Just Foreign Policy produces a list of articles from various sources, with headlines and short summaries of some and excerpts from others. The source for Just Foreign Policy is http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/639.
Among the July 7, 2010 offerings, Just Foreign Policy provides extended excerpts on an article found originally at http://csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0706/Dent-in-Afghanistan-war-strategy-Why-Kandahar-locals-turn-to-Taliban.
The article provides further evidence that the Afghan government remains incapable of providing adequate social and legal order in much of the country. The article also emphasizes that long-standing traditions are important in dispute resolution to local Afghans. Although the "Taliban" are not a welcome option to many Afghans, they appear to be a better option than what the US-led occupation can offer. They have an understanding of local cultures and offer speedy resolution to disputes, with less or no corruption involved.
Kandahar, Afghanistan - As he took command of the Afghanistan war this weekend, Gen. David Petraeus wrote to NATO troops of building "a brighter future for a new country in an ancient land."But around Kandahar, the Taliban's heartland and what Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona called Monday the "key to success or failure" in the war, growing numbers of citizens are turning away from the new Afghanistan's corruption-plagued justice system to an ancient means of resolving disputes that is overseen by the Taliban.
Some go because they're Taliban partisans, most others because the Taliban have something to offer that the government of Afghanistan so far does not: Fast, generally impartial justice from a court that doesn't demand bribes for its services.
The phenomenon is part tradition - local mullahs have been adjudicating disputes between farmers and small businessmen for centuries.But it's also evidence of a government that has so far failed to deliver the governance that is crucial to success of America's strategy in Afghanistan, according to its advocates. They are well aware that it was the predatory behavior and corruption of local warlords in the early 1990s that drove many Afghans, seeking honesty and an end to anarchy, into the arms of the Taliban.
Kandahar - and Afghanistan more generally - is far from the state of collapse that prevailed then. But the fact that citizens are turning voluntarily to the Taliban's parallel government in a city and province that is now the focus of a massive US and Afghan military buildup is a reminder of the limits of arms alone in defeating the insurgency."I don't like our current government at all, and I don't really like the Taliban, either. But I can either spend months in the government court and pay bribes, or I can go to the Taliban and have the matter settled in one day," says Rahmatullah, who helps manage a construction site on the plains outside Kandahar where Al Qaeda once maintained training camps. "It's an easy choice to make."
He says he returned home in 2004, after almost 20 years in Pakistan, with optimism about the government of President Hamid Karzai. But he says he's lost faith. "In the government areas, there are warlords everywhere and all the police have their hands out."
[...]
Rahmatullah, who asked that his full name not be used, contrasts his recent experience with the government court in Kandahar city with that of a property dispute that he took to the Taliban three months ago. Disputes over land in deeply rural Afghanistan are as common as summer sunshine after more than 30 years of war that have destroyed documents and encouraged land grabs from owners that fled the fighting.
The disputed land near the village of Marwais had led to fistfights among family members. The disagreement was threatening to turn even more violent, and the Taliban reached out to Rahmatullah and his cousin, the main parties, promising an impartial hearing.
He and his cousin agreed, and were invited to an ad hoc Taliban court in a ruined farmhouse, where a panel of five mullahs guarded by two gunmen reviewed their documents, consulted the stacks of books on Islamic jurisprudence at their elbows, and after about an hour found in Rahmatullah's favor. "My cousin wasn't happy about it at first," he says. "But the Taliban mullahs convinced him that to take my land was a sin, and that he'd go to hell for it. They eventually satisfied him."
There is an element of coercion for some participants in the Taliban court process. The Islamist group has sent threatening letters to men who have refused to participate. Locals say that most people comply since the group still carries out assassinations inside the city, particularly in its crowded bazaar. Still, Rahmatullah says, in most cases it's a matter of being practical. As evidence, he brings up an inheritance dispute over another piece of land with his brother that's currently before the Kandahar district court.
He says he has paid about $1,400 in bribes so far to a clerk in the court that he suspects is also extracting cash from his brother, playing the two sides off one another."It's been months and we still don't have a result. It's disgusting," he says. "I've told all my friends and relatives to use the Taliban courts."
[...]
Showing posts with label Afghan villages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghan villages. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
U.S. for nation-building from the bottom-up - another potential reason for extending occupation
Carlotta Gall reports in the New York Times about a U.S. effort in Afghanistan to build democracy from the bottom up in the form of elected district councils in some of the most unstable parts of the country. The article was published on June 19, 2010, with the title "U.S. Hopes Afghan Councils Will Weaken Taliban." Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan. Here is a summary of key points from the article and some quotes.
The council in Nadali, are, Gall writes, "part of a pilot program to set up 100 district" by July 2011 "to provide representative government in places where government has largely been absent...[and] convince people that there is a viable option to the Taliban."
The project runs up against Afghan populations that have "suffered at the hands of predatory officials and repeated military operations by foreign forces in recent years."
Another key element of the project is a "National Solidarty Program," designed to "set up small development councils...[and] to undertake small reconstruction projects in every village."
The process take times. Aside from insurgents or Taliban, "it takes six months just to elect and train community councilors and two years to complete a village project."
Even prior to reaching the stage where there are elections, it may take a year or more "of visiting villages and persuading people to cooperate with the government...."
Gall does not make clear how a village's representatives are "selected" for a district's council. Once selected, though, they elect the councilors. Thus, the plan is to have only local people participating in these local governance structures.
Another task is "to persuade local insurgents to give up the fight and return to a peaceful life in the community." One district chief who is quotes, says: "It takes time; you have to go and talk a lot and spend money."
Two questions:
(1) Can a locally-focused program succeed, given a continuing occupation by foreign troops, a weak central government, along with weak government at other levels and warlord domination in many districts, and insurgents or Taliban who have yet to be defeated or reconciled?
(2) My impression is that the whole idea will take many years to implement. If it is taken seriously by the Obama administration, the Pentagon, and the generals in the field, then the U.S. occupation may well continued beyond the summer of 2011, the scheduled time for the "beginning" of the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
NADALI, Afghanistan — More than 600 men, most of them farmers with weathered faces and rough hands, sat on the ground under an awning, waiting all day to deposit their ballots in plastic boxes. They had braved Taliban threats and road mines to come here to select a district council, part of a plan to strengthen local government in the most unstable parts of Afghanistan.
“The important thing is we are trying to build trust between the people and the government,” said Qari Mukhtar Ahmad, a senior cleric attending the election last month. “This district was under fighting for a long time, but now there is peace and we have to listen to the people and bring them together.”
Peace is a relative term in Nadali, a district in the southern province of Helmand with one of highest levels of roadside bombs per square mile. Government officials still have to fly by helicopter from the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, rather than risk the 20-minute drive.
The district encompasses Marja, a Taliban stronghold where United States Marines have been battling insurgents since February. Marja remains largely ungovernable, but the operation broke the hold of the Taliban in the rest of the district, making it stable enough to try to set up some local representation.
The election here, an exercise in nation-building from the ground up, is part of a pilot program to set up 100 district councils to provide representative government in places where government has largely been absent. But the councils, backed by the British and American governments, also represent a critical element of counterinsurgency strategy: if they succeed, the hope is they will convince people that there is a viable alternative to Taliban rule.
Since the beginning of the year, 35 such councils have begun work in nine provinces, and the American and British governments have pledged financing to establish 100 by July 2011, officials said. The ultimate goal is to have directly elected councils nationwide.
“It is a vital, basic element of administration,” said Christopher Demers, an adviser for the Agency for International Development in Kandahar. “Building a people’s body like this is important; it is giving people an opportunity to speak with the government.”
Military officials in the United States-led coalition have often expressed frustration at the inability of the Afghan government to move quickly into secured areas and start governing. Yet Afghan officials say that it is a lengthy task to build an administration from scratch and gain the trust of a population that has suffered at the hands of predatory officials and repeated military operations by foreign forces in recent years.
In many districts, like Nadali, there is little government presence, often only a district chief and a police chief, both appointed by the central government in Kabul. They have few resources or personnel. Most district chiefs have no official car and an official budget of only $12 a year, the United Nations said last year.
One of the successes of the Afghan government over the past eight years has been the National Solidarity Program, which set up small development councils across the country to undertake small reconstruction projects in every village. Yet it takes six months just to elect and train community councilors and two years to complete a village project, said Wais Ahmad Barmak, deputy minister in the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, who has 30 years experience in community development.
In the most insecure areas, like Helmand, the ministry has had to suspend its work, he said.
In Nadali it has taken a year of visiting villages and persuading people to cooperate with the government to get them to the point of electing the district council, said the district chief, Habibullah Shamlani, a former police academy instructor.
After several gatherings around the district, 600 representatives were selected to come and vote for 45 councilors, all of whom must live in the district, a change from the absentee landlords or tribal chiefs who have traditionally made the decisions.
“This district council should make all the decisions which affect the life of the district,” said Jelani Popal, who leads the local government directorate, an arm of the national government that is running the program. “We will use them for security reasons, like reintegration; they will be very active in deciding about development, but also governance; they can communicate or channel the grievances of the people to the governor and district governor.”
Those who took part in the selection said they were taking the risk because they needed representatives to intercede with the government and the foreign forces on a variety of problems, from securing the release of detainees and compensation for war damage to resolving tribal and land disputes and winning development assistance for their areas.
“We hope the government will do something for us if we have this district council and we can share our problems with the higher authorities,” said Feda Muhammad Khan, an elected councilor. “We are fed up with the fighting, and there is a drought, and we are hoping peace will knock on our door.”
One of the main tasks of the council will be to persuade local insurgents to give up the fight and return to a peaceful life in the community, or if not to move away and stop destabilizing the area, Mr. Shamlani, the district chief, said. Already 40 people who were with the Taliban have been persuaded to quit fighting, he said.
“We are working step by step,” he said. “We cannot put too much pressure on the people to reject the Taliban. Gradually now, people have found some courage to point out who are Taliban. If things are sustained the same as now I am hoping by next year we will know who is behind it all.”
The key has been to deliver on promises of assistance and treat the people well, he said. “It takes time; you have to go and talk a lot and spend money,” he said.
But there is already evidence that the Taliban are fighting the councils much as they have resisted other government initiatives.
Some of the participants said they risked assassination if the Taliban in their area discovered that they were cooperating with the government. At least five councilors have been killed and one has been wounded since the four councils were formed in Helmand Province, officials said, presumably by the Taliban.
And the representatives choosing the council here included Taliban members, several participants said. They, too, wanted representation to help win the release of their people who have been detained.
Maj. Abdul Salam, who runs the police criminal department in Nadali, said the fact that 600 representatives showed up was itself a vote of confidence in the process.
“These people are here because they have some hope that the government is gaining strength and they are hoping they can defend themselves,” he said. “But you are right, they are in some danger.”
The council in Nadali, are, Gall writes, "part of a pilot program to set up 100 district" by July 2011 "to provide representative government in places where government has largely been absent...[and] convince people that there is a viable option to the Taliban."
The project runs up against Afghan populations that have "suffered at the hands of predatory officials and repeated military operations by foreign forces in recent years."
Another key element of the project is a "National Solidarty Program," designed to "set up small development councils...[and] to undertake small reconstruction projects in every village."
The process take times. Aside from insurgents or Taliban, "it takes six months just to elect and train community councilors and two years to complete a village project."
Even prior to reaching the stage where there are elections, it may take a year or more "of visiting villages and persuading people to cooperate with the government...."
Gall does not make clear how a village's representatives are "selected" for a district's council. Once selected, though, they elect the councilors. Thus, the plan is to have only local people participating in these local governance structures.
Another task is "to persuade local insurgents to give up the fight and return to a peaceful life in the community." One district chief who is quotes, says: "It takes time; you have to go and talk a lot and spend money."
Two questions:
(1) Can a locally-focused program succeed, given a continuing occupation by foreign troops, a weak central government, along with weak government at other levels and warlord domination in many districts, and insurgents or Taliban who have yet to be defeated or reconciled?
(2) My impression is that the whole idea will take many years to implement. If it is taken seriously by the Obama administration, the Pentagon, and the generals in the field, then the U.S. occupation may well continued beyond the summer of 2011, the scheduled time for the "beginning" of the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
NADALI, Afghanistan — More than 600 men, most of them farmers with weathered faces and rough hands, sat on the ground under an awning, waiting all day to deposit their ballots in plastic boxes. They had braved Taliban threats and road mines to come here to select a district council, part of a plan to strengthen local government in the most unstable parts of Afghanistan.
“The important thing is we are trying to build trust between the people and the government,” said Qari Mukhtar Ahmad, a senior cleric attending the election last month. “This district was under fighting for a long time, but now there is peace and we have to listen to the people and bring them together.”
Peace is a relative term in Nadali, a district in the southern province of Helmand with one of highest levels of roadside bombs per square mile. Government officials still have to fly by helicopter from the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, rather than risk the 20-minute drive.
The district encompasses Marja, a Taliban stronghold where United States Marines have been battling insurgents since February. Marja remains largely ungovernable, but the operation broke the hold of the Taliban in the rest of the district, making it stable enough to try to set up some local representation.
The election here, an exercise in nation-building from the ground up, is part of a pilot program to set up 100 district councils to provide representative government in places where government has largely been absent. But the councils, backed by the British and American governments, also represent a critical element of counterinsurgency strategy: if they succeed, the hope is they will convince people that there is a viable alternative to Taliban rule.
Since the beginning of the year, 35 such councils have begun work in nine provinces, and the American and British governments have pledged financing to establish 100 by July 2011, officials said. The ultimate goal is to have directly elected councils nationwide.
“It is a vital, basic element of administration,” said Christopher Demers, an adviser for the Agency for International Development in Kandahar. “Building a people’s body like this is important; it is giving people an opportunity to speak with the government.”
Military officials in the United States-led coalition have often expressed frustration at the inability of the Afghan government to move quickly into secured areas and start governing. Yet Afghan officials say that it is a lengthy task to build an administration from scratch and gain the trust of a population that has suffered at the hands of predatory officials and repeated military operations by foreign forces in recent years.
In many districts, like Nadali, there is little government presence, often only a district chief and a police chief, both appointed by the central government in Kabul. They have few resources or personnel. Most district chiefs have no official car and an official budget of only $12 a year, the United Nations said last year.
One of the successes of the Afghan government over the past eight years has been the National Solidarity Program, which set up small development councils across the country to undertake small reconstruction projects in every village. Yet it takes six months just to elect and train community councilors and two years to complete a village project, said Wais Ahmad Barmak, deputy minister in the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, who has 30 years experience in community development.
In the most insecure areas, like Helmand, the ministry has had to suspend its work, he said.
In Nadali it has taken a year of visiting villages and persuading people to cooperate with the government to get them to the point of electing the district council, said the district chief, Habibullah Shamlani, a former police academy instructor.
After several gatherings around the district, 600 representatives were selected to come and vote for 45 councilors, all of whom must live in the district, a change from the absentee landlords or tribal chiefs who have traditionally made the decisions.
“This district council should make all the decisions which affect the life of the district,” said Jelani Popal, who leads the local government directorate, an arm of the national government that is running the program. “We will use them for security reasons, like reintegration; they will be very active in deciding about development, but also governance; they can communicate or channel the grievances of the people to the governor and district governor.”
Those who took part in the selection said they were taking the risk because they needed representatives to intercede with the government and the foreign forces on a variety of problems, from securing the release of detainees and compensation for war damage to resolving tribal and land disputes and winning development assistance for their areas.
“We hope the government will do something for us if we have this district council and we can share our problems with the higher authorities,” said Feda Muhammad Khan, an elected councilor. “We are fed up with the fighting, and there is a drought, and we are hoping peace will knock on our door.”
One of the main tasks of the council will be to persuade local insurgents to give up the fight and return to a peaceful life in the community, or if not to move away and stop destabilizing the area, Mr. Shamlani, the district chief, said. Already 40 people who were with the Taliban have been persuaded to quit fighting, he said.
“We are working step by step,” he said. “We cannot put too much pressure on the people to reject the Taliban. Gradually now, people have found some courage to point out who are Taliban. If things are sustained the same as now I am hoping by next year we will know who is behind it all.”
The key has been to deliver on promises of assistance and treat the people well, he said. “It takes time; you have to go and talk a lot and spend money,” he said.
But there is already evidence that the Taliban are fighting the councils much as they have resisted other government initiatives.
Some of the participants said they risked assassination if the Taliban in their area discovered that they were cooperating with the government. At least five councilors have been killed and one has been wounded since the four councils were formed in Helmand Province, officials said, presumably by the Taliban.
And the representatives choosing the council here included Taliban members, several participants said. They, too, wanted representation to help win the release of their people who have been detained.
Maj. Abdul Salam, who runs the police criminal department in Nadali, said the fact that 600 representatives showed up was itself a vote of confidence in the process.
“These people are here because they have some hope that the government is gaining strength and they are hoping they can defend themselves,” he said. “But you are right, they are in some danger.”
Monday, April 26, 2010
Building schools in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan
You can find the following article, written by Steve Young for the the Argus Leader, at: http://www.argusleader.com/article/20100117/NEWS,1170325/1001/news. The article highlights how American Greg Mortenson was able to win the trust of villagers in remote parts of northeast Aganistan and northwest Pakistan, and, with donations from individuals and groups in the US, to build schools for children and youth, with special attention to increasing educational opportunities for girls. It is a remarkable story. And, above all else, it humanizes Afghan and Pakistan villagers. In the last analysis, they are basically like us, though, as a result of historical and geographical circumstances, with far fewer opportunities. In this story the villagers are not the passive recipients of government or international aid; rather, they are active in all vital decisions and in providing their skills and labor for the school and other projects. The work of Greg Mortenson provides examples of how there are peaceful alternatives to military interventions.
There is a caveat that comes to mind. The success of Greg Mortenson and the villagers with whom he worked, may be unusual in some ways. In these villages, there were respected elders, and then the villages as a whole, who came to trust Mortenson. This was a key factor. It may not be so easy to achieve these accomplishments in villages and areas that are already dominated by warlords or fundamentalist Taliban. Time will tell. What is clear, though, is that Mortenson has proven to be an inspiration for those who want, and believe in, peaceful change.
------------------------------------
Greg Mortenson left USD dreaming of the world’s tallest mountains and found his calling in education
Greg Mortenson’s advice is sought by world leaders, America’s top generals and the warriors trekking over from South Dakota as National Guardsmen to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Few other Americans can offer his unique perspectives on one of Earth’s most volatile regions. The University of South Dakota graduate has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and has just released his second book, “Stones into Schools.” The book, like his earlier one, “Three Cups of Tea,” is a best-seller on the New York Times book list.
The struggle in Afghanistan, Mortenson says, isn’t about flexing America’s military might.
It’s about listening, he says, about teaching and, when asked, about extending a helping hand. Sixteen years of building schools and relationships in the most desolate reaches of Afghanistan and Pakistan have taught him that. And now many in positions of influence across America are starting to see it, too.
“He has a very innate knowledge of the culture from being exposed to it for so many years,” Capt. John Kirby, spokesman for Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said by phone from Washington, D.C. “We have come to learn from Greg just how important things like education and literacy are. It has helped shape how we do our jobs.”
And this from Yankton native Tom Brokaw, the former news anchor for NBC: “You’re not going to win this war in the barrel of a gun. A lot of what we have to do in Afghanistan, and have been doing, involves efforts of people like Greg.
“He knows the culture. He knows that when you go out into the villages, it’s not 19th century, it’s 17th century. So the idea then that you can have education and a little bit of hope is an important component if we’re ever going to move forward in that part of the world. That’s why I think he is an important voice for people to hear.”
Mortenson’s voice has reached millions worldwide through his books, which chronicle his work in Central Asia.
It has found an audience in places such as Sioux Falls as well, where children at Hawthorne, Eugene Field, Discovery and other elementary schools have collected thousands of coins together with students at Augustana College to help build Mortenson’s schools through his “Pennies for Peace” program.
The effort at Hawthorne, which raised $1,200, particularly connected with Mortenson when he visited there in fall 2008, because more than 80 percent of its diverse student population comes out of poverty. “I visit lots of schools,” he said. “And Hawthorne was one of the most inspired, determined bunch of kids that wanted to help other kids. That really struck me.”
How Mortenson got the idea
Mortenson’s own decision to improve education and literacy in Central Asia was born of a chance encounter with a village in Pakistan in 1993.
At the time, he had a sister, Christa, who was an epileptic. She died of a massive seizure in July 1992, on the eve of a trip to visit Dyersville, Iowa, where the movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed in a cornfield. To honor her memory, Mortenson, an avid climber, resolved to take an amber necklace of Christa’s to the summit of Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain on earth.
“It’s a mountaineer’s mountain, one of the most dangerous,” Mortenson, 52, explained. “I thought it would be an awesome thing … to dedicate that climb to my sister.”
Just a few years removed from his days in the halls at USD, working as an orderly at Dakota Hospital in Vermillion and, soon after, in health care at Deadwood and Rapid City, Mortenson spent 78 days on the mountain before the rigors stopped him 2,000 feet beneath the 28,261-foot peak.
He stayed behind as two friends tried for the summit. He would be their safety net if they needed help down the mountain. “I probably could have made it,” Mortenson said. “In my mind, I could have made it and died, and it would have been perfectly fine.”
But after weeks above 16,000 feet, oxygen deprived and their bodies struggling against the high altitude, Mortenson and his friends headed down the mountain. He stopped in his descent in a little village, Korphe, to recover from his emaciation and exhaustion.
During his 10-day recovery, he met a little girl, Cho Cho, 9 years old and handicapped. He watched her writing with a stick in the dirt, along with the other children of the village. They had no classrooms, and their teacher was gone half the week because they couldn’t afford his daily $1 salary.
So to repay the villagers’ kindness to him – and because of the resolve of Cho Cho, like his sister, to persevere despite her disability – Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school.
Back in America, he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, asking for help in building the school. He got one response, a $100 check from Brokaw.
“My daughter has always said, ‘It’s outrageous that you get credit just because of that $100,’ ” Brokaw said, chuckling. “I can’t remember exactly if I’d been given a heads-up about Greg. We have a couple of mutual friends. He was a climber and had Midwestern roots. I thought it was a good idea.”
In 1994, Mortenson founded Pennies for Peace, engaging schoolchildren to donate their spare change to help pay for his first school. The children responded with 62,400 pennies.Village gives the land and the labor
Since then, through his Montana-based Central Asia Institute he co-founded, Mortenson has built or established 49 schools in Afghanistan and 82 schools in Pakistan, mainly for girls. His budget has grown to $3.5 million annually, funded 94 percent through private donations, such as Pennies for Peace, and the other 6 percent through corporations and foundations. He relies on a group he calls “the Dirty Dozen” to oversee his school building and management efforts.
It costs about $50,000 to establish a school, Mortenson said. Roughly $15,000 to $25,000 pays for the brick and mortar, supplies and furniture. Then there’s teacher training and support. The village then must provide land and labor.
“If they want a school in their village, that providing of land and labor ensures the buy-in,” Mortenson said. “That’s one of the reasons the Taliban haven’t destroyed any of our schools. The community has such a fierce support for the school.”
That’s important to note, Mortenson said, when you consider that the Taliban have bombed, destroyed or shut down more than 1,000 schools in Afghanistan and over 850 schools in Pakistan, 90 percent of which were girls schools.
The Taliban fears education, especially for young girls, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in a July 2009 New York Times piece on Mortenson. The war on terror is really a war of ideas within Islam, Friedman wrote. On the one side are the religious zealots who glorify martyrdom, who want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, and who want to keep women disempowered.
On the other side are those who embrace modernity, who want to open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men, Friedman said.Educated women can destroy the Taliban
Mortenson has come to understand that very well. He has seen that when girls are educated, health improves, infant mortality drops and overpopulation falls.
Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s education system has changed dramatically, with far more girls now being educated. In 2000, when the Taliban was in power and education for girls was discouraged, there were 800,000 schoolchildren in Afghanistan, almost all of them boys. Today, he said, there are 8.4 million students in school, and 2.5 million of them are girls.
When those girls learn to read and write, their mothers very carefully unfold the newspapers used to wrap meat and vegetables in the market and ask their daughters to read the news to them, Mortenson said.
“To finally hear the news, those mothers can get involved in political issues, or can understand about exploitation of women,” he said.
When women are educated, they are less likely to encourage their sons to get into the Taliban or extremist groups, he said.
“The Taliban, their primary recruiting ground is illiterate, impoverished society,” Mortenson said. “Most educated women will refuse to allow their sons to join the Taliban.”
That’s the message he has shared with Mullen and other military leaders, such as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, former commander in Iraq.
Kirby, the spokesman for Mullen, said Mortenson’s book, “Three Cups of Tea,” is required reading for the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., and encouraged for other units. As part of his work, Mortenson often briefs military units.
“We have come to realize over the course of these last eight years that we in the military can’t do it alone,” Kirby said. “In fact, what we have come to appreciate is that we shouldn’t try to do it all alone. There are certain things other people are more proficient at. Greg has helped us see that.”
The inroads are made, Mortenson said, when America builds relationships with village elders in Afghanistan – people he calls “shura” – who have risen in their communities to positions of respect and leadership.
“We have to put the elders back in charge,” he said. “And we must learn that we have to talk with and get to know each other before decisions are made.
“The elders tell me, their No. 1 complaint is, ‘Don’t bomb and kill our civilians.’ If there is any way we antagonize people, it’s when we bomb or kill civilians. The shura say, ‘If you don’t like someone, we’ll go and kill them ourselves.’ ”
For his 16 years of building schools and peace in Central Asia, Mortenson has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and 2009. Last year, he received Pakistan’s highest civil award, the Sitarae-Pakistan, or “Star of Pakistan.”
That comes as no surprise to those back in South Dakota and the Midwest who know him.
Brookings native Don Birkeland, a retired organizational psychologist, said Mortenson’s mother, Jerene, tells about 2-year-old Greg when the family was living in Tanzania and doing missionary work.
“She would look out her window, and there was Greg with the cookie jar, sharing it with a beggar,” Birkeland said.
That image of giving to the less fortunate resonated with her schoolchildren, said Cheryl Larson, principal at Hawthorne Elementary.
“Greg brought a great lesson to our children, that they could sense the value of their education, could sense the value of peace, and could learn the value of making a difference no matter how small we are,” Larson said. “We can still contribute and make a positive contribution to the global community. That’s what he showed us.”
Mortenson connects with the college crowds as well, said Julie Ashworth, an education professor at Augustana. In reading his books, her students learn that he struggled in college – first at Concordia College and later at USD – both with his studies and what he wanted to be.
“In that way, he’s not so different from many of them,” Ashworth said of her students. “But like him, they can choose to lead if they so choose. I think his is such a remarkable story of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.”
It’s not so difficult, Mortenson said. That’s what he would tell the more than 300 South Dakota National Guardsmen in Afghanistan today with the 211th Engineer Co. of De Smet and Madison, and the 196th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade of Sioux Falls.
That’s what he would tell those who haven’t left yet, either.
“To those from South Dakota or anywhere, I would say the same thing,” he said. “Listen to the elders when you get there. Be a teacher. Lend a hand when it’s asked for. That’s how we’ll win this war.”
Reach reporter Steve Young at 331-2306.
There is a caveat that comes to mind. The success of Greg Mortenson and the villagers with whom he worked, may be unusual in some ways. In these villages, there were respected elders, and then the villages as a whole, who came to trust Mortenson. This was a key factor. It may not be so easy to achieve these accomplishments in villages and areas that are already dominated by warlords or fundamentalist Taliban. Time will tell. What is clear, though, is that Mortenson has proven to be an inspiration for those who want, and believe in, peaceful change.
------------------------------------
Greg Mortenson left USD dreaming of the world’s tallest mountains and found his calling in education
Greg Mortenson’s advice is sought by world leaders, America’s top generals and the warriors trekking over from South Dakota as National Guardsmen to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Few other Americans can offer his unique perspectives on one of Earth’s most volatile regions. The University of South Dakota graduate has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and has just released his second book, “Stones into Schools.” The book, like his earlier one, “Three Cups of Tea,” is a best-seller on the New York Times book list.
The struggle in Afghanistan, Mortenson says, isn’t about flexing America’s military might.
It’s about listening, he says, about teaching and, when asked, about extending a helping hand. Sixteen years of building schools and relationships in the most desolate reaches of Afghanistan and Pakistan have taught him that. And now many in positions of influence across America are starting to see it, too.
“He has a very innate knowledge of the culture from being exposed to it for so many years,” Capt. John Kirby, spokesman for Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said by phone from Washington, D.C. “We have come to learn from Greg just how important things like education and literacy are. It has helped shape how we do our jobs.”
And this from Yankton native Tom Brokaw, the former news anchor for NBC: “You’re not going to win this war in the barrel of a gun. A lot of what we have to do in Afghanistan, and have been doing, involves efforts of people like Greg.
“He knows the culture. He knows that when you go out into the villages, it’s not 19th century, it’s 17th century. So the idea then that you can have education and a little bit of hope is an important component if we’re ever going to move forward in that part of the world. That’s why I think he is an important voice for people to hear.”
Mortenson’s voice has reached millions worldwide through his books, which chronicle his work in Central Asia.
It has found an audience in places such as Sioux Falls as well, where children at Hawthorne, Eugene Field, Discovery and other elementary schools have collected thousands of coins together with students at Augustana College to help build Mortenson’s schools through his “Pennies for Peace” program.
The effort at Hawthorne, which raised $1,200, particularly connected with Mortenson when he visited there in fall 2008, because more than 80 percent of its diverse student population comes out of poverty. “I visit lots of schools,” he said. “And Hawthorne was one of the most inspired, determined bunch of kids that wanted to help other kids. That really struck me.”
How Mortenson got the idea
Mortenson’s own decision to improve education and literacy in Central Asia was born of a chance encounter with a village in Pakistan in 1993.
At the time, he had a sister, Christa, who was an epileptic. She died of a massive seizure in July 1992, on the eve of a trip to visit Dyersville, Iowa, where the movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed in a cornfield. To honor her memory, Mortenson, an avid climber, resolved to take an amber necklace of Christa’s to the summit of Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain on earth.
“It’s a mountaineer’s mountain, one of the most dangerous,” Mortenson, 52, explained. “I thought it would be an awesome thing … to dedicate that climb to my sister.”
Just a few years removed from his days in the halls at USD, working as an orderly at Dakota Hospital in Vermillion and, soon after, in health care at Deadwood and Rapid City, Mortenson spent 78 days on the mountain before the rigors stopped him 2,000 feet beneath the 28,261-foot peak.
He stayed behind as two friends tried for the summit. He would be their safety net if they needed help down the mountain. “I probably could have made it,” Mortenson said. “In my mind, I could have made it and died, and it would have been perfectly fine.”
But after weeks above 16,000 feet, oxygen deprived and their bodies struggling against the high altitude, Mortenson and his friends headed down the mountain. He stopped in his descent in a little village, Korphe, to recover from his emaciation and exhaustion.
During his 10-day recovery, he met a little girl, Cho Cho, 9 years old and handicapped. He watched her writing with a stick in the dirt, along with the other children of the village. They had no classrooms, and their teacher was gone half the week because they couldn’t afford his daily $1 salary.
So to repay the villagers’ kindness to him – and because of the resolve of Cho Cho, like his sister, to persevere despite her disability – Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school.
Back in America, he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, asking for help in building the school. He got one response, a $100 check from Brokaw.
“My daughter has always said, ‘It’s outrageous that you get credit just because of that $100,’ ” Brokaw said, chuckling. “I can’t remember exactly if I’d been given a heads-up about Greg. We have a couple of mutual friends. He was a climber and had Midwestern roots. I thought it was a good idea.”
In 1994, Mortenson founded Pennies for Peace, engaging schoolchildren to donate their spare change to help pay for his first school. The children responded with 62,400 pennies.Village gives the land and the labor
Since then, through his Montana-based Central Asia Institute he co-founded, Mortenson has built or established 49 schools in Afghanistan and 82 schools in Pakistan, mainly for girls. His budget has grown to $3.5 million annually, funded 94 percent through private donations, such as Pennies for Peace, and the other 6 percent through corporations and foundations. He relies on a group he calls “the Dirty Dozen” to oversee his school building and management efforts.
It costs about $50,000 to establish a school, Mortenson said. Roughly $15,000 to $25,000 pays for the brick and mortar, supplies and furniture. Then there’s teacher training and support. The village then must provide land and labor.
“If they want a school in their village, that providing of land and labor ensures the buy-in,” Mortenson said. “That’s one of the reasons the Taliban haven’t destroyed any of our schools. The community has such a fierce support for the school.”
That’s important to note, Mortenson said, when you consider that the Taliban have bombed, destroyed or shut down more than 1,000 schools in Afghanistan and over 850 schools in Pakistan, 90 percent of which were girls schools.
The Taliban fears education, especially for young girls, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in a July 2009 New York Times piece on Mortenson. The war on terror is really a war of ideas within Islam, Friedman wrote. On the one side are the religious zealots who glorify martyrdom, who want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, and who want to keep women disempowered.
On the other side are those who embrace modernity, who want to open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men, Friedman said.Educated women can destroy the Taliban
Mortenson has come to understand that very well. He has seen that when girls are educated, health improves, infant mortality drops and overpopulation falls.
Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s education system has changed dramatically, with far more girls now being educated. In 2000, when the Taliban was in power and education for girls was discouraged, there were 800,000 schoolchildren in Afghanistan, almost all of them boys. Today, he said, there are 8.4 million students in school, and 2.5 million of them are girls.
When those girls learn to read and write, their mothers very carefully unfold the newspapers used to wrap meat and vegetables in the market and ask their daughters to read the news to them, Mortenson said.
“To finally hear the news, those mothers can get involved in political issues, or can understand about exploitation of women,” he said.
When women are educated, they are less likely to encourage their sons to get into the Taliban or extremist groups, he said.
“The Taliban, their primary recruiting ground is illiterate, impoverished society,” Mortenson said. “Most educated women will refuse to allow their sons to join the Taliban.”
That’s the message he has shared with Mullen and other military leaders, such as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, former commander in Iraq.
Kirby, the spokesman for Mullen, said Mortenson’s book, “Three Cups of Tea,” is required reading for the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., and encouraged for other units. As part of his work, Mortenson often briefs military units.
“We have come to realize over the course of these last eight years that we in the military can’t do it alone,” Kirby said. “In fact, what we have come to appreciate is that we shouldn’t try to do it all alone. There are certain things other people are more proficient at. Greg has helped us see that.”
The inroads are made, Mortenson said, when America builds relationships with village elders in Afghanistan – people he calls “shura” – who have risen in their communities to positions of respect and leadership.
“We have to put the elders back in charge,” he said. “And we must learn that we have to talk with and get to know each other before decisions are made.
“The elders tell me, their No. 1 complaint is, ‘Don’t bomb and kill our civilians.’ If there is any way we antagonize people, it’s when we bomb or kill civilians. The shura say, ‘If you don’t like someone, we’ll go and kill them ourselves.’ ”
For his 16 years of building schools and peace in Central Asia, Mortenson has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and 2009. Last year, he received Pakistan’s highest civil award, the Sitarae-Pakistan, or “Star of Pakistan.”
That comes as no surprise to those back in South Dakota and the Midwest who know him.
Brookings native Don Birkeland, a retired organizational psychologist, said Mortenson’s mother, Jerene, tells about 2-year-old Greg when the family was living in Tanzania and doing missionary work.
“She would look out her window, and there was Greg with the cookie jar, sharing it with a beggar,” Birkeland said.
That image of giving to the less fortunate resonated with her schoolchildren, said Cheryl Larson, principal at Hawthorne Elementary.
“Greg brought a great lesson to our children, that they could sense the value of their education, could sense the value of peace, and could learn the value of making a difference no matter how small we are,” Larson said. “We can still contribute and make a positive contribution to the global community. That’s what he showed us.”
Mortenson connects with the college crowds as well, said Julie Ashworth, an education professor at Augustana. In reading his books, her students learn that he struggled in college – first at Concordia College and later at USD – both with his studies and what he wanted to be.
“In that way, he’s not so different from many of them,” Ashworth said of her students. “But like him, they can choose to lead if they so choose. I think his is such a remarkable story of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.”
It’s not so difficult, Mortenson said. That’s what he would tell the more than 300 South Dakota National Guardsmen in Afghanistan today with the 211th Engineer Co. of De Smet and Madison, and the 196th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade of Sioux Falls.
That’s what he would tell those who haven’t left yet, either.
“To those from South Dakota or anywhere, I would say the same thing,” he said. “Listen to the elders when you get there. Be a teacher. Lend a hand when it’s asked for. That’s how we’ll win this war.”
Reach reporter Steve Young at 331-2306.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Afghan tribes organized for regional jirgas can defeat Taliban intruders
The following article appeared today on Afghan Online Press at http://aopnews.com/today.html. The gist of the article is that US-led military operations are not protecting civilians and are not keeping Taliban permanently out of villages. The author, Mohammed Amin Mudaqiq, further points out that there are 40,000 villages in Afghanistan. The US military approach cannot deal effectively with this reality and landscape. Mudaqiq suggests the key to victory over alien Taliban is through bringing villages leaders together through regional jirgas and through the self-organization of tribal leaders.
----------------------------
After Marjah And Kandahar, How Many More Operations In Afghanistan?
April 15, 2010Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
By Mohammad Amin Mudaqiq
As Operation "Moshtarak" (Together) in the Marjah and Nad Ali districts of southern Helmand Province enters its final stage, preparations are already under way to launch another full-fledged military campaign named "Omaid" (Hope) in the Zirai and Panjawai districts of Kandahar.
The conventional wisdom among Western military generals and diplomats is that such operations are crucial in order to halt the advance of the Taliban, who now control large swathes of rural Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's emerging security establishment too is eager to see these operations implemented. Afghan deputy intelligence chief Naim Baluch recently declared that the insurgents pose a serious security threat to 15 provinces of Afghanistan (consisting of well over 100 districts). Ten districts in those 15 provinces have already fallen into Taliban hands since the Taliban resurgence began in 2005.
Afghanistan has 34 provinces with a total of 364 districts. The question now is: how many more military operations will be needed to secure the whole country. Perhaps another hundred? Operation Moshtarak is already into its second month. If most of the next 100 operations take as long, it will be another 100 months (eight years) before they are over. But there is still no guarantee these offensives will yield the desired results.
In Marjah, the results so far have been mixed. While the 15,000-strong Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) contingent may have pushed the Taliban and other extremists out of Marjah and Nad Ali, the operation has caused large-scale displacement and some civilian casualties. In addition, dozens of Afghan and ISAF soldiers have been killed, while thousands of displaced civilians remain stranded between the warring sides.
Unfortunately, there was no contingency plan to help the local residents displaced by this intense battle, and that failure in turn compounded the local population's anger and distrust. Afghans believe that such mistakes during military operations only push more youngsters to join the Taliban.
Tribal Realities On The Ground
The basic challenge is that the international community in Afghanistan is convinced that its approach is appropriate and correct. It seems reluctant to take into account the centuries-old tribal structure and traditions in Afghanistan, particularly in the region around Kandahar where the insurgency is strongest. Unless there is a genuine effort to understand the roots of the crisis and ultimately solve it in accordance with local tradition and practice, it will be almost impossible to convince the pro-Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and pledge support for the government.
Instead of resorting to such devastating military operations, the international community should encourage Kabul to convene an inclusive regional tribal jirga (council) in Kandahar that would bring together all tribal chiefs from the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, Oruzgan, Ghazni, and Farah. The international community should create a neutral mechanism for convening and hosting the Jirga to enable the tribal elders to express their wider concerns freely. Once those concerns are understood and addressed, then a military plan could be prepared to isolate and ultimately knock out the insurgents.
That approach has been successful before, eliminating insurgents from certain areas of Afghanistan. The once-volatile Spin Boldak district in Kandahar Province on the Pakistani border was tamed this way in 2003.General Abdul Razeq, with a battalion of 350 police officers recruited with the consent of the tribal chieftains, succeeded in expelling the Taliban from the whole district.
The grand jirga of the Shinwari tribe in Nangarhar Province just six weeks ago is another landmark example the success of those tactics. The Shinwari tribesmen agreed to expel the Taliban from their region and warned that those who accommodated them would be severely punished by the tribal authorities. Consequently, there is no longer any significant Taliban presence in this strategic belt along the border with Pakistan.
Afghanistan has a complicated tribal system with centuries-old rivalries. Geographically, over two-thirds of the country is mountainous, with 30 million people living in 40,000 villages. Unless you find a way to bring those people into the security system, address their concerns, and win their consent, there is no way that posting security guards can stop Taliban infiltration into the villages. Without a concerted effort to understand the Afghan people and address their wider concerns, any plan for bringing peace and stability will be doomed to failure.
Mohammad Amin Mudaqiq is the head of the Kabul bureau of RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan. The views expressed in this commentary are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL
----------------------------
After Marjah And Kandahar, How Many More Operations In Afghanistan?
April 15, 2010Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
By Mohammad Amin Mudaqiq
As Operation "Moshtarak" (Together) in the Marjah and Nad Ali districts of southern Helmand Province enters its final stage, preparations are already under way to launch another full-fledged military campaign named "Omaid" (Hope) in the Zirai and Panjawai districts of Kandahar.
The conventional wisdom among Western military generals and diplomats is that such operations are crucial in order to halt the advance of the Taliban, who now control large swathes of rural Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's emerging security establishment too is eager to see these operations implemented. Afghan deputy intelligence chief Naim Baluch recently declared that the insurgents pose a serious security threat to 15 provinces of Afghanistan (consisting of well over 100 districts). Ten districts in those 15 provinces have already fallen into Taliban hands since the Taliban resurgence began in 2005.
Afghanistan has 34 provinces with a total of 364 districts. The question now is: how many more military operations will be needed to secure the whole country. Perhaps another hundred? Operation Moshtarak is already into its second month. If most of the next 100 operations take as long, it will be another 100 months (eight years) before they are over. But there is still no guarantee these offensives will yield the desired results.
In Marjah, the results so far have been mixed. While the 15,000-strong Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) contingent may have pushed the Taliban and other extremists out of Marjah and Nad Ali, the operation has caused large-scale displacement and some civilian casualties. In addition, dozens of Afghan and ISAF soldiers have been killed, while thousands of displaced civilians remain stranded between the warring sides.
Unfortunately, there was no contingency plan to help the local residents displaced by this intense battle, and that failure in turn compounded the local population's anger and distrust. Afghans believe that such mistakes during military operations only push more youngsters to join the Taliban.
Tribal Realities On The Ground
The basic challenge is that the international community in Afghanistan is convinced that its approach is appropriate and correct. It seems reluctant to take into account the centuries-old tribal structure and traditions in Afghanistan, particularly in the region around Kandahar where the insurgency is strongest. Unless there is a genuine effort to understand the roots of the crisis and ultimately solve it in accordance with local tradition and practice, it will be almost impossible to convince the pro-Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and pledge support for the government.
Instead of resorting to such devastating military operations, the international community should encourage Kabul to convene an inclusive regional tribal jirga (council) in Kandahar that would bring together all tribal chiefs from the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, Oruzgan, Ghazni, and Farah. The international community should create a neutral mechanism for convening and hosting the Jirga to enable the tribal elders to express their wider concerns freely. Once those concerns are understood and addressed, then a military plan could be prepared to isolate and ultimately knock out the insurgents.
That approach has been successful before, eliminating insurgents from certain areas of Afghanistan. The once-volatile Spin Boldak district in Kandahar Province on the Pakistani border was tamed this way in 2003.General Abdul Razeq, with a battalion of 350 police officers recruited with the consent of the tribal chieftains, succeeded in expelling the Taliban from the whole district.
The grand jirga of the Shinwari tribe in Nangarhar Province just six weeks ago is another landmark example the success of those tactics. The Shinwari tribesmen agreed to expel the Taliban from their region and warned that those who accommodated them would be severely punished by the tribal authorities. Consequently, there is no longer any significant Taliban presence in this strategic belt along the border with Pakistan.
Afghanistan has a complicated tribal system with centuries-old rivalries. Geographically, over two-thirds of the country is mountainous, with 30 million people living in 40,000 villages. Unless you find a way to bring those people into the security system, address their concerns, and win their consent, there is no way that posting security guards can stop Taliban infiltration into the villages. Without a concerted effort to understand the Afghan people and address their wider concerns, any plan for bringing peace and stability will be doomed to failure.
Mohammad Amin Mudaqiq is the head of the Kabul bureau of RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan. The views expressed in this commentary are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL
Friday, February 5, 2010
Tribal power dynamics may have changed to weaken roles of traditional Afghan tribal leaders
Thomas L. Day's report for McClatchy Newspapers raises a few questions. (See the report after my comments.) (Also see the sources at the end of Day's article.)
First, the report identifies the oultines of the Afghan tribal structure. He tells us that there are 5 super tribes, with 350 or so sub-tribes variously embedded in them. And, further, there are clans that criss-cross the tribes. However, this description may imply that traditional tribal leaders at the various levels of the tribal structure have power. This idea is challenged by Antonio Giustozzi's analysis in his book, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan. On page 40, Giustozzi writes the following.
"In Afghanistan the legitimacy of tribal and village elders was weakened by the war and by the emergence of armed strongmen who often tried to replace the elders, without entirely succeeding. Moreover, the youth who grew up in the Pakistani refugee camps were much less likely to be respectful of the tribal elders. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the disruption caused by Afghan militias, police and foreign troops contributed to further weaken tribal and local elders. At the same time the difficulty of the tribal system (where it still exists) or of the rural economy to cope with war, post-war, large scale-migration and resettlement, together with the uncertainty about the medium- and long-term future, led many families to see a diversifcation of their sources and influence. Hence an increase in the number of children sent to Pakistani religious madreas to become mullahs or to the cities to seek employment, both cases contributing to further weaken the influence of the elders over the youth."
If Guistozzi's analysis is valid, then the US military counterinsurgency strategy, including a focus on winning the support of tribal leaders, tribe or sub-tribe by tribe or sub-tribe, may be based on mistaken assumptions about tribal power arrangements.
Second, it remains questionable as to whether the US occupation/surge forces have the cultural and linguistic resources to establish meaningful relations with whomever holds power.
Third, the US-led occupation itself may contribute to undermining whatever legitimacy traditional tribal leaders and elders have had or to any tribal groups that cooperate with the occupation. Rather than strengthening anti-Taliban and rogue or dissenting groups, the occupation may strengthen them.
Fourth, where are the mullahs in all this?
Bob
-------------------------------
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Thu, Feb. 04, 2010 - http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/v-print/story/83712.html
U.S. plan to win Afghanistan tribe by tribe is risky
Thomas L. Day McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: February 04, 2010 03:49:06 PM
PAKTIA PROVINCE, Afghanistan — U.S. officials put a lot of hope last year in Haji Rashid, an up-and-coming community leader in the Zormat district of Afghanistan's Paktia province. They considered Rashid a unifying figure who was capable of bringing together about a dozen tribes in the area to work in support of the American-backed Afghan government.
Their hopes collapsed, however, when Rashid was kidnapped, tortured, mutilated and murdered and his groundwork to broker the support of the tribes in Zormat quickly foundered.
Military officials aren't sure who killed Rashid, but their suspicions point to the Taliban. "It's to their benefit to have instability," said Lt. Col. Matthew Smith, a Georgia Army National Guard officer and the commander of about 1,000 U.S. troops in Paktia province.
Rashid's murder illustrates one of the obstacles that American officials and military commanders face as they try to persuade tribal leaders to cooperate with U.S. troops and with one another against the Taliban. Afghanistan's historically weak central governments have shared power with the country's five so-called "super-tribes" and the tribes that compose them, with 350 or so sub-tribes and with local clans, and most of the country's would-be conquerors — including the British and the Soviets — have employed their own tribal strategies.
Now American officials are attending tribal meetings, staying in close touch with tribal leaders and trying to determine which leaders are friendly and which aren't.
In Zormat, U.S. and Afghan officials have turned to tribal leaders as a channel of communication with several small Taliban networks in the region, networks they think could be persuaded to join a peaceful political process. American commanders declined to identify the Taliban commanders with whom they've been communicating.
Those efforts, however, risk feeding traditional tribal rivalries, to the detriment of any plan to undercut the Taliban.
"If you are seen as favoring one tribe over another, you are seen as an enemy to them," said 1st Sgt. Troy Arrowsmith of Odgen, Utah, the top enlisted soldier on the Paktia Provisional Reconstruction Team, a cooperative of about 100 troops and civilians from multiple U.S. agencies.
Unhappy tribes don't have to look far to find outside support.
"In Zormat, the tribes are fractured, and the Taliban are a part of those tribes," Arrowsmith said. "They live with them. They have families there."
American commanders in Paktia keep maps of the province, closely demarcating the tribal areas.
Rivalries among tribes, sub-tribes and families aren't confined to Zormat.
In Paktia's northeast, there's a long-standing animus between the Turi, a Shiite Muslim tribe that extends into Pakistan, and the Bushara, a Sunni Muslim tribe. U.S. officials think the tribes have been at odds over territorial boundaries for about 60 years.
The Bushara "claim that they won't allow them to move freely; the Turi claim that they get threatened when go to Gardez," said Genevieve Libonati, a State Department official who's assigned to Paktia.
The chaotic nature of tribal relations was on display on a recent Sunday, when a panoply of American military, diplomatic and Department of Agriculture officials joined about 100 government and tribal leaders from the region for a "shura," or meeting, near the Pakistani border.
After introductions, no U.S. officials spoke during the shura. They only listened.
What they heard was a cacophony of complaints. As emotions rose, any formalities guiding the shura were quickly abandoned. The only common issue among the tribal leaders involved the failings of the American occupiers.
"I'm glad the PRT commander is here," one Afghan participant told the other tribal leaders, referring to Lt. Col. Carlos Halcomb. "They were going to build a hospital in our district, and it hasn't been provided yet."
The comment brought an uproar of support and dissent.
"If we don't have good security in the area, we're not going to be able to finish the projects," retorted Abdul Rahman Mangal, the deputy governor of Paktia.
For several hours, tribal leaders shouted their concerns, with no one attempting to regulate who had the floor. One continued a harangue even after he'd left the lectern, directly in front of the provincial deputy governor and the U.S. officials seated in the back of the room.
Finally, the local director of the Afghan Intelligence Service approached the lectern and calmly delivered a clear message to the tribal chiefs: "Don't assist (the Taliban). Don't let them stay in your home overnight. Don't give them food. Just tell them to leave."
Turning away the Taliban isn't easy, though, particularly in areas that Taliban fighters call home. American officials think the Taliban even have infiltrated some local political meetings — denouncing the U.S. occupation — and threatened other tribal leaders who attend these shuras.
"Have I been to a shura where there was Taliban infiltration? I'm pretty sure I have," said 1st Lt. Luis Alberto Moreno, a U.S. civil affairs officer who specializes in tribal relations in the border region.
(Day reports for The Telegraph in Macon, Ga.)
ON THE WEB
"A Tribal Strategy for Afghanistan," from the Council on Foreign Relations
"One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan"
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
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Follow Afghanistan news at McClatchy's Checkpoint Kabul
McClatchy Newspapers 2010
First, the report identifies the oultines of the Afghan tribal structure. He tells us that there are 5 super tribes, with 350 or so sub-tribes variously embedded in them. And, further, there are clans that criss-cross the tribes. However, this description may imply that traditional tribal leaders at the various levels of the tribal structure have power. This idea is challenged by Antonio Giustozzi's analysis in his book, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan. On page 40, Giustozzi writes the following.
"In Afghanistan the legitimacy of tribal and village elders was weakened by the war and by the emergence of armed strongmen who often tried to replace the elders, without entirely succeeding. Moreover, the youth who grew up in the Pakistani refugee camps were much less likely to be respectful of the tribal elders. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the disruption caused by Afghan militias, police and foreign troops contributed to further weaken tribal and local elders. At the same time the difficulty of the tribal system (where it still exists) or of the rural economy to cope with war, post-war, large scale-migration and resettlement, together with the uncertainty about the medium- and long-term future, led many families to see a diversifcation of their sources and influence. Hence an increase in the number of children sent to Pakistani religious madreas to become mullahs or to the cities to seek employment, both cases contributing to further weaken the influence of the elders over the youth."
If Guistozzi's analysis is valid, then the US military counterinsurgency strategy, including a focus on winning the support of tribal leaders, tribe or sub-tribe by tribe or sub-tribe, may be based on mistaken assumptions about tribal power arrangements.
Second, it remains questionable as to whether the US occupation/surge forces have the cultural and linguistic resources to establish meaningful relations with whomever holds power.
Third, the US-led occupation itself may contribute to undermining whatever legitimacy traditional tribal leaders and elders have had or to any tribal groups that cooperate with the occupation. Rather than strengthening anti-Taliban and rogue or dissenting groups, the occupation may strengthen them.
Fourth, where are the mullahs in all this?
Bob
-------------------------------
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Thu, Feb. 04, 2010 - http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/v-print/story/83712.html
U.S. plan to win Afghanistan tribe by tribe is risky
Thomas L. Day McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: February 04, 2010 03:49:06 PM
PAKTIA PROVINCE, Afghanistan — U.S. officials put a lot of hope last year in Haji Rashid, an up-and-coming community leader in the Zormat district of Afghanistan's Paktia province. They considered Rashid a unifying figure who was capable of bringing together about a dozen tribes in the area to work in support of the American-backed Afghan government.
Their hopes collapsed, however, when Rashid was kidnapped, tortured, mutilated and murdered and his groundwork to broker the support of the tribes in Zormat quickly foundered.
Military officials aren't sure who killed Rashid, but their suspicions point to the Taliban. "It's to their benefit to have instability," said Lt. Col. Matthew Smith, a Georgia Army National Guard officer and the commander of about 1,000 U.S. troops in Paktia province.
Rashid's murder illustrates one of the obstacles that American officials and military commanders face as they try to persuade tribal leaders to cooperate with U.S. troops and with one another against the Taliban. Afghanistan's historically weak central governments have shared power with the country's five so-called "super-tribes" and the tribes that compose them, with 350 or so sub-tribes and with local clans, and most of the country's would-be conquerors — including the British and the Soviets — have employed their own tribal strategies.
Now American officials are attending tribal meetings, staying in close touch with tribal leaders and trying to determine which leaders are friendly and which aren't.
In Zormat, U.S. and Afghan officials have turned to tribal leaders as a channel of communication with several small Taliban networks in the region, networks they think could be persuaded to join a peaceful political process. American commanders declined to identify the Taliban commanders with whom they've been communicating.
Those efforts, however, risk feeding traditional tribal rivalries, to the detriment of any plan to undercut the Taliban.
"If you are seen as favoring one tribe over another, you are seen as an enemy to them," said 1st Sgt. Troy Arrowsmith of Odgen, Utah, the top enlisted soldier on the Paktia Provisional Reconstruction Team, a cooperative of about 100 troops and civilians from multiple U.S. agencies.
Unhappy tribes don't have to look far to find outside support.
"In Zormat, the tribes are fractured, and the Taliban are a part of those tribes," Arrowsmith said. "They live with them. They have families there."
American commanders in Paktia keep maps of the province, closely demarcating the tribal areas.
Rivalries among tribes, sub-tribes and families aren't confined to Zormat.
In Paktia's northeast, there's a long-standing animus between the Turi, a Shiite Muslim tribe that extends into Pakistan, and the Bushara, a Sunni Muslim tribe. U.S. officials think the tribes have been at odds over territorial boundaries for about 60 years.
The Bushara "claim that they won't allow them to move freely; the Turi claim that they get threatened when go to Gardez," said Genevieve Libonati, a State Department official who's assigned to Paktia.
The chaotic nature of tribal relations was on display on a recent Sunday, when a panoply of American military, diplomatic and Department of Agriculture officials joined about 100 government and tribal leaders from the region for a "shura," or meeting, near the Pakistani border.
After introductions, no U.S. officials spoke during the shura. They only listened.
What they heard was a cacophony of complaints. As emotions rose, any formalities guiding the shura were quickly abandoned. The only common issue among the tribal leaders involved the failings of the American occupiers.
"I'm glad the PRT commander is here," one Afghan participant told the other tribal leaders, referring to Lt. Col. Carlos Halcomb. "They were going to build a hospital in our district, and it hasn't been provided yet."
The comment brought an uproar of support and dissent.
"If we don't have good security in the area, we're not going to be able to finish the projects," retorted Abdul Rahman Mangal, the deputy governor of Paktia.
For several hours, tribal leaders shouted their concerns, with no one attempting to regulate who had the floor. One continued a harangue even after he'd left the lectern, directly in front of the provincial deputy governor and the U.S. officials seated in the back of the room.
Finally, the local director of the Afghan Intelligence Service approached the lectern and calmly delivered a clear message to the tribal chiefs: "Don't assist (the Taliban). Don't let them stay in your home overnight. Don't give them food. Just tell them to leave."
Turning away the Taliban isn't easy, though, particularly in areas that Taliban fighters call home. American officials think the Taliban even have infiltrated some local political meetings — denouncing the U.S. occupation — and threatened other tribal leaders who attend these shuras.
"Have I been to a shura where there was Taliban infiltration? I'm pretty sure I have," said 1st Lt. Luis Alberto Moreno, a U.S. civil affairs officer who specializes in tribal relations in the border region.
(Day reports for The Telegraph in Macon, Ga.)
ON THE WEB
"A Tribal Strategy for Afghanistan," from the Council on Foreign Relations
"One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan"
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
New Afghan initiative: Convince insurgents to switch sides
U.S. turns to Afghan farmers to uproot insurgency
U.S. troops rely on Afghan police while trying to train them
Few see reason to take rumors of Taliban talks seriously
New U.S. air strategy in Afghanistan: First, do no harm
Afghan legislators hold tentative peace talks with insurgents
Follow Afghanistan news at McClatchy's Checkpoint Kabul
McClatchy Newspapers 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Counterinsurgency is destined to fail in Afghanistan, just as it did in Vietnam
William R. Polk argues in the following article that US counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is failing - and will fail - just as it did in Vietnam and as it did when the Russians attempted it in Afghanistan back in the 1980s. Counterinsurgency doctrine says that a combination of military force and civil aid is necessary. Polk contends that you cannot lay the basis for providing civil aid until all groups in the society come to believe that the aid is not being used to consolidate a foreign military occupation and the continuation of associated corruption in the government and among warlords.
Polk's plan would start with the US giving a firm and comprehensive date for the withdrawal of US troops. This is a first step. He contends that, once this is accepted as authentic, civil aid will be welcome by "traditional [village] councils, who "will begin to seek those things that will heal their sick, feed their hungry, repair their destroyed and decayed infrastructure and generally make their lives easier." The Taliban already have agreed, he says, to negotiate once foreign forces are withdrawn. Once aid is offered and being delivered, and with foreign troops leaving the country, it will be hard for the Taliban to continue their warfare, given the great needs of the people. Polk implies that this aid would go directly to villages rather than through a central government.
Polk's analysis squares with our own and maintains that the US-led war should come to an end. He does not address how the political system, particularly the central government, will be reconstituted. He does not address how a national army, if there is one, can be organized in a way that it is not dominated by the Tajiks. And he does not address how the warlords and their militias can be marginalized or phased out. But the implication of his article is that all of these challenges will more easily reconciled or overcome in the absence of the US-led military occupation.
Bob
----------------------------
Missteps on Afghanistan
By William R. Polk
http://www.hnn.us/articles/122319.html - History News Network
William R. Polk was Professor of History at the University of Chicago. During the Kennedy and part of the Johnson administrations, he was the member of the Policy Planning Council responsible for North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Among his books are Understanding Iraq, Violent Politics and Understanding Iran. He is now at work on a book to be entitled Afghanistan: Descent into Unending War. He is the senior director of the W.P. Carey Foundation.
In his final report on January 6, 2009 to the Security Council, the senior UN representative to Afghanistan, Ambassador Kai Eide of Norway, highlighted two issues that will determine events far into the future. The first of these was development aid and the second is building a military capacity for the central government. He and others have argued that failure to accomplish one or both is likely to result in what General Stanley McChrystal called “mission failure.” Eide may be right, but history suggests that even more danger may result from success.
The Vietnam war tells us why. Then, as now, we engaged in the “civic action” programs Eide urges that we increase. Also then, as now, our adversaries regarded them as hostile moves. The Viet Minh deliberately destroyed not only the beneficial contributions – clinics, schools, bridges – but also targeted those Vietnamese and foreign aid workers who were trying to help the people. If proof were needed for the diabolical nature of the Communist guerrillas, this was surely it. At least that was what many of my government colleagues then thought. It is also what many people today think of the Taliban and their similar actions. What could have made them act in this way?
The obvious, but rarely mentioned, reason is that insurgents see civic action programs as a counterinsurgency tactic. In Vietnam they were designed to “win the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese and so win them away from the insurgents. The insurgents regarded our civil aid as more dangerous to their cause than our bombs.
Ironically, they were partly wrong. Neither we nor the Viet Minh recognized a fatal side effect of our program: because the South Vietnamese government was hopelessly corrupt, any aid we turned over to officials was apt to be stolen or even sold to the Viet Minh. So we took on ourselves the task of delivering the aid direct to the villagers. Since our officials were honest, the program worked.
But, without realizing it, we sidelined the very government we were dedicated to supporting: by our intervention, we literally became the government of South Vietnam. Of course, we remained foreigners – indeed a study made during my time in government showed that many villagers thought we were a new batch of French colonialists, perhaps Foreign Legionnaires. But, since we were doing the “good things,” and the Saigon government continued to do the “bad things,” in part through our aid efforts, we further weakened its claim to legitimacy.
How does this experience in Vietnam relate to Afghanistan? Those who point out that there are major differences are right, but the general context, dealing with a hopelessly corrupt government, is what we now face. Few competent observers think we can reform that government. So, while we at least talk about trying, we effectively by-pass it just as we did in Vietnam. Consequently, while history does not exactly replay, knowing it can sometimes stimulate our thinking. What might Vietnam teach us to question Ambassador Eide’s recommendations that we increase our civic action program?
Like the Viet Minh, the Taliban understand the purpose of civic action. Simply put, it is a counterinsurgency weapon. Indeed, we told them it was. As General David Petraeus said, “Money is my most important ammunition in this war.” To implement this tactic, the U.S. Army published “the Commander’s Guide to Money as a Weapons System” (Handbook 09-27 April 2009) which tells officers how to use money and civic actions programs to defeat insurgents. This is the basis of a training program at the Combined Arms Center at Leavenworth, Kansas.
Our civic action program not only was informed by the Vietnam War, but mirrors the large-scale program undertaken by the Russians in Afghanistan. (It is odd that in his manual on counterinsurgency, General Petraeus never mentions the Russian program. Did he or the actual authors of the manual not know of it? As the philosopher George Santayana warned, those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Perhaps that explains the manual.) During their occupation of Afghanistan, the Russians poured in hundreds of millions of dollar-equivalents to civic action. It did not win Afghan hearts and minds.
Will ours? After conducting some 400 interviews, Andrew Wilder of Tufts University concluded that “Afghan perceptions of aid and aid actors are overwhelmingly negative.”
This background and these findings explain, I think, both why the Taliban blows up the facilities we build and why the general population allows them to do so: what we see as generous help to needy people, they see as part of a campaign by foreigners to subdue them.
But it is clear that the Afghans need help. Without aid from abroad, the future of the people of Afghanistan would be grim and the chances for the reforms we have set as our goal would be unlikely. So can civic action programs be configured in a way that would make them acceptable? I believe they can. This is how:
Once we set a firm and believable date for actual withdrawal, the psychology of the war will change. This was not, of course, accomplished by President Obama’s vague statement that the process will begin in July 2011, particularly after what he announced was further weakened by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s definition of “withdrawal” as amounting only to a “handful” of the occupation forces. To be effective the date must be firm and comprehensive -- and be believed. Then, particularly if they can at least partly be made multi- or inter-national, aid projects will gradually cease to be seen as “ammunition in this war.” At that point, the traditional councils (known in various parts of the country as jirgas, ulus and shuras) that exist in, and essentially govern, virtually every one of Afghanistan’s approximately 23,000 villages) will begin to seek those things that will heal their sick, feed their hungry, repair their destroyed or decayed infrastructure and generally make their lives easier.
Hopefully, by that time, negotiations with the Taliban – which even President Hamid Karzai has called vital and which he promised in September 2009 he would launch -- will begin. On his side, the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Umar, has also agreed to negotiate once the foreign forces are withdrawn. He, too, should be driven by the announcement of a firm date. In December he even “signaled” that the Taliban would not allow aggressive action by al-Qaida on other states from Afghanistan. We have said, essentially, that we are not interested.
If we get interested and the war winds down, the Taliban will cease to oppose a redefined form of civic action. The Taliban will have to permit it because, if they continue in the new context of the winding down of the war to destroy what the villagers want, they will lose their most important asset, the support of the people. And without that support, as Mao Zedong memorably put it, they will become like fish stranded without supporting “water.”
So the setting the date of withdrawal is absolutely crucial. It must be the first step.
Now what about the call Ambassador Eide, almost everyone in the American and British governments, and our military leaders have sounded to create a much expanded security apparatus for the central government?
I do not believe this is in either ours or the Afghan national interest. Again, consider what history can teach us.
For many years before the Russian invasion in 1979, Soviet training missions worked with the almost entirely Pashtun Royal Afghan Army and took many officers and trainees to Russia for advanced instruction and indoctrination. By world standards, the army was not an impressive force, but it existed, had coherence and was disciplined. So when the Russians invaded and occupied the country, they and their puppet government “inherited” a standing army. To it, they added approximately 100,000 well-paid militiamen. These forces actually performed reasonably well for the Russians during at least the early part of their occupation. But they did not enable the Russians to “win.”
Contrast this with our current position: we have not inherited an existing army. The old royal army was compromised by its relationship with the Russians and virtually disappeared in the aftermath of their withdrawal in 1989. Thereafter, the resistance forces, particularly the “Northern Alliance,” the Tajik-based guerrillas who had operated from the Panjshir valley under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud, and their Hazara and Uzbek rivals fought one another for dominance all over the country. They had nearly destroyed Afghanistan when the Taliban moved in and defeated them. Most of their leaders, the “warlords,” ran away. When the United States invaded in 2001, and defeated the Taliban, it began to rebuild the power of the warlords as the cheapest way to control the country. Helped by America, these warlords decimated what remained of the Taliban. Out of this turmoil, the local winners were mainly the Tajiks.
Today, Tajiks, who number about one in four Afghans (roughly half as many as the traditionally dominant Pashtuns), hold most of the key positions in the government, including intelligence and political police, and command seven in ten of the army’s battalions. Unwittingly, therefore, we may have laid the basis for a civil war. That is a long-term potential danger, but other aspects of what Ambassador Eide has recommended and General McChrystal intends to implement are more immediately worrying.
Because today’s soldiers are without a background of training and, according to NATO advisers, nine in ten are illiterate and three in ten are drug addicts, turning them into an army will justify – indeed require, as both the American and British military commanders agree – our forces to remain in Afghanistan for years, or more likely, decades. Such a program on such a timetable will not only convince the Afghans that we have become a colonial power but will also serve to convince the adherents to the party line of al-Qaida that Usama bin Ladin is right to target America and Britain.
The second effect is that emphasizing the army will inhibit the negotiating process that nearly everyone is beginning to see as the only hope of ending the war on acceptable terms.
The third result is that the army will become a major drain on the limited resources of the country. Pentagon planners are already calculating how soon we can off-load the costs onto the Afghans. Pursuit of this objective necessarily will clash with the plan we must also try to implement of making Afghanistan reasonably secure and reasonably prosperous. Today they can barely feed themselves: an estimated 42 percent live on the equivalent of about 7¢ a day. It will be decades, if ever, before they can shoulder the sort of war we want them to fight.
The fourth result is (mercifully perhaps) a future danger: it is that since balancing civil institutions are weak and will take years to become strong, a military force on the scale General McChrystal is beginning to build is likely to lead once again to a dictatorship of the kind that destroyed the earlier attempts in the 1920s and 1960s to build a reformist, modern state.
Thus, it seems to me that the message Ambassador Eide has delivered and which many of the new “experts” on Afghanistan also espouse would lead us in precisely the wrong direction – toward a period of greater threats of terrorism, further damage to our society, economy and legal system, and will result in virtually unending war.
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Polk's plan would start with the US giving a firm and comprehensive date for the withdrawal of US troops. This is a first step. He contends that, once this is accepted as authentic, civil aid will be welcome by "traditional [village] councils, who "will begin to seek those things that will heal their sick, feed their hungry, repair their destroyed and decayed infrastructure and generally make their lives easier." The Taliban already have agreed, he says, to negotiate once foreign forces are withdrawn. Once aid is offered and being delivered, and with foreign troops leaving the country, it will be hard for the Taliban to continue their warfare, given the great needs of the people. Polk implies that this aid would go directly to villages rather than through a central government.
Polk's analysis squares with our own and maintains that the US-led war should come to an end. He does not address how the political system, particularly the central government, will be reconstituted. He does not address how a national army, if there is one, can be organized in a way that it is not dominated by the Tajiks. And he does not address how the warlords and their militias can be marginalized or phased out. But the implication of his article is that all of these challenges will more easily reconciled or overcome in the absence of the US-led military occupation.
Bob
----------------------------
Missteps on Afghanistan
By William R. Polk
http://www.hnn.us/articles/122319.html - History News Network
William R. Polk was Professor of History at the University of Chicago. During the Kennedy and part of the Johnson administrations, he was the member of the Policy Planning Council responsible for North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Among his books are Understanding Iraq, Violent Politics and Understanding Iran. He is now at work on a book to be entitled Afghanistan: Descent into Unending War. He is the senior director of the W.P. Carey Foundation.
In his final report on January 6, 2009 to the Security Council, the senior UN representative to Afghanistan, Ambassador Kai Eide of Norway, highlighted two issues that will determine events far into the future. The first of these was development aid and the second is building a military capacity for the central government. He and others have argued that failure to accomplish one or both is likely to result in what General Stanley McChrystal called “mission failure.” Eide may be right, but history suggests that even more danger may result from success.
The Vietnam war tells us why. Then, as now, we engaged in the “civic action” programs Eide urges that we increase. Also then, as now, our adversaries regarded them as hostile moves. The Viet Minh deliberately destroyed not only the beneficial contributions – clinics, schools, bridges – but also targeted those Vietnamese and foreign aid workers who were trying to help the people. If proof were needed for the diabolical nature of the Communist guerrillas, this was surely it. At least that was what many of my government colleagues then thought. It is also what many people today think of the Taliban and their similar actions. What could have made them act in this way?
The obvious, but rarely mentioned, reason is that insurgents see civic action programs as a counterinsurgency tactic. In Vietnam they were designed to “win the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese and so win them away from the insurgents. The insurgents regarded our civil aid as more dangerous to their cause than our bombs.
Ironically, they were partly wrong. Neither we nor the Viet Minh recognized a fatal side effect of our program: because the South Vietnamese government was hopelessly corrupt, any aid we turned over to officials was apt to be stolen or even sold to the Viet Minh. So we took on ourselves the task of delivering the aid direct to the villagers. Since our officials were honest, the program worked.
But, without realizing it, we sidelined the very government we were dedicated to supporting: by our intervention, we literally became the government of South Vietnam. Of course, we remained foreigners – indeed a study made during my time in government showed that many villagers thought we were a new batch of French colonialists, perhaps Foreign Legionnaires. But, since we were doing the “good things,” and the Saigon government continued to do the “bad things,” in part through our aid efforts, we further weakened its claim to legitimacy.
How does this experience in Vietnam relate to Afghanistan? Those who point out that there are major differences are right, but the general context, dealing with a hopelessly corrupt government, is what we now face. Few competent observers think we can reform that government. So, while we at least talk about trying, we effectively by-pass it just as we did in Vietnam. Consequently, while history does not exactly replay, knowing it can sometimes stimulate our thinking. What might Vietnam teach us to question Ambassador Eide’s recommendations that we increase our civic action program?
Like the Viet Minh, the Taliban understand the purpose of civic action. Simply put, it is a counterinsurgency weapon. Indeed, we told them it was. As General David Petraeus said, “Money is my most important ammunition in this war.” To implement this tactic, the U.S. Army published “the Commander’s Guide to Money as a Weapons System” (Handbook 09-27 April 2009) which tells officers how to use money and civic actions programs to defeat insurgents. This is the basis of a training program at the Combined Arms Center at Leavenworth, Kansas.
Our civic action program not only was informed by the Vietnam War, but mirrors the large-scale program undertaken by the Russians in Afghanistan. (It is odd that in his manual on counterinsurgency, General Petraeus never mentions the Russian program. Did he or the actual authors of the manual not know of it? As the philosopher George Santayana warned, those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Perhaps that explains the manual.) During their occupation of Afghanistan, the Russians poured in hundreds of millions of dollar-equivalents to civic action. It did not win Afghan hearts and minds.
Will ours? After conducting some 400 interviews, Andrew Wilder of Tufts University concluded that “Afghan perceptions of aid and aid actors are overwhelmingly negative.”
This background and these findings explain, I think, both why the Taliban blows up the facilities we build and why the general population allows them to do so: what we see as generous help to needy people, they see as part of a campaign by foreigners to subdue them.
But it is clear that the Afghans need help. Without aid from abroad, the future of the people of Afghanistan would be grim and the chances for the reforms we have set as our goal would be unlikely. So can civic action programs be configured in a way that would make them acceptable? I believe they can. This is how:
Once we set a firm and believable date for actual withdrawal, the psychology of the war will change. This was not, of course, accomplished by President Obama’s vague statement that the process will begin in July 2011, particularly after what he announced was further weakened by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s definition of “withdrawal” as amounting only to a “handful” of the occupation forces. To be effective the date must be firm and comprehensive -- and be believed. Then, particularly if they can at least partly be made multi- or inter-national, aid projects will gradually cease to be seen as “ammunition in this war.” At that point, the traditional councils (known in various parts of the country as jirgas, ulus and shuras) that exist in, and essentially govern, virtually every one of Afghanistan’s approximately 23,000 villages) will begin to seek those things that will heal their sick, feed their hungry, repair their destroyed or decayed infrastructure and generally make their lives easier.
Hopefully, by that time, negotiations with the Taliban – which even President Hamid Karzai has called vital and which he promised in September 2009 he would launch -- will begin. On his side, the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Umar, has also agreed to negotiate once the foreign forces are withdrawn. He, too, should be driven by the announcement of a firm date. In December he even “signaled” that the Taliban would not allow aggressive action by al-Qaida on other states from Afghanistan. We have said, essentially, that we are not interested.
If we get interested and the war winds down, the Taliban will cease to oppose a redefined form of civic action. The Taliban will have to permit it because, if they continue in the new context of the winding down of the war to destroy what the villagers want, they will lose their most important asset, the support of the people. And without that support, as Mao Zedong memorably put it, they will become like fish stranded without supporting “water.”
So the setting the date of withdrawal is absolutely crucial. It must be the first step.
Now what about the call Ambassador Eide, almost everyone in the American and British governments, and our military leaders have sounded to create a much expanded security apparatus for the central government?
I do not believe this is in either ours or the Afghan national interest. Again, consider what history can teach us.
For many years before the Russian invasion in 1979, Soviet training missions worked with the almost entirely Pashtun Royal Afghan Army and took many officers and trainees to Russia for advanced instruction and indoctrination. By world standards, the army was not an impressive force, but it existed, had coherence and was disciplined. So when the Russians invaded and occupied the country, they and their puppet government “inherited” a standing army. To it, they added approximately 100,000 well-paid militiamen. These forces actually performed reasonably well for the Russians during at least the early part of their occupation. But they did not enable the Russians to “win.”
Contrast this with our current position: we have not inherited an existing army. The old royal army was compromised by its relationship with the Russians and virtually disappeared in the aftermath of their withdrawal in 1989. Thereafter, the resistance forces, particularly the “Northern Alliance,” the Tajik-based guerrillas who had operated from the Panjshir valley under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud, and their Hazara and Uzbek rivals fought one another for dominance all over the country. They had nearly destroyed Afghanistan when the Taliban moved in and defeated them. Most of their leaders, the “warlords,” ran away. When the United States invaded in 2001, and defeated the Taliban, it began to rebuild the power of the warlords as the cheapest way to control the country. Helped by America, these warlords decimated what remained of the Taliban. Out of this turmoil, the local winners were mainly the Tajiks.
Today, Tajiks, who number about one in four Afghans (roughly half as many as the traditionally dominant Pashtuns), hold most of the key positions in the government, including intelligence and political police, and command seven in ten of the army’s battalions. Unwittingly, therefore, we may have laid the basis for a civil war. That is a long-term potential danger, but other aspects of what Ambassador Eide has recommended and General McChrystal intends to implement are more immediately worrying.
Because today’s soldiers are without a background of training and, according to NATO advisers, nine in ten are illiterate and three in ten are drug addicts, turning them into an army will justify – indeed require, as both the American and British military commanders agree – our forces to remain in Afghanistan for years, or more likely, decades. Such a program on such a timetable will not only convince the Afghans that we have become a colonial power but will also serve to convince the adherents to the party line of al-Qaida that Usama bin Ladin is right to target America and Britain.
The second effect is that emphasizing the army will inhibit the negotiating process that nearly everyone is beginning to see as the only hope of ending the war on acceptable terms.
The third result is that the army will become a major drain on the limited resources of the country. Pentagon planners are already calculating how soon we can off-load the costs onto the Afghans. Pursuit of this objective necessarily will clash with the plan we must also try to implement of making Afghanistan reasonably secure and reasonably prosperous. Today they can barely feed themselves: an estimated 42 percent live on the equivalent of about 7¢ a day. It will be decades, if ever, before they can shoulder the sort of war we want them to fight.
The fourth result is (mercifully perhaps) a future danger: it is that since balancing civil institutions are weak and will take years to become strong, a military force on the scale General McChrystal is beginning to build is likely to lead once again to a dictatorship of the kind that destroyed the earlier attempts in the 1920s and 1960s to build a reformist, modern state.
Thus, it seems to me that the message Ambassador Eide has delivered and which many of the new “experts” on Afghanistan also espouse would lead us in precisely the wrong direction – toward a period of greater threats of terrorism, further damage to our society, economy and legal system, and will result in virtually unending war.
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