Photo: Afghan National Army soldiers, right, and United States Marines from Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment, 2nd MEB, left, stand at attention during the playing of the Afghan national anthem at a flag raising ceremony of the new combat outpost in the village of Dahaneh Friday, Aug. 14, 2009 in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. The ANA will occupy the outpost. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)


At a certain point in every imperial occupation, the occupier becomes frustrated with their lackeys. The imperialist will moan:

"Why can't they fight their own war?"
"Why won't they help themselves?"
"When will they take responsibility for their own country?"
"When will they stand up so we can stand down?"

The amnesia required to ask these questions would be startling if it weren't so common. The logic involves forgetting that the occupying forces overthrew the existing government and installed a puppet regime. The imperialist must convince themselves that their use of military force is actually part of a civilizing mission. It is only in this way that one can imagine that the subjects of occupation actually want to fight for the occupier and their puppet government. At this point the occupier assumes the role of a parent offering some tough love to a spineless son.

Very rarely does the occupier ask more fundamental questions:

"Why should they fight to achieve the objectives we set out?"
"Why don't we pay them the exact same salary that we pay our own soldiers?"
"Why don't we completely integrate their forces and ours?"
"Why don't we let their officers command our soldiers?"

To answer such questions honestly, one would need to admit that imperialism is at the heart of the Occupation.

At other times, the imperial frustration hinges on the assumption of native barbarism. In this scenario, the occupied subject is inhibited from their natural instinct to fight by foreign methods and training. The imperialist will argue that the native will actually fight more effectively, as they have for decades or centuries, if we just get out of the way. The critique here shifts slightly from paternalistic condescension to a Machiavellian manipulation of the political economy of violence. The objective also switches from the creation of "modern and professional" army to a desperate struggle to defeat the insurgency. Nevertheless, the fundamental question as to why these subjects should fight to impose our vision remains unasked and unanswered.

Labels: afghanistan, imperialism, nato, security, south asia, us

Photo: Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, top rival of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, displays the allegedly fraud ballot papers during a news conference at his residence in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2009. Six Afghan presidential candidates, including one being floated as a potential "chief executive" for the next government, warned Tuesday that fraud allegations threaten to undermine the recent election and could stoke violence. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)


We have lost the war in Afghanistan. It will take another five to ten years for most Americans to admit it, but the failure to hold a credible election means it's effectively over... of course, we will drag this out, but after eight years this is the definitely the begining of the end. A strong state and functional economy has not been built, the ancien regime has been scattered but not vanquished, the drug trade was not sufficiently diminshed, the ideology of secular liberal democracy was not sold to the majority of Afghans. Progress was made on all of these fronts, particularly in the last two years, but it was clearly too little too late. If the elections had been credible, at least some of these structural failings could have been ignored for a few more months.

So the question now is what have we learned? At least provisionally, here are a few lessons:

1. Victory is declared just before the real fight begins. Whenever the US declares a military victory, it is time to settle in for a long fight.

2. The Powell Doctrine is dead. First, there are limits to the use of overwhelming force. In fact, flexing one's military muscle and superior air power can backfire and create more enemies than the conflict began with. Second, clearly defined exit strategies have a way of disappearing once a war/occupation gets underway. We wanted to hand this occupation off to the UN and then NATO, neither strategy worked out. Starting a second war to mask the failure to find an exit strategy is the worst possible solution. The rules of war should be clearly understood at the outset: you break it; you fix it. If you don't know how to fix it, don't break it.

3. Be wary of generals asking to double troop strength and administrators asking to double development assistance. The logic behind the rhetoric of "doubling" is dubious (why not "1.73" or "triple" or "quadruple"?) and generally a sign of utter incompetence or complete desperation.

4. Decentralized organizations are much more difficult to defeat than centralized organizations. Moreover, a centralized organization like the Taliban (1996-2001) can reorganize itself as a decentralized organization (2001 - Present). The pursuit of strategies designed to knock out centralized organizations (e.g. leadership assassination) when dealing with a decentralized organization are an indication of a failed military strategy.

5. The discipline of political science does not have much useful to contribute on the process of building a strong state. The process has been carefully studied, but there are no blueprints. The only states America has rebuilt successfully already had a strong state tradition. Weak states can be rebuilt as strong states (e.g. Korea under Japanese occupation; Taiwan under the KMT), but the process is very difficult to replicate.

6. Holding elections before building strong institutions and providing security is a major gamble for breathing room. Of course this was known before the elections were held. At the end of the day, elections are not a substitute for the hard work of institution building and security provision. Elections are necessary but not nearly sufficient for the establishment of a well governed democracy.

Labels: afghanistan, south asia, taliban, us

My article on the US media's coverage of the election in Afghanistan is available at Himal Magazine.

Labels: afghanistan, elections, south asia, us

File Photo: A U.S. soldier of the 101st Airborne Division takes picture of an Afghan man for identification during a house search with Afghan police in Mandozai, in Khost province, Afghanistan, Friday, April 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)


One of the first attempts to develop a systematic archive of fingerprints was in British India one year after the Sepoy Mutiny/Great Rebellion of 1857. William Herschel, a chief magistrate, began the practice of fingerprinting Indian pensioners on a whim, but soon he required that all contracts had to be signed with a fingerprint. Next, the technology was introduced in the identification of criminals in Indian jails. From there the technology rapidly metastasized and spread back to the metropole.

Of course, the taint which associated fingerprinting with incarceration acted as a restraint against the use of the technology among the general citizenry. However, after 9/11 the US government began to use fingerprinting and other biometric data on all foreigners entering the country. The technology was also quickly deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, initially to verify the identity of local hires at military bases. Digital scans of finger prints, irises, and voices were also made of all suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners taken to Guantanamo. Now the US military is assembling a database of all Iraqis and Afghans using biometrics (see propaganda video at the endo this blog post).

The logic today, as during the Raj, is informed by a pervasive fear of the duplicity of the oriental subject of the Empire (see Simon A. Cole, "Book Review: Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India. By Chandak Sengoopta," Technology and Culture 46.1 (2005) 252-253). For all the rhetoric of engaging the local Afghan culture through "tea drinking diplomacy," biometric data is the way the military is really getting to know the population.




File Photo: Pakistani border officials screen an Afghan traveller at Pakistani border post of Chaman at Pakistan- Afghanistan border, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007. Pakistan opened its first biometrics system to screen travelers at a land border post with Afghanistan as a meassure to curtail cross-border movement of militia, an official said. (AP Photo/Shah Khalid)


With the exception of a few science fiction films (e.g. Gattaca, Minority Report), there has been almost no debate or even awareness about this issue inside the US, much less the occupied territories. As I have stated before, the overwhelming majority of Americans do not actually believe that those outside the Constitution have rights. Many are familiar with the idea of international human rights, but most do not actualize that concept in their politics except to the extent that those rights can be used to legitimate imperial aggression and occupation. Those beyond the law are objects of scorn or pity; they are treated like animals or children.

Fingerprinting, iris scanning, DNA sampling, and voice prints are a reflection of the American outlook toward non-citizens. As Foucault and Agamben warned, biometric data acquisition is a mechanism for the progressive animalization of the population (see Karla F.C. Holloway, "Editor's Afterword: Private Bodies/Public Texts," Literature and Medicine 26.1 (2007) 269-276). Moreover, the silence of the citizenry has allowed this technology to be recoded with the racial overtones it once promised to reveal to its early pioneers (see Simon A. Cole, "Twins, Twain, Galton and Gilman: Fingerprinting, Individualization, Brotherhood, and Race in Pudd’nhead Wilson," Configurations, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2007).

The reason why Americans ought to be concerned, even if they do not care about non-citizens, is rather obvious. The experiments conducted by the state on those outside the Constitution are eventually imposed on the citizenry at large. Iris and fingerprint scanning technology is already appearing at office complexes, grocery stores, automobiles, personal laptops in the US (Washington Post, 24 September 2002). Face scanning software is also being used to detect individuals in crowds. It is only a matter of time before authentication and identification technologies are sufficiently refined and combined so as to read biometric data from hundreds of yards (if not thousands of miles) away whether it be on a battlefield or a mall.

Thus as the exception becomes the rule...

"... it results, argues Agamben, not only in the appropriation of the legislative or judiciary power by the executive, the suspension of the constitution, and the extension and encroachment of the military's wartime authority into the civic sphere...." (Puspa Damai, "The Killing Machine of Exception: Sovereignty, Law, and Play in Agamben's State of Exception," CR: The New Centennial Review 5.3 (2005) 255-276).

It would be height of naïveté to believe that these developments can now be stopped or rolled back. A society which is already constituted through intensive surveillance by everything from cameras to credit cards will hardly resist en masse. The technology will be refined and the archive will grow. The saddest part is that most American citizens will view their subjugation to this technology and archive as a protection from identity theft and/or as an entitlement which increases security and efficiency at airports, the office, and even at home.




Source: US Forces Afghanistan

Labels: afghanistan, agamben, biopolitics, foucault, security

Photo: An Afghan woman adjusts her scarf made from an Afghan flag, while attending a gathering held by the Afghanistan Women Council to discuss presidential candidates in the upcoming election in Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday, Aug, 11, 2009. Afghans will head to the polls on Aug. 20 to elect a new president for the second time in the country's history. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)


The difficulty in watching, hearing, and reading about the repression of women's rights in Afghanistan is that so few in Euromerica or Afghanistan actually even attempt to let those affected by repressive policies speak for themselves. Women, conceived as a monolithic collectivity, and women's rights continue to be used as a justification for imperialism in a manner that denies the history of women's activism in Afghanistan. Of course, there are dangers for women and women's rights activists in speaking out in Afghanistan, but there is an eerie parallel here with Spivak's critique of the colonial condemnation/nationalist defense of sati:

"Between patriarchy and imperialism, subject-constitution and object-formation, the figure of the woman disappears, not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the "third-world woman" caught between tradition and modernization,"

- Gyatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

Whether such subalterns can in fact speak and know their conditions, is another debate...

Labels: afghanistan, rights, south asia, women

File Photo: Village elders listen to U.S. soldiers of the 82nd Airborne during a meeting in Chinar Village in Ghorak district of Kandahar province Southern Afghanistan, Tuesday, March 13, 2007. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

"When a country is being subverted, it is not being outfought; it is being out-administered." - Bernard B. Fall, 1965

By now it is well understood that "good governance" is the key to an effective counter-insurgency and stabilization strategy in Afghanistan. In fact, one of the few differences between the Obama and Bush administrations is the relative weight attached to non-military methods vs. military methods in the occupation of Afghanistan. Even though the Obama administration has continued the policy of a troop surge planned by the preceding administration, its goal is to place greater emphasis on improving local governance. Ambassador Eikenberry has requested $6.6 billion in nonmilitary spending. Eikenberry has explained that this amount is necessary to show the "results" demanded by Congress in 14 months (Washington Post, 12 August 2009).

It should be noted that the US has already spent $38 billion on reconstruction since 2001, although half of that money was actually spent on training the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. Moreover, annual nonmilitary spending has been about a tenth of military spending in Afghanistan. International donors have funded governance projects for the last three years, however the emphasis on improving the capacity of governors, police chiefs, district chiefs failed to improve governance (Vanda Felbab-Brown, "2009 Afghan Elections and the Future of Governance," Brookings, 13 August 2009).

Nevertheless, since there is now more than adequate funding in the pipeline and a commitment to prioritize nonmilitary methods of counterinsurgency, the real question is what is "good governance" at the local level and how can it be set up?

We as Americans tend to equate good governance with an idealized image of our own political system, i.e. a liberal constitutional democracy with a high level of transparency and accountability in policy making and implementation processes. It is believed that democracy and legality foster more durable bonds of loyalty and hence "legitimacy." Of course, in reality, a system of governance need not be democratic or even benevolent to be effective in fostering obedience and development... this is amply evident to any serious student of comparative politics. Nevertheless, it is difficult for most Americans to be critical of the noble lies on which the republic was founded.

In general the most cost effective mode of imperial governance is to formalize and reinforce existing systems of government (particularly for the purpose of revenue extraction). This was the classic approach developed by the East India Company toward its conquered territories in South Asia.

US administrators have generally rejected the "East India" approach. They argue that decades of war in Afghanistan have almost completely destroyed prior systems of administration even at the local level. Moreover, the residual system of governance from the Taliban era was viewed as wholly inadequate and highly regressive, particularly in relation to the rights of women -- which was a major post hoc rationalization for the war. So the US and its allies have chosen to rebuild the framework of governance at the national and sub-national levels. (There are some inconvenient parallels here with the PDPA and Soviet approaches to building a "modern" socialist state in Afghanistan after the Saur Revolution in 1978, especially in regard to the mandate for including women in government). Much of first seven years of occupation were devoted to rebuilding a national and provincial government. Village level governance was not prioritized by the US but other donors did make attempts to improve local governance. The result of this neglect is that a series of contradictory bodies were established with access to donor funding at the provincial, district, and village levels (Sarah Lister, "AREU Briefing Paper, April 2005, p. 1).

The objective of the Obama administration is to rebuild local shura councils for day to day administration at the local level and create "development councils" to help decide which development projects a locality would prefer in their area. The administration has also decided to continue a policy begun under the Bush administration to economically co-opt local leaders. The leaders of the local councils and tribal leaders are provided a stipend (reportedly $200 per month) to encourage them to act as informants on the activities of local Taliban militias.

The difficulty with creating a system of local governance from the ground up is that there are varied traditions of local governance throughout Afghanistan. There is also a complex relationship between the central government, the provinces, and local leaders. Decision making within the state apparatus is (at least on paper) highly centralized, but relatively decentralized in practice. Provincial governors have very little budgetary discretion (Sarah Lister, "AREU Briefing Paper," April 2005, p. 3), but may wield great power, particularly if they earn revenue from the drug trade.

Thus one key issue is calibrating local governance structures to existing traditions of governance. The other issue is discovering the proper level of centralization or decentralization to promote efficient solutions to solve coordinations problems (i.e. economic development) and create security. The challenge as laid out by the US is creating a state which has sufficient capacity to encourage development and security; while also being sufficiently decentralized to promote meaningful participation and accountability.

Unfortunately, most Americans have little understanding of how our federal republic became a great industrial and military power. Even fewer Americans have studied the developmental states of East Asia in any detail. This is not to imply that either the US or the East Asian Tigers are remotely appropriate "models" for the current regime in Afghanistan. However, it does indicate that the contemporary American impulse for decentralization, liberalization of markets, and participatory politics may be counter-productive to the objective of state building and development at this time. Good governance is essential to defeat the insurgency, but a serious debate needs to be undertaken on how to achieve improved governance in the context of a systemically corrupt government with weak state capacity at all levels. Holding elections and soliciting local participation in an ethnocracy will not create accountability or reduce corruption. More likely, elections will increase corruption as power brokers who are able to deliver ethnic or tribal "vote banks" gain greater control of the reigns of government. Soliciting local participation on selecting foreign funded development projects will not institutionalize a sustainable mechanism for resolving coordination problems. Given time constraints imposed by Congress on the current occupation, the US may need to choose between creating a state which has sufficient capacity to encourage development and security or promoting citizen participation and the appearance of democratic accountability.

Labels: afghanistan, counterinsurgency, south asia, us

Video: ISAF Media.


Over the last few weeks, I have been studying the US military's use of social media for propaganda and community building purposes. Facebook now has fan sites devoted to ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), USFORA (US Forces in Afghanistan), the new US embassy in Kabul, EUCOM, USO, FORSCOM, CENTCOM, etc.

The target audience for these sites appears to be the loyal families and friends of soldiers and diplomats. What interests me is the characteristics of the community that posts responses to the news items.

The majority of comments are simply wishes and prayers for the success of the various missions and the safe return of their loved ones as well as expressions of gratitude for the service of the soldiers. (There are also regular posts by new comers seeking to locate a family member and/or the activities of a particular platoon, which cannot be revealed for security reasons). In other words, the majority of those who comment are relatively apolitical well wishers. However, I have noticed some interesting patterns among those who post comments more frequently:

1. Many of those who post frequently seem to be frustrated that the type of "good news" and "good works" covered by these fan sites are not featured more frequently in the main stream media (MSM) in the US and the media in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Others believe that the MSM at home and abroad is simply unfair and biased against NATO forces. For example, here is a comment from a story reporting that ISAF evacuated a child injured by a roadside bomb:

GR: "When we kill, by mistake, civvies there are frequently protests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Is the populace continually informed of civilian casualties caused by Islamic terrorists ?"

There is no attempt to ascertain why a professional newspaper editor might refuse to run media content produced directly by the military. In essence, there seems to be little awareness that the fan sites are disseminating propaganda. (In the comment above, there is also an assumption that occupying forces only kill civilians by mistake rather than as part of a deliberate strategy to shift risks onto the civilian population in order to limit harm to occupying forces. The believe that US forces are paladins is usually accompanied by the characterization of the enemy as unconstrained and ruthless.).

2. There is a deep distrust of the people of Afghanistan. The most racist and insensitive comments are quickly deleted by moderators (one racist comment I saw called the Afghans "sand niggers" before it was deleted by moderators). However, there is a rather constant stream of comments which seek to imply that the people of Afghanistan are ungrateful and likely to switch sides or back stab the coalition in the future. For example in response to the comment above, a different individual wrote:

CMVF: "To me Civves there are just future terrorists so no biggie."

It should be noted that there is occasional push back against the repeated slurs about the occupied population. For example, in response to CMVF's post, we see:

KRN: "That's asinine [CMVF]. Those civilians are a large part of the reason we're there in the first place- so they can be free and safe to run their country without Taliban and other terrorist influence. Shame on you."

Another commenter adds:

TM: "Wow [CMVF], pretty sure you don't have any loved ones serving or you might not have made that comment. My son, a Marine, when asked about how he feels about possibly killing someone, said the "bad guys" don't weigh heavily on the mind but killing or injuring an innocent does. Obviously the Taliban have no such discretion. A child is always an innocent. And the Taliban could be saying all of our kids will grow up to be racist or the part of the KKK or whatever other looney group is ascribed to America......and you'd be the first to argue against that."

3. There is a general confusion between the category of insurgent and terrorist (or the more frequently used label on these fan sites: "Islamic terrorist"). There seems to be a pervasive belief that all of the enemies of the occupying forces are ipso facto terrorists. Even if an insurgent uses standard guerrilla tactics against military targets, they are labelled as terrorists or Islamic terrorists. (The attempt to forge a link between one of the largest religions in the world and terrorism generally goes unchallenged.)

4. There seems to be a general confusion as to why the US and NATO forces are involved in the war. For example, in a discussion of a video showing basic training for the Afghan National Army, one commentator noted:

JE: "[LB], its not about toleration, its about history. People need to want help to help them. We gove [sic] them "democracy" They vote for who their Trinal [sic] leader tells them to, blindly. I talk to them every day. Our nation is in a financial meltdown. we have spent so much money in Iraq nad [sic] now here, but we have a massive forclosure [sic] and unemployment rate to deal with. We give their Police a bonus to come cover the election in the south, after they get the bonus, one quarter defects out of the south and keeps the money. You read media shit about this place, I am here. That is how it works here."

This is the rhetoric of the white man's burden. The commentator (a US soldier in Afghanistan) does not understand that the mission of the US in Afghanistan was to impose regime change with bayonets. When the local population does not accept an alien and imposed form of governance, they are viewed as hostile to the generous, enlightened, and good natured occupying forces. There is an assumption that a rejection or reworking of the imposed form of governance implies a retreat towards blind obedience rather than an attempt to syncretically adapt an instrument of liberal democracy to more familiar modes of governance.

The commentator is not critical of the claim that US forces are there to give the gift of democracy (much less the idea that democracy can be given by an occupying army or the conflation of elections with democratic governance more broadly). Of course, even a cursory investigation into the initial appointment of the head of state after the Taliban were overthrown should pose sufficient questions about the relative importance attached to democracy by the US.

There is also frustration expressed about the unwillingness of the local people to "want to help themselves." The commentator does not understand why the Afghan soldier or police officer is not sufficiently motivated by an economic bonus to risk his life implementing a form of government desired by the occupying forces. The assumption here is that the American soldier is benevolently risking his life to give the gift of democracy. There is no attempt to question why the Afghan soldier or police officer who is paid a pittance should not be paid the same salary and lifetime benefits as the US soldier for taking the same risk. When I engaged this commentator and informed him that in fact the ANA and ANP take greater risks and have suffered much higher casualties than coalition troops, he replied that his main concern was about the waste of money in trying to train individuals who will do things their own way anyway.

It seems that for those who come to believe the propaganda they are fed by the military, their world becomes increasingly frustrated. Like the Han Chinese who are occupying Tibet and Xinjiang, the Russian Soviets in Central Asia, or the Indian armed forces in the vale of Kashmir, the occupiers cannot understand why the local population resents and resists their will. While the propaganda may sustain the morale of family and friends, it generates increasing hostility (and/or paternalism) toward the occupied population.

Labels: afghanistan, homefront, south asia, us

Video: Helicopter gun camera video footage released today shows the deliberate steps International Security Assistance Force personnel took when countering the threat of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) placed by two insurgents Aug. 5 along a road in southern Zabul province, Afghanistan. Scenes include an Attack Weapons Team of helicopters assigned to the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade of Task Force Pegasus observing and engaging two insurgents emplacing an IED, destroying them and eliminating the threat. (ISAF - HQ)


This morning as I sipped my coffee and checked my e-mail, the news showed night-vision footage from Afghanistan of two to three men digging in the middle of the road. Apparently they were planting an IED. A few seconds later (the video was edited) the men were killed by US helicopters firing hell fire missiles and shooting 16mm machine guns. The attack was precise, there were apparently no civilians in the area. Nevertheless, it was disturbing footage, I wondered if others were disturbed to watch war on television.... I guess a whole generation has grown up embedded.

Later, as I waited in the doctor's office this afternoon, I listened to a conversation between a patient and one of the receptionists. The patient was telling the receptionist how her son signed up for the war in Afghanistan and was leaving for basic training tomorrow. She seemed to have a mix of emotions about the event, mainly fear mixed with pride. Her son had chosen to be an infantryman, he wanted to be on the front line she said. The receptionist tried to convince her that it would take a long time before he was actually deployed and a lot could happen to end the war before then. Somehow they both knew it was highly unlikely that this war would end soon or that the US would be at peace with the rest of the world anytime in the next decade. The mom said that she was at least happy that her son was finally passionate about something in his life. He had hated high school and community college. At least he was excited to go off to war, she said...

Labels: afghanistan, homefront, random, us

File Photo: Hamid Karzai is seen in this undated photo. (AP Photo)


Some aspects of Hamid Karzai's early biography are rather well known: his ethnic, tribal, and family heritage; his college education in India; etc. However, the details of his early career are sketchy after he earns his MA in political science in 1983 and before his appointment as Chairman of the governing committee at the Bonn Conference in December 2001. Most of the details of this period which are commonly known are intended to paint a portrait of a moderate nationalist who has consistently sought to liberate his country rather than an elite, corrupt, opportunistic, and co-opted individual.

Karzai has stated that he joined the mujahideen resistance to the Soviet occupation in 1983, at the age of twenty-five. However, he was clearly not a traditional freedom fighter. In fact, he never fired a weapon during the resistance or at any time in his life (Sinno 2008, p. 259). Moreover, Karzai lived in Pakistan and not Afghanistan during this period. Two years after joining the resistance, Karzai left Pakistan and enrolled in a journalism course in Lille, France.

Upon his return to Pakistan, he became the "Director of Information" for the National Liberation Front of Afghanistan led by Sibghataullah Mojaddedi. He explained to a journalist friend (Ahmed Rashid) that he picked the NLFA because he found the major fundamentalist factions supported by the Pakistani ISI to be distasteful.

In 1987, Karzai left the country again to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Program hosted by the US State Department. This program is part of the Fulbright-Hayes Act of 1961. Participants who are considered to be potential future leaders are selected for the program by US officials overseas. It seems reasonable to infer that Karzai's long standing relationship with the United States (and reportedly the CIA) began around this time.

Karzai was first quoted in English language press reports in the waning years of the Soviet occupation of his country. In December 1988, the dapper spokesman expressed support for the negotiations being conducted in Saudi Arabia between the USSR and Afghan rebel factions. At that time, the Soviets hoped that the Saudis would restrain their mujahideen clients long enough to allow the USSR to retreat honorably. Rebel leaders sought to work with the Soviets to ensure a smooth transitional government which excluded the "hard core" communists, but included "moderates." The Soviets hoped that negotiations might ensure a non-aligned government rather than a revolutionary Islamic regime (Sunday Times, 4 December 1988). This rather simplistic approach to forming a government would be adopted by Karzai throughout his career.

Unfortunately, a smooth transition was not worked out and after the Soviets withdrew their troops, their client regime in Afghanistan attempted to defeat the rebels (relying heavily on continuing Soviet assistance). The battle finally ended in April 1992 as thousands of mujahideen took Kabul.

In early 1992, the NLFA's leader, Sibghataullah Mojaddedi, was chosen to be the interim President of Afghanistan and Karzai served as his advisor. [Mojaddedi would resurface after the collapse of the Taliban regime. In 2003, Mojaddedi served as the head of the Loya Jirga that approved the new constitution and designated the new interim government under Karzai. Notably, Mojaddedi attempted initially to silence women's voices for trying to put themselves on an equal footing with men. In 2005, Mojaddedi become the head of the upper house of the Afghan parliament. He was also appointed by Karzai to be the head of the National Independent Peace and Reconciliation Commission to grant amnesty to all Taliban and Hizb-e-Islami members.]

By late 1992, Karzai was appointed as the Deputy Foreign Minister for International Humanitarian Help in the Rabbani government (he also served as the Acting Deputy Minister of the Interior). Karzai was frequently cited as a representative of the government in the early days of the Rabbani regime. In large part his command of English and refined manners made him a darling of the foreign media.

Karzai's had difficulty defending the new regime to the foreign press, particularly on the issue of women's rights:

"The only experience I have is with the resistance," he said. "The only reason I stay with it is so that people can continue to live the way they have. Men's clothing is a matter of their personal choice. As for women, unfortunately for them, they cannot continue to dress as they have. We are trying to protect everything from the flowers and the trees, to things at the highest level," (New York Times, 3 May 1992).

The Rabbani regime failed to restore peace among the warring factions. Even Kabul continued to be shelled by rival warlords. By 1994, Karzai fled the increasingly dangerous capital for Peshawar, stating "I can no longer risk living there." He claimed that members of the Rabbani regime, particularly the chief of the intelligence bureau, attempted to kidnap and interrogate him on orders from Ahmed Shah Masood. However, he did not explain why they would have done so (Associated Press, 10 January 1994).

As the situation deteriorated in Afghanistan, the Taliban emerged as a band of idealistic militants promising to restore order to the country. In an interview with Ahmed Rashid, Karzai stated he was an early supporter of the Taliban. He claimed that in 1994 he gave the Taliban $50,000 and a cache of weapons that he had hidden near Kandahar (Rashid 2008, p. 13). How a former rebel spokesman and deputy minister came into such a large amount of disposable income and weaponry was not explained. Apparently, upon receiving his generous support the head of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, considered appointing Karzai as his envoy to the United Nations. However, Karzai told Ahmed Rashid that he began to have second thoughts upon learning that the Taliban were shutting down schools for girls and operating under orders from the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI). When the Taliban came under the influence of Al Qaeda, Karzai claims that he began to organize against the Taliban.

From 1997 to 2000, Karzai appeared as a senior member of former King Zahir Shah's delegation in the US financed Rome Process. Karzai hoped that a Loya Jirga could be established to end the fighting in Afghanistan between the Taliban and rival warlords. Not surprisingly, the Taliban were less than interested in this proposal.

Around this time Karzai is curiously quoted in a classified US embassy telegram in 1998 after a cruise missile attack failed to knock out an Al Qaeda training camp inside Afghanistan. Karzai informed his American embassy contact that Bin Laden was "on the move" and that he and his father supported the US missile strikes.

Tragically, Karzai's father, a leader of the Popalzai tribe, was murdered in 1999 in Quetta, Pakistan allegedly by Taliban militants. In the younger Karzai's narrative, this act further strengthened his resolve to oust the Taliban regime.

In July 2000, Karzai testified before the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. He continued to promote the idea that a Loya Jirga (or grand council/constitutional assembly) war needed to be set up to find a solution to the insecurity in Afghanistan.

In 2001, Karzai met with several prominent warlords, including Hekmatyar and Masood, who seemed willing to attack the Taliban. Karzai told Ahmed Rashid that Hekmatyar offered to let him join the Northern Alliance or to supply him with weapons if he chose to take independent action in the south (Rashid 2008, 19). The latter claim seems implausible since it is clear that Karzai was not a warlord with any military experience.

Certain patterns emerge from this brief study of Karzai's forgotten years. First, while Karzai was "there at the creation" of two new regimes, he was not a particularly charismatic figure. Rather, his importance to different leaders was based on his language proficiency and polish as a communications specialist. He is eminently qualified as an international diplomat, but his early career poorly qualified him to serve as the president of an impoverished and war ravaged country. In other words, Karzai is more appealing to foreigners than his own people. His leadership positions were not based on his ability to inspire confidence in hardened rebel fighters or the masses more broadly. Second, Karzai's story reveals that he was quickly co-opted by foreign governments, particularly the United States. He regularly appears in possession of far greater disposable income and resources than seems possible for a man of his rank. To be blunt: he was quickly corrupted. While this might be considered as a personal failing of Karzai, or a systemic necessity in a highly factionalized society, it also shows a poor understanding of politics in the developing world by his handlers. Imperialists historically have sought to hand over power to individuals who seem to reflect their own values and mannerisms. The problem is that this is usually a recipe for creating an illegitimate regime that succumbs to authoritarianism or a revolution. Third, Karzai was opportunistic from the beginning. He showed a willingness to work with rather unsavory warlords in exchange for power from a very early stage in his career. While Karzai portrays himself as a moderate progressive, he has been willing to compromise women's rights to co-opt chauvinistic and thuggish warlords. Karzai cannot have his cake and eat it too. Karzai is not a progressive, at best he is a pragmatist or a survivalist.

Labels: afghanistan, karzai, pakistan, south asia, taliban, us

Photo: First mall in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Tomas Munita)


This too is Afghanistan. Often forgotten in the predictable images that portray Afghanistan as a medieval and militarized landscape, is the other Afghanistan which is rising very slowly and very tentatively.

This mall, which opened in 2005, has about 90 shops and is one of the only fully air-conditioned spaces in the country. It also boasts of having the only escalator in Afghanistan. There is a five-star hotel above the mall with 177 rooms starting at approximately $200 a night.

Given that Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth, this mall is mainly a temple to capitalist consumerism... only the smallest minority could afford to buy the iPods or PlayStations or flat screen televisions on sale here. Few could even afford the imported shoes. Apparently, however, the bridal outfits can be rented for that special occasion.

So the real question is who does shop here? Journalists report that some of the shoppers are those Afghans who returned from exile after 2001 to help "rebuild" their country. Others are expatriate contractors and overpaid development workers (St. Petersburg Times, 26 November 2006). The rest are most likely warlords and corrupt government officials (or a hyphenated combination of both) and their family members.

The space of the mall should not be read through a Western lens. This is not a public space for the masses to congregate and perambulate; the average Afghan subject would probably not make it past security. Rather this mall seems to be a zone for Afghanistan's elite which resides behind compound walls. This is a class that seems to be generally alienated from its national surroundings. They seek parity with one another and a Globalized Gulfie elite that they meet mainly through satellite television and the Internet (Statesman, 3 February 2008).

I think it would be fanciful to believe that this mall will bloom or metastasize (depending on your political point of view) to cover every urban area in the country in the near future. It is more likely that this mall will remain a small capitalist shrine for the next decade or so. The mall will continue to serve a sheltered elite that longs to build an alternate future.

Like their Taliban rivals who renamed the country the Emirate of Afghanistan, the Afghan elite also long for a utopia by the same name. However, the elite's vision of an emirate is inspired by the Persian Gulf states rather than a Deobandi interpretation of an idealized Islamic state. In either case, neither group is particularly concerned about the res publica. Nevertheless, while neither the Taliban nor the elite have strong social roots in the country, the elite are far more dependent on foreign financing.

Labels: afghanistan, corruption, kabul, mall, south asia

Photo: Pakistani Pastun men read a copy of Taliban code of conduct in a Pakistani border town of Chaman along the Afghanistan border on Friday, July 31, 2009. A Taliban code of conduct that pledges to limit attacks on civilians and curb suicide bombings appears aimed at mustering support among the Afghan people and refurbishing the militants' international image ahead of peace talks widely expected after next month's presidential elections.(AP Photo/Shah Khalid)

Labels: afghanistan, neo-taliban, pakistan, south asia, taliban