Afghanistan: The Right War?
We are told all too often that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong war but that the war in Afghanistan is the right one. Indeed, both presidential candidates favor a surge of troops in Afghanistan. However, the attempt to impose a regime change on Afghanistan is failing, all the while causing more and more Afghan, American, and other casualties.
The main reason is that a conventional army is no match for guerrilla forces, especially when they can rely on a safe haven right across the border. The Taliban dress like civilians, are supplied by civilians, and are housed in civilian homes. When the U.S. attacks them, it inevitably ends up killing civilians, including women and children. The notion that if the U.S. used more ground forces, and less planes and artillery, there would be fewer casualties is a valid one--as far as the Afghans are concerned. But many more Americans and allied troops are going to be lost this way. Using airpower undermines the support of the war by the Afghans; using ground troops undermines the support of the war by America's allies, and soon--by Americans.
Moreover, given that the Pakistani government cannot control the tribal areas that border Afghanistan and which provide a haven for the Taliban, the U.S. is increasingly embroiled in a third war in Pakistan. This engagement is causing still more civilian causalities. It further antagonizes Pakistan, a nation that has nuclear bombs that can be acquired by terrorists, our greatest security nightmare.
The number one lesson from Iraq is that the U.S. must work with local tribes and their militias. In Iraq, this meant working particularly with the Sunnis and the Kurds, but also with various Shia groups. It involved dealing directly with the tribal chiefs or sheiks, and not some elected official in Bagdad. The relative success also entailed allowing the Iraqi forces to carry more of the burden, whether they were fully prepared or not, and granting them various kinds of American help -- in communications, transportation, intelligence, and even fire power - when asked for.
In Afghanistan, the US has been trying to impose a national government and remove tribal chiefs, who command strong and sizable local militias. The time has come to realize that Afghanistan is, even more than Iraq, a tribal society composed of different ethnic groups, each dominating one part of the country. These groups and their troops were the forces that liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban in the first place (remember the Northern Alliance? ). Such tribes are best now called upon to take responsibility for various parts of the country--with American support when asked for.
The result will not be the picture perfect prosperous democracy that Neocons have been dreaming about. It is not in the cards anyhow. Indeed, as it is, the Afghan government is becoming ever more corrupt, increasingly controlled by opium exporting mafias and turning into a new nacro-terrorism state. However, a coalition of the major tribes would go a long way toward stabilizing the country. Casualties would decline, especially among civilians, as it is much easier for the locals to tell who is who. And these tribes will understand that if their country again provides a haven for terrorists, they will face more rounds of bombings and missile attacks. The rest they will have to duke out with each other, as they have been doing since the beginning of history.
All this may seem like a minimalist agenda, but if one recalls the alternatives--especially in terms of the number of killed children and women, as well as some of our own youngsters--one realizes that this is about as good as it is going to get for now.
Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international relations at The George Washington University. For more discussion, see Security First (Yale 2007). To contact him, write comnet@gwu.edu.
www.securityfirstbook.com
The number one lesson from Iraq is that the U.S. must work with local tribes and their militias. Etzioni
Afghanistan is not Iraq where the insurgents were 20% of the population (Sunni) and where they suffered from a foreign pathogen (Al Qaeda in Iraq). Providing the Sunni tribes with protection against the Shii majority and putting them on the dole (salaries to militia members) worked in Iraq -- but won't work in Afghanistan.
The dominant tribe(s) in Afghanistan is the Pashtun (40+%), who see and have long seen themselves as the natural rulers of the country. While Karzai is Pashtun, he's also an emigre surrounded by non-Pashtuns in the leadership positions.
The Pashtuns are not going to agree to take second place to any other tribe each of which is a minority and since the Taliban are Pashtuns and act in their interests, an Iraq policy isn't likely to work.
September 22, 2008 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Never let the facts get in the way of a good argument. The fact is occupations don't work short of controlling a population by terrorizing it - slaughtering whole villages works wonders, for a while at least.
Western nations used to operate that way, and secured a lot of colonies as a result. But now with the rest of the world having ready access to the graphics, imperialistic nations have lost the cover of ignorance.
Addendum - old G. Washington knew that his troops were no match for the Brits and the Brits would win a lot of battles accordingly, but George also knew that the Americans would eventually win the war.
September 22, 2008 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is worse than a minimalist agenda, it's potentially disastrous. By ceding authority to a bunch of warlords (lets call them what they are) and worse, by agreeing to back them up with our military we will again become complicit in the oppression of average people.
You are too enamored with the notion of order and not enough with notions of freedom and fairness. To think that you'd come to a liberal cite to advocate propping up warlords. It's Kissingerian.
I suggest that we never use our military in defense of undemocratic elements, ever. Had we stuck to that then we wouldn't have restored Kuwait's monarchy in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. And, we shouldn't have. What did the Kuwaitis ever give us in return for our saving them?
September 22, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
We are condemned to repeat History. Not knowing it, there were lessons to be learned ROTE from the British in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the French in Algiers.
There are simply limits to what may be accomplished with military force in terms of transforming a traditional tribal society into a parliamentary democracy. There are limits. Why is that point so difficult for some to grasp? Are they simply paradigm bound? This lesson was certainly taught in Viet Nam.
We are in Iraq using the Army to teach adult Iraqi men how to read--so that we can provide them with job training. Now the Pentagon is reinventing the Peace Corp! I cannot be the only one who finds this an inappropriate use of the Military.
After all our bombs and bullets and bag men sent on diplomatic missions to Pakistan--the Taliban are more firmly entrenched than ever--and Al Quaeda is reconstituted. I think that pretty much spells: P-O-L-I-C-Y F-A-I-L-U-R-E.
September 22, 2008 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
No one seems to want to admit it, but Afghanistan never was a justifiable place for America to attack. Afghanistan did not attack us, had no ability to attack us, and never showed any desire to attack us. They did have a sick government, run by the Taliban, who were taught by Pakistan to hate Americans and all non-Islamic people. Attacking Afghanistan as we did was about as justified as attacking Germany at that time. Remember it was in Germany that the 9/11 terrorists dreamed up and planned their attacks.
We are such an infantile nation, damned by our almost non-existent education system. We still believe that our military is a solution to problems other than defending the country. No other country in the world is that stupid.
September 22, 2008 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, and the root cause of that Taliban hatred was the Saudi exportation of Wahabi Islam. In order to fulfill their charitable obligations according to Islamic tradition, the Saudis chose to build Mosques and Madrasas for their less fortunate members of the uma. Instead of water treatment plants or hospitals, madrasas, where they taught Wahabi bellligerence towards the Infidels. All the money that we spend on Saudi oil--and some of it trains young men in 8th century conservatism and hatred of all things non Muslin--a religion that spread on the successes of its original warrors.
You think the Taliban recoil from a fight?
What they needed was economic assistance and development.
September 22, 2008 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
hoppy,
Other than conducting business from within our borders,I think we should stay out of the Islamic world entirely, at least until they come to grips with the radicals.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya, etc. are loaded with people who are born with an AK 47 in their hands, where their life is fighting jihad, and where many think nothing of strapping a satchel charge to their chest and go looking to shake handes with you.....oh, and they hate the west.
Our government should have no presence in these countries, and if private firms or civilians go there they do so at their own risk. We don't need to go there to conduct business or diplomacy.
Look at what our presence in these countries cost us so far.
September 23, 2008 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
We never should have overthrown the Taliban. I know how evil they were, but once we overthrew them we couldn't allow them to come back. Now were stuck there.
As to Osama, using special forces and bribes to the northern alliance and others to help us get him could possibly have been successful.
September 22, 2008 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
All of this shows how complicated the situation was. Who could craft a policy that could cope with all of the potential side effects?
How come every time we get involved in a military misadventure, whether Nam and Lao, Central America, or Afghanistan, the CIA comes around an then there is an explosion of Narco trafficking and Narco economics. Opium in southeast Asia, Cocaine in Columbia, now opium in Afghanistan. I'm just saying.
September 22, 2008 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because our drug laws, which we and our allies have basically attempted to impose globally, are stupid. Another fact that Amitai Etzioni doesn't get.
September 22, 2008 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Breaking Afghanistan into tribal enclaves the way we are continuing to break Iraq into tribal enclaves is not nation-building by any stretch of the imagination. It is an adaptation of the British divide and conquer tactics that have wreaked such havoc on both countries.
Here are two simple things that we could do. One is technological. We've distributed about one million solar/dynamo radios throughout Afghanistan since before the 2001 invasion. These solar/dynamos, unfortunately, charge only the dedicated, hard-wired, internal battery and can not charge separate AA or D cell batteries. They can be modified to do so (see http://www.youtube.com/v/j04WMo1kPto) and there are models which charge cell phones that can be more easily modified to charge batteries. This modification allows the solar/dynamo to become a reliable source of low voltage DC power, day or night, by sunlight or muscle power. It makes battery switching, the practice of charging one set of batteries while using another, practical and thus the use of multiple battery-powered devices like an LED light, a cell phone (there is cell phone service in some parts of Afghanistan), or walkie talkies to provide short range communication. This simple change would leverage a solar/dynamo radio into a sandal-net, battery switching, low voltage grid. That should produce economic and social effects which could add up to greater security.
The second suggestion is to study and use the principles of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Badshah Khan. He was the "Frontier Gandhi" and founded the first non-violent army in history, the Khudai Khidmatgar, in the very areas where fighting is now going on, with the very people who are now fighting. He was Pashtun but believed that his tribal identity did not trump his national identity. His model was the USA melting pot. His non-violence was as deep as Gandhi's and based upon traditional Pashtun values and the teachings of the Koran. In fact, it would not be a bad idea to promulgate his teachings throughout the Islamic world, to remind Muslims of the Prophet's idea of patience, sadr, as a way of non-violence that Mohammed himself used to great effect in the early days of his teaching.
September 22, 2008 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
These are good ideas, and I agree that economic development, bring solar panels to generate electricity for villages, encouraging cottages industries, is the right approach to take. Encouraging a nativist peace movement is the best idea I have heard yet. You cannot address the economics without addressing the cultural and political domains, as well.
September 22, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The local tribes will have to come to a power sharing arrangement, but how does that process work better with foreign intervention (that would be us)? Our presence implies we will try to shape any arrangements to our advantage, which in turn implies there will be more local resistance against the result. The Karzai government can never govern Afghanistan as long as it is seen as a US puppet government (for all the reasons given above re. insurgencies, and with the Soviet experience as an example). Any advantage we gained by going in originally w.r.t. Al Quaeda is by now fading away the longer we stay. I doubt there is a graceful exit, but an ungraceful one is probably better than staying.
September 22, 2008 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's remember how we got into the mess in Afghanistan. First, it was recognized that there was an organized Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, complete with training camps, weapons caches and recruiting operations. The immediate task was to destroy that organized presence.
It was also felt by many that it was necessary to destroy the Taliban regime because Afghanistan under the Taliban was a "state sponsor" of terror, and that we should send a message to all such regimes that their complicity with violent anti-American jihadism would be punished in the new "with us or against us" world.
The neoconservative outlook at the time was dominated by Michael Ledeen and Laurie Mylroie style theories about said "state sponsorship" of terror. It was erroneously held by these folks that the only groups who were capable of reaching out globally and projecting 9/11 levels of terrorist damage were sophisticated organizations enjoying this kind of state sponsorship. Neocon theorizing was filled with yarns about the "terror masters" in Iran; or about Saddam's, or Qaddafi's or Riyadh's ties with terrorism. And these theorists sold the administration on the notion that the only way to fight terrorism was to launch a massive project to completely overhaul the political and cultural systems prevailing among about a quarter of the world's population, using a combination of brute force and uncompromising diplomacy, and shocking and awing the ignorant and impressionable natives with the sheer, dazzling awesomeness of our End of History unipolar omnipotence.
This jaw-droppingly absurd project born of vaulting ambition, and historical and geopolitical ignorance, was in due time revealed to involve a spectacular overestimation of US power, an overestimation that included more than a excessive appraisal of the power of military tools, but a moral overestimation as well. The project's proponents imagined that our own morally compromised, corrupt, shallow and decadent way of life, which at least so far as our cheesy cultural exports show is organized mainly around the lust for money and hedonistic pleasure seeking, would overcome the spiritual resistance of hundreds of millions of people by virtue of the irresistible evidence of its exquisite moral perfection.
And lest we think the idiocy was all the neocons' doing, let's recall that the neocons were mainly driven by dreams of power, domination and hegemony. The chief "democracy promotion" crusaders and missionaries were, on the other hand, mainly drawn from liberal ranks. They told us we had to fight "with all our might" in the "good fight" which was the "moral challenge of our generation." They were the ones who provided the missionary zeal and the allure of phony moral purity to the neoconservative power dreams. Yet for some reason, these fanatical missionary boobs have not been forced into the same area of cultural retreat and ignominy that the neocons have been forced to endure, but are still lording it over the Democratic foreign policy establishment, telling us all what to do, and whose souls to save next.
The immediate post 9/11 zeitgeist I have described was the dominant pattern in our political culture less than seven years ago. But that cultural outlook now seems so absurd and laughable that one has the sense that it was dominant no more recently than three or four decades ago.
Our efforts in the war on terror should have been, and should still be, based on intelligence, special forces and covert capability. They should not be based on regime restructuring, whether by hard or soft power, nor on long distance social engineering projects targeting complex and alien societies most Americans know almost nothing about.
We should put all our efforts and resources into making sure that no three jihadis in the world can get together to so much as buy a Roman candle or a cap gun without the US government knowing about it, and to making sure that whenever we do discover any such nefarious dealings, we have the ability to interdict the budding operation before it gets off the ground. That's it. So long as we can prevent the people who mean us ill from harming us, then it is of no concern of ours what they believe, and we need not torment ourselves with ridiculous fantasies of effecting a global conversion to the religion of Americanism.
The most crucial element of our foreign policy should be to put all our national brains and energies together to do whatever we can to replace petroleum as a major source of US energy, by the earliest possible date. One we have done that, we can then forget about all this business with pipelines, petrodollars, geostrategic access nodes, lily pad bases stretched from here to eternity and petroleum security contingency plans. We can get out of other people's oil-rich countries and leave their people in peace to work out their own futures.
September 22, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks as always, Dan. Are they really going to have a discussion of "Security First" where all the participants pretend that the neocons actually ever cared about democracy promotion? They only talked about it because it helped them sell their war. During the lead up to the Iraq invasion they put forward myriad reasons for it. Democracy promotion was one, it was the feel good reason. But let's not forget that these people also tried to convince us that Iraq was going to nuke us.
September 22, 2008 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
they only talked about it because it helped them sell their war
I disagree, I think some, like Paul Wolfowitz and Kanan Makia, were pure true believing ideologues, naive believers more dangerous than the cynical liars in some ways, mho.
September 23, 2008 1:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
The "mess in Afghanistan" really started, not on 9/11, but in the late 90's when the US became interested in a trans-Afghanistan oil pipeline from the oil-rich -Stans and the Afghan government signed on with an Argentine company (Bridas) rather than a US company (UNOCAL) to build the pipeline. There were negotiations, but behind the negotiations planning was underway to take military action against the Taliban. The State Department sought and gained concurrence from both India and Pakistan to do so, and in July of 2001 three American officials met with Pakistani and Russian intelligence people to inform them of planned military strikes against Afghanistan the following October.
These plans were put on the front burner, along with the invasion of Iraq, by Dick Cheney's supersecret “Energy Task Force in March 2001.
State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban, at their last pipeline negotiation in August of 2001, just five weeks before 9/11, “Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”
And the US has bombed Afghanistan fruitlessly for nearly seven years while the hope for energy riches continues.
Last November Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, the four partners of a proposed $3.3 bn pipeline, vowed to accelerate work on the four-nation project to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan to India. The declaration was adopted in New Delhi at a two-day regional economic cooperation forum on Afghanistan, which was attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The proposed gas pipeline project (TAPI) will initially provide 30 million cubic meters of gas to Pakistan and India each and 5 million cubic meters to Afghanistan on a daily basis, which can be later increased up to 90 million cubic meters in aggregate. TAPI will run from the Dovetabat gas deposit in Turkmenistan to the Indian town of Fazilka, near the border between Pakistan and India. Six compressor stations are to be constructed along the pipeline. TAPI certainly would help the consumer countries, Pakistan and India, while Turkmenistan could make billions of dollars from gas exports. But arguably it would benefit US-client Afghanistan most by providing steady transit fees to fill depleted state coffers in Kabul.
September 23, 2008 9:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
And how is it that we non-Muslims are going to succeed in promulgating the teachings of a Muslim thinker throughout the Muslim world?
September 22, 2008 9:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Easy question, Dan. We send that loud mouth broad that came with Bush from Texas, the big one, who was our "information minister" for awhile, but whose name escapes me for now. She could easily persuade the Muslims to do anything. Oh, what the Heck was her name? The last I heard of her she had slunk back to Texas to spend more time with her family.
September 22, 2008 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Which was she? Harriet Myers? All of those overweight, big-haired Texans are blending together now.
September 22, 2008 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Karen Hughes.
An interesting example of Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, eh? For a while there in the first campaign and the early Bush years, she was in our face every day. Her second job, the outreach to the Muslim world thing, was a real dud, even in this country as to getting any P.R. at all, even though at one time she was presented as some kind of P.R. genius. Now it's almost like she's in a witness protection program....
September 23, 2008 12:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Four words which should give pause regarding our Afghanistan policy: The FORMER Soviet Union.
September 23, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink