[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and Rutland Herald.]
President Obama has just informed us that we are going to remain in Afghanistan long enough to train security forces capable of keeping the Taliban at bay. Given Afghan realities, that is, at very best, problematical.
Afghanistan is not even a pure tribal society. It is a family- and geographically based society. Afghan Tajiks do not think of themselves by tribe. They refer to themselves by the region, province, city, town, or village from which they come. That means that even though two Afghans may be from the same Tajik tribe and speak the same Afghan Farsi, they may have absolutely nothing further in common. They could well have been raised in inaccessible mountain valleys hundreds of miles apart in families that shared virtually no common experience.
In that kind of society, individuals, in the main, owe their loyalties to their family, village, mountaintop or valley, for it is on such entities that they rely for their security and well-being. The concept of a greater loyalty to a national entity is largely unknown, particularly in rural Afghanistan where, given its fragmented geographic realities, there is little prospect for integrating the various groups.
Ethnically, Afghanistan breaks down into eight groupings — Pashtun, 42 percent; Tajik, 27 percent; Hazara, 9 percent; Uzbek, 9 percent; Aimak, 4 percent; Turkmen, 3 percent; Baluch, 2 percent; and others 4 percent.
These realities make the concept of national security forces — the Afghan National Army (ANA) or the Afghan National Police (ANP) — virtually alien. Guidelines set up in 2003 by General Karl Eikenberry, then our commander in Afghanistan, stipulate that the ANA must have proportional ethnic representation from its diverse population.
His guidelines called for 38 percent of the troops to be Pashtun, 25 percent Tajiks, 19 percent Hazaras and 8 percent Uzbek. In reality, Tajiks now account for 41 percent of all ANA troops who have been trained, and only 30 percent of the ANA trainees are now Pashtuns.
First, this is a difficult mix in a society that is narrowly family-based. Second, what do you do when you need the ANA in the Pashtun region? Does the normal 27 percent Tajik membership stand down for the operation because of ethnic differences? Does it stand up and create chaos, or does it refuse to carry out orders it does not favor?
Afghanistan is not America, Australia or Canada where, despite the “melting pot” nature of those societies, all the trappings of nationhood exist. Armies in those liberal Western democracies truly are national armies. They lack any meaningful, negative, ethnic schisms and understand the concept of nation that they are there to support. In Afghanistan, you have all the ethnic differences with no allegiance to the nation, no meaningful understanding of what nation means, and little inclination to support national goals over family or ethnic goals.
Then there is the Afghan flavor that permeates society and the ANA and the ANP. The turnover rate in the army is said to be about 25 percent. That means that statistically, the entire army is replaced every four years. This does little for unit cohesion or combat readiness.
At one point, the ANA rewarded recruits with a Kalashnikov rifles. Recruits accepted the rifle, then either did or did not serve out their enlistments, went home, waited a while and re-enlisted a second time in a new name to get another Kalashnikov.
A recent examination of U.S. Marine trainers of the ANA by the Guardian newspaper in London showed the acute frustrations of the Marines in trying to accomplish their missions. One trainer referred to his group of trainees as no easier to handle than “26 children.” All the Marines questioned said that narcotics use was so high that it seriously hindered the ANA in their appointed tasks. One trainer surmised that if drug tests were used and drug use were unacceptable, 75-80 percent of the ANA would not qualify for service.
These are extreme examples, but they are generally supported by embedded reporters and trainers who have worked with the trainees. Ultimately, the trainees represent what would be expected of a broadly illiterate, backward population of a country that really isn’t a nation at all. And this is the raw material on which our success is to be built?
As under the Bush administration, we continue now to see Afghanistan as we would like it to be, not as it is. There are alternate strategies that better reflect reality. As long as domestic American politics remains at the top of our list of imperatives in foreign policy formulation and we refuse to employ different strategies, our prospects for any kind of “success” in Afghanistan are minimal.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief, who served in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston.
