This formulation ignores the obvious rejoinder that for US forces to stay and battle the “Taliban” (whatever that term is supposed to mean on any given day) means to target large swaths of that same Afghan population.  Some of the anti-government groups are remnants of the Pashtun-dominated Mullah Omar-led Taliban that hosted al-Qaeda, some are entirely unrelated tribal entities, some are ordinary Afghans radicalized by the presence of a foreign occupying army, some are narco-warlords defending their turf and revenue stream, some smaller group are foreign fighters, etc. 

Regardless of the exact identity and motivations, and aside from the small group of foreign fighters, the people that we are killing also count as the Afghan people.  In actuality, we are protecting certain Afghan factions while doing our best to kill others.  It is an unstated, reflexive act of dehumanization to associate our favored factions with the “Afghan people” while relegating those groups that oppose the Afghan government to some form of limbo status in terms of their humanity/national identity.

Not to mention the fact that in the crossfire, we are also unintentionally killing Afghans that we readily recognize as Afghans.  Here are some stories from some of the people that we are protecting:

At first light last Friday, in the Chardarah district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, the villagers gathered around the twisted wreckage of two fuel tankers that had been hit by a Nato airstrike. They picked their way through a heap of almost a hundred charred bodies and mangled limbs which were mixed with ash, mud and the melted plastic of jerry cans, looking for their brothers, sons and cousins. They called out their names but received no answers. By this time, everyone was dead.

What followed is one of the more macabre scenes of this or any war. The grief-stricken relatives began to argue and fight over the remains of the men and boys who a few hours earlier had greedily sought the tanker’s fuel. Poor people in one of the world’s poorest countries, they had been trying to hoard as much as they could for the coming winter.

“We didn’t recognise any of the dead when we arrived,” said Omar Khan, the turbaned village chief of Eissa Khail. “It was like a chemical bomb had gone off, everything was burned. The bodies were like this,” he brought his two hands together, his fingers curling like claws. “There were like burned tree logs, like charcoal.

“The villagers were fighting over the corpses. People were saying this is my brother, this is my cousin, and no one could identify anyone.”

So the elders stepped in. They collected all the bodies they could and asked the people to tell them how many relatives each family had lost.

A queue formed. One by one the bereaved gave the names of missing brothers, cousins, sons and nephews, and each in turn received their quota of corpses. It didn’t matter who was who, everyone was mangled beyond recognition anyway. All that mattered was that they had a body to bury and perform prayers upon.

“A man comes and says, ‘I lost my brother and cousin’, so we gave him two bodies,” said Omar Khan. “Another says I lost five relatives, so we gave him five bodies to take home and bury. When we had run out of bodies we started giving them limbs, legs, arms, torsos.” In the end only five families went away without anything. “Their sons are still missing.”

While on the homefront, many Americans are convinced that we are protecting the “Afghan people,” the view in Afghanistan can vary greatly with respect to the security benefits of our presence.  Obviously, the Afghans in the above-cited piece might not take such a rosy view of our mission – nor would Afghans in the regions targeted by US military action.  Further, as Joshua Foust recounts, some villagers in areas where we have taken up defensive positions have struck deals with US forces to stay outside of their population centers because the presence of US forces brings conflict to their doorstep. 

In other words, in Nuristan we had begun enacting the McChrystal policy over a year before it got pushed out as an order. Only, as we know from Want, it ended very poorly (rumor has it the villagers near Want asked the U.S. to withdraw from the region because their presence made security nearby substantially worse off). [...]

Moreover, as this Washington Post piece makes clear, in places like Kamu and Kamdesh the U.S. almost never interacts with the local population anyway (a little birdie told me the community of Kamdesh struck an agreement with the military that no one from its Observation Post 300 meters away will ever step foot inside their village). Needless to say, there’s not much “reconstruction” going on there, either—the provincial capital is still a dreary, empty nothing. It’s not like the people will really notice our absence.

Undoubtedly, our presence breeds conflict at least as much – though likely more – than it breeds stability. 

The narrative of US forces as peace-bringers, and defenders of the virtuous, is an archetypal story, a common form of wartime propaganda prevalent amongst warring populations intent on buttressing their efforts with some moral undergirding (also, often detached from reality – see, ie, US armed support for the “good guys” in Central and South America, Southeast Asia and elsewhere).  It’s a good war, after all, and we are the good guys, defending the foreign born good guys, in pursuit of a common humanitarian good. While there are elements of truth to this characterization, the story begins to break down upon closer scrutiny – as touched on above.  In truth, we fight wars to further our interests.  Sometimes those align with local groups.  If so, we champion their cause - often regardless of how “good” or “bad” that group is. 

Not only is it the case that the continuation of our mission involves both intentionally and unintentionally killing thousands of actual Afghan people (that we are ostensibly  there to protect), so too are the factions that we are championing far from the virtuous liberal-minded freedom fighters that the good guys vs. bad guys narrative demands.  For example, Afghan women’s groups have complained that the warlords cobbled together to form Karzai’s government are every bit as brutal toward women as the Taliban.

The U.S. military may have removed the Taliban, but it installed warlords who are as anti-woman and as criminal as the Taliban. Misogynistic, patriarchal views are now embodied by the Afghan cabinet, they are expressed in the courts, and they are embodied by President Hamid Karzai.

Paper gains for women’s rights mean nothing when, according to the chief justice of the Afghan Supreme Court, the only two rights women are guaranteed by the constitution are the right to obey their husbands and the right to pray, but not in a mosque.

These are the convictions of the government the U.S. has helped to create. The American presence in Afghanistan will do nothing to diminish them. 

The staggering level of criminality and corruption rife in the Afghan government, in addition to proving a stubborn impediment to winning the population’s support, serves as a reminder of the moral ambiguity in terms of our allies and adversaries.  While it requires extra effort to keep track of these nuances from a distance, the Afghan people are confronted with these realities on a daily basis.  The results from a poll of Afghans commissioned by Britain’s Department for International Development are telling of the divergent views of this war and its moral justifications depending on one’s proximity to the violence:

Respondents could not understand why the Coalition forces were in Afghanistan. They reasoned that their objectives were clearly not to bring security to local populations, as their mere presence exacerbated violence and increased the numbers of civilians killed in air strikes. They also rejected the idea that Coalition forces were serious either about democracy or, separately, development. Democracy could not be an aim as the Afghan population had never been consulted about the occupation in the first place. And although western publics had been consulted about the recent surge ordered by President Obama the Afghan parliament and people had not (‘So if this is western style democracy we don’t want it’). The development efforts of international agencies was seen as delivering only very small projects which didn’t have significant impact and employed few people (demand for projects that created local employment was huge). The lack of clarity on US and Coalition motivations led to speculations about ‘real’ motives.

Further:

10. All respondents had ideas about what should be done to bring security. The responses were remarkably consistent across all groups and can be summarised as follows:

• The government should formally bring the Taliban and Hizb-i Islami into the democratic process and allow the leaders to stand for election. The leaders must first come off the UN black list (on the basis that some very violent warlords and abusers of human rights were already in government yet some on the black list were not guilty of such crimes). As one respondent said: ‘Even though the Taliban have a restricted idea of Islam and women’s rights they didn’t commit crimes against humanity but the Northern Alliance did, and many who committed such crimes are now in government.’ And: ‘If there are trials then it should be for both parties’.

• The military objectives of foreign forces should be made publically known. Two quotes reflect the general sentiment: ‘They say there are here to root out Al Qa’eda and Osama but we all know that these people are not in Afghanistan’. ‘There should be a legal agreement between the Coalition forces and the government which specifies what they are here for and what they are allowed to do – currently they have no legality from the government or the people of Afghanistan. This ambiguity about their mission and objectives has created a lot of suspicion in the minds of the public – some say they are here for revenge, some say they are after historical relics, some say it is oil or uranium. If their mission is known and people can understand their mission then it would be a lot easier for them as well as the people of Afghanistan’…

Obviously unaddressed in this post are our strategic interests for prolonging our occupation of Afghanistan.  Rather, this piece was intended to question some of the moral assumptions that are taken for granted when analyzing our mission in the region, and as a reminder that the situation on the ground looks vastly different to the Afghan people whose cause we are supposedly championing – at least those groups of Afghans that we are not actively trying to destroy (or end up killing mistakenly).

(See, also, conservative foreign policy wonk, Jim Henley)

Related posts:

1. We Chiseled and We Switched
2. Ingrates Abound
3. In Tatters, Shattered

The draft document focuses on three main objectives: disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan, working to stabilize Pakistan, and working to achieve a host of political and civic goals in Afghanistan. Each objective has a list of metrics beneath it, although many of these are more goals than concrete milestones that could be measured in any factual way. [emph. added]

The metrics span just about every conceivable issue, including progress towards Pakistan’s civilian government and judicial system becoming stable, to support for human rights, to public perceptions of security, to volume and value of narcotics.

A partial list of the cross purposes is as follows: A continued military operation in Afghanistan that (even if inadvertently) weakens Pakistan vis-a-vis India is not going to stabilize the situation in Pakistan (nor garner the full support of the Pakistani government).  Along those lines, operations against Pakistani Taliban elements in pursuit of eliminating supply lines and redoubts for Afghan Talibs is not going to stabilize Pakistan either.  Quite the contrary, such activities are creating a sizable anti-US, anti-Pakistani government backlash – pushing moderates and religious extremists together in common cause – and provoking Pakistani Taliban to attack the Pakistani government.  

In general terms, this radicalization and escalation are only logical: large foreign military occupations pursuing narrow, self-serving interests and in the process bending local powers to its purposes rarely bring about stability, peace and regional harmony.  Absent an unrestrained brutality that we will not and should not unleash.

As for the metric of achieving “progress towards Pakistan’s civilian government and judicial system becoming stable,” again, this aim is undercut by the underlying policy of military occupation of Afghanistan.  Consider the actual metrics:

1. Progress towards Pakistan’s civilian government and judicial system becoming stable and free of military involvement
2. Pakistan’s actions to take necessary steps to ensure economic and financial stability, job creation, and growth
3. Support for human rights
4. Development of an enduring, strategic partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan
5. Pakistani public opinion of government performance
6. Demonstrable action by government against corruption, resulting in increased trust and confidence of the Pakistani public

Our policy is wildly unpopular in Pakistan.  We are viewed by large swathes of the population as, alternatively, an imperial power and a Western crusader intent on weakening a powerful Muslim nation (and seizing its nukes).  The government in power is viewed as a quisling regime installed and/or controlled by us. 

How is a continuation of the policy that gives rise to such sentiment going to aid the “[d]evelopment of an enduring, strategic partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan”?  Further, in an environment like the one stoked by such policies, how can the US simultaneously support democracy and seek to ensure a compliant Pakistani government?  After all, it is at least likely that any government that emerges from a fair democratic process, if representative of public sentiment, would reject these particular US policies in the region.

Even Hamid Karzai had to engage in massive fraud to achieve his “free and fair” electoral victory – a testament to the complications elections and democracy can bring about.  A similar outcome (or perceived outcome) in Pakistan in order to preserve the opportunity to pursue an unpopular policy would directly undermine each and every one of the enumerated metrics above. 

Legitimacy is not won that way.  And if legitimacy is a prerequisite for success in counterinsurgency operations, well then, we’re doing it wrong.

Related posts:

1. Our Midas Guns
2. Start Another Fire and Watch It Slowly Die
3. We Chiseled and We Switched

Juan Cole, however, is a Pakistan expert, and the first part of his chapter provides an educated overview of Pakistani politics and it social basis, as well as the causes of Pakistani grievances with the United States. A key point is that Islamic Revivalism does not have a large constituency in the country, nor are most grievances rooted in pan-Islamic sentiments. Most of the country is radically different from the tribal areas from which the Taliban Movement of Pakistan emanates, and where one finds the madrasas who took in poor and orphaned refugees from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and provided them with a rudimentary education, which did happen to be based in theologically conservative Deobandi teachings.

While Islamist parties won 2002 elections in the North West Frontier Province, Cole interprets this as a reaction to the American invasion of Afghanistan and the support it received from President Pervez Musharraf. The population was swiftly disenchanted when these parties focused on implementing Islamic law in the area rather than advancing their agenda on other issues.

After surveying Pakistan’s recent political history up to the rise of current President Asif Ali Zardari, Cole turns his attention to Pakistan, which is a very different place. A basic sense of nationalism, which underlies the modern state system, isn’t strong among any of the country’s inhabitants, with the possible exception of the Uzbeks, and where it does exist it is often directed toward linguistic groups rather than “Afghan-ness.” Cole also questions how much of the violence in Afghanistan’s south is really caused by the Taliban, and indeed much is not.

The one point in this chapter where I question Cole has to do with the old issue of the extent to which ethnicity influences Afghanistan’s conflict. Here’s the crucial paragraph:

“The conflict also has a strong, if not determinative, ethnic coloration, with some Pushtun tribesmen resentful of what they see as the Tajik-dominated government in Kabul even though Afghan bureaucrats representing that government in the southern provinces are themselves Pushtun. The ethnic lines are not drawn in an absolute way, since Karzai and many of his officials are Pushtun and they have many Pushtun tribal supporters. In some ways, the fighting in the south is the civil war between pro- and anti-Karzai tribes. Still, ethnicity is one element in the struggle – there are no Hazara Shi’ite Taliban, and the spread of neo-Taliban violence to northern provinces such as Kunduz, where German troops have come under repeated attack, has tended to occur through Pushtun clan networks.”

My question here is that can’t the given examples better support the idea that ethnicity is a minor factor? Is the lack of Hazara Taliban because they are Hazara, or because they are Shi’ites? Is the Pushtun-ness of the clan networks of neo-Taliban violence in the north really important?

That aside, this is an excellent chapter, and I strongly support Cole’s recommendations, which boil down to forming an alliance with the Pakistani people rather than particular governments.

Related posts:

1. Engaging the Muslim World: The Struggle for Islamic Oil
2. Engaging the Muslim World: Muslim Activism, Muslim Radicalism
3. Engaging the Muslim World: The Wahhabi Myth

Along these lines, much of our strategic class suffers from a persistent form of solipsism with respect to international affairs, a myopia that obscures the obvious truth that, just as we must pursue our interests first and foremost, other governments are, likewise, compelled to put their own respective interests first.  Often times, this overriding motivation means that they will refuse to line-up along demarcations established, somewhat arbitrarily in their eyes, by the United States.  It’s nothing personal.

The most pertinent recent example of this incongruity between US expectations and demands, and a foreign nation’s uncooperative and hesitant response, centers around our dealings with Pakistan and our policy agenda in Afghanistan. 

After the attacks of 9/11, from the US perspective, the Taliban was an extremist religious faction that had seized power in Afghanistan, hosted a terrorist organization that had repeatedly attacked the US and US interests, and thus, a group that had to be deposed and shut out from power.  That policy agenda is certainly reasonable enough, especially for an American, but there is another side to the story.

Whereas the United States is, quite understandably, concerned with the threat posed by al-Qaeda, and thus views the Taliban as a hostile element given its past support (and current cooperation) with al-Qaeda, Pakistan is not similarly disposed.  For Pakistan, the foreign policy universe revolves around its regional adversary, frequent military opponent, and former co-inhabitant of a vast territory that each, in common, once called home: India.  Everything from relations with China and Russia, to relations with the United States, are ordered on the principle of how to best counter India.  In fact, this pervasive paranoia and monomaniacal focus has even warped Pakistan’s domestic political life, exacerbating a militarized culture, complete with a powerful and semi-autonomous intelligence apparatus (the ISI), with frequent military coups and a general disregard for civilian rule.

While Pakistan views its alliance with the US as valuable, it is not because it necessarily sees eye to eye with the US on most matters.  Quite the contrary: Pakistani elites, as well as the general population, have long had a suspicious view of the United States and its motives, opposing key aspects of its international policies (these attitudes have worsened dramatically in recent years).  This alliance, like most others for Pakistan, passes through the India-lens; Pakistan values the military and economic aid it can obtain via cordial relations with the US in order to counter India, and it has an interest in preventing too close an alliance forming between the US and India (which could tilt the balance of power too heavily in India’s direction).  But the US alliance is – at best – of a second order importance, and subsumed by the India imperatives.

With respect to Afghanistan, Pakistan has long sought to cultivate a proxy and ally in that territory in order to achieve several objectives: expand its regional reach, influence and alliances in order to better balance India’s larger territorial space and population, and create a strategic redoubt in case of conflict.  In fact, the US facilitated this process somewhat with the funneling of massive amounts of financial and military aid destined for anti-Soviet Afghan mujaheddin through Peshawar and other Pakistani hubs, leaving it to the Pakistanis (mostly the ISI) to determine the recipients of this largess (a valuable perch from which to cultivate influence, as well as enrich itself).  Peshawar, it turns out, was also where Osama bin Laden set up his operations, and the point from which he coordinated aid from Gulf donors to his favored groups of foreign fighters.

After the withdrawal of the Soviets, and the eventual fall of the regime that it had backed, the US withdrew its presence from Afghanistan. But Pakistan, obviously, continued its involvement with its neighbor.  As the dust settled after years of post-Soviet conflict, Pakistan made sure that the eventual victor – the Taliban – was the horse that it had backed with money, arms and other forms of support.  Pakistan, at last, had what it deemed vital in terms of countering India, its most serious threat.

Fast forward to the events of 9/11 and George Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan.  The leader of Pakistan at the time, by dint of a prior military coup in 1999, was Pervez Musharraf and he was faced with a significant strategic setback for Pakistan: it’s proxy and ally had been replaced by a government that was establishing friendly ties (and accepting millions in aid from)…India.  While the US was focused on neutralizing al-Qaeda and the Taliban (notwithstanding the massive diversion of resources away from this effort and to the unrelated theater in Iraq), Pakistan was trying to contain the fallout from the loss of its valuable regional ally. 

Musharraf did his best, as any Pakistani leader would, to juggle the various imperatives: placate the United States by saying what they wanted to hear and making a show of cooperation, extract massive amounts of aid under the pretense of fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban (aid that was converted into conventional arms better suited for conflict with India, and rushed to that front), surreptitiously support (or, at least, keep alive) its Taliban allies, and destabilize the India-friendly Karzai regime.  All in preparation for the day when the United States, again, withdraws and Pakistan can, again, fill the void. 

But the tightrope walking has had its perils.  In the process of, at least partially, complying with the war on terror as envisioned by the United States, the Pakistani government has had to support the anti-Taliban mission in Afghanistan which has, at times, involved cross border incursions and air strikes on Pakistani territory along the border regions.  This support and acquiescence to infringements on its sovereign territory has, in turn, greatly stoked anti-Americanism as well as anti-government sentiment within Pakistan. 

Pakistani Taliban elements have been radicalized, choosing in recent months to launch attacks against government forces.  During the years that the Afghan Taliban were in power, the Pakistani government had little problem with its indigenous Taliban elements.  The heightened tensions are a recent phenomenon, and are directly related to the Pakistan government’s complicity in the US war on terror, and they are a symptom of a pernicious underlying unrest.

By pushing Pakistan even further, by forcing US prerogatives on the Pakistani government (interests that run counter to Pakistan’s in many respects), the US is actually destabilizing Pakistan and forcing disparate groups of religious zealots and secular elites, extremists and moderates, together in common cause in opposition to the current government and its pro-US tilt - ironic, considering that one of the arguments for ongoing US military operations in the region is the supposed stabilizing effect those military operations will have on Pakistan, crucial to safeguarding that country from potential hostile coup.  From a McClatchy article (via Kevin Drum):

For weeks now, the Pakistani media have portrayed America, its military and defense contractors in the darkest of lights, all part of an apparent campaign of anti-American vilification that is sweeping the country and, according to some, is putting American lives at risk.

Pakistanis are reacting to what many here see as an “imperial” American presence, echoing Iraq and Afghanistan, with Washington dictating to the Pakistani military and the government. Polls show that Pakistanis regard the U.S., formally a close ally and the country’s biggest donor, as a hostile power. [...]

The lively Pakistani media has been filled with stories of under-cover American agents operating in the country, tales of a huge contingent of U.S. Marines planned to be stationed at the embassy, and reports of Blackwater private security personnel running amuck. Armed Americans have supposedly harassed and terrified residents and police officers in Islamabad and Peshawar, according to local press reports.

Much of the hysteria was based on a near $1 billion plan, revealed by McClatchy in May and confirmed by U.S. officials, to massively increase the size of the American embassy in Islamabad, which brought home to Pakistanis that the United States plans an extensive and long-term presence in the country. [...]

A survey last month for international broadcaster al Jazeera by Gallup Pakistan found that 59 percent of Pakistanis felt the greatest threat to the country was the United States. A separate survey in August by the Pew Research Center, an independent pollster based in Washington, recorded that 64 percent of the Pakistani public regards the U.S. “as an enemy” and only 9 percent believe it to be a partner.

“The Ugly American of the sixties is back in Pakistan and this time with a vengeance,” said Mazari, the defense analyst whose newspaper column was the subject of the American complaint. “It’s an alliance (U.S.-Pakistan) that’s been forced on the country by its corrupt leadership. It’s delivering chaos. We should distance ourselves. You can’t just hand over the country.”

While the anti-US sentiment appears genuine, it is uncertain whether the current storm, and the particular stories that it thrived on, was orchestrated by a pressure group or even an arm of the state. In the past, Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, part of the military, has very effectively used the press to push its agenda. [...]

A widely believed conspiracy contends that America is deliberately destabilizing Pakistan, to bring down a “strong Muslim country”, and ultimately seize its nuclear weapons. Pakistanis, especially its military establishment, also are distrustful of U.S. motives in Afghanistan, seeing it as part of a strategy for regional domination. Further Pakistanis are appalled that the regime of Hamid Karzai in Kabul is close to archenemy India. [...]

Many also blame the U.S. for “imposing” a president on the country, Zardari, who is deeply disliked and who last year succeeded an unpopular U.S.-backed military dictator. So democrats resent American interference in Pakistani politics, while conservatives distrust American aims in Afghanistan.

“You used to find this anti-Americanism among supporters of religious groups and Right-wing groups,” said Ahmed Quraishi, a newspaper columnist and the leading anti-American blogger. “But over the past two to three years, young, educated Pakistanis, people you’d normally expect to be pro-American modernists, and middle class people, are increasingly inclined to anti-Americanism. That’s the new phenomenon.”

There are two main takeaways from this McClatchy piece, and the background laid out above: First, Pakistan will, ultimately, look out for Pakistan’s interests and address threats to Pakistan which involve, above all else, India.  Our efforts in Afghanistan run directly counter to Pakistan’s regional/India-related concerns.  Thus, Pakistan will only provide half-hearted cooperation, while key elements of its security establishment work at cross-purposes.  The recent anti-American media blitz is either the result of grass roots sentiment, or an ISI funded campaign, but neither alternative should prove comforting.

With a population so suspicious of our motives, and with a military/elite/intelligence apparatus in vehement opposition to an agenda that is weakening Pakistan vis-a-vis India, forcing our mandate on Pakistan will serve to destabilize a country that is far more important to the US than Afghanistan.  In that sense, it should be possible to line-up US interests and Pakistani interests: ultimately, destabilizing a nuclear armed nation such as Pakistan is riskier than withdrawing from Afghanistan and disrupting al-Qaeda from afar.  And by doing the latter, we reduce the risk of the former.  Perhaps if the Obama administration took full measure of Pakistan’s position and interests, it could further seek to craft a compromise acceptable for all. 

Related posts:

1. Our Midas Guns
2. Engaging the Muslim World: Pakistan and Afghanistan
3. Premature Evacuation?

While entirely too much has been made of the importance of Afghan safe havens in terms of conducting successful terrorist attacks (just as too little has been made of the ability to replicate similar safe havens elsewhere and our ability to disrupt any such haven from afar now that we are making such interdiction a priority), there is little doubt that Obama would pay a steep political price if he were to withdraw and an attack occurred that had some traceable connection to Afghanistan. While an attack emanating from hubs in, say, Europe or Yemen may be just as (or more) likely, those connections would not prove as damaging despite the underlying reality of the terrorist threat.

So it is that Obama seems to be trading Bush’s muddled vision of Afghanistan for his own, with a vague yet grandiose (if often contradictory) recitation of implausible goals and exaggerated fears, all buttressed by a refusal to acknowledge the costs of continuing our occupation. As if they were trivial (think trillions of dollars – less than the costs of health care that has Washington in a tizzy, but then wars never seem to count as spending). As Rory Stewart suggests, it’s almost impossible to decipher an actual policy direction from the pomp and flourish:

When we are not presented with a dystopian vision, we are encouraged to be implausibly optimistic. ‘There can be only one winner: democracy and a strong Afghan state,’ Gordon Brown predicted in his most recent speech on the subject. Obama and Brown rely on a hypnotising policy language which can – and perhaps will – be applied as easily to Somalia or Yemen as Afghanistan. It misleads us in several respects simultaneously: minimising differences between cultures, exaggerating our fears, aggrandising our ambitions, inflating a sense of moral obligations and power, and confusing our goals. All these attitudes are aspects of a single worldview and create an almost irresistible illusion.

It conjures nightmares of ‘failed states’ and ‘global extremism’, offers the remedies of ‘state-building’ and ‘counter-insurgency’, and promises a final dream of ‘legitimate, accountable governance’. The path is broad enough to include Scandinavian humanitarians and American special forces; general enough to be applied to Botswana as easily as to Afghanistan; sinuous and sophisticated enough to draw in policymakers; suggestive enough of crude moral imperatives to attract the Daily Mail; and almost too abstract to be defined or refuted. It papers over the weakness of the international community: our lack of knowledge, power and legitimacy. It conceals the conflicts between our interests: between giving aid to Afghans and killing terrorists. It assumes that Afghanistan is predictable. It is a language that exploits tautologies and negations to suggest inexorable solutions. It makes our policy seem a moral obligation, makes failure unacceptable, and alternatives inconceivable. It does this so well that a more moderate, minimalist approach becomes almost impossible to articulate. Afghanistan, however, is the graveyard of predictions. [...]

Policymakers 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.’

These connections are global: in Obama’s words, ‘our security and prosperity depend on the security and prosperity of others.’ 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-Qaida 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. Even if the invasion was justified, that does not justify all our subsequent actions. If 9/11 had been planned in training camps in Iraq, we might have felt the war in Iraq was more justified, but our actions would have been no less of a disaster for Iraqis or for ourselves. 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.

He continues, highlighting some points that I have been making regarding the mythic importance of "safe havens":

Even if – as seems most unlikely – the Taliban were to take the capital, it is not clear how much of a threat this would pose to US or European national security. Would they repeat their error of providing a safe haven to al-Qaida? And how safe would this safe haven be? They could give al-Qaida land for a camp but how would they defend it against predators or US special forces? And does al-Qaida still require large terrorist training camps to organise attacks? Could they 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?

Furthermore, there are no self-evident connections between the key objectives of counter-terrorism, development, democracy/ state-building and counter-insurgency. 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). Nor is there any necessary connection between state-formation and terrorism. Our confusions are well illustrated by the debates about whether Iraq was a rogue state harbouring terrorists (as Bush claimed) or an authoritarian state which excluded terrorists (as was in fact the case).

It is impossible for Britain and its allies to build an Afghan 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? Afghanistan is starting from a very low base: 30 years of investment might allow its army, police, civil service and economy to approach the levels of Pakistan. But Osama bin Laden is still in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. He chooses to be there precisely because Pakistan can be more assertive in its state sovereignty than Afghanistan and restricts US operations. From a narrow (and harsh) US national security perspective, a poor failed state could be easier to handle than a more developed one: Yemen is less threatening than Iran, Somalia than Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan than Pakistan.

Yet the current state-building project, at the heart of our policy, is justified in the most instrumental terms – not as an end in itself but as a means towards counter-terrorism.

With so convoluted a policy, with its mosaic of cross-purpose justifications and strategies, it is no surprise that Obama’s choice of McChrystal (a noted counter-terrorism practitioner – aka, a "killer") was curious given the underlying rhetoric and nod in the direction of counterinsurgency ("COIN", noted for its population centric concern and restraint in terms of the use of force). As Judah Grunstein suggests to explain this apparent contradiction:

…[It seems that] the COIN rhetoric is simply a scaffolding that’s been slapped over a strategy that has neither the resources, the political will, nor the local support necessary to succeed.

Those limitations are real. Even the Afghan optimists (the COIN experts that think that we must "succeed," and that we have a shot at succeeding) think that our only hope is to commit tens of thousands more troops for at least the next decade at a price tag (when combined with non-military outlays) in the neighborhood of several trillions of dollars. Oh, and even then we’ll only succeed if we also eradicate the poppy crop and reorder Pakistan’s society while we’re creating a stable Afghanistan.

As unrealistic an allocation of resources (and set of goals) as that may seem, it actually gets worse. Back to Stewart:

In pursuit of this objective, Obama has so far committed to building ‘an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000’, and adds that ‘increases in Afghan forces may very well be needed.’ US generals have spoken openly about wanting a combined Afghan army-police-security apparatus of 450,000 soldiers (in a country with a population half the size of Britain’s). Such a force would cost $2 or $3 billion a year to maintain; the annual revenue of the Afghan government is just $600 million. We criticise developing countries for spending 30 per cent of their budget on defence; we are encouraging Afghanistan to spend 500 per cent of its budget.

Some policymakers have been quick to point out that this cost is unsustainable and will leave Afghanistan dependent for ever on the largesse of the international community. Some have even raised the spectre (suggested by the example of Pakistan) that this will lead to a military coup. But the more basic question is about our political principles. We should not encourage the creation of an authoritarian military state. The security that resulted might suit our short-term security interests, but it will not serve the longer interests of Afghans.

Given the unappetizing, politically unpalatable menu of options available in terms of crafting an Afghanistan policy, Obama seems to be picking and choosing ala carte, while vastly overselling the risk of starvation, as well as the sumptuousness of the feast – a meal that is doomed as much by the basic ingredients as by their haphazard combination. If the recent escalation is part of one last push to try to set a decent stage for fuller withdrawal, so be it. But mission creep is an omnipresent concern with so amorphous and ambitious a set of goals (already there is talk that McChrystal will request thousands more troops from Obama in the near future – one wonders what the response will be and under what rationale?).

Unless and until Obama scales back his goals, and takes a more measured reckoning of the actual costs of withdrawal (total or partial), the policy manifestations will continue to be plagued by an incoherent blend of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, targeting segments of the Afghan population while ostensibly under the rubric of population centric protection, air strikes and hearts and minds, nation building and piecemeal aid, erecting a centralized state and showing sensitivity to the local culture of decentralization, etc., all sold using the ominous rhetoric of an existential threat and the resource allocation of a middling concern.

Related posts:

1. I’m Creepin’ and I’m Creepin’
2. Our Midas Guns
3. Engaging the Muslim World: Pakistan and Afghanistan