Rural Ruminations

[Originally published on Nieman Watchdog.]

Even as President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan, a former CIA station chief raises questions about the administration’s goals there, and whether they are remotely achievable.

The U.S. government is currently involved in a re-examination of its Afghan policy. And because the Obama Administration has committed itself to transparency – in stark contrast with the previous administration – that should lead to a public discussion of what our goals are in Afghanistan and how to pursue them.

So far, the Obama administration has not shared many details of its thinking with us.  Nonetheless, realities on the ground dictate that any reexamination of current policy consider the same basic issues.  Insurgency, terrorism, police and army training, counter-narcotics, the rule of law, our definition of success and our goals in Afghanistan have not and will not change with the adoption of a new policy.

Q. What is our ultimate goal for Afghanistan?

If it is security and stability, that simply cannot be achieved militarily. If Afghanistan were ever to be pacified, which it never has, it would take hundreds of thousands of troops. Afghans have never accepted foreign domination of any kind. They have even been unwilling to accept central indigenous governance.  Whatever security and stability they achieve will have to arise from within the Afghan people, and will presumably reflect the character of those people, which is insular, secular and tribal.

Q. How do you create a “national army ‘ or “national police force” in a tribal society?

If Afghanistan is to somehow deal with its own internal issues of instability and tribalism, it will have to have some sort of central police and military organizations. How does the Administration propose to accomplish that?

Afghanistan is tribal in a way that makes Iraq look homogeneous. Sadly for us, tribal societies rarely form cohesive or successful national armies or police forces.

Q. How does the Administration propose to deal with the armed groups that currently control most of the country?

Because of the pervasiveness of the Taliban, any solution will have to involve Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. The Pashtuns, who are the base of Taliban power, occupy both sides of the border. By definition and in the face of the ongoing decline of Al Qaeda, we will be involved in counter-insurgency rather than counter-terrorism – a far more complicated, long-lasting and difficult task.

Q. Is the Administration prepared to deal with Shariya Law as the basis for Afghanistan’s future legal system?

Afghanistan already has a “Rule of Law” in the Shariya, or Muslim system of law based on the Koran, the Hadith and centuries of interpretations and precedents. Afghanis won’t look favorably on new western ideas of what its legal system ought to be. If recent changes in the status of the Swat Valley in Pakistan are a harbinger of things to come, Shariya is the law of the future in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghanistan also has a long and proud tradition of corruption.

Q. How are we going to run a counter-narcotics program in Afghanistan?

Poppies, Pashtuns and Pakistan are the immutable reality we must face. The Pashtuns are both Afghan and  Pakistani. They spill over the border between the two countries. They are also the Taliban who rely on poppies (heroin) for their financing.

Finally, given our modest level of success in the “War on Narcotics” here in the Western Hemisphere, it is hard to believe that we will suddenly figure out precisely what to do in Afghanistan, a culture infinitely more alien to us than that of Mexico.

In Conclusion

Any American plan for success in Afghanistan that includes the commitment of significant numbers of additional troops will put more stress on our current military and financial problems and encourage Afghan opposition to our plans and programs.

We need a new definition of “success”, one more in keeping with realties on the ground both in Afghanistan and in the United States, where a disastrous economy with a murky future and a war-weary population give scant hope of being able to support an inordinately expensive and long-lasting military campaign.

We will not make over Afghanistan into an image pleasing to us. The road to “success” in Afghanistan will be tribal and non-sectarian and will almost certainly involve the Taliban in some as yet unforeseen, but increasingly more significant way.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in Eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East, as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff, and as Executive Assistant in the Director’s office.

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[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and the Rutland Herald.]

America needs to reassess its current policy of exporting democracy to the rest of the world.  It is not working in Iraq and it is even less likely to work in Afghanistan.  The only hope we have for change there is to seek stability and that means understanding and supporting the wishes of the local populations.   We will not be successful in that part of the world, particularly if our policy is based on militarily imposing democracy.

The Bush administration has made it abundantly clear to the rest of the world, particularly the Islamic world, that it sees the democratization of Islam as the answer to radical Islamic terrorism. That is a major mistake that will plague future generations in America and the West.  Our next object lesson in this arena may come in Afghanistan where increased attempts to install democracy will only make the problem worse.

This administration, under the debilitating influence of the Neoconservatives, whose basic philosophical point of departure is to see world events through a purely moral, right vs. wrong filter, has decided to spread democracy. They have decided, under that same Neocon influence, that the only correct answer to the terrorist issue, or, for that matter, any other foreign policy issue, is a military response.

It is this conflation of two distinctly different issues, selling democracy and combating terrorism, into one problem and the concurrent conviction that they only can be addressed with one policy – military action – that has caused us most of our current foreign policy problems.

This is what got us into Iraq, what lost us so many allies.  Remember all the energy expended by the Bush Administration to establish a direct connection between the terrorist bombings on 9/11 and the government of Saddam Hussein?  Well, that was the beginning.  We say we are fighting terrorism in Iraq, but we are really trying to suppress an insurgency in order to impose democracy on them because we think that will create a better world for us and our friends.

It now appears that we will move our military attention from Iraq to Afghanistan.  Both Senators McCain and Obama have stressed their resolve to “save” Afghanistan by transferring more troops there.  Unfortunately, the Afghanis will not be eager for us to impose a democracy, or much of anything else, on their country. There is nothing in their culture, their history, their geography or their reality that would make this likely.

We need to continue to be concerned about terrorism in Afghanistan, not about insurgency.  Al Qaida is, and will remain a threat to us, particularly if we continue our failed policies in the region.  It would be foolhardy to walk away and permit them to reestablish their base of operations there.  However, we should not be concerned with democratizing that country. Afghan stability and denying Al Qaida an operational base should be our dominant goals.

What we need to do is allow Afghanistan to stabilize itself.  That means identifying what political arrangement will be acceptable to the Afghanis and then figuring out how to accomplish that in the face of pressures that will seek both to destabilize Afghanistan and to recreate it as a home for Al Qaida.

That means no major jump in our troop levels, no attempt to control that large country or its borders, no attempt to bring them democracy and no attempt to militarily crush the indigenous insurgency – the Taliban – for if we pursue those paths, we are guaranteeing a repeat of Iraq, or worse.  It would literally take hundreds of thousands of troops to succeed using an Iraq-like “surge” in Afghanistan.  Any serious attempt at military “victory” in Afghanistan will make Iraq look like a walk in the park.

About the only things we should hope to accomplish are Afghan stability and the denial of Afghanistan to Al Qaida. We can do that only if we support governance that is acceptable to the majority of Afghanis.  That means some sort of Islamic government, hopefully, but not necessarily moderate, which, in recognizing the dangers of fundamentalist terrorism, would be willing to have us remain involved in the denial of their land to terrorist groups like Al Qaida.  Right now, the Taliban is the best candidate.  They are not universally violent, they once stabilized Afghanistan and ended poppy cultivation and they contain elements with which we certainly could cooperate toward those goals.  They are far from all bad.

To accomplish those goals, we need to move on from our basic, long held premise of American exceptionalism – the thought that only America has found the Holy Grail when it comes to governance. Instead, we need to understand that the world is full of people who, perhaps because they do not share our history, have no understanding of democracy or the rule of law, are not that displeased with their own lives, and have little interest in adopting democracy.

That most emphatically includes the broadest spectrum of Muslims who have their devoutly held religious and cultural beliefs and who believe that those beliefs, not ours, are the key to their own happiness.

Until we reach that level of sophistication and understanding of how the world really works, we will certainly be seduced by our own notion of exceptionalism into more and more disastrous democracy-driven forays into the rest of the world.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.  He lives in Williston.

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[Originally published on Nieman Watchdog.]

A former CIA station chief writes that Obama and McCain should think again if they believe nation-building in Afghanistan can be achieved without an enormous cost in blood and treasure. History suggests otherwise.

Both Barack Obama and John McCain appear to believe that the pacification and rebuilding of Afghanistan is a national imperative. But if they think Iraq has been complicated, just wait till they sink their teeth into Afghanistan.

If we have learned nothing else from Iraq, it is that pacifying and rebuilding a country with ethnic and confessional differences and problematic neighbors is anything but a cakewalk. And indeed, the similarities between Afghanistan and Iraq are striking. Also, as in Iraq, today’s problem in Afghanistan is not terrorism; it is a hostile entity, the Taliban, which we defeated in 2002 and which has since morphed into an insurgency against us and the government we installed in its place.  Terrorist organizations hardly ever win anything significant — though insurgencies almost always do.

The differences between the two countries, however, suggest the challenge in Afghanistan is even greater. Where Iraq is fairly flat, Afghanistan is mountainous — perfect for an insurgency and terrible for conventional warfare.  Afghanis display characteristics common to many mountain people: They are basically unconquerable and ungovernable.  They are Middle East versions of the Hatfields and the McCoys.  They are brave, bellicose, fiercely proud, loyal to their clan, tribe or family, wildly independent, and have a highly developed sense of honor.  They are normally armed to the teeth, ready to fight, and they are good at it, having spent millenia fighting each other and themselves.

Even if it becomes possible to defeat the Taliban insurgency, Afghanis are not ideal candidates for pacification or nation-building.  Foreigners have tried and failed many times. The British tried off and on from 1839 to 1919. Between 1979 and 1989, the Soviets committed well over 100,000 troops there.  They lost 15,000 soldiers and whatever favorable image they had in the world. And it cost them billions of dollars, which almost certainly played a role in the demise of the USSR in 1991.

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 free enterprise, we should think again.

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.

Any real attempt to crush the Taliban in Afghanistan will necessarily involve their supply lines and suppliers in nuclear Pakistan.  At this moment, the Pakistani government seems incapable of or disinclined to get involved with our Pashtun problem in Northwest Pakistan.  This creates a de facto safe haven for the Taliban in Pakistan.  To our peril, we may well find it impossible to solve the Afghan problem without getting more heavily involved in Northwest Pakistan. But if we alienate that country sufficiently, we could end up creating a brand new, nuclear-armed enemy.

Poppy production now accounts for half of Afghanistan’s annual national income of $8 billion. Eighty percent of that opium is grown in Pashtun territory and the Taliban now gets around 40% of its income from the opium trade.  Afghanistan’s poverty is a real issue here and, legal or not, opium is an important crop.  Eradication would bring increased poverty and hardship.  Switching poppy farmers to other crops won’t be easy.

And all of this in Afghanistan, a country which is traditionally and inherently corrupt.

Not Really a Military Problem

As in the case of Iraq, our problem in Afghanistan is only superficially a military problem.  Under the surface are crucial economic, religious and political issues.  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, drawn-out, expensive business of pacification and nation building in a country that will not be easily or naturally united.

We had best be prepared for these realities, and given our total lack of preparedness for a similar situation in Iraq, it must 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-based system of governance is perfectly OK.  There may be discontent in Afghanistan, but it is not with Islam.

We have little going for us here and changing Afghanistan will be an incredibly expensive, dangerous and difficult task, if it can be accomplished at all.

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