On the Imbroglio in Afghanistan
The likelihood is growing of a stalemate in Afghanistan between the Hamid Karzai administration backed by NATO military power and the Taliban, other Jihadi and al Qaeda forces operating mainly out of safe havens in Pakistan.Â
The effect of such a stalemate would be a de facto defeat for NATO in its first operation so far outside its traditional European territories. Creating and perpetuating a stalemate requires simply that the Taliban and its supporters prevent Karzai from establishing physical security and proper governance over very large swathes of Afghan territory.Â
Karzai’s writ has not reached outside the city of Kabul for over four years and is further weakened currently by Taliban led violence in almost all regions except the North. The Northern region used to be the stronghold of the Alliance, which fought the Taliban when they ruled Kabul and later joined the US in destroying that regime after 9/11/2001.Â
The problem now is that NATO and American forces are fighting with methods unsuited to Afghan culture and history. They are bombing from the sky and using intensely violent forays by heavily protected ground troops to cause damage to the Taliban and its allies. In this, they have recently scored some successes.Â
However, their tactics are alienating rural folk especially in the South, East and West. Worse still, those angry people are being pushed into the Taliban fold. The few who try to remain neutral or are fed up of Taliban aggression face severe punishment from Taliban raiders who capture, torture and kill “collaboratorsâ€? ruthlessly.Â
These are the types of scenarios described by Europeans and Asians familiar with Afghanistan and participating in humanitarian aid and public works reconstruction projects in that country.Â
It is worth remembering that the Taliban conquered and effectively controlled all Afghan territory except the extreme North without using a single warplane and helicopter gunship or rows of tanks and heavy rocket launchers. They did so on foot, village by village. From Kandahar, they moved North, South, East and West wearing sandals made of discarded truck tires and carrying light weapons. Throughout their march to conquest, they took time off to pray five times a day because of their authentic piety and austerity.Â
They are fighting the current war in exactly the same way. In riposte, NATO and American bombs are destroying entire villages, including precious infrastructure and causing significant “collateral damageâ€? to children, women and elderly men. Each side is fighting separate wars in which they cross paths occasionally.Â
Neither side is winning hearts and minds or advancing reconstruction or rehabilitation. Nor is either side winning the war. The Taliban and its friends have the advantage because they need only to stymie all good works by Karzai and his international friends. Making the country ungovernable and preventing peace and human security is victory enough for them.Â
Obviously, the Taliban think that NATO and America will tire at some point and withdraw leaving the country open to another Taliban occupation bolstered by al Qaeda strategists and training camps. Al Qaeda are mainly Arabs and Pakistanis but they are no longer foreign for the Taliban Pashtuns because they live together day and night.Â
The West’s fundamental mistake is to see Afghanistan as a nation state endangered by a totalitarian enemy. Afghanistan never was a nation state at any time in history. It has always been a patchwork of Pashtun, Baluchis, Turkmen, Tajik, Uzbek, Persians and the frontier tribes of modern Pakistan. It has never had a strong central government whose writ ran firmly throughout the territory. It borders are lines drawn at various times by foreigners, including the British.Â
The West, nurtured on nation state politics and the values of the Enlightenment, is trying to create a democracy led by an Afghan, Karzai, who is a Westernized citizen of the world rather than a rough and tumble Afghan tribal warlord. The West’s mighty guns and billions of dollars are useless in such a morass, which has no national identity or historical memory of greatness as a civilization.Â
Afghanistan is a kind of Switzerland. It is a mosaic, through which various invaders and traders crisscrossed to go about their conquests and commerce. Each left a few of its ethic stock in that land. Their descendants now populate most of the country.Â
Switzerland had the good luck to be surrounded by more or less orderly kingdoms and, later, nation states. When those tribes of the continent of Europe had their massive Civil Wars in the 20th century, Switzerland was preserved as a neutral space by agreement among all antagonists.Â
Additionally, the Swiss had the good sense to be some thing to everybody. Thus, they avoided making fierce enemies or sinking into internal civil wars among their German, French, Italian and Romansh tribes. They focused on peace and money instead of uncompromising nationalism.Â
Regrettably, modern Afghans do not seem to have the common sense of the Swiss. And by a quirk of fate, NATO the world’s mightiest ever military conglomerate might yet find itself defeated by Afghanistan’s numerous unruly tribes.Â
That is a real possibility if NATO does not more closely study Afghan tribal culture and history to find a new approach more in harmony with those it is trying to help.Â
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14 Responses to “On the Imbroglio in Afghanistan”
I totally disagree that a stalemate is a defeat. We have conditioned ourselves to only accept Victory. Anything else is defeat.
We will never defeat terrorism. We will never Win hearts and minds. It is not in our job description to win hearts and minds. It is in our job description to stiffle terrorism and you do that by cutting off funding. By making it extremely difficult for the terrorists to operate.
People continually look at the next truck bomb that goes off in Afghanistan as a “See were losing” scenario. We would be losing if their were dozens of truck bombs going off daily. There is not they are scattered and well timed because they do not have the resources to do otherwise.
A stalemate means that our efforts are actually working. Victory is measured in different ways. The war on crime in the USA has been a victory. Not because we have defeated crime. Crime remains but it is under control and manageable.
Putting Terrorism under control and manageable while continuing to deprive them of the funding and resources they need to continue is a successful campagin. We started our campaign with this concept of outright victory. In America their is no winner till someone clearly wins. We even have overtime to ensure a winner. There is no overtime in the war on terror. Victory is measured in different ways. We are winning, just not in the way we are used to measuring a “win”.
A stalemate in Afghanistan simply means that what we are attempting to do is working. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.
And that’s the biggest problem.
Nearly 40 years ago I was told that the United States of America is the most fascinating nation populated by the most naive people. I did not believe this because I had inherent faith in the vitality of a nation described as a melting pot of the world.
I had great expectations….
Alas…in the march of recent history I may have to change my opinion!!!
Brij–
Do you think Afghanistan should be partitioned along ethnic lines, the way many now think Iraq should be partitioned?
It is a great pity that the ‘thinking people’ in Europe and the rest of the world may have decided that let the United States of America go on it suicidal path following its unilateral decision to handle in its own way Afghanistan and Iraq (and may be Iran later).
It is not that they are rejoicing. But what can you do with someone with suicidal tendency. And many fear that backing the USA would be like committing suicide…
Divide the whole world my dear George Sorwell…wish you best of luck!!!
Swaraaj Chauhan–
Have a nice day.
You too…Thank you my dear George Sorwell…
I agree they are fighting the war all wrong over there. I have heard terms like “counterinsugrency” fighting and was led to believe there are experts in this discipline currently stationed in Afghanistan. Then I hear of our “victories”, which invariably consist of a very large bomb dropped on a suspected enemy stronghold, killing a handful of Taliban and a few dozen bystanders. If thats what passes for counter-insurgency the Taliban will be running the show there within 10 years.
And I very strongly disagree that a stalemate is a win. A win is when there are no longer roving bands of armed men clashing daily and killing bystanders. Once that is the case a country, or tribe or people, can begin getting on with their lives and living in peace. Anything else is not living.
I wonder if the author has actually been to Afghanistan or has any concept of what US and NATO forces are doing there. The ignorance of this post is astounding. The Taliban are portrayed as “pious” religious fighters who manage, against all odds, to triumph despite their lack of proper footwear. There are so many, but this is particularly ignorant:
“In riposte, NATO and American bombs are destroying entire villages, including precious infrastructure and causing significant “collateral damageâ€? to children, women and elderly men.”
First of all, we haven’t dropped bombs on villages to any serious degree since 2002. In fact, the opposite is true – it’s the Taliban that is now bombing in the cities and villages – first with car and motorcycle bombs and now with suicide bombs. Their aim is to kill any prominent leader who isn’t Taliban as well as any police or other forces of authority. They don’t seem to mind much when their acts kill the very women, children and the elderly that Brij opines about. The fact is that the vast majority of combat the US and NATO forces pour onto the Taliban happen in largely unpopulated areas in the mountains where the Taliban hide, or along the border with Afghanistan. It’s very very rare for us to bomb villages. We’ve never deployed tanks or heavy artillery or rockets to Afghanistan. The vast majority of ground forces are light infantry. I wonder if Brij even knows what light infantry are.
There are two reasons the Taliban still have a foothold in Afghanistan. First, and most important, they have safe-havens in Pakistan where we cannot attack them. Every winter they go over the border to train and requip to fight in the spring. Secondly, their only tool for control is fear. With very few exceptions the Taliban have little popular support but they are still able to instill fear into the populace and they force villages to shelter and protect them. There’s a reason the Taliban use “night letters” extensively and the US and NATO do not. The only area the Taliban has any support is in the south in the conservative Pashtun areas. But all Pashtuns are not Taliban as Karzai demonstrates.
In short the author understands little of the actual fighting in Afghanistan or our counter-insurgency strategy. He’s probably completely unaware that our “intensely violent forays” by “heavily protected ground troops” consist of light infantry and special forces. And the special forces spend most of their time doing stuff like veterinary services for livestock along with basic medical and dental care for villagers with no other access to such services. I wonder how often the Taliban provides similar benefits when they’re not busy in Pakistan learning how to make det cord, or printing night letters to instill fear? And what is an “intensely violent foray” anyway? How is it different from a mere “violent foray?” And what are “heavily protected ground troops?” Troops that have weapons? Body armor? Ride around in Toyota trucks or humvees, or, even more likely, LPC’s? LPC= Leather Personnel Carrier = boots.
No, Brij doesn’t seem to know anything about actual combat operations in Afghanistan, but the comparison to the Swiss is interesting. I can certainly see parallels, but Afghanistan has a LONG way to go before it’s remotely able to aspire to what the Swiss have achieved.
Well Entropy, while I don’t doubt anything in particular you said, the fact remains they are not only gaining ground in Afghanistan, they are simultaneously able to grow enough heroine to supply the world.
Where are the results? How is it possible we, the UNITED STATES have been unable to maintain enough order there to crush the Taliban permanently? So they go to Pakistan in the winter, why do we not crush them in the spring when they return? What needs to change so this doesn’t drag on for another 4 years? You make it sound as if everything is going according to some master plan and the author is totally ignorant of reality, when it is you who are passively denying the reality that we are not making any progress there.
Sam,
Did I ever claim we were making progress against the insurgency? If you search my name in the comments on this site you’ll see I’ve talked about Afghanistan before and the fact is we are NOT making progress, but it’s not because the Taliban are popular and “pious” religious warriors, or because we’re denuding the country of women, children and old men through our supposedly indiscriminate carpet bombing campaigns.
The biggest obstacle is the Pakistan safe-haven. It’s much, much more than a place to casually spent the winter months. It serves as a recruiting, training, supply and logistics hub that we cannot interdict. Take a quick look at the history of insurgency – it should not surprise anyone that in the last century no insurgency that has a safe-haven has lost. The only exception being Korea which was fought to a draw after Chinese intervention. Vietnam, El Salvador, Afghanistan for the Soviets, Nicaragua are all examples where the insurgent had a safe-haven across a political boundary that couldn’t be interdicted and destroyed.
The safe haven is the main reason the insurgency survives in Afghanistan and we won’t defeat it until that safe-haven is removed. The best we can hope for is to slowly build Afghani forces so that they can defend themselves from the cross-border attacks. That will take at least a decade however. There is no doubt that we are in Afghanistan for the long haul. We are making progress in fits and starts, but that progress is also being pushed back. Insurgency is a dirty, tough business that takes a lot of time, intelligence and effort. There’s a reason most insurgencies last a decade or more.
This will be a critical year in Afghanistan. The Taliban and AQ are really itching for a fight. They’ve been building up for bigger operations over the last couple of years and they believe they can take some parts of the country back. They would not be any position of strength were it not for the safe haven.
What you don’t hear in the press is that the insurgency is going on inside Pakistan as well. Bill’s site follows the border area extensively and is a good source for information on the area.
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