Afghaniscrewed

P.J. Tobia's cover story in this week's Village Voice is worth reading. His travelogue conveys a sense of seemingly hopelessness of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. The way he Tobia it, there's virtually no chance that the coalition will train the Afghans to govern themselves and oppose the Taliban on their own.

Rachel Maddow has been running an interesting series on her TV show called "This Way Out" in which she interviews leading military experts and policy makers about possible ends to the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Tobia's account is consistent with what Maddow's experts have been saying.

The official Bush administration line was that the coalition was only going to stay long enough to turn over power to the newly democratic Afghanistan. This week Obama said, more modestly, that the mission was to defeat Al Qaeda.

Neither of those things will happen soon.

There's absolutely no reason to expect that the coalition will manage to train enough Afghans to resist the Taliban on their own. The popular will to cooperate with occupying forces is, understandably, limited. Over and above that, Afghanistan lacks the infrastructure, resources, and skills necessary to create a sustain a self-governing state out of the ashes of a failed one.

The question is whether it's worthwhile, let alone ethically justifiable, to continue to occupy the country indefinitely.

Comments

[scats]

uh...I'm gonna havta go with "no" on those last two.

[(O)CT(O)PUS]

There is a twofold question with respect to nation-building: Does it mean building hospitals, schools, infrastructure, and the public institutions that will help a country sustain itself? Or does nation-building merely mean protracted military occupation? Without the former, that later has no chance of succeeding, and the U.S. has made the same mistake twice before. If we are not prepared to get it right this time, then we should leave.

[Sam Holloway]

The key here is that there is no "getting it right" without understanding what "it" should be. In all its foreign policy dealings so far, the Obama administration has demonstrated a more sober, more competent imperialist approach than the belligerent blunderings of its predecessor.

Still, the imperialist approach has its drawbacks. First off, Afghanistan and the FTAA in Pakistan are not really states or parts of states. They are areas that were named such as a result of colonial expediencies. Repeated attempts to hold the Afghan areas under a single government have all proven disastrous. The Taliban have risen out of the ashes of these attempts, and the Bush administration's ham-fisted efforts helped make the Taliban stronger. Now the Obama administration wants to put more boots on the ground, this time with less qualms about going into Pakistan. This is only going to expand and solidify the Taliban's legitimacy and serve to destabilize Pakistan. The stated goal of destroying al Qaeda is a sick joke.

[Alon Levy]

Sam, the Afghan monarchy managed to hold the country for a couple decades. Afghanistan wasn't born a failed state; the US and the USSR made it one in the Cold War.

[squashed]

man, I wish Rachel isn't such an idiot sometimes.

1. shooting/chasing al qaeda all over the mountain is pretty hard. Afghanistan is pretty big place. (look at the map)

2. Then there is talibanism/taliban movement. (which is the social support)

now, those two alone can be defeated using military power and counter insurgency move. Except, taliban is fueled by Pakistani's ISI. We can shoot and fight al qaeda, but taliban will keep producing replacement/recruit. We can fight taliban, but Pakistan will keep producing more talibanism.

then it will become logistic battle of attrition. Essentially, we go bankrupt trying to shoot a movement consisting 6-7million people supported by Pakistani secret service using about 60-70K troops in area the size of yukon and alaska mountains. (afghanitan is located in himalaya mountain range. flying a pound of supply up there costs several thousand bucks)

so whats the answer?(aside from "good bye afghanistan. build al qaeda 2.0 why don't you?"

unfortunately that involved stable afghanistan government. Only the afghani/afghanistan government can fight for themselves in such large scale. (subduing 6 million people)

minimum requirement:
1. it can produce food for its people.
2. it can provide basic industrial supply necessary for a state. Cement, fertilizer. building material, farming)
3. some form of government (instead of warlords)

nevermind fancy things like hospital. (where is the cement?) afghanistan illiteracy rate is 70%! How you gonna build that hospital? Importing workers from Uzbekisthan? Who is paying?

that means, no bureaucracy (no government service is possible, no court, no post office, no banking, no registration, nada....)

so, I don't know what Rachel is whining about. Unless she can propose how else to subdued 6 million pasthuns in afghanistan/pakistan border, she better accept the plan.

[Alon Levy]

The US is trying diplomatic pressure on Pakistan in order to get it to purge the Jihadists from ISI. It's just not working very well.

[squashed]

of course it's not working. They have US by the balls. (seriously, what we gonna do? they control the only viable land route to pakistan.) All other afghanistan border is hostile or not friendly.

http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/03/pakistans-isi-obamas-big-problem.html

The support consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders who are gearing up to confront the international force in Afghanistan that will soon include some 17,000 American reinforcements.

Support for the Taliban, as well as other militant groups, is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the officials said. There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections.

Details of the ISI’s continuing ties to militant groups were described by a half-dozen American, Pakistani and other security officials during recent interviews in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. All requested anonymity because they were discussing classified and sensitive intelligence information.

The American officials said proof of the ties between the Taliban and Pakistani spies came from electronic surveillance and trusted informants. The Pakistani officials interviewed said that they had firsthand knowledge of the connections, though they denied that the ties were strengthening the insurgency.

[rapier]

Well as Giblets said, "Change you can suspend your disbelief in"

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html

Well the Fafblog is cruel. Progress is slow. It has been proposed and is likely true that today a smaller percentage of humans will die at the hands of their fellows than ever in history. A relentless trend only threatened by those pesky nukes.

As for Afghanistan it's mostly about the great game for oil. The Afgan's a cast of extras.

[Bloix]

"Afghanistan and the FTAA in Pakistan are not really states or parts of states. They are areas that were named such as a result of colonial expediencies. Repeated attempts to hold the Afghan areas under a single government have all proven disastrous."

This is just false.

Aghanistan became an independent kingdom in 1747, when an Afghan (ie, Pashto) nobleman won its independence from the Persian empire. It was never a colony of any European state. It was a monarchy until 1973. For about 50 years - 1880-1920 - the British exercised control over Afghan foreign policy, and at times interfered with succession of the monarchy, but they never directly governed. So for over 200 years, Afghan monarchs governed Afghanistan, without disaster.

[Alon Levy]

Bloix, I think I said something like this on Brad DeLong's blog a while ago, in his thread about why Africa is poor: every poor or failed state generates a host of pseudo-scholarly explanations why its misery is embedded in its culture, genes, or history. It used to be South Korea; then it was India and Bangladesh; now it's Afghanistan and the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, and occasionally Cambodia. In every case, these explanations are raised by a combination of racists, aid-giving do-gooders, and even serious economists and political scientists. And in every case, the explanations are quickly forgotten if the country gets back on its feet, as South Korea did and as India is doing now.

[Dunc]

I have a fundamental problem with the idea of "train[ing] the Afghans to govern themselves and oppose the Taliban on their own", and all such similar formulations - the Taliban are (by and large) Afghans. Specifically, they are the former Afghan government.

What you really mean is "train the Afghans to govern themselves in a manner we deem acceptable, for now." Bearing in mind that "we" found the Taliban perfectly acceptable for a number of years.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Dunc, you're absolutely right. Point taken.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Although it kind of depends on how you define "Afghans governing themselves." If self government just means having Afghans in control of the country, then, clearly the Taliban was an example of Afghan self-government. On the other hand, the Taliban were a small faction that took power in a coup and didn't enjoy broad popular support. So, it's a little misleading to say that the Afghan people were governing themselves under the Taliban any more than the citizens of other dictatorships.

[Dunc]

And the current government was instituted by a foreign military occupier - hardly the benchmark for democratic legitimacy. While it's certainly true that the Taliban did not enjoy anything like universal support, they did enjoy enough support to be able to mount a successful coup against the previous "government" (which also did not enjoy broad support, to the extent that it even existed, which is fairly limited). Similarly, the current government does not enjoy anything like universal support, as evidenced by the fact that many Afghans are prepared to actively oppose it by force of arms, despite its being heavily supported by the occupying powers.

I'm not entirely convinced that any Afghan government could enjoy broad support in the current climate, because I'm not convinced that "Afghanistan" constitutes a coherent polity, or that "the Afghan people" constitute a coherent constituency. However, that is not for me (or any other foreigner) to say.

Elections alone do not a democracy make - especially not elections held under the watchful eyes and guns of a foreign military occupation.

I do want to point out here that I'm not in any way an apologist for the Taliban - I think they were (and are) a bunch of murderous medieval bastards. However, I'm not convinced that our current pet Afghan government is really any better - and I base that primarily on the assessment of NGOs whom I trust, such as RAWA.

I'm of the opinion that the current war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with getting rid of murderous bastards per se, and, as ever, has everything to do with making sure that the murderous bastards in power are our murderous bastards. Swapping Mullah Omar for General Dostum doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me.