“We are prisoners of our culture, break free or die.” (Click on quote for meaning.) This post deals with our Afghanistan strategy. For hundreds of years, western countries have projected their culture onto native populations (e.g. in Africa in the 1800’s) with fatal consequences for all.
We have made this mistake from our invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and continue to do with Obama’s strategy. Fundamentally, Afghanistan is roughly equivalent to a 12th century European feudal society in a bleak landscape with insignificant natural resources, and we are trying to impose a 21st century government/societal/economic structure.
Various facts about Afghanistan are available from the CIA. 72% of adults (age 15 and over) are illiterate. The birth rate is the 4th highest in the world (6.5 children born per woman). Life expectancy at birth is 44 years (214th in the world out of 224). 75% of the population is in rural areas. Key environment issues: “limited natural fresh water resources; inadequate supplies of potable water; soil degradation; overgrazing; deforestation (much of the remaining forests are being cut down for fuel and building materials); desertification; air and water pollution.” The terrain is mainly rugged mountains. The climate is arid to semi-arid, with hot summers and cold winters. There are multiple ethnic groups (Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%) and languages/dialects (Dari 50%, Pashto 35%, Turkic languages 11%, 30 minor languages 4%). The 2008 GDP was $11.7 Billion, of which ~$3 Billion was from the illicit Opium trade. 80% of the labor force is engaged in agriculture. The unemployment rate is 40%.
Afghanistan is a tribal society with adherence to tribal authority, and loyalty is to the tribe. And, we are trying to impose a centralized government onto this tribal structure which has lasted for hundreds of years. And, just to make it even more challenging, we are trying to do this with an illiterate, rural population living in a bleak landscape, with opium being the cash crop.
To get a sense of the hopelessness of the Afghan situation, articles by Scott Ridder (long) and Glenn Greenwald (short) are worth a read (click names for the articles). Here is an excerpt from Ridder on Obama’s strategy:
At its heart, the strategy requires a fiercely independent people to swear fealty to a man, Hamid Karzai, whose tenure as Afghanistan’s president has been marred by inefficiencies and corruption. Trying to reverse centuries of adherence to local authority and tribal loyalty with the promise of effective central government would represent a monumental challenge for the most efficient and honest of Afghan leaders. That we are attempting to do so behind the person of Karzai represents the height of folly.
For any military-based solution to have a chance of succeeding, we would need to deploy into Afghanistan an army of social scientists capable of navigating the complex reality of intertribal and interethnic relationships. They would require not only astute diplomatic skills that would enable them to bring together Hazara Shiite and Pashtun Sunni, or Uzbek and Tadjik, or any other combination of the myriad of peoples who make up the populace of Afghanistan, but also an understanding of multiple native languages and dialects. But the reality is we are instead dispatching 20-year-old boys from Poughkeepsie whose skill set, perfected during several months of predeployment training, is more conducive to firing three rounds center mass into a human body.
The Greenwald (late October) article is interesting, because of this:
Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain with combat experience in Iraq, resigned last month from his position with the Foreign Service, where he was the the senior U.S. civilian in the Taliban-dominated Southern Afghanistan province of Zabul, because he became convinced that our war in that country will not only inevitably fail, but is fueling the very insurgency we are trying to defeat. Hoh’s resignation is remarkable because it entails the sort of career sacrifice in the name of principle that has been so rare over the last decade.
Here are some excerpts from Hoh’s resignation (click to download the 4-page PDF) – emphasis is mine:
Next fall, the United States’ occupation will equal in length the Soviet Union’s own physical involvement in Afghanistan. Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people.
If the history of Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously, in a tragedy that not only pits tribes, valleys, clans, villages and families against one another, but, from at least the end of King Zahir Shah’s reign, has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modem of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional. It is this latter group that composes and supports the Pashtun insurgency. The Pashtun insurgency. which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.
I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If.honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan. Yemen, etc. . . . the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries.
I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.
Although I strongly disagree with Obama’s Afghan plan, I am sympathetic with his thoughtful decision. Even the president is a “prisoner of our culture.” If he failed to supply the troops that General McChrystal requested, the political fall-out would have been severe. I doubt if any of Obama’s challenging legislative plans on the myriad of other issues could be passed. So Obama’s decision was politically pragmatic, in my view. It is also likely that the troop surge will temporarily improve the Afghan situation.
In addition to the cultural flaws in our war strategy, the way that we are waging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is degrading our culture. War should always be the last resort, and when we go to war, it must be a shared sacrifice. Instead, the sacrifice in our current wars has fallen on just 1% of our population, and the financial burden we’ve left to future generations. Bob Herbert had a thoughtful OpEd in the NY Times on this. An excerpt:
The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. Most Americans do not want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.
To say that this is a national disgrace is to wallow in the shallowest understatement. The nation will always give lip-service to support for the troops, but for the most part Americans do not really care about the men and women we so blithely ship off to war, and the families they leave behind.
Within the context of our broken culture, the right paths for many issues (i.e. the Iraq/Afghan wars, climate change, immigration, health care, the economy) are beyond our reach. Instead the available pragmatic paths are best described by Woody Allen: “We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.”
Fred's Corner 