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Tue, Oct 21st 2008, 07:33

Patrick Edwin Moran, Wake Forest University, Platinum Contributor (201)

The article on winding down the Afghan war by M.K. Bhadrakumar has many good points that are obscured both by unclear terminology and by what may be his subjective attitude toward the United States. There is ample reason to find fault with the U.S. without encouraging anyone to misperceive the issues or to surrender to a "let them muddle through" policy.

The article in The Hindu views two separate but consecutive conflicts as one. The first conflict was the invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. forces to attempt to destroy al Qaida. That invasion at least succeeded in driving al Qaida from the field. At that point the U.S was faced with a situation that its leadership failed to prepare for because the difference between merely casting votes and actually constructing a constitutional government that protects the rights of all citizens was beyond their ken. All Qaida was gone and the Taliban was severely weakened, but a functioning central government did not rise out of the ashes. The U.S. was at a loss when the Afghan people organized their own Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) and decided on how to govern themselves. Unfortunately, the U.S. and other countries that ought to have been concerned gave not enough support in any way to help this newly founded government succeed.

The Taliban is a religious organization that took it upon themselves to rule the entire nation by their standards and ideologies. Not every citizen welcomed the severe controls, the strong limits of personal freedoms. But many or even most of these people found an excess of government curtailment of personal liberties preferable to anarchy and violence. The Taliban could clamp down on what Mr. Bhadrakumar regards as a "low-intensity fratricidal strife," and thus give ordinary people the peace to go about their daily lives, but it oppressed all of them who did not share its extreme religious views.

What is the need of the people of Afghanistan? What were they unhappy about before the U.S. invasion to get at the al Qaida camps? Despite the claims of U.S. General Westmorland and his ilk, no people anywhere in the world that I know of have ever regarded their own lives, the lives of their parents and children, or, for that matter, the lives of any other people lightly. Afghanistan may have a rather harsh physical environment, and it may have been less successful economically than some of its neighbors, but it was not a bad place to live before the Soviet Union invaded it. Do its people not now desire to have the freedom to lead their own lives under a system of law that applies equally to everyone, to have the means to acquire adequate food for themselves and their families, to have shelter well enough made to keep them warm in the winter, and, in short, all of the things that people elsewhere regard as the fundamental requirements of human life?

Mr. Bhadrakumar says, "Political violence in Afghanistan is primarily rooted in local issues and 'warlordism' is an ancient trait." He makes it sound like small scale civil wars and control of each region of a nation by unelected individuals ruling by AK-47 are acceptable, if quaint, social institutions. I think he would not like to live under those circumstances himself.

He says further, "Washington has been far too prescriptive, creating and then controlling a regime in Kabul." Much as I feel inclined to heap blame on the Bush administration, especially in its early years, I somehow feel that Mr. Bhadrakumar attributes too much power to the U.S. if he believes that beyond giving strong "prescriptions" the U.S. has actually been able to control the current regime. Guiding it would have been an easier task, especially for people with true diplomatic abilities, but the U.S. seems to have largely failed in that regard too -- mostly, I suspect, because they dropped the ball. Probably it would be more accurate to say that the U.S. failed to give effective guidance, was too stingy to provide economic and other resources that could have empowered the central government to succeed, and is only now coming to regret the problems it has laid up for itself in six or seven years of neglect.

Mr. Bhadrakumar claims that "creating an Afghan army is not the answer."
But the situation now is that every warlord has his own army, and every leader with his own army is little inclined to obey the decisions of the central government. Not only that, but they have an unfortunate proclivity for fighting among themselves. Their fights do not bring a better life to the individuals who fall under their rule.

If regional armies, militias, are not to fight among themselves and to vie to take over the place of the central government, then the central government must have the military means to first suppress the warlords and later to absorb the militias somehow and put them under effective national control. There may be a need for regional defense forces for dealing with bandits, transnational organized crime, border incursions, etc., but even then it is not clear that an enduring Afghanistan can be possible if it is internally divided into armed camps.

He argues: "The Afghans must be allowed to regenerate their traditional methods of contestation of power in their cultural context and to negotiate their cohabitation in their tribal context." This argument disrespects the intelligence, the awareness of the realities of daily life, and the education of the Afghan people. It is a short stroke away from saying that they are uncivilized and can only be dealt with by letting them go on along their uncivilized ways. It would be a far better idea to brain storm with representatives of all the factions into which Afghanistan is divided and seek for ways that the power to rule could be achieved by means other than armed might and coercion, how the wounds of the past could be healed, and how the components of the present-day nation could be woven together into a harmonious and synergystic union.

There may be places in the world where cruel leaders have taken control over a people for whom they have no empathy, for whom them have no concern, and for whom they have no respect. However, it would be unfair and disrespectful simply to assume that all regional leaders, war lords, or whatever one might want to call them are ill-intentioned and even evil human beings. Perfection is rarely found in the world, either in the goodness of leaders or the evil of leaders. Possibly it is even rarer in the competency of leaders.

Imperfect human beings may seek rather ineffectually to do their best for others. Humans who come together in a spirit of problem solving and compromise will generally do better -- especially if feedback effects are allowed to make corrections in the institutions they have formed.

"It needs to be appreciated that the U.S. decided to invade Afghanistan. The backdrop of the September 11 attacks and George W. Bush’s dubious election victory in 2000 engendered compulsions. The invasion was avoidable. The war should never have escalated beyond what it ought to have been — a low-intensity fratricidal strife. In other words, a solution to the conflict has to be primarily inter-Afghan, leading to the formation of a broad-based government free of foreign influence, where the international community can be a facilitator and guarantor."

It is hard to understand what Mr. Bhadrakumar is talking about here. The U.S. did indeed invade Afghanistan. It did so with the clear short-term goal of striking back against al-Qaida, and at that time the Taliban was supporting them. The war was over in an unbelievably short time. What the U.S. found on the ground after it had made its military conquest was the aftermath of the long war that had begun as an attempt to unseat a communist puppet regime, and then a period of disunity and disorder that made the harsh Taliban welcome simply because they could use force to establish order. The grand council that established the current government was not expected by the U.S. leaders. The top U.S. leadership had no prior experience with or knowledge of such a form of decision making. All of the theoretical requisites mentioned above were present except for the last one. The international community made a weak response to the challenges, the U.N. presence was soon removed, and the United States failed, as they failed in the case of the former Soviet Union countries, to give effective aid that could meet the real needs of the ordinary people involved. But his vision for a solution involving a well-functioning Afghan government is correct.

"Seven, the war should not have been an American enterprise. Nor should it have space for the arrogance of power. Unfortunately, the U.S. uses the United Nations as a fig-leaf but pretty much decides on the war strategy."

Again, Mr. Bhadrakumar leaves the reader wondering what "war" he is talking about. It appears that although he started talking about a war that was the invasion of Taliban-dominated Afghanistan by the U.S., and the defeat of the Taliban, he must now be talking about fighting between the central government of Afghanistan and various insurgent groups -- primary among them being the Taliban forces that often take refuge across the border in Pakistan.

So the question that Mr. Bhadrakumar seems to be raising is how the post-invasion social, military, and political turmoil should be (and should earlier have been) addressed.

"Therefore, the involvement of the regional powers in any Afghan settlement becomes imperative — a regional summit, for instance." It would indeed be useful in all the regional powers could put aside individual rivalries and realize that an unstable Afghanistan is more important and more valuable to each of them than any passing advantages any of them could accrue by pursuing a policy designed to thwart establishment of a stable and harmonious Afghanistan.

If all the American officials who have failed in Afghanistan could be given cash penalties for their failures to make good plans, sued for their transgressions against civil laws, and punished for their offenses against criminal codes, it would not greatly improve the future of the people of Afghanistan. What is needed instead is a realistic understanding of the situation in Afghanistan, and coherent planning done of that basis.

There are some needs that are common to all the citizens of Afghanistan. There are also needs and interests that pertain to the various factions that make up that nation. That does not mean kneeling down to the religious rulers of the Taliban, but it does mean that if Afghanistan is going to become a flourishing nation then those people who share Taliban values are going to have to be recognized. To me that means, for one thing, that if one faction wants to forbid the eating of some kinds of food, then they may teach their own followers accordingly, but it does not mean that they can impose those values on people in other factions.

It is easy to state a desired outcome: Let there be a polity that gives voice to and balances the interests of all factions that agree to comply with its constitution, and let that constitution guarantee the basic human rights of all citizens. It is not easy to secure that desired outcome.

The early United States had it easy because the factional differences were not hard set, hatreds had not accumulated over generations, and there already existed a clear body of thought on the subject of how governments function and how they might better function. In Afghanistan, many of the factions have legitimate reason to fear their competition. Working out a harmonious polity involves working out safeguards that will allow contending warlords to believe on strong grounds that they can relax their defenses against each other. Christians need to feel that they can continue to be Christians without fear, and the same thing applies to all other religious groups. But people fear these differences, even in the supposedly enlightened Western nations. There must be a solid center of justice. There must be a real community that supports the central government.