| Ripe for fisking. I've started, below. |
Every Afghan ruler in the 20th century was assassinated, lynched or deposed. The Communist government tried to tear down the old structures of mullah and khan; the anti-Soviet jihad set up new ones, bolstered with US and Saudi cash and weapons from Pakistan. There is almost no economic activity in the country, aside from international aid and the production of illegal narcotics. The Afghan army cannot, like Pakistan's, reject America's attempt to define national security priorities; Afghan diplomats cannot mock our pronouncements. Karzai is widely criticised, but more than seven years after the invasion there is still no plausible alternative candidate; there aren't even recognisable political parties.
Obama's new policy has a very narrow focus -- counter-terrorism -- and a very broad definition of how to achieve it: no less than the fixing of the Afghan state.
| If the latter is true than Bambi is as much of a neo-con as George Bush ever was. That might not be a bad idea if we can stay in Afghanistan for three generations, because that's what it would take. But one can't say that one is fixing the Afghan state and still claim to be focused only on counter-terrorism. The writer is addled. |
Obama combines a negative account of Afghanistan's past and present -- he describes the border region as ''the most dangerous place in the world'' -- with an optimism that it can be transformed. He assumes that we have a moral justification and obligation to intervene, that the US and its allies have the capacity to address the threat and that our global humanitarian and security objectives are consistent and mutually reinforcing.
Policy-makers perceive Afghanistan through the categories of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, state-building and economic development. These categories are so closely linked that you can put them in almost any sequence or combination. You need to defeat the Taliban to build a state and you need to build a state to defeat the Taliban. There cannot be security without development, or development without security. If you have the Taliban you have terrorists, if you don't have development you have terrorists, and as Obama informed the New Yorker: "If you have ungoverned spaces, they become havens for terrorists."
| Nowhere in this description is an understanding that the Afghan people, far more than Iraqis, are tribal, with an honor-shame society. That means an integrated approach is necessary, but it has to be an approach that recognizes -- and then shatters -- the tribal structure. |
| Shatters? Explain, please. Briefly, if possible. ;-) |
These connections are global: in Obama's words, "our security and prosperity depend on the security and prosperity of others."
| Said a better way, our security and prosperity depends on that of others, and both can only be realized with a liberal application of personal liberty. |
Or, as a British foreign minister recently rephrased it, "our security depends on their development". Indeed, at times it seems that all these activities -- building a state, defeating the Taliban, defeating al-Qaeda and eliminating poverty -- are the same activity. The new US army and marine corps counter-insurgency doctrine sounds like a World Bank policy document, replete with commitments to the rule of law, economic development, governance, state-building and human rights. In Obama's words, "security and humanitarian concerns are all part of one project".
This policy rests on misleading ideas about moral obligation, our capacity, the strength of our adversaries, the threat posed by Afghanistan, the relations between our different objectives, and the value of a state. The power of the US and its allies, and our commitment, knowledge and will, are limited. It is unlikely that we will be able to defeat the Taliban. The ingredients of successful counter-insurgency campaigns in places like Malaya -- control of the borders, large numbers of troops in relation to the population, strong support from the majority ethnic groups, a long-term commitment and a credible local government -- are lacking in Afghanistan.
| I would think the goal in Afghanistan would be to seduce the locals into turning on the Taliban, as some of the tribes are doing on the Pakistani side of the border. |
| Exactly. Tribes. One recognizes the tribal nature of the world and use one tribe to work on getting the others to change (or kill them). But to bring that to an end you have to persuade the tribes to recognize a larger entity such as the nation-state, or else you'll be back in a few years to deal with more uppity tribes. |
General Petraeus will find it difficult to repeat the apparent success of the surge in Iraq. There are no mass political parties and the Kabul government lacks the base, strength or legitimacy of the Baghdad government.
| Granted, Iraq had none of those things once the invasion was completed in 2003. |
Afghan tribal groups lack the coherence of the Iraqi Sunni tribes and their relation to state structures: they are not being driven out of neighbourhood after neighbourhood and they do not have the same relation to the Taliban that the Sunni groups had to "al-Qaeda in Iraq".
| I'm not sure what that last clause means. |
| It means that the Sunni (and Shi'a) tribes of Iraq were more cultural and had been subsumed substantially by a national, or at least regional, identity long before we arrived. The Arabs felt Arab, the Kurds felt Kurdish, and the tribal chiefs were more brokers of deals and arbiters of disputes than controlling rulers. It was easier for us to deal with them because they were most of the way down the road where we needed them to be. |
Afghans are weary of the war but the Afghan chiefs are not approaching us, seeking a deal.
| Nor did they in Iraq until they trusted the Surge. We've only just begun to Surge in Afghanistan. |
Since the political players and state structures in Afghanistan are much more fragile than those in Iraq, they are less likely to play a strong role in ending the insurgency.
Meanwhile, the Taliban can exploit the ideology of religious resistance that the West fostered in the 1980s to defeat the Russians. They can portray the Kabul government as US slaves, Nato as an infidel occupying force and its own insurgency as a jihad. Its complaints about corruption, human rights abuses and aerial bombardments appeal to a large audience. It is attracting Afghans to its rural courts by giving quicker and more predictable rulings than government judges.
| But most of all, the Taliban can play the tribal card: the foreigners aren't Pashtuns. |
Like some government officials, the Taliban has developed an ambiguous and sometimes profitable relationship with the drug lords.
| Ambiguous? I don't think so. |
It is able to slip back and forth across the Pakistani border and receive support there. It has massacred Alokozai elders who tried to resist. It is mounting successful attacks against the coalition and the Afghan government in the south and east. It is operating in more districts than in 2006 and controls provinces, such as Wardak, close to Kabul. It has a chance of retaking southern towns such as Musa Qala and perhaps even some provincial capitals.
But the Taliban is very unlikely to take over Afghanistan as a whole. Its previous administration provided basic road security and justice
| The journalist forgot to put justice in scare quotes. |
but it was fragile and fell quickly.
| Precisely because it couldn't extend itself beyond Pashtun tribal boundaries. The Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazara, etc weren't about to knuckle under to the Pashtuns by anything other than brute force. |
It is no longer perceived, as it was by some in 1994, as young student angels saving the country from corruption. Millions of Afghans disliked its brutality, incompetence and primitive attitudes. The Hazara, Tajik and Uzbek populations are wealthier, more established and more powerful than they were in 1996 and would strongly resist any attempt by the Taliban to occupy their areas.
The Afghan national army is reasonably effective. Pakistan is not in a position to support the Taliban as it did before. It would require far fewer international troops and planes than we have today to make it very difficult for the Taliban to gather a conventional army as it did in 1996 and drive tanks and artillery up the main road to Kabul.
Even if -- as seems most unlikely -- the Taliban was to take the capital, it is not clear how much of a threat this would pose to US or European national security. Would it repeat its error of providing a safe haven to al-Qaeda?
| Since they are providing a haven for Al Qaeda in their territory in Pakistan, I think we can safely conclude the answer is yes. |
| And they don't need Kabul to be that kind of threat to us. |
And how safe would this haven be? And does al-Qaeda still require large terrorist training camps to organise attacks? Could it not plan in Hamburg and train at flight schools in Florida; or meet in Bradford and build morale on an adventure training course in Wales?
| The author misses the need for a terror organization to have a place of safety. Al-Qaeda was able to prosper in Afghanistan precisely because, until after 9/11, it was a place we wouldn't go. They could train their fighters, their terror squads, amass expertise, equipment and facilities, and most importantly, they could have the time to plan. It's hard to plan a great terror caper when you're on the run and living out of a suitcase. You need a place where you can put your head at night and have some assurance that you'll still have a head in the morning. That's why terrorists need a home base. |
Furthermore, there are no self-evident connections between the key objectives of counter-terrorism, development, democracy/ state-building and counter-insurgency.
| That's just idiotic unless you're a neo-con, in which case the connections are self-evident: one leads to the other and back down again. Build a representative state with enough prosperity and personal liberty and you fix the terror problem: the terrorists no longer have a place to call home. That requires development, counter-terror ops and counter-insurgency ops, along with a big attitude change in the population. |
Counter-insurgency is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for state-building. You could create a stable legitimate state without winning a counter-insurgency campaign (India, which is far more stable and legitimate than Afghanistan, is still fighting several long counter-insurgency campaigns from Assam to Kashmir).
You could win a counter-insurgency campaign without creating a stable state (if such a state also required the rule of law and a legitimate domestic economy).
| No, you couldn't. As soon as you let up on the pressure of your counter-insurgency campaign, the terrorists/insurgents would be right back at it. |
Nor is there any necessary connection between state-formation and terrorism.
| Yes, there is, in both directions: in places like Somalia, the lack of any viable state structure allows terrorism to flourish. Likewise, the formation of a state that dedicates itself to funding and supporting terrorists (e.g., Saddam, Syria, North Korea) allows terrorism to continue. |
Our confusions are well illustrated by the debates about whether Iraq was a rogue state harbouring terrorists (as Bush claimed) or an authoritarian state that excluded terrorists (as was the case).
It is impossible for Britain and its allies to build an Afghan state.
| For Britain, yes. The rest of the statement does not follow from that premise, as it was impossible for Britain to succeed in Iraq as well, although they were capable of aiding the American success. |
| In the end we create the conditions by which a state can be built, if enough Afghans are willing to give up the grounding, governing structure of tribalism and embrace a nation-state. |
They have no clear picture of this promised "state", and such a thing could come only from an Afghan national movement, not as a gift from foreigners. Is a centralised state, in any case, an appropriate model for a mountainous country, with strong traditions of local self-government and autonomy, significant ethnic differences, but strong shared moral values? And even were stronger central institutions to emerge, would they assist Western national security objectives?
| What's wrong with a federation of self-ruling provinces, where the federal government is responsible for national defence and international agreements? |
| Even at the level of 'provincial' rule, the tribes would be giving up substantial authority and autonomy. |
| How can the tribes give up what they don't have? At the moment nobody really rules at the provincial or national level |
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