The War in Afghanistan

[alguien]

Terrorists are not always punished for their crimes, and they are not always immune to "rehabilitation", if you want to call it that. This is a great article about this phenomenon, especially in regard to the IRA.

Its funny, I was thinking of Gerry Adams while reading your post.

[Ckrisz]

I don't know about that. Pakistan has lost thousands of soldiers over the years policing those regions. I am still very worried that this type of (no so well) targeted assassinations is going to end up hurting us more in the long run.

We also famously let OBL and M. Omar slip away (according to that report John Kerry did) even with troops on the ground. If the combined intel of the CIA/ISI and the Pakistani military and the most powerful military in the world can't catch two people, one a 6 foot high turbaned Saudi diabetic and the other a crazy one-eyed mullah that anyone who lived through the Taliban could recognize in a second.

Occupying a non-existent border between the two countries and angering the Pashtun population because we're targeting them specifically is not going to clean out the cancer. It's going to make it worse, and I can almost guarantee that.

Pakistan has lost thousands of soldiers, largely to fighting those factions in the FATA devoted to Talibanization of the entire area and the ejection of Pakistani authority, not those fighting in Afghanistan.

OBL slipped away specifically because we relied on local Afghan warlords for the cordon - because Rumsfeld and Tenet chose not to use the Rangers and Marines we had available. The Pakistani military and the ISI were and remain complicit in many ways, so it's not like they were fully invested in helping us catch either.

Do you mean positive treatment (extending olive branches to moderate groups) of the minorities? Because we're setting up a minority government in Afghanistan, and we're lumping Pashtun nationalists in with terrorists.

Um, do you see any "Pashtun nationalists" around? What Pashtun nationalist movement are you talking about? The Awami National Party? The last I heard of those guys, the TTP was busy murdering as many as they could catch in the FATA. Find me some genuine Pashun "nationalists" we are lumping in with the Taliban. Do you mean Gul Agha Shirzai? The Karzai family? Seriously, who?

I don't see how we think we're going to do any differently than anyone else has done in Afghanistan. What is the special factor that the United States has that nobody else has?

IIRC, McVeigh said repeatedly that his bombing was a direct response to Waco and Ruby Ridge; therefore, I see his action as part of a movement made up of both groups and individuals, including the Waco group and the individuals at Ruby Ridge. My opinion is that focusing on the destruction of individual groups and people risks losing sight of a bigger picture of why these people were acting this way in the first place. That's the difference between prevention and response: I'm much more interested in preventing the violence from occurring in the first place.

Why, because McVeigh claimed to be acting for Ruby Ridge and Waco, do you conflate the three? The Waco cultists didn't really have much an anti-government beef beyond not wanting David Koresh be arrested for child molestation.

Your argument about prevention and response makes more sense when there is a mass political movement being suppressed first. What political plan would you have had the Federal government enact to prevent Tim McVeigh from being upset?

So, for example, IMO, this decade will be filled with terrorism in the Middle East, if only because 50% of people under 30 are unemployed, which was the biggest factor for suicide bombers in Gaza. Lack of opportunity.

Poverty != terrorism or violence. Getting people to kill is not nearly as simple as that.

[snake]

NATO is winning hearts and minds again. Story.

And they wonder why the Afghans don't like them much. Even though these instances are rare it really does a lot to wipe out what little goodwill NATO has earned. Couple things like this with indiscriminate missile attacks that often kill women and children and it's hard to see how NATO plans to crush the insurgency.

[jurble]

The War in Afghanistan is doomed! Doomed! There is no hope! We must pull out!

[snake]

Well, I'm happy enough that we're getting out. Leave the crap fest for the rest.

[snake]

I think that this just helps to underscore the scope of the challenge. It's virtually inevitable that things like this will happen in any war, and this makes success all the more difficult.

I realize that. I also realize these incidents are uncommon. I still don't think the Taliban can be "defeated" though. Not unless you cleanse the country of Pashtuns.

[Ckrisz]

Yes, but if I was the Pakistani government, I wouldn't feel like completely alienating that population either.

What population are you referring to? The Pakistani population as a whole, or just the population of the FATA?

Either way, I doubt either matters that much to the Pakistani military, which determines policy in the FATA.

By nationalist, I meant "people who want their country free from occupation".

Can you name any prominent non-Taliban Pashtun leaders fighting just to get the foreigners out? Gulbuddin Hekmatyar doesn't count, since he'd be Taliban if only he could have Mullah Omar's spot.

What political plan? How about not driving tanks into compounds and killing children? That's usually a pretty decent plan to stick to. If we were protecting children, we did a pretty shitty job.

You seriously believe Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah building because kids died during the Waco siege?

I see the 3 as connected, as part of a general malaise and anti-gov sentiment during the 90s. If the folks at Waco didn't have beef with government, they wouldn't have holed up with guns.

Right, so again, what should the Federal government have done to assuage the fears of these kooks?

Also, I'm not sure if you can access this, but what do you say about this?

Can't read it, but I think he'd find more interesting info post 1997. I'll just say that democracy doesn't explain everything - compare and contrast the insurgency situation in India vs China, for instance.

[Galactus]

Pakistan is playing it's own game, all of their goals and objectives are (surprise) not related to the US.

They are opposed to the US' state-building enterprise in the region because they fear it would be too pro-indian (not to mention a pashtun-dominated government might want a slice of Pakistan in case the indian border goes hot...) but they don't exactly want a resurgent taliban either.

[Ckrisz]

Referring to the Pashtun population in the FATA.

The military walks a fine line between alienating them and appeasing our imperial interests.

The military doesn't care if it alienates the Pashtuns of Bajaur or Swat when it decides to clean out the Taliban in that area, because the TTP blows up innocent people in Pakistan and blows up mosques in Rawalpindi and Lahore. However, the Taliban in North Waziristan principally focuses on killing Americans in Times Square and Afghanistan (I suppose stopping that is one of our imperial interests), so the Pakistani military doesn't really bother with that.

Why do they have to be non-Taliban?

Because that would mean their objection to the U.S. is based on nationalism rather than politicial Islamism.

There's a solution to this problem, and that solution is autonomy. However, it took genocide to even a modicum of that for Native Americans, so I don't really expect our system to build anything like that before the next group feeling marginalized blows something up.

Democracy only prevents terrorism when it gives people a voice in the political process. As soon as you start marginalizing people politically, they start to strike back.

So what could we really have done to avoid these issues? Give Tim McVeigh and his crazies their own little white homeland? And yeah, people who think that the Zionist Overlord Government rules the world are fucking kooks, sorry. Their relationship with reality is fucked and they don't deserve their own little statelet, especially when their version of reality requires that other people to bow down to them. There's another solution, of course, which we pursued after OKC - infiltrate and destroy these fringe, marginal groups rather than give in to their insane demands.

Democracy only prevents terrorism when it gives people a voice in the political process. As soon as you start marginalizing people politically, they start to strike back.

The tribals of Northeastern India and the Muslims of Kashmir both have more of a political voice than the Uighurs or Tibetans of China, or the Kurds in Syria, or the Shia in Saudi Arabia. And yet terrorism and violent resistance is more prevalent in those areas than in the latter dictatorships. State strength clearly matters at least as much as lack of political options when it comes to terrorism.

[Galactus]

Because that would mean their objection to the U.S. is based on nationalism rather than politicial Islamism.

It's probably a mistake to consider those two things to be unrelated. I suspect most afghans would consider islamic faith to be a part of their national identity.

[DanteGabriel]

Coco, this could be a teachable moment. The next time the subject of anti-intellectualism comes up, remember that I acknowledged my ignorance and made an attempt to understand something and you slapped me down by essentially telling me to butt out of the conversation instead of making any attempt to enlighten me.

An intellectual worthy of respect would say "Nation building after the Afghan/Russian war would not have been helpful because of A, B and C."

Just catching up with this thread today, but this is really fucking rich after the "I don't care what evidence you cite, I'm going to ignore it all because I know in my gut that stoners are worthless" shit you pulled in the drug policy thread.

An intellectual worthy of respect would respond the way you want when he finds an intellect worthy of respect.

[TrueMetis]

Maybe we need an actual fucking goal in Afghanistan. Not something stupid and impossible like a democratic government, how about something simple like giving the people all the rights and freedoms outlined in the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Basically protect them from the Taliban and let them figure out everything else out. And we also got to turn the fucking ANA into an actual fucking military force. As is most of them are just fucking thugs. Bet the ANA doesn't even have a psych exam.

We can't beat the Taliban, it's hard enough to defeat an insurgency in your own country let alone someone else's, what we can do is protect people from them and give them what they need to figure it out on their own. (basically security) Hold the towns cities and important roads, and let the Taliban have the country where no one fucking lives anyway. Give the Afghan people some time away from being shot at and they're start to realize they don't have to put up with this shit anymore. Might not make them like us but it will certainly put us in way better standing than the Taliban, and once they've decided to get rid of the Taliban then the Taliban is screwed. (at least in Afghanistan, and who knows maybe it will spread to other countries)

There has been movement in that direction but no one wants to really go that way because it's not what militaries are used or made for.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Because that would mean their objection to the U.S. is based on nationalism rather than politicial Islamism.-- I'm with galactus - I don't see the difference.

The former problem is much more easily solved. We leave, and the problem ends, because the only thing they care about is their country. But if the objection is the latter, then the threat to the U.S. doesn't end if we leave the country because their goals are not limited simply to being left alone as a nation.

At least, that's my take on it. Ckrisz may have different reasons for thinking the difference matters.

[Ckrisz]

IIRC, the Baluchis are also a problem.

And are you sure that the Pakistani military has no interest in making sure the Pashtun are reasonably happy? I mean, we are dealing with what is now a "democratically elected government", a government that kind of needs support.

Have you seen this video? And all governments in Pakistan, whether democratic or not, have allowed the military free reign in both Baluchistan and the FATA. Not all Pashtun are Taliban, despite what you seem to be arguing - Pashtuns make up a disproportionate number of Pakistani military officers, right behind the Punjabis in that respect.

I'm with galactus - I don't see the difference.

Afghanistan traditionally has never been an Islamist state, and certainly not one ruled by Deobandi ideologues. It has always had a very strong tradition of following Sufi 'saints' (the 'mad mullahs' of Brit propaganda) combined with shrine pilgrimage, much more in line with Barelvi-style worship. Check out Thomas Barfield, Olivier Roy (Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan), and William Maley (The Afghanistan Wars) on this. Islam has always provided a unifying/legitimizing glue for resistance movements against the British and the Soviets, but never was an Islamic regime dominated by clerics seen as an end in itself.

Now, I'm not familiar with their ideology at all, but did they have designs to take over parts of the country, or did they want to have their own place to live and to be left alone?

Read The Turner Diaries.

I could agree with that. But I'd weigh it as 50/50, and I'm curious as to what you see as it being weighed at.

80/20, more or less.

That'd be nice.

Thor's recommendation sounds pretty much like the McChrystal/Petraeus strategy ongoing right now.

[Ckrisz]

If they've allowed free reign, then why are you saying they are not doing enough and need to be pressured?

My point was that the Pakistani Army has no inhibitions with mass killing of civilians, including Pashtuns, when its priorities are involved - i.e. Bajaur, Swat, etc. Yet somehow scruples apparently come into play when the Afghan Taliban's bases in North Waziristan are in question.

You're saying that an Islamic regime was never considered an end goal until the Taliban, and therefore the Taliban's resistance movement against the Americans is not nationalist in character?

Why would you say that someone like J. Haqqani, who seems to be ambiguously taliban, wasn't nationalist?

Obviously it is possible to be both nationalist and Islamist. However Haqqani and many other Taliban obviously prioritize the seizure of power and the conversion of Afghanistan into a purely hardline Islamist state - otherwise they would not work so closely with the Pakistani ISI, whose priority is the dominance of Pakistan over the sovereign state of Afghanistan.

Until I do, please explain.

McVeigh viewed the Federal Government as dominated by a secret claque which essentially sought to dominate the world and destroy freedom. The Second Amendment was viewed as critical to McVeigh's worldview in that the seizure of weapons across America would be the first step along these lines. The idea of the Federal Government being the overweening power through which a secret group could seize control was key. In order to satisfy the paranoid worldview of McVeigh and his ilk, the Federal government would have to be largely destroyed as an organization in ways that most Americans would find unacceptable.

[Galactus]

Obviously it is possible to be both nationalist and Islamist. However Haqqani and many other Taliban obviously prioritize the seizure of power and the conversion of Afghanistan into a purely hardline Islamist state - otherwise they would not work so closely with the Pakistani ISI, whose priority is the dominance of Pakistan over the sovereign state of Afghanistan.

There is another issue though: Afghanistan is divided linguistically and culturally. The one glue that holds the thing together is Islam. (Somalia, btw. was in a similar situation until the ethiopian intervention at least, although Somalia is actually remarkably ethnically homogenous, it has different divisions)

My point is that nationalism and islamism are by no means mutually exclusive (definitely not in the short-term) and indeed go hand in hand. I'm not certain the people involved neccessarily see a contradiction between the two: To fight for Islam is to fight for Afghan national identity, to fight for afghan national sovereignity is to fight for Islam.

[TrueMetis]

There have been a lot of anecdotes about members of the Taliban joining the ANA to get their free Kalashnikov, and then leaving and going back to the front. Not only do they not have a psych exam, but they can't tell who is who.

That's fucked. There are Canadian Forces troops training these people they should be held to Canadian Forces standards.

Thor's recommendation sounds pretty much like the McChrystal/Petraeus strategy ongoing right now.

I haven't seen any plans talking about actually setting a standard for the ANA.

Which you know would be kind of important for Afghanistan overall.

[Ckrisz]

I just don't see the desire to make Afghanistan into an Islamist state and a nationalist (ie, anti-imperialist, anti-foreign intervention) as all that groundbreaking. I know what you're saying, that having a hardline, almost purely clerical government is definitely new, but I'd say it's difficult to say that hard line Islamic values weren't the result of soviet invasion, the importing of Arabic fighters into the mix, and then 30+ years of civil war. If you wanted to argue from your perspective, hardline militancy didn't arise until the state fell apart.

I don't think you could see hardline Islamist militancy as a major movement in Afghanistan until the state fell apart. Without the Saur Revolution and the Soviet invasion, the Islamist parties in Afghanistan would never have come close to power, just as Islamist parties in Pakistan have always failed at the ballot box. This is not to say that Afghanistan is not a very conservative Islamic society. All Afghan leaders have to at least pay lip service to conservative Islamic values, and woe to leaders who try to extend the reach of a secular state too far into the lives of people in the countryside (most often because these extensions were both predatory, in the form of corrupt officials demanding bribes and taxes, and also because they threatened the position of local power brokers who traditionally played the role of intermediary between state and countryside).

Political Islamism, however, is very different in that it doesn't recognize civil law or civil authority, it doesn't acknowledge or promote a secular education system, but it does claim power over the most mundane details of people's lives. Political Islamism doesn't acknowledge the rights of normal Afghans to live their own lives - rather it represents the most intrusive and ugly form of state control possible, in the form of an outside power that seeks to regulate every aspect of traditional life. Both political Islamism and Communism represented modernist revolutions in Afghan society, and both managed to thoroughly wreck it in the 1980s and 1990s. The Taliban represent the latest and most mutated form of Islamism (molded in the refugee camps and madrasas of the FATA and NWFP of Pakistan) and thus, IMO, a quite alien form of government in Afghanistan.

What about the people at Waco? Did they want to do more than have a compound independent of mainstream society?

I'm describing McVeigh's views, not the Waco cultists. That's why I don't view them as having anything to do with each other, other than McVeigh becoming more radicalized by their fate.

I haven't seen any plans talking about actually setting a standard for the ANA.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/556-caldwell.pdf

I can't tell you the number of stories and shady behavior I saw and heard about Iraqi Army and police when I was over there. Yet the Iraqi security forces have maintained, despite some spectacular attacks, a level of peace and security in Iraq far better than what we saw in 2006-2007. It took them years to get there, and they certainly aren't up to Western standards, but they don't have to be --- they just have to be better organized, more disciplined, and more effective than the enemy. And so far, they are. The ANA can get there too --- keep in mind that we haven't put real, genuine resources into training the ANA until 2007 or so. The Taliban aren't that good. Building a capable force that can beat them consistently really doesn't require that the ANA Be as good as the Canadian Forces (and I have much respect for Canadians). Hell, an ANA as good as the old DRA Army would be plenty fine.

[TrueMetis]

I can't tell you the number of stories and shady behavior I saw and heard about Iraqi Army and police when I was over there. Yet the Iraqi security forces have maintained, despite some spectacular attacks, a level of peace and security in Iraq far better than what we saw in 2006-2007. It took them years to get there, and they certainly aren't up to Western standards, but they don't have to be --- they just have to be better organized, more disciplined, and more effective than the enemy. And so far, they are. The ANA can get there too --- keep in mind that we haven't put real, genuine resources into training the ANA until 2007 or so. The Taliban aren't that good. Building a capable force that can beat them consistently really doesn't require that the ANA Be as good as the Canadian Forces (and I have much respect for Canadians). Hell, an ANA as good as the old DRA Army would be plenty fine.

I was talking about the Canadian forces entry requirements. (obviously didn't make that clear) Which aren't all that high, if you aren't nuts, don't do drugs, can do 20 push-ups and can run 2.4 km in less than 13 minutes your good.

[Ckrisz]

I was talking about the Canadian forces entry requirements. (obviously didn't make that clear) Which aren't all that high, if you aren't nuts, don't do drugs, can do 20 push-ups and can run 2.4 km in less than 13 minutes your good.

I'm pretty sure about 20% of the IAs I saw during my last deployment couldn't do at least one of those. Drug and alcohol use was pretty rampant at a lot of the IP posts I went to as well. But how many insurgents could do any of that either?