[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and Rutland Herald.]
Shortly after his spring 2009 arrival in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal made the following statement: “(Afghanistan) is complex in terms of geography; it’s complex in terms of demographics, of resources, or more specifically the lack of resources, to include what I normally like to refer to as the lack of human capital, the lack of — the availability of people that can provide governance in Afghanistan, and that’s probably a fact of education in many years to come.”
What we have done in our 2001 invasion and subsequent 2008 reinvasion of Afghanistan is completely disrupt the patterns of governance that have existed there for centuries. Those patterns, whether or not we like, admire or approve of them, are the instruments that have made past life in Afghanistan workable.
Anyone who optimistically sees any sort of democracy as a logical destination for Afghanistan is self-delusional. Regardless how our policy evolves, we are not going to successfully turn Afghanistan into anything that would be appealing to the American or western mind. To be stable, Afghanistan will need to essentially revert to what it was in the pre-Taliban era.
Afghanistan has been at its workable best when it has had a weak central government surrounded by a strong and independent tribal system. A quick look at Afghan history will show that outsiders mess with that system at their own peril.
How, then, do we resolve this endless and unproductive Afghanistan struggle without “losing”?
First we must acknowledge the salient realities of the Afghan people. They are largely illiterate, xenophobic, bellicose, corrupt and independent. True warriors, they don’t negotiate, they shoot. The last thing they want is to be invaded and occupied by foreigners.
Tradition and human raw material in Afghanistan do not lead to anything we could think of as a desirable government, yet we must acknowledge that Afghans should and will choose their own form of government.
We can facilitate that in two ways: We should remove our military forces which, as a provocative and rather blunt instrument, represent one of the few unifying factors against us in present day Afghanistan. Having done that, we should support the old Afghan system by funding (or buying off, depending on your level of cynicism) the tribes and, by talking to them, find out what sort of a central government they would like to have. That will almost certainly include some element of the Taliban.
Since its birth in 1994, the Taliban’s brutal fundamentalism has alienated so many people that they do not enjoy great popular support. With appropriate U.S. support for Afghan tribes, there is no reason the Taliban will ever approach the power it enjoyed before 2001.
In arranging tribal funding, we will have to make a number of stipulations. This is a flexible list, subject to the needs of the US Administration, but which could include; an absolute ban on the return of Al Qaida, universal education and no further poppy cultivation. Those stipulations can be supported by an appropriate long-term commitment of U.S. Special Operations troops.
By doing this, we restart the attempt to return to the only model that has ever provided stability for the Afghan people. The simple drawdown of American military involvement will begin the change in today’s Afghanistan. Our military approach has brought us a major insurgency which is aimed primarily at us as a foreign power, and only secondarily at our lapdog, the Karzai government.
This sort of effort will not be cheap. However, if you stack it up against the $73 billion we are spending annually in the Afghan war, it all becomes relative.
There are 12 major tribes with hundreds of subdivisions in Afghanistan. The U.S. administration should be able to figure out precisely how to apportion funds to those tribes based on sub-tribes, population, need and politics.
If you start with the fact that we are now spending $200 million a day, it would seem we could easily settle an average of $100 million a year on each of those 12 major tribes. That would total up to $1.2 billion per year, a far cry from today’s costs of $73 billion. That, in itself, gives us great flexibility in setting subsidies. When you add in the costs to us of dead and wounded, it looks even more favorable.
We will never “win” in Afghanistan, whatever that may mean. However, getting out as planned can mean reduced financial and time commitments as well as sharply reduced military casualties.
All in all, a cheap solution.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff.
