billions of dollars into reconstruction efforts for an already shattered country. But this was not even attempted in any serious fashion, to our collective shame.
I reckon its time to lay off the denigration of the Afghan nation, and Afghanis, and to focus more upon our collective role in the destruction of a wonderful, and unique culture for no good reason.
Perhaps, with the might and wisdom of our “superior” society, we may be able to conceive of, and implement some way of redressing the great wrongs we have inflicted on these people ?
While I agree, Pterosaur, that the entering the bronze age comment above was over the top (how do bronze age people build IEDs?), the reality is that large parts of the ‘jurisdiction’ (and I use the term with caution because rule of law is near non-existent there) are pre-modern.
Yes they are not mainly to blame for this, if indeed ‘blame’ is ever a good term to describe historical process, but it does seem to me that what has to happen is a serious piece of circuit-breaking, which tears up the old structures by making of them a diaspora and reduces the numbers in the place radically until the land reaches something like carrying capacity. How else are you going to break down the hold the clans and old blodd feuds have on each new generation?, and allow them to breathe the modern air?
Fran your attraction to ethnic cleansing is noted but you might like to consider what launching the bourgeois democratic revolutions implies. Rapid industrialization and a massive transformation of agricultural production resulting in urbanization of the people. This can and does concentrate the people sufficiently to much better enable their physical protection and permit the spread of mass education that will develop the culture and create and expand the classes of people needed to change that part of the world.
Fran said ‘… he campaigned in part on the basis that the Iraq War was a diversion from going after the terrorists where they were — Afghanistan. He didn’t want to be seen as soft on national security.’
But ‘they’ had disappeared across the border into Pakistan, and Obama knows that the war on this front will have to be expanded! And by now everyone ought to know that they are constantly being bred across the entire region. They were not just in Afghanistan in some sort of static sense.
The question is; does Obama want to actually be soft and then obviously be seen as such, by pulling the troops out of Afghanistan? The answer to that is obviously NO. He will not pull the troops out. But during his first term effectively ‘all’ the troops will be out of Iraq and he will get brownie points for a situation that would have been the same under McCain because the process is being clearly managed by the Iraqi government as their national forces continue to strengthen literally province by province. A very powerful enemy of Al Qaeda is now cooperatively hunting these fascists right in the heart of the Middle East. And the peoples of all the neighbouring countries are all stirring with the same desire to rid themselves of their autocratic dictatorships.
This opportunistic lawyer wants a second term and given the deep recessional state of the US economy and the rest of the world’s unwillingness to keep bailing them out by buying their treasury bonds etc the domestic front does not look promising and three years is a lifetime in politics. All we know at the moment is that his huge approval ratings continue to come back down to earth. Nevertheless we can for the purpose of analysis separate and ignore his domestic pluses and minuses and just focus on his foreign policy positions.
He will of course reap the benefit of being the President when the war for greater Israel is ended, even though the policy direction for ending it was set by GWB when he declared the West Bank occupied territory as opposed to all the other Presidents since 1967 including Clinton etc terminology of calling the West Bank disputed territories. There is no more dispute now; the national interests of the US is to end the failed war for greater Israel and that (now having been so clearly signalled) will be a major policy to be pushed all through Obama’s first term if needs be.
At any rate the Netanyahu government will be put right under the pump till the next Israeli elections with the policy of applying this pressure to achieve either the required deal done under Netanyahu or influencing a change to a Livni government that will do the deal! US national interests transparently require nothing less.