While the eyes of the world are focused elsewhere, and while many eyes in the United States are focused on the inevitable 24/7 political-rage squabbles, the U.S. is facing a major challenge in Afghanistan — one perhaps a bit more complex than usual: the battle for Kandahar which will require more than just military might.
The coming battle for control of this ancient crossroads city will be the toughest challenge of the war in Afghanistan — not because it will be bloody, necessarily, but because it will require the hardest item for U.S. commanders to deliver, which is an improvement in governance.
Kandahar is the heartland of the Pashtun people — a place of competing tribes and clans, of hidden wealth accumulated from drug trafficking and smuggling, and of notorious power brokers symbolized in the public mind by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the leader of the provincial council and brother of Afghanistan’s president.
Reforming the local government is like disassembling a pyramid of pick-up sticks. One wrong move and the whole pile collapses. Yet if the United States accommodates the existing power structure, it will appear to be condoning corruption here — a bad message for the public in Afghanistan and America alike.
Talking with U.S. officials about the coming campaign, I heard a range of good ideas but not a clear strategy. The American officials know they can’t deliver on their counterinsurgency promise of protecting the population without breaking the hold of the local chieftains. Yet they are wary of toppling the system and opening the way for what might be even worse chaos — and new resentment at American meddling.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.