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

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: 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

Photo: Pakistani Taliban militants, who were arrested during a gunfight between Taliban militants and locals in Achin district, are shown to the media at the detention center of Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Saturday, July 18, 2009. Three Taliban militants and two civilians were killed in Friday night's gunbattle in Nangarhar province, Afghan officials said. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)


The label neo-Taliban was first popularized by the Economist magazine in 2003 (see Economist, 24 May 2003). The term originally seems to have been used to describe militants in Afghanistan who skirmished with coalition and government forces as well as aid workers even after the Taliban government was overthrown by the US backed Northern Alliance in 2001. The actual distinction between the neo-Taliban (2003-Present) and the paleo-Taliban (1994-2001) was unclear, except for the claim that the neo-Taliban included "tribal malcontents, drug traffickers, and other ill-educated chancers" (Economist, 4 October 2003) - a distinction without a difference.

By 2004, the neo-Taliban were linked in media reports to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) as well as the anti-government insurgency in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Ahmed Rashid even claimed that the neo-Taliban were "recently trained in Iraq" (International Herald Tribune, 2 June 2005).

Eventually, the label was said to encompass four components:

"Most of the original top leaders who were never captured, including Mullah Mohammed Omar, who founded the movement. Other senior leaders include Mullah Dadullah, the former Taliban intelligence chief; Maulavi Obaidullah, the former defense minister; and Jalalludin Haqqani, a prominent commander of the struggle to drive Soviet troops out of the country in the 1980s and former Taliban minister of tribal affairs. Their fighters are said to include loyalists from the original movement and newly indoctrinated Afghan students from radical Islamic schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hizb-e-Islami party, the main recipients of U.S.- funded weapons that Pakistan funneled to the mujaheddin groups that fought the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. Hekmatyar, a fervent Islamist, was prime minister in the government of the mujaheddin parties that took power in 1992 and then began fighting among themselves. He fled to Iran after the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Returning after it fell, he called on his former foes to join him in battling the U.S.-led coalition and Karzai.

Pakistani Islamic extremists, foreign jihadists and al-Qaeda fighters from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, and Arab countries whom sympathetic Pashtun tribes in Pakistan's tribal belt sheltered after the U.S.-led intervention.

Afghan drug merchants, lumber and gem smugglers, and criminal gangs who cover their activities by portraying themselves as defending Afghanistan from non-Muslims," (Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 August 2005).

Thus, the label seemingly described a motley crew of fighters and bandits with only a loose command structure united by a general desire to oust foreign troops and destabilize the Karzai regime. These groups occasionally allied to fight government and coalition forces, but not to acquire territory. Their tactics included terrorism (e.g. beheadings) and elements from the guerrilla play-book (e.g. improvised explosive devices). Funding for the neo-Taliban was reportedly coming from private individuals in the Middle East and the Pakistani Intelligence Services (although the latter strongly denied the charge) as well as the sale of narcotics within Afghanistan.

By 2006, reports emerged that neo-Taliban groups were forming shadow governments in the tribal areas of Pakistan (Washington Post, 19 April 2006). Naturally, the idea of a shadow government indicated a greater measure of centralized organization. Even President Musharraf acknowledged that a wave of "talibanization" was occurring in the tribal areas. Ironically, the original Taliban had emerged from the same area that was now being described as "talibanized." Some journalists called the militants in the tribal areas "Pakistani Taliban" others used the label "Pakistani Neo-Taliban." The militants themselves sometimes accepted these labels and at other times claimed to be fighting for the "Islamic Emirate of Waziristan" (Newsweek, 21 July 2006; Of course, from a logical standpoint the label "Pakistani Taliban" seems awkward since few of the Pushtun militants seem to identify with the idea of Pakistan or the broader population outside of the tribal areas.).

At the very least, it was clear that there were strong and long-standing links and support networks between the Pashtun militants on both sides of the Durand Line separating Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moreover, these links became stronger as the Pakistani government, pressured by the US, moved in to its tribal areas to help eradicate rear bases for Afghan militants.

The growth of the neo-Taliban militias in southern and western Afghanistan as well as the tribal areas of Pakistan meant that American plans to hand over the conflict to NATO forces had to be delayed and ultimately scrapped. This indicated that the Americans had underestimated their opponents.

NATO forces began to analytically divide the neo-Taliban enemy into "tier one" and "tier two" Taliban:

"At this point, we refer to Afghanistan's enemies as Tier One and Tier Two insurgents," a Canadian military source at Kandahar Airfield told the Star on condition of anonymity.

"Tier One, to put it simply, is the hardcore. We believe they are a mix of the old Taliban fighters and products of the madrassa school system and they remain relatively small in number. But they are showing a degree of sophistication, including the ability to stage co-ordinated fights in groups of up to 20 fighters."

Tier One Taliban, the Canadians say, employ a broader range of weaponry, including use of 12.7 mm machine guns and an ample supply of rocket-propelled grenades. Their work can be seen in the almost daily attacks around Kandahar, including the ambush yesterday of a bus carrying a road construction crew, killing 19 labourers.

Tier Two Taliban, by contrast, equate roughly to "local hires" - young Afghan soldiers of fortune driven by despair and joblessness into the ranks of the insurgency.

"We're basically talking about people whose main motivation is work. They are handed an AK-47 with a couple of magazines of ammunition and sent out to do damage," the Canadian military source told the Star," (Toronto Star, 23 September 2006).

This analytical framework was intended to help focus counter-insurgency efforts. The goal was to buy off the second tier and kill off the first tier. However, the first tier was pretty hard to kill off and intelligence sources indicated that the tier two grunts were being paid salaries of $300 per month, nearly triple the salary of grunts in the Afghan National Army and five times the salary of Afghan National Police recruits.

Thus, it became increasingly evident that the "neo-Taliban" leadership is well funded and organized (probably based in Pakistan). Their grunts are even better paid than those working for the Karzai regime. And while the new Taliban force is about a quarter the size of the original Taliban, the resurgent organization has the ability to replenish its ranks even after numerous confrontations with NATO and Afghan government forces. The organization clearly has its own communications infrastructure and supply lines, which are being used to open new fronts against coalition and government forces.

Strategically, the organization knows it does not need to do anything more than wage hit-and-run operations inside Afghanistan to politically wear out the foreign troops. Within Pakistan, bungled attempts by the Pakistani army to pacify the tribal region as well as the Red Mosque seige have only strengthened and popularized the insurgency on both sides of the border. In other words, the organization is smart and understands the political economy of violence.

In recent weeks we have learned that the organization has issued a new manual to its fighters on the treatment of prisoners of war. The leadership has also threatened to kill regional commanders who are corrupt or who do not obey orders from the central leadership. Finally, the organization has developed a modicum of media savvy and the ability to produce media content (as demonstrated after the recent capture of a US soldier).

The idea of the neo-Taliban has grudgingly evolved from a derisive label to a concession that the enemy is actually more organized and strategic than the US or other NATO forces first assumed.

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

Photo: British Foreign Secretary David Miliband gestures while speaking during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Monday July 27, 2009. Miliband said Monday that the Afghan government must use the opportunity created by the allied military surge to reconcile with moderate Taliban guerrillas willing to join the political process. Twenty British soldiers have died in Afghanistan in July, the deadliest month of the war, setting off a heated political debate about Britain's role in the war and raising doubts over whether the military has the proper equipment. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)


There are probably no more than about 12,000 gun-toting members of the Taliban in Afghanistan arrayed against almost 180,000 combined troops of the European, American, and Afghan governments. The numbers alone do not even begin to measure how fully mismatched the fight is. The Taliban have no heavy artillery, no tanks, no armored transports, no helicopters, no fighter jets, no predator drones, and no cruise missiles... The Taliban have yet to overrun and hold a single NATO base.

And yet we repeatedly hear talk of reconciliation and compromise with the Taliban from Western leaders and the Kabul government.

What is happening? The short answer is that there is a desire to expedite the conclusion of this war by all parties, except the Taliban. So why aren't the Taliban interested in a negotiated settlement?

First, it is important to note that the logic of the reconciliation strategy assumes that the Taliban are a fragmented group on the verge collapse. This is wishful thinking. In fact, the Taliban appear to be increasingly centralized (they've even issued a new manual to all of their fighters on how to treat prisoners of war) and the organization is hardly on the verge of defeat. Since the organization is relatively unified, a reconciliation process would need to negotiate directly with the central leadership of the Taliban. The problem for the Kabul government, which is almost completely propped up by foreign forces and foreign financing, is that Mullah Omar has rejected any reconciliation talks as long as foreign troops are present in the country (there is a historic parallel here with the mujahideen's rejection of the Afghan communist government's call for a ceasefire and national reconciliation in January 1987).

Second, even if Mullah Omar were in the mood to negotiate, there would still be a problem. The terms of the most recent reconciliation offer indicates that the government is only interested to negotiate with "moderate Taliban" or those who have no ties to international terrorism. This clearly excludes Mullah Omar and his immediate associates who have bounties on their heads.

Third, even if we suppose that a reconciliation process could be started with "moderate Taliban" leaders of some notoriety and legitimacy, there is no guarantee that such a process would endure. In neighboring Pakistan, the government has made multiple peace treaties with their Taliban only to have these treaties scrapped by one of the parties within a few months. While a truce or treaty is not the same as a reconciliation process, a true or treaty is usually a precondition for the start of a reconciliation process. One wonders why there is an assumption that reconciliation will necessarily result in a lasting peace. The most likely outcome from the start of a reconciliation process would be a fragmentation of the Taliban and a repudiation of any agreement by those who do not participate in the reconciliation process. At best this would weaken the Taliban, but it would not bring peace. The Taliban are not dumb and have anticipated this result of the reconciliation strategy, this is why Mullah Omar has forbidden any of his subordinates from negotiating with the Kabul government.

Finally, reports that the notoriously corrupt Karzai government has been willing to bribe Taliban leaders to secure temporary ceasefires before the upcoming election generally undermines the idea of a legitimate reconciliation process. If peace must be purchased, war is likely to return when the funding runs dry. Provincial Taliban will certainly take money from the Kabul government for a temporary truce, but this only increases their incentive to keep fighting.


Setting aside the absurdity of the reconciliation strategy, it is curious that any party to the conflict would want to include members of the Taliban in the legitimate government of Afghanistan. What does one say to the women and minorities who were oppressed by these thugs? Would one ask women and minorities to sit next to a Taliban legislator and try to have a rational debate on why the rights of women and minorities should be restricted? While it is true that the Taliban are Afghans, not all members of a nation have a right to participate in government... some belong in prisons. It is bad enough that the current Kabul government has included notorious warlords in critical positions, to add Taliban members would truly create a pitiful state.

The guiding spirit of the call for reconciliation is an abstract pragmatism divorced from both reality and morality. Unfortunately, there are enemies which must be defeated. Defeating the Taliban may not need to be done by the West alone, but it cannot be circumvented through wishful thinking.

Labels: afghanistan, nato, reconciliation, south asia, taliban, us

Labels: afghanistan, pow, south asia, taliban

File Photo: Afghan farmers work in an opium poppy field in Nawa district of Helmand province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan (April 25, 2009). (AP Photo/Abdul Khaleq)


I read a lot of commentary about the war and reconstruction in Afghanistan... far more than I probably need to. So much of what I read treats the problems of Afghanistan as if they originated from within the discrete territorial boundaries of the country. There is often a tone of frustration among Western pundits as if they were discussing the antics of an incorrigible child. This is a highly deceptive mode of analysis.

The three most important issues (i.e., drugs, corruption, and the insurgency) cannot be understood without looking outside the boundaries of the country. The production of heroin would not be such an issue if there were no demand in Europe and America. The crop is grown to earn hard currency, plain and simple. Similarly, the issue of corruption in the Kabul government is in part due to the overwhelming amounts of aid provided by international community. Aid is necessary to rebuild a war ravaged country, but to provide more aid than a developing country can productively absorb is a recipe for corruption. One should also question the neat line drawn between the puppet Afghan government and its foreign supporters. Finally, it is well known that the Taliban were strengthened and supported in their rise to power by the ISI of Pakistan. Even today, the insurgency would have little chance to survive without foreign sources of funding and the permeable border with Pakistan.

I have only read one intelligent article on this issue and not surprisingly it is written by an Afghan, Nushin Arbabzadah:

"As local wisdom has it, there are three types of people in Afghanistan today: al-Qaida (the fighters), al-faida (the enriched) and al-gaida (the fucked). Most Afghans belong to the third category.

From the perspective of Afghans on the ground, the west is part of this machinery of corruption which thrives on the continuation of the current situation. If the Afghan leadership is corrupt and incompetent, so is the western leadership involved in Afghanistan. If Afghan warlords ignore international standards of warfare and engage in torture, so does the US in Bagram and Guantánamo. If the Taliban endanger civilian lives by suicide attacks, so do the foreign troops by carrying out reckless air strikes. The lines between the bad and the good, the problem and the problem-solvers, have become blurred. Moreover, the problem-solvers have themselves become part of the problem; they are costly but ineffective. Every little project, from digging a well to conducting a research project, involves hiring an entourage of armed security guards.

Far from disarming the many Afghan militia gangs, the current intervention has created a new set of armed men who are highly trained and well-equipped. Their daytime job is to protect foreign problem-solvers. But in their spare time, they run their own criminal businesses, robbing and intimidating locals and recently, even killing a government official.

The local population are capable of doing many of the projects for a fraction of the cost (and without a single bodyguard) but they are not being employed. The civilian and military problem-solvers are cut off from the population they are supposed to help. They talk to each other but not to Afghans, unless the Afghans in question are part of the English-speaking elite. In the words of an MEP who I met recently, "We have good ideas; the only thing missing is the Afghans themselves."

From a local perspective, Afghanistan has become a laboratory where a disparate set of international military and civilian problem-solvers and their Afghan colleagues are trying out and dropping various ideas and making a comfortable living out of it. Not everyone is starving in Afghanistan. The al-faida are doing well."

At the end of the day, the Western countries are in Afghanistan not out of charity but because those states cannot adequately sustain their sovereignty from within their territorial boundaries. Unable to control the demand for illicit drugs, they must move to control the source. Unable to demobilize from the second world war, they must find new enemies. Unable to defend against asymmetric warfare, they must root out the terrorists' safe havens. This war stems from the weakness of the West as much as anarchy unleashed in Afghanistan after thirty years of war.

It is important to see this weakness in order to understand that Afghanistan is not just a problem to be fixed by Westerners or a laboratory for half-baked Western ideas on state and society building. The weakness of the West is complicit in prolonging this conflict and re-producing the problems it tries to solve. Weakness leads to underfunded troops, inadequate detention facilities, and opium crop eradication programs. This weakness is, at least in part, why the problems of Afghanistan have yet to be fixed.

Labels: afghanistan, corruption, heroin, south asia, taliban

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)

Labels: afghanistan, helmand, security, south asia, taliban, us

Photo: In this May 11, 2009 file photo, soldiers from the U.S. Army First Battalion, 26th Infantry take defensive positions at firebase Restrepo after receiving fire from Taliban positions in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan's Kunar Province. Spc. Zachary Boyd of Fort Worth, Texas, far left was wearing "I love NY" boxer shorts after rushing from his sleeping quarters to join his fellow platoon members. From far right is Spc. Cecil Montgomery of Many, La. and Jordan Custer of Spokan, Wash, center. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says American soldiers have more than their military might and training on their side in the war in Afghanistan. Some have pink underwear. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)


This photo above by David Guttenfelder (Associated Press) of Spc. Zachary Boyd wearing pink boxer shorts with the "I love NY" logo while fighting Taliban insurgents on May 11th, 2009 will probably be one of the most remembered images of the war in the years hence. The image is both comical and courageous as the soldier chose to go to help his comrades without bothering to put on his uniform. In addition, the idea that a Texan would wear pink boxer shorts with the "I love NY" logo is itself an implicit red-state joke. Of course, the photo can also easily be seen as a depiction of a country and a military perpetually caught off guard.



My own pick for the most iconic photo of the US-Afghan War (so far) is different. The controversial image above by Veronique de Viguere published in Paris Match on September 4th, 2008 shows members of the Taliban wearing parts of the uniform of ten French paratroopers which they killed about 30 miles from Kabul. (There was some debate as to whether the soldiers were killed by gunfire or had their throats slit by these Taliban while lying wounded on the ground).

The photo seems to me to capture much of the essence of the Taliban network or organization. The picture depicts the end product of a rather brutal act, i.e. the execution and scavenging of the uniforms and equipment as trophies from dead soldiers. (Of course, trophy acquisition has been a commonplace activity throughout history among any poorly equipped and minimally disciplined guerrilla force or professional military.) Nevertheless, the result is a curious image of these young Afghans as some strange hybrid between modernity and tradition.

Despite simplified media reports, the Taliban are not medieval barbarians even though they are often brutal and thuggish. In fact, the Taliban is an organization which is often explicitly anti-traditional. As Barnett Rubin once noted, while some of the Taliban's policies seem rooted in conservative Pashtun tribal traditions (e.g. their restrictions on women's mobility) other policies (e.g. the banning of the celebration of spring New Year (Nawruz), which is derived from pre-Islamic Persian tradition) are anti-traditional. Moreover, the ways in which the Taliban enforced their policies when they were in power was alien to traditional tribal customs in much of Afghanistan.

This image also reveals something more disturbing. The Taliban who are modelling these clothes for the photographer are effectively gloating over their prowess. The image is upsetting to Europeans and Americans not only because it seemingly violates the norms of "civilized warfare" but because it is the image of a group, which against all odds, is defeating much better trained and equipped adversaries. One can hope that this image does not foreshadow the future resolution of the conflict.

Labels: afghanistan, photos, south asia, taliban