[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and the Rutland Herald.]
Barack Obama has articulated his goals for Afghanistan. In doing so, he becomes the first significant American politician since 9/11 to honestly lay out what he really wants for a country in the Middle East. John McCain has spoken favorably of the need for additional troops in Afghanistan.
Obama said during his recent visit to Afghanistan that “losing is not an option.” In the course of spelling out his plan to commit additional troops to the struggle there, he has said that he wishes to “rebuild the country.” His further goals are to stabilize the country, promote a rising standard of living and disable al-Qaida and the Taliban to the point where they cannot cause problems for anyone.
For those of us who are old enough to remember the 20th century, Obama is proposing another attempt at nation building. At that time, that is, before George W. Bush took office, invaded Iraq and turned his party upside down, Republicans were almost universally opposed to nation building. Democrats have never been so opposed, so it would appear that a more favorable climate may exist today for such an experiment in Afghanistan.
Nation building is the notion, favored by today’s Republicans for implementation in Iraq, that after a war, you can, by force of arms and occupation of the nation in question, successfully force a lasting change to a democratic form of government. Iraq provides us with a living example of the vicissitudes of nation building.
Many in this country view the current American approach in Iraq as “successful.” In fact, the “surge” has lowered the level of violence in Iraq. However, the originally stated purpose of the surge was to provide sufficient stability to enable the ethnic and sectarian groups in that country to successfully settle the basic political and economic issues that currently divide them. That has not been accomplished and if history is a decent guide, it will be a very difficult result for them to attain.
And now, we sail off into Afghanistan! It is almost as if, in the aftermath of 9/11, we are morally obliged to do that. We have to find Osama bin Laden. After all, he launched that attack on us from Afghanistan, with the protection of the Taliban – the same organization that has now morphed into an insurgency against our presence in their country.
Historically, where terrorist organizations hardly every win anything significant, insurgencies almost always do.
One truly hopes that our leaders understand enough of today’s realities and past history of that country to enable them to devise a workable plan for accomplishing their goals. If they do not, we may find a similar result there to what is facing us in Iraq.
Afghanistan is very different from Iraq. Where Iraq is fairly flat, Afghanistan is anything but. The terrain is mountainous and not favorable for conventional warfare. The people are different. Although they are not Arabs, but a mélange of Central Asians, Persians and other minor groups, they are 80 percent Sunni and 20 percent Shia. Their main languages are Indo-European and their culture is tied more to Persia than to the Arab world. They have the reputation of being unconquerable and ungovernable.
The Afghanis display characteristics common to all mountain people. They are Middle East versions of the Martins and the Coys. They are brave, bellicose, fiercely proud, loyal to their clan, tribe or family, wildly independent, have a highly developed sense of honor and are normally armed to the teeth and ready to fight. And they have spent eons fighting each other and themselves. They may have invented internecine warfare!
Even if it becomes possible to defeat the Taliban insurgency, these are not ideal candidates for pacification or nation building. In fact, foreigners have tried. Apart from the historical occupation of what is today Afghanistan by regional conquerors, in more recent centuries, both Britain and the Soviet Union have tried.
Britain meddled actively in Afghanistan for over many decades in the 19th century. During that time, they were involved in three wars against Afghanistan. All in all, they never achieved any real victory or peace.
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. They remained 10 years. They committed 100,000 troops backed up by at least that many more. They lost 15,000 soldiers, whatever favorable image they had in the world before the invasion and spent billions of dollars, which fact almost certainly played a role in the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. These represent powerful lessons for us today.
As a people, Afghanis are not terribly interested in being ruled by anyone outside their own tribe or clan, let alone their nation. The have tried that before. If our goal in Afghanistan is to pacify the country, or bring them democracy and prosperity, let’s think again.
The issues are Pakistan, Pashtuns and poppies.
One of the starkest realities we face in Afghanistan is the fact that almost half the population is Pashtun – 13 million souls located in southern Afghanistan. The same Pashtuns total 28 million in contiguous Northwest Pakistan – about one-sixth of the overall Pakistani population.
The Taliban is overwhelmingly Pashtun. Pakistani Pashtuns have long supported and supplied the Afghan Taliban. In addition, the Taliban has always been supported by the Pakistani intelligence service and to this day, there remains much active support in Pakistan for the Taliban.
It would seem likely that any real attempt to crush the Taliban in Afghanistan will necessarily involve their supply lines and suppliers in Pakistan. At this moment, the Pakistan government seems disinclined to get involved with our Pashtun problem in Northwest Pakistan. We may well find it impossible to solve the Afghan problem without solving the Pakistan problem.
Then we have the poppy problem. Opium production now accounts for half of Afghanistan’s annual national income of $8 billion. Eighty percent of that opium is grown in Pashtun territory. The Taliban now gets a large portion of its income – something on the order of 40 percent — from the opium trade.
Afghanistan’s poverty is a real issue here and, legal or not, opium is an important crop. Eradicating it would bring increased poverty and hardship. Switching poppy farmers to other crops won’t be easy. Our best hope is that rising world food prices will seduce Afghani farmers to grow food crops.
As in the case of Iraq, our problem in Afghanistan is only superficially a military problem. Under the surface it is an economic, religious and political issue. If we do ramp up in Afghanistan, it is going to be wildly expensive because, in the end and even after military success, we are going to be back in the long and drawn-out business of pacification and nation building.
We had best be prepared for that and given our total lack of preparedness for a similar situation in Iraq, it had better be carefully thought through. We are not dealing here with post-war Germany or Japan. We are dealing with a Muslim country in which people think their Islamic system of governance is perfectly OK. There may be discontent in Afghanistan, but it is not with Islam.
Changing whole cultures is not easy. Think how difficult it has been for America to come to grips with the prospect of a female or black president. Before we take up the mantle of bringing change to the world, we had best understand that not the entire world wants what we have to offer and adapt our goals in Afghanistan to a continued Islamic framework. That may be the only thing that works there.
This will be an extremely expensive and difficult task.
Haviland Smith served in Eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East.
He was also chief of the counterterrorism staff.
