I’ve been reading about the US presence in Afghanistan — this weekend in particular, with the election going on, it’s been on my mind.
Over the years I’ve read a lot about the human rights situation in Afghanistan, especially for women, but this week I’m trying to read more about the US war in Afghanistan — and in particular, arguments for and against Obama’s planned escalation of the US presence there,and basically our entire strategy.
- Rory Stewart, “The Irresistible Illusion” The London Review of Books.
- Gilles Dorronsoro, “The Taliban’s Winning Strategy in Afghanistan” for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
- Andrew Exum and Nathaniel Fick, “Triage: The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
- David Kilcullen’s February congressional testimony.
- Bernard Finel, “An Alternative Strategy for Afghanistan” at the Flash Point Blog
- Stephen Biddle, “Is It Worth It? The Difficult Case for War in Afghanistan,” in The American Interest.
- Bernard Finnel, “The Incoherence of COIN Advocates” (a response to Biddle).
- Stephen Walt, “Safe Haven (2): A response to Peter Bergen“
I’d also recommend this post by Matt Ygelsias. An excerpt:
This is a map of Afghanistan’s main ethnic groups that abstracts away from the reality that actual populations aren’t homogeneous. The biggest ethnic group is the Pashto. The Taliban is also an overwhelmingly Pashto-based movement. Historically, Afghanistan’s Uzbeks and its small Turkmen community have been very hostile to the Taliban. What’s more, the Hazara are Shiites so they don’t really have any choice but to be anti-Taliban. The Tajiks aren’t necessarily as hostile, but pro-Taliban sentiment is relatively rare among Tajiks, and since the Tajiks are the second-largest group the main leaders of the anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan have generally been Tajik.
All of which is to say that waging war against the Taliban means something quite different in the brown-colored Pashto belt than it does in the rainbow of non-Pashto areas.
As well as any Afghanistan-related discussion, please feel free to post any links on this subject you’ve found especially helpful.
(Many links via Matt.)
Working my way through them. the Rory Stewart article reminds me of some of the histories I’ve read of England’s Victorian era campaigns in that part of the world. Back then, a city here or a town there would be raised up to modern standards of economics and “live and let live” and then some maniac would whip up the remote villages into a massacre of said cities and towns.
NPR had a good piece last week I can’t find, concerning attempts to find out what the Afghan people really want, systematically including every village and town. The thinking seemed to be that if they took all the people’s needs into account, they would take away the big recruiting tool from the Taliban types.
An interesting approach since you have to remember, it was the common Soviet citizen’s desire for blue jeans, good music and soft toilet paper that did more to cause the Soviet Union to fail than anything else. Unfortunately as long as the “true believers” have bombs, bullets and battery acid, it’ll be hard to give the Afghan people a stable marketplace and some vision of neighbors co-existing without slaughtering non-believers.
I think that propping up the Karzai government is fundamentally the wrong approach. Any Afghan government run by Afghans is either going to be corrupt and ineffective, or opposed to U.S. interests.
We need to conquer Afghanistan, not “liberate” it. We didn’t “liberate” Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. What would a cost-benefit analysis of American involvement in World War II have shown? We’d probably end up coming to the same kind of conclusions that Neville Chamberlain did.
Nothing less than the Taliban’s unconditional surrender or utter and complete annihilation is acceptable. As long as the enemy hasn’t given up on the idea of conquering the world – which is, indeed, the explicit goal of radical Islamism – and the only thing keeping them from, say, turning New York City into radioactive glass, is the lack of ability to do it – we need to keep fighting. Like Ender, I want make damn sure we don’t have to fight the same enemy more than once. Which is why we have to win here and now, rather than let the enemy regroup and attack us again, stronger than ever, fifty years from now.
Furthermore, I think we should march NATO troops into Pakistan’s tribal areas, and when the Pakistani government complains, just say “Don’t like it? Too bad. Just try and stop us.”
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/
Yes, that’s a problem. :(
(Which is yet another reason why you should never put me in a position to influence foreign policy. If I were in charge, the world would be a lot more peaceful and a lot more empty. Which would probably be a bad thing. So don’t put me in charge, okay?)
A little bit of dialogue:
Pakistan: We can’t control our tribal areas.
Me: Can’t, or don’t want to?
Pakistan: Can’t.
Me: Then give us permission to go in and do it for you.
Pakistan: That would violate our sovereignty.
Me: If you have sovereignty over the territory, you have responsibility for the actions of the people in that area. Am I to understand that you are condoning their activities?
Pakistan: No. We just can’t stop them.
Me: And you won’t let us stop them?
Pakistan: That’s correct.
Me: Then you are protecting them, which makes you a state that harbors terrorists, which would make you our enemy, and cause you to share their fate. Is that what you want?
Pakistan: Ulp… No, it’s not.
Me: If it’ll make you feel better, we won’t care if you complain a lot, just so long as you don’t actually do anything to interfere with the soldiers we send. Oh, and by the way, we’re sending them in next month. Your move.
Why would you take strategic guidance from a six-year-old character in a science fiction novel? The actual history of the world is that temporary and partial victories are usually cost-effective.
It’s not clear what “unconditional surrender” would mean in the context of Afghanistan. The Taliban appear to be only fairly loosely organized; there’s no one leader who is in a position to make a surrender stick. Likewise, it isn’t clear precisely who we’d be “annihilating”. This isn’t a national government, it’s a coalition of warlords, without a precise membership roster.
What precisely will those troops do once they’re there? This is not a good place to stick an army of occupation. Among other things, the only feasible ports from which to supply this army are in Pakistan. The country you just invaded. Quite aside from the obvious moral and political difficulties, what you’re proposing simply isn’t possible.
The Afghan war is a messy problem, and militarist escapism isn’t a good way to get out of it.
Again, this is exactly why nobody with any actual influence should ever listen to me about any of it. ;)
Amp– All the authors of those articles you list are male. (As are all the commenters so far.) Could you not find anything written by Afghan women?
Pingback: some things i have been reading « guerrilla mama medicine
just in case ppl needed more information about ethnicity distribution which may be “abstracted away” without a better legend, please see this: http://www.communitywiki.org/odd/NewsPlopper/download/motherfucker
thanks.