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.
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.
Photo: Afghan presidential candidate and former foreign minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah waves to his supporters during a campaign rally in Fayz Abad district of Badakhshan province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghans will head to the polls on Aug. 20 to elect a new president. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
The end game of the current "surge" in Afghanistan is to clear the way for elections on August 20th. This is why Afghan and NATO soldiers are laying down their lives in places like Helmand Province.
The hope is that the writ of the Kabul government can be extended to lawless provinces in time to provide the semblance of a free and fair election. If the southern provinces are not stabilized, the electoral result may create a strong ethnic imbalance which is not adequately reflective of the role of the Pashtuns in Afghan society. As the country is essentially an ethnocracy, an ethnically imbalanced government would threaten the legitimacy of the state.
Despite the sacrifices being made, the election results are almost a foregone conclusion. The incumbent, President Hamid Karzai is expected to win by a large majority without a run-off. The only two other candidates who even have a shot are Abdullah Abdullah (the former Foreign Minister) and Ashraf Ghani (a former Finance Minister, former World Bank official and Chancellor of Kabul University). Dr. Ghani has a superb resume but no real political base; in fact, he only recently renounced his American citizenship to compete in the carpet-bagger Olympics. Abdullah is better known both domestically and regionally but he is still a long shot. Barring massive vote fraud, Karzai will win.
It is worth noting that NATO and foreign donors are paying to hold these elections. Security for the leading candidates is being provided by the Kabul government (and thus the foreign forces which are helping to prop up the government). Campaign events appear to be highly stage managed as photo opportunities for foreign journalists.
So what are the differences between Karzai and his opponents? Short answer: not much.
Karzai's opponents all charge that the current regime is corrupt. While the charge seems righteous, it is mainly ridiculous. In a country like Afghanistan, corruption exists on one end of a continuum with civil war on the other end. In other words, it is corruption that prevents even greater hostilities in the country. It is extremely unlikely that anyone could rule the country without cutting deals. The Kabul government does not have the manpower to suppress the Taliban and other warlords and the foreign forces lack the will to supply the number of troops necessary for complete pacification.
Several candidates have expressed a desire to negotiate with the Taliban to end the war. Of course, Karzai has expressed similar sentiments, so this is a non-issue.
Dr. Abdullah has claimed that the troop surge represents a failure and that Afghanistan needs "real change." This seems to be an empty slogan. His main policy solution is better coordination between Afghans and foreign forces.
With this kind of opposition, it is no wonder that Karzai is slated to win.
Okay, so if the elections are a foregone conclusion and there are few legitimate differences between the candidates why hold the elections? The answer is that the ritual of an election is about making power visible. In this case, it is not just the power of the Kabul government but the true sources of power in Afghanistan (i.e. NATO). This ritual performance will eventually have to be sublimated through the extension and routinization of other governmental procedures. Until that time, however, power must be made legible to the masses.
Photo: A U.S. Marines from the 2nd MEB, 1st Battalion 5th Marines carries his weapon on his shoulders as they reach the end of a patrol in the Nawa district of Afghanistan's Helmand province Tuesday July 7, 2009. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
The operation in Helmand Province, "Operation Khanjar", is the first major offensive in Afghanistan under the Obama administration. The operation is centered near the town of Khan Nesin, which is near the Helmand river. The aim is to restore control of this province before the elections scheduled for August 20th.
Few in the US probably realize just how dangerous this province has become. There were an average of 10.6 insurgent attacks per day from January to the end of April 2009. That is six attacks more than the next most hostile region, Kandahar. Notably, January through March are winter months and thus generally experience fewer insurgent attacks than June through August.
To the extent that there is any media attention of the war, much is being made of the casualties suffered by coalition forces in recent days. The concern expressed is completely understandable given the devastation that these lives lost have on families and communities in their home countries. However, media reports tend to paint a distorted image of the overall conflict by focusing on losses to NATO troops.
In particular, reading American and European papers, one tends to gain the impression that coalition troops are taking the lion's share of the risks in the country. The Western media also gives the illusion that the occupation is less deadly than it actually is, since reports of casualties are rather infrequent and numbers are small.
Nevertheless, in the last two years the overwhelming majority of casualties have been members of the Afghan National Police (ANP) and the Afghan National Army (ANA). The ANA is also playing an increased leadership role. Since the start of this year over half of the average 83 deliberate military missions per week were conducted and led by the ANA according to unclassified ISAF documents. In day to day affairs, the ANP, local shuras, and the ANA are generally perceived to be the main providers of security by the local population according to the ANQAR survey.
Of course, statistics are not neutral -- particularly in wartime. Nevertheless, a view of the aggregate data may help to paint a more complex picture than the standard narrative being conveyed to American and European audiences.
Photo: Soldiers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) jump down from their pick-up truck during a search operation for pro-Taliban fighters in Baghlan Jalid, Baghlan province of northern Afghanistan, Wednesday, July 8, 2009. The province's only ANA battalion started an operation Wednesday to search for insurgents in the Qandahari Valley with the assistance the Ohio National Guard and the Hungarian Army. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
Photo: Presidential nominees, from right, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to be general and Commander, International Security Assistance Force and Commander, U.S. Forces, Afghanistan; Adm. James G. Stavridis, for reappointment to the grade of admiral and to be Commander, U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; and Lt. Gen. Douglas M. Fraser, to be general and Commander, U.S. Southern Command, testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 2, 2009,before the Senate Armed Services Committee. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
General McChrystal has issued new tactical orders. Here are the portions that have been made available to the public (bold emphasis is mine):
Our strategic goal is to defeat the insurgency threatening the stability of Afghanistan. Like any insurgency, there is a struggle for the support and will of the population. Gaining and maintaining that support must be our overriding operational imperative – and the ultimate objective of every action we take.
We must fight the insurgents, and will use the tools at our disposal to both defeat the enemy and protect our forces. But we will not win based on the number of Taliban we kill, but instead on our ability to separate insurgents from the center of gravity – the people. That means we must respect and protect the population from coercion and violence – and operate in a manner which will win their support.
This is different from conventional combat, and how we operate will determine the outcome more than traditional measures, like capture of terrain or attrition of enemy forces. We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories – but suffering strategic defeats – by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people.
While this is also a legal and a moral issue, it is an overarching operational issue – clear-eyed recognition that loss of popular support will be decisive to either side in this struggle. The Taliban cannot militarily defeat us – but we can defeat ourselves.
I recognize that the carefully controlled and disciplined employment of force entails risks to our troops – and we must work to mitigate that risk wherever possible. But excessive use of force resulting in an alienated population will produce far greater risks. We must understand this reality at every level in our force.
I expect leaders at all levels to scrutinize and limit the use of force like close air support (CAS) against residential compounds and other locations likely to produce civilian casualties in accordance with this guidance. Commanders must weigh the gain of using CAS against the cost of civilian casualties, which in the long run make mission success more difficult and turn the Afghan people against us.
I cannot prescribe the appropriate use of force for every condition that a complex battlefield will produce, so I expect our force to internalize and operate in accordance with my intent. Following this intent requires a cultural shift within our forces – and complete understanding at every level – down to the most junior soldiers. I expect leaders to ensure this is clearly communicated and continually reinforced.
The use of air-to-ground munitions and indirect fires against residential compounds is only authorized under very limited and prescribed conditions (specific conditions deleted due to operational security). (NOTE) This directive does not prevent commanders from protecting the lives of their men and women as a matter of self-defense where it is determined no other options (specific options deleted due to operational security) are available to effectively counter the threat.
We will not isolate the population from us through our daily conduct or execution of combat operations. Therefore:
Any entry into an Afghan house should always be accomplished by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), with the support of local authorities, and account for the unique cultural sensitivities toward local women.
No ISAF forces will enter or fire upon, or fire into a mosque or any religious or historical site except in self-defense. All searches and entries for any other reason will be conducted by ANSF.
The challenges in Afghanistan are complex and interrelated, and counterinsurgencies are difficult to win. Nevertheless, we will win this war. I have every confidence in the dedication and competence of the members of our force to operate effectively within this challenging environment. Working together with our Afghan partners, we can overcome the enemy’s influence and give the Afghan people what they deserve: a country at peace for the first time in three decades, foundations of good governance, and economic development.
Obviously, this attempt to create a human face to the counter-insurgency only makes plain some of the "risks" which were shifted onto the civilian population over the previous seven years. "Risks" which the new strategy implicitly acknowledges were potentially both immoral and illegal. However, this new tactical approach is not without its own flaws. This seemingly humane approach is actually about a calculus or political economy of violence, not the sanctity of civilian lives. Commanders are asked to weigh the gains of the use of force over the costs in terms of civilian lives; commanders are not forbidden from choosing in favor of an acceptable level of civilian casualties. The reason not to destroy civilian lives is mainly tactical; moral and legal reasons are thus implicitly insufficient.
What is perhaps most interesting is that this pronouncement signals an end to a key component of the Powell doctrine: the use of massive force. American forces have clearly recognized the limits of a preponderance of force in Afghanistan. Instead of defeating their enemies, the allies have only been multiplying their enemies through civilian casualties.
I am not yet convinced that General McChrystal's approach is much more than a public relations ploy aimed at the domestic audience which pays for the occupation. I will wait until the number of civilian casualties are compared before and after this shift in tactics (i.e. if anyone is counting). It is also worth noting what is not stated here: there is no discussion of how to treat civilians on the other side of the Durand Line where drone attacks continue.
