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March 6, 2010 -
Report: Afghan 'civilian surge' is struggling - Comment:
No surprise. This never made as much sense on the ground in
Afghanistan as it did for politicians and bureaucrats in Washington. |
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February 1, 2009 -
There's an interesting article in the Weekly Standard, "How
to export an awakening". It basically
argues that the local "awakening" councils of Iraq might be replicated
with some variations in Afghanistan as a counterterrorism strategy for
dealing with the Taliban insurgency and the foreign Al Qaeda terrorists
in the region.
There also seems to be some confusion in the media and
in some circles between a political strategy to develop effective local
checks on the growth of central government power and potential tyranny
versus the military focus on defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda by
seizing and holding territory in the field.
The point is to help the Afghans defeat them for their
own good reasons, rather than to lead that battle in tribal areas where
we will never be welcome. If we are perceived as helping to create
a stronger central government which can impose control over the tribal
areas from the top again, then many tribes will justifiably resist our
continued presence in their country. They know what central power
can do to them. |
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Conceptually, there seems to be some merit in this line of thinking, but
one needs to be careful about equating Iraq and Afghanistan too
superficially. That's sort of like comparing the Balkans with
France. They may have a few things in common in their European
history, but they also have a lot of very important differences, and
those details matter. One strategy doesn't fit all situations.
It has to adapt, at least at the tactical level, even if there are some
high-level similarities and useful lessons learned. |
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one thing, Iraq has a long history of either (a) living with
foreign domination by one empire or another, or (b) living with
local domination by one strong authoritarian regime or another, and
(c) achieving considerable economic, educational, and cultural
development as a major power in the region regardless of who was
ruling over the country (or parts of it, as borders changed).
This goes back beyond the caliphate in Baghdad or the
Persian Empire to earliest recorded history. It didn't just become
important in the 20th century because of the oil industry. That
just made it somewhat more important to us, but Iraq has been crucial
to the Middle East region and Asia for centuries. |
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contrast, Afghanistan has a long and proud history of (a) tribes
resisting domination by foreign empires, (b) tribes resisting domination
by authoritarian national leaders, although not always so successfully,
and (c) very poor economic development as one of the poorest
countries in the world, with very little real power in the region,
despite a fairly strong cultural tradition which is far more tribal,
or local, than national. It has never been a
major power in the region. It was an important crossroads for
overland trade routes, and played an influential role in empires and the
flow of events in South Asia over the centuries, but it was not the
economy and power base which was driving events. It was largely
overtaken by events. |
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this context, the success of the "awakening" strategy is perhaps more
remarkable in Iraq than it would be in Afghanistan. In Iraq,
there had been growing local frustration that the central government in
Baghdad had proven to be ineffective and divided - unlike the past.
By contrast, in Afghanistan a strong central government had rarely been
good for much from a tribal perspective. It was more often a
threat. For
generations, Iraq had seen an unquestioned and absolute authority in
Baghdad which projected power into every corner of the country, and
pretty ruthlessly crushed any resistance to it. Saddam was just
the latest tyrant in recent memory, but fundamentally the country worked
economically with great power concentrated in central government.
The Afghans were also accustomed to tyranny from their central
government, but it had rarely produced significant economic and social
progress. Resisting central authority in Kabul was fairly normal.
Why trust all the other tribes to do you any favors?
Iraqis might not have felt very free, but they had
security, jobs, education, infrastructure, and so forth. The
government seemed to be getting the basic job done, even if they might
not like, or might actively hate, some aspects of their government.
The abuses of power and tyranny that we perceived from our own free
point of view may have been somewhat fatalistically accepted by many
Iraqis as inevitable. Whether benign or tyrannical in nature, a
powerful central government was well established in Iraq. Think of
it as somewhat analogous to the defense of one-party rule in the "city
that works" - Chicago. Iraq worked, despite the flaws which were
more obvious from our outside perspective, or among the most oppressed
of the Iraqis.
When that predictable social structure was swiftly
removed, and the factional political bickering in Baghdad over the
shifts in power dragged on,
the growing tribal frustration was finally redirected by the "awakening"
groups. They turned away from simply hating the new central
government leaders (through insurgency) to taking more direct local
responsibility for what they could change to create a better future for
themselves.
This meant that they could largely get on with their
lives as before, regardless of what might happen among the new
politicians in Baghdad. In the process, that would also give them
more influence over the new situation in Baghdad than an insurgency tied
to foreign terrorists. Iraq was not an experiment to try to
create a strong central government, as in Afghanistan. It was
just new to have more local control over it, whereas the Afghan
tribal leaders had rarely trusted national leaders anyway. If
there were foreign threats, they were repelled by local tribes forming
temporary alliances to work together. If there were economic
opportunities, then they wanted to keep the control to themselves - not
rely on Kabul. The national leaders needed to seek support
among
the tribes - not the other way around. |
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has been an interesting transition for Iraq's people, including the
recent
provincial elections, with so many candidates who don't
even have obvious sectarian or national political party loyalties.
They are getting more involved at the local level
because, unlike past reliance on Baghdad for everything, they sense the
freedom to control their own futures. There is new pride in having
a voice in their future, rather than just allegiance to a ruthless
tyrant or a growing bureaucracy out of touch with their interests.
In Iraq, the local leaders and tribes are being
empowered to influence the future of the country. By contrast, in
Afghanistan the local tribes rarely ceded authority. National
leaders needed their consent. |
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That's very different than Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the weak
central government in Kabul was not a major factor in the lives of most
ordinary Afghans unless regimes like the Soviets or the Taliban decided
to try to impose their will on everyone through local repression.
After having so much influence in Kabul since the early 1950's, it
clearly surprised the Soviets when the tribes rose up to fight against
them. That was not our doing. They were determined to fight
the Soviets even before we helped them at all.
For centuries there had been one ruler after another in Kabul, Herat, or
Kandahar as one empire after another rose and fell or passed through
Afghanistan, but the fundamental subsistence life of ordinary Afghans
was less affected. The tribes controlled their own areas with
considerable autonomy.
Over time, the benefits which had come from the old
trade routes through the region, or by external power struggles, became
less significant beyond the main cities. Life in the tribal areas
wasn't very closely tied to life in Kabul, or to events elsewhere in the
world or even in other parts of South Asia.
They may have been very poor, but the tribes were
largely free to live as they had chosen to live for many centuries.
Even in the era of the British Raj, the British never really dominated
Afghanistan, and several attempts to impose their will failed.
They didn't try to "develop" it, as they did in India. They cut
deals with the leaders to minimize having trouble with Afghanistan while
their own focus was on other aspects of the "Great Game" in South Asia,
including India in particular as the jewel in the crown. They just
didn't want Afghanistan to become too big of a thorn in their side, or
too friendly with Russia..
The British invested heavily in their interests in
India. They invested relatively little in Afghanistan - basically
just trying to keep it from becoming a problem as a buffer against an
expansionist Russian empire. When they tried to do more than that,
the tribes in Afghanistan and the frontier of what is now Pakistan
fought them off. In the process, the modern borders of Afghanistan
became a reflection of competing British and Russian interests, rather
than tribal patterns and traditions. |
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should keep that very different heritage in mind. Afghanistan is
not like Iraq. There are some tribes in
Afghanistan which will never accept our presence there, regardless of
good intentions and best efforts to help them from our perspective.
We may perceive that to be a threat, because the "bad guys" may find
safe haven in such places, and indeed they will.
That's actually OK, even though that may seem
counterintuitive in the context of our idea of a long "war on terrorism"
in which we want to relentlessly hunt down the bad guys everywhere.
The point is that, unless the locals want to defeat them too, we're just
going to be making a bad situation worse. |
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key, therefore, is to not have an "Afghanistan" policy in which
we are determined to do the same thing everywhere, as if we were taking
it upon ourselves to help impose the central authority of Kabul over
tribal areas which have never really been very comfortable with the idea
of rulers in Kabul having their best interests at heart.
We need to think locally in terms of the tribes, not
nationally as though all of the solutions would come out of Kabul by
creating a stronger central government there. Let Afghans enjoy
the relative freedom of a more limited central government. Let's
focus on building up the local tribal base for a more responsive central
government, rather than a more powerful one which can someday impose
tyranny again.
Make it easier for the Afghan tribes elsewhere in the
country to assure that they never welcome back that sort of tyranny
again in their areas, even if a few tribes may still welcome the Taliban
and Al Qaeda back in their own areas. Let the rest of the tribes
around the country have a good reason to be motivated to contain that
threat to their own interests, rather than to treat it as though it is
our problem.
Let those who may choose to welcome the Taliban and Al
Qaeda back see greater progress in other regions. Let the youth
see a brighter future in other areas, and wonder why their own tribes
are being left behind. Think of it as somewhat analogous to the
Berlin Wall, without the physical wall. Make the economic
disparity as stark a local contrast as possible over time (it won't
happen quickly).
Did the surge come out of the politicians in
Baghdad? No, it wasn't their strategy. They were content
to keep fighting for their own central power, regardless of the local
consequences elsewhere.
Local relationships in Anbar built upon our experience
with successful counter-insurgency strategies in many other countries.
We helped them to take back control of their own local areas. We
didn't try to wrest it from the locals by force, or push all the
resources out through the politicians in Baghdad.
We had to find local leaders who were willing to work
with us because it was perceived to be in their own interest to do so,
rather than to do us any favors. We were empowering them to solve
their own local problems, not the other way around. Our focus was
to make it possible for us to leave their areas soon without abandoning
them to a new tyranny led by either foreign terrorists or new leaders in
Baghdad. Once given more local control, they would be reluctant to
cede it back to Baghdad. That was OK. That created a growing
local check on the power of anyone in Baghdad to return to the tyranny
of the past. |
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didn't tackle everyplace at once. We concentrated resources
where we could make a difference. |
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back to the loya jirga process by which local tribal
leaders around Afghanistan were brought together with the encouragement
of former King Zahir Shah after the Taliban was removed from power.
That process created the new system of government by
consent of the governed, including the initial selection of Hamid Karzai
as the new leader and the subsequent elections. It reflected the
tribal traditions of the country and respect for the local leadership as
the foundation for any legitimacy, with delegation of power up to a new
form of national government in Kabul. |
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Nobody really knows whether a local "awakening" strategy will work in
Afghanistan. It probably won't work in some tribal areas -
because they don't share our view that the Taliban or Al Qaeda are a
threat to their own interests. For whatever reason, some will
still welcome them back. In many important
areas, however, it probably will work - and can spread success by
keeping a sharp focus on a few places to set a good example of what is
possible to achieve together, and then working with local leaders in
other parts of the country who want to replicate that success.
Instead of trying to spread progress equally in every
region as a matter of "fairness" by the central government in order to
remain popular, we need to be extremely "unfair" by selective
support. There needs to be a stark contrast between
what happens in places which are still sympathetic to the Taliban, and
places which embrace a different vision for Afghanistan.
The local tribes are free to choose their own future.
We are free to only invest in those areas which, like ourselves, don't
welcome the return of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We aren't the UN,
trying to spread money around equally as some sort of global social
welfare program. We have vital interests at stake in the
economic and social success of some tribal areas, and the dismal failure
of others.
The government in Kabul will certainly not want to be
perceived as ceding any territory back to the Taliban and Al Qaeda
sympathizers, thereby making the central government look weak and
vulnerable.
On the other hand, if major progress can be made in
the "good" areas, that should strengthen the hand of the national
leadership by drawing a very visible contrast between progress in some
favored regions and a future of pretty hopeless tyranny in those areas
which the Taliban may dominate again. |
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in mind that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not the same. The
Taliban are the local Islamist radicals, as home-grown tyrants who
basically want to impose their radical vision on whatever people they
manage to rule over where they live. Al Qaeda is the organization
which wants to use such a "base" for their foreign ambitions of
spreading their radical tyranny in other Muslim countries.
Our fight is with Al Qaeda. The Taliban are
mainly just local despots who spread local misery, like Mugabe in
Zimbabwe or some of the radicals in Somalia. They have little
ability to project power beyond their local base, even though they can
cause some trouble for us there and a lot of local misery.
If local influence is quietly ceded to them in some
tribal areas, then they will reliably bring misery to those locals on
their own initiative, without us having to become the scapegoat by
fighting them there.
Unlike their rise to fill a power vacuum in the past
before most Afghans knew what to expect of their rule, the central
government and any success we achieve with local tribes in other regions
of Afghanistan should prevent the Taliban from becoming a larger threat
again. Most were very glad to be rid of them, as proven through
elections, even if they were suspicious of the new central government or
disliked our military presence in their country. Few will regard
Taliban rule as the "good old days".
We should be able to "contain" the radical
Islamists in a few tribal areas of Afghanistan where the central
government has little influence anyway - while the Pakistani
government should be able to drive the worst threats out of most of
their tribal areas too.
As in Afghanistan, there needs to be a stark contrast
between the tribal areas in Pakistan which welcome the Taliban and Al
Qaeda, and those which embrace a better future in cooperation with the
Pakistani government. Opposition needs to have a heavy price for
the tribes involved - at the hands of the Pakistani government, rather
than ourselves, in more than just a military response.
There needs to be a carrot with strings attached,
rather than just a small stick with no political power or will to use
it, and free carrots for nothing, or no carrots at all. Offering
rewards for turning in terrorists has been predictably ineffective in
this region. |
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Qaeda leaders properly hate us as their worst enemy. They may
feel justified in attacking us anywhere, but their focus is largely on
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other places in the Arab world where they have
some remotely plausible hope of imposing their own tyranny someday.
That is a threat for many of those Arab regimes.
They will have to figure out how to deal with it. It is not a
US or NATO problem unless the Afghan and Pakistani governments, and
others in the Arab world, fail to take the lead in dealing with those
radical Islamists who choose to threaten us, too. Our focus needs
to shift to working more closely with those who want to make progress
together in peace, without giving up our critical intelligence and
military capabilities to whack those who remain a threat to us.
We are, to a large degree, a useful red herring
in radical Islamist efforts to grow their own power. They can stir
up hatred of us as an excuse to recruit and train more followers to do
their bidding and die for their cause. They have managed to foster
the myth that this is some sort of noble jihad against us.
Their struggle is really to impose their tyranny in Muslim countries.
They have no hope of doing it here. They can scare and kill people
here, but that will just result in another blowback which weakens them. |
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Their myth of power was unfortunately reinforced by the last time we
screwed up the "end game" by abandoning Afghanistan once the Soviets
pulled out, after getting too close to the regime of General Zia ul-Haq
in Pakistan during those Reagan years. That left behind an
economic and humanitarian disaster as a power vacuum of competing tribal
warlords, crime, and corruption. Within a few years, that made the
rise of the Taliban possible. Nobody in the international
community showed any interest in helping to rebuild Afghanistan, or to
resist the rise of the Taliban. Meanwhile, the military in
Pakistan not only recognized them, but had close ties and actively
supported their rise to power. |
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is going to take some time to unravel this mess. It basically has
roots going back to at least the early 1950's, rather than just the
trouble with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the late 1990's and recent
years. In the Cold War era, Afghanistan was pretty much written
off as an irrelevant place in terms of Western interests. It was
conceded to already be within the Soviet "sphere of influence", and
gradually became more closely tied to the Soviets without the concern
which Britain had shown during the "Great Game" with Russia in the 19th
century, when Russia seemed to be a looming threat to India.
When the Soviets pulled out, that left behind more
than just a country devastated by a truly horrific decade of war and
millions of refugees. It also left behind a country in which
relatively few elders (in a country with a short life expectancy) could
recall the earlier era of King Zahir Shah's rule, before the rise of
Muhammad Daud in 1953 and growing Soviet influence. When the
Soviets actually invaded in 1979, some analysts simply regarded this as
defending their long-standing interests in the country, and the desire
for "stability" on their southern border in the context of growing
revolutionary threats from Iran. |
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Bottom line - Afghanistan is an extraordinarily complex country,
somewhat like the problems in the Balkans. As a country, it was
largely created by external power struggles rather than national
unity. A sense of national identity as "Afghans" has
developed, but to a large degree the history and identity is more tribal
than national. That's very different than Iraq, where despite tribal
structures and heritage, the identity of individuals as Iraqis
reflected fairly proud nationalism. The fiercely proud tribal
autonomy of Afghans reflects distrust and only grudging acceptance of
any central government. |
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that context, it is somewhat more remarkable that the "surge" strategy
worked in Iraq. It seems more likely that it will work in
Afghanistan - in those places where it is welcomed by local leaders.
In other areas, we could stay there and fight the tribes for decades,
and they would still fight us with the same tenacity as the
mujahideen fought the Soviets and the British and others before
them. It is not a question of whether we can defeat them in
battle. We can defeat them for decades, and at the end of the day
it will still be their homeland, and they will continue to fight to the
death against us. We can only "win" by
working closely with local tribal leaders who actually want to
create a more prosperous future for the people in their part of
Afghanistan, however slow and difficult that progress may be. The
"progress" has to be as they define it, by their own priorities, through
their own tribal structures. We can't simply be trying to get them
to "buy into" our own war against Al Qaeda, or even to resist the spread
of the Taliban again. They have to be the ones who want to keep
the Taliban out of their territory, and Al Qaeda too. That has to
be their war, not ours. We can play a supporting role, as we did
to selectively help some mujahideen groups (but not all) drive
out the Soviets.
They are the ones who have to win in Afghanistan,
not us. They should be our focus now - not the endless
struggle against the scattered Taliban insurgents and Al Qaeda
terrorists. It goes against our nature to ever cede territory to
the enemy, but there are times when a strategic retreat makes sense in
order to concentrate our forces and resources where they can be more
effectively deployed. |
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