The PeaceCow Field Journal: February 2009

The following is an assortment of articles on Afhganistan that offers a surprising view of what's really going on--and why...

The reality of war in Afghanistan
By Stephen Kinzer October 15, 2008

DESPITE their differences over how to pursue the US war in Iraq, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both want to send more American troops to Afghanistan. Both are wrong. History cries out to them, but they are not listening.

Both candidates would do well to gaze for a moment on a painting by the British artist Elizabeth Butler called "Remnants of an Army." It depicts the lone survivor of a 15,000-strong British column that sought to march through 150 kilometers of hostile Afghan territory in 1842. His gaunt, defeated figure is a timeless reminder of what happens to foreign armies that try to subdue Afghanistan.

The McCain-Obama approach to Afghanistan, like much of US policy toward the Middle East and Central Asia, is based on emotion rather than realism. Emotion leads many Americans to want to punish perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. They see war against the Taliban as a way to do it. Suggesting that victory over the Taliban is impossible, and that the United States can only hope for peace in Afghanistan through compromise with Taliban leaders, has been taken as near-treason.

This knee-jerk response ignores the pattern of fluid loyalties that has been part of Afghan tribal life for centuries. Alliances shift as interests change. Warlords who support the Taliban are not necessarily enemies of the United States. If they are today, they need not be tomorrow.

In recent weeks, this elemental truth has begun to reshape debate over Western policy toward Afghanistan. Warlords on both sides met quietly in Saudi Arabia. The Afghan defense minister called for a "political settlement with the Taliban." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates would not go that far, but said he might ultimately be open to "reconciliation as part of the political outcome."

Gates, however, struck a delusionary note of "can-do" cheeriness by repeating the McCain-Obama mantra: More US troops can pacify Afghanistan. Speaking days after a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the United States was caught in a "downward spiral" there, Gates asserted that there is "no reason to be defeatist or underestimate the opportunity to be successful in the long run."

In fact, long-run success in Afghanistan - defined as an acceptable level of violence and assurance that Afghan territory will not be used for attacks against other countries - will only be possible with fewer foreign troops on the ground, not more.

A relentless series of US attacks in Afghanistan has produced "collateral damage" in the form of hundreds of civilian deaths, which alienate the very Afghans the West needs. As long as the campaign continues, recruits will pour into Taliban ranks. It is no accident that the Taliban has mushroomed since the current bombing campaign began. It allows the Taliban to claim the mantle of resistance to a foreign occupier. In Afghanistan, there is none more sacred.

The US war in Afghanistan also serves as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. It is attracting a new stream of foreign fighters into the region. A few years ago, these jihadists went to Iraq to fight the Great Satan. Now they see the United States escalating its war in Afghanistan and neighboring regions of Pakistan, and are flocking there instead.

Even if the United States de-escalates its war in Afghanistan, the country will not be stable as long as the poppy trade provides huge sums of money for violent militants. Eradicating poppies is like eradicating the Taliban: a great idea but not achievable. Instead of waging endless spray-and-burn campaigns that alienate ordinary Afghans, the United States should allow planting to proceed unmolested, and then buy the entire crop. Some could be turned into morphine for medical use, and the rest destroyed. The Afghan poppy crop is worth an estimated $4 billion per year. That sum would be better spent putting cash into the pockets of Afghan peasants than firing missiles into their villages.

Deploying more US troops in Afghanistan will intensify this highly dangerous conflict, not calm it. Compromise with Al Qaeda would be both unimaginable and morally repugnant, but the Taliban is a different force. Skillful negotiation among clan leaders, based on a genuine willingness to compromise, holds the best hope for Afghanistan. It is an approach based on reality, not emotion.

Stephen Kinzer is author of "A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It."
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TIME Magazine article

As the world's finance ministers wring their hands over the global financial crisis, a quieter multilingual chorus of dismay is emanating from the military compounds and foreign offices of one of the planet's most powerful nations. Afghanistan, NATO's first post[EN]Cold War, non-European experiment and the U.N.'s most significant mission to date, has been termed a failure, leading many decision makers to contemplate the unthinkable: negotiations with the very same Taliban leadership that was defeated in 2001.

The only problem is, negotiations are unlikely to be successful, and reliance on such stopgap solutions may only make things worse.
Among top military and diplomatic strategists, the failure of the current approach in Afghanistan has been accepted as inevitable. Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, Britain's top military officer in Afghanistan, has said, "We're not going to win this war."

At best, he says, international troops can hope to reduce it "to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat." U.K. ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, in a leaked diplomatic briefing with the French deputy ambassador, is said to have described the current situation in Afghanistan as "bad; the security situation is getting worse — so is corruption — and the government [of President Hamid Karzai] has lost all trust." The American strategy, he said, "is doomed to fail."

While the U.K. foreign office disputes the veracity of the briefing, the sentiments are echoed in diplomatic circles across Kabul and have even found traction in the U.S., which has long persisted in regarding Afghanistan as the "good war." Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told reporters last week that "the trends across the board are not going in the right direction," and in a year in which violence has reached its worst levels since the U.S. invasion of the country in 2001, he voiced concerns that next year in Afghanistan could be even worse.

His fears echo a nearly completed U.S. National Intelligence Assessment that has described a "downward spiral" in Afghanistan unless major improvements are immediately implemented. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration has launched a major review of its Afghanistan policy just as new ground-based intelligence indicates that this winter may not yield the expected lull in fighting that would have allowed a deployment of extra troops to wait until the spring. U.S. and Afghan forces patrolling the eastern border near Pakistan have uncovered caches of cold-weather gear and weapons in areas that are usually closed off during winter snows.

The Impossibility of Winning
In June, Dan McNeil, the outgoing NATO commander in Afghanistan, estimated that it would take some 400,000 troops to win the war. Currently, the total allied force stands at just over 70,000, with an additional 60,000 poorly equipped Afghan troops in various states of training. McNeil's replacement, U.S. General David McKiernan, has appealed to the White House for 15,000 more U.S. troops "as quickly as possible" but has been promised less than half that number by spring of next year. More troops are unlikely to be forthcoming until the U.S. starts pulling out of Iraq. In the meantime, McKiernan has cautioned reporters that Afghanistan "might get worse before it gets better."

With the global financial situation spiraling out of control, countries are even less likely to contribute troops and treasure to a war that seems, on its face, less threatening to the West by the day. Al-Qaeda has so far failed to replicate the devastating attacks of 9/11, and low-intensity efforts to keep Osama bin Laden on the run appear to have been effective. With the ebbing of public support for the war, and with casualties and costs reaching record levels, world leaders and military commanders are now clutching for solutions and exits, including possible power-sharing deals with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents.

Kai Eide, the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, said on Oct. 6 that "if you want to have relevant results, you must speak to those who are relevant." U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reiterated the new philosophy a day later, saying at a press conference that the only way to win the war was "through political means."

President Karzai seems to be moving in the same direction. Last week he appealed to Taliban leader Mullah Omar for peace and offered to talk. And in September, during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, representatives of Karzai's government sat with former Taliban leaders and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in Mecca to discuss Afghanistan's problems over a sunset feast of more than 100 dishes. Both Karzai's government and Afghanistan's current Taliban leadership deny that any negotiations took place. But one of the attendees, Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former representative of the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Pakistan before its overthrow in 2001, characterized the meeting to TIME as a "consultation about the future of Afghanistan, about stability, about peace and what we can do to bring it to our country."

The Plausibility of a Taliban Pact
Reconciliation with the opposition is an inevitable part of the end of any war, and no leader, military or otherwise, has ever said that total military victory is the only path to a stable Afghanistan. But the sudden courting of Taliban leaders appears to be more an act of desperation than strategy.

The problem with any potential Taliban agreement lies in incentives. Chaos in Afghanistan has always played to the Taliban's advantage, which makes the notion that its leaders could be seduced by promises of stability myopic. Besides, Zaeef, who is no longer a member of the Taliban leadership but still adheres to the Taliban philosophy, says the Taliban are not fighting for power but for ideology. "Until the Americans and other foreigners leave, this war is not for share in the government, but a war of obligation, a holy jihad."
(Click here for a photo essay on Afghanistan's mean streets.)

Taliban spokesman Zaibullah Mujahid took it a step further, telling TIME by telephone that "no one from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan [the name of the country under Taliban rule from 1996-2001] is ready to negotiate with this government. The conditions that the government and the Americans offer is that the Taliban accept the constitution and the presence of American and other foreign troops in Afghanistan. Our condition would be the withdrawal of all foreign troops, and without that we are not ready to negotiate."

While the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda has frayed over the years, bin Laden's group is still a principal financial supporter, and as such would have input on major decisions that the Taliban make. Needless to say, it will be impossible for any negotiations to take place unless the Taliban renounce all ties with the terrorist group. That's an unlikely scenario, says Zaeef. "I am not sure the Taliban will say to al-Qaeda, 'Leave the country and don't support us,' because there is no one else funding the Taliban, so there is no way they would beak with their key supporters."

Disaffection Inside the Taliban
Even if Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Karzai were able to overcome their glaring differences to hammer out a power-sharing agreement, the real question would be: How much power could Mullah Omar actually wield?

While he does hold sway over a large mass of the former Taliban command structure, which has largely taken refuge in Pakistan's lawless mountain sanctuaries, the bulk of what is currently known as the Taliban in Afghanistan is made up of disaffected and alienated bands of Pashtun tribesmen who have been leveraged out of their traditional power bases and are disillusioned by the increasingly corrupt and ineffective government in Kabul. The only point that these groups — some of which are made up of opportunistic criminals, narcotics kingpins and smugglers — can agree on is that they are against the Afghan government.

Any true reconciliation would have to include these groups, as well as the Taliban leadership, and that is an almost inconceivable task. "The West tends to imagine a rather more coherent organization than the Taliban really is," says Joanna Nathan, Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group. "They imagine there is a single element of control over a wider organization. This view that it is somehow going to be Mullah Omar sitting at one end of the table while President Karzai sits at the other as they sign a power-sharing agreement and we can all go home — that is a fantasy."

A better strategy might be to cut at the roots of this dissatisfaction with the central government. The Taliban has capitalized on widespread disillusion with corrupt, centrally appointed officials to recruit to its cause.

Few Afghans feel that they have an adequate outlet for settling grievances, like land disputes, so they are more likely to turn to Taliban courts that have sprung up in government vacuums. Real reconciliation, says Nathan, should be taking place at the grass roots, with Afghans who have become alienated from the government. If they can be persuaded that the government is looking after their needs, they are less likely to support the Taliban.
This approach would also be much more palatable to Afghans from the largely non-Pashtun north, who bitterly fought Taliban rule during the civil war and are more likely to launch another war than submit to a Taliban-led government.

The Taliban today operate in virtually every Afghan province, and in several places they have been able to create a parallel system of government, but they do not have the support of a majority of Afghans. Most still vividly remember the deprivations of Taliban rule, and if given a choice, they would prefer their current situation to that of eight years ago.

The international community has already wasted seven years and billions of dollars in failed attempts to reverse the depredations of Taliban rule; a far better solution to the Talibans' resurgence would be correcting the mistakes of the past and delivering, for once, on international promises of democracy and development.

about Sweeta's case and promised to look into it, but Sweeta's sister Saleha had already given up on the government, and wondered if the past seven years of foreign intervention have brought any progress at all to Afghanistan. "If the Taliban were still here, that rapist would have already been executed by now. It would have been a lesson for all," she says. "If there is no law, and the government does not listen to people's complaints, then it is better to go back to the Taliban era. At least then we had justice." —With reporting by Ali Safi / Shebergan

Tuesday, Dec. 09, 2008
Warlords Toughen US Task in Afghanistan
By Aryn Baker / Kabul

Like many mothers in Afghanistan, Maghferat Samimi has affixed the photo of a child to her mobile phone. But the two-and-a-half-year-old is not her daughter. She is a rape victim, one of scores that Samimi, a researcher with the Afghan Human Rights Organization, has documented in the country's northern provinces over the past six months. Witnesses to the child's abduction by a local militia commander — a person who would once have been called a "warlord" — have had their rape claim backed up by a nearby hospital, but the district police chief maintains that the child fell on a stick. The police chief's refusal to issue an arrest warrant, he says, has nothing to do with the fact that he is friends with the militia commander. Seeking justice from government officials, says Samimi, "is like going to the wolves for help, when the wolves have stolen your sheep." That is what it is like in Afghanistan, where lawless warlords are now the law. (See pictures here of the perils of motherhood in Afghanistan.)

The Afghan warlords largely responsible for assisting the U.S.'s ousting of the Taliban in 2001 are now deeply entrenched in Afghan society. They have positions in government, in the police, in the army and in business. Though they have largely relinquished their tanks and heavy artillery, most have been able to maintain their core militias in the form of private security companies, political parties or loose business networks.

Allegations of land grabs, rape, murder and kidnapping are rife. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Afghan human rights organizations such as Samimi's have documented extortion rackets run by former warlords and militia-run prisons where captives are held for ransom. Afghan journalists covering their crimes have been harassed by police or thrown in jail. Last year Samimi received a phone call from General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a U.S. ally who was appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as Army Chief of Staff, threatening to have her raped "by 100 men" if she continued investigating a rape case in which he was implicated. Dostum denies ever making such a threat and calls the rape allegation "propaganda." A witness to the phone call, military prosecutor General Habibullah Qasemi, was dismissed from his post soon after, despite carrying a sheaf of glowing recommendation letters penned by U.S. military supervisors.

Faced with a rapidly spreading insurgency that threatens to overturn seven years of incremental progress in Afghanistan — a survey released Monday by the International Council on Security and Development reports that the Taliban are present in 72% of the country — the U.S. and its allies are struggling to find a new strategy to stabilize Afghanistan. President George W. Bush has announced that about 4,500 more soldiers will be sent there early in the new year, but that is a fraction of what General David McKiernan, head of NATO forces in Afghanistan, has said that he needs to successfully conduct the war. Meanwhile, allied forces have been forced to rely on local militia leaders for intelligence gathering, delivery of supplies and to better understand the country's southern tribal networks.

In the north, where the Uzbek and Tajik warlords' historic hatred of the Pashtun-dominated Taliban has maintained a stability that has so far been unattainable elsewhere, both national and coalition leaders are loathe to upset the balance by pushing for prosecution. One former NATO official in Afghanistan compares the warlords to shrapnel lodged in an artery — infection is a risk, he says, but pulling it out could be even worse. "There are so many other things we have to worry about, so why go and open this can of worms?"

In a new article in Foreign Affairs magazine, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates writes, "Over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory. Where possible, [military] operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance ... and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit."

But so far, the U.S. is failing to do that. With the possibility that Indian threats of retaliation over last month's terror attacks on Mumbai could force Pakistan to move its military to the east from the Afghan border, where it is currently fighting elements of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it is more important than ever that Afghanistan's central government be strengthened. The perception that warlords, protected by their influence and threats of violence, can commit crimes with impunity has rocked Afghan society, and threatens to undermine the very government that the United States and its allies are trying to build up.

This is not the first time warlords have had positions of power in Afghanistan. Following the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops, rival mujahedin groups that had united to drive the foreigners out turned on each other, further destroying the country in a brutal civil war marked by warlord rule. The government collapsed, and militia commanders were able to seize territory, terrorize the population and, in some cases, even issue currency.

The Taliban capitalized on widespread disgust with their savagery, eventually coming to power in 1996. The U.S., unwilling to commit large numbers of ground troops when it went to overthrow the Taliban government, relied instead on the northern warlords and their militias. In a grave mistake that was to haunt Afghanistan for years to come, many of those leaders were given prominent positions when the new Afghan government was formed, enabling them to claw back credibility that had been lost due to their abhorrent behavior in the civil war. Samimi laments the lost opportunity for Afghanistan to start over. "Right after the collapse of the Taliban, the government had the opportunity to go after these commanders because they were scared and weak," she says. "Instead the international community and the government supported them and made them stronger. They didn't bring them to justice; they waited until they committed more crimes. For this we ousted the Taliban?"

It is the unfulfilled promise of a new, clean democracy that has alienated the very Afghans that the West depends on to build a strong, stable country. Educated moderates, such as Samimi, have no love for the Taliban, but they have also become disillusioned with the current government's failings, as exemplified by the unaddressed predations of militia commanders. Francesc Vendrell, the former European Union envoy to Afghanistan, holds that "warlordism," as he calls it, is just as much at the root of the insurgency as religious ideology. "In Muslim society justice is the most essential element and, here in Afghanistan, people simply don't see it exist. They see impunity; they see a few people become extremely wealthy and they see cruelty," he says. "Therefore I think many of them are fence sitters. And you can't hope to win an insurgency when the civilians are sitting on the fence."

For some Afghans, however, it may be too late. Among Samimi's other rape cases is 11-year-old Sweeta, whose attacker was protected by his employer, a local commander. The family's repeated attempts to bring the rapist to justice have been borne little fruit. In an interview with TIME this summer, President Karzai was told about Sweeta's case and promised to look into it, but Sweeta's sister Saleha had already given up on the government, and wondered if the past seven years of foreign intervention have brought any progress at all to Afghanistan. "If the Taliban were still here, that rapist would have already been executed by now. It would have been a lesson for all," she says. "If there is no law, and the government does not listen to people's complaints, then it is better to go back to the Taliban era. At least then we had justice." —With reporting by Ali Safi / Shebergan

It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said.

Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding that without a change in U.S. policy there, the erstwhile sanctuary of Osama bin Laden would remain a failed state. After spending $25 billion over six years to try to defeat the Taliban, the radical Islamist militia that had been dispersed into the mountains by the initial U.S. invasion is now a growing presence in large parts of the country. The Taliban is now setting off more bombs — including one in Kabul's fanciest hotel on January 14 that killed eight people — and fueling its insurgency with profits from the opium trade. (Last year, the country produced 93% of the world's supply.) The declining security situation saw foreign investment in Afghanistan fall by 50% last year.

The Taliban is also killing more Americans: From 2002 to 2004, an average of one U.S. soldier was killed per week in Afghanistan; by 2007, that figure had more than doubled. Indeed, nearly 500 U.S. troops have perished in America's "forgotten war." Despite the presence of 50,000 foreign troops, including 28,000 Americans, arrayed against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has just ordered another 3,200 Marines into the fight. And the reluctance of other NATO members to send additional troops is threatening the future of the alliance. "Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," said a study by the Atlantic Council released Wednesday. "Unless this reality is understood, and action is taken promptly, the future of Afghanistan is bleak, with regional and global impact."

Despite such grim news, the message to the Foreign Relations Committee from the Administration was that things are actually getting better. "Progress is being made," said Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher at the hearing. "If you add together the achievements in roads, achievements in education, achievements in health care, we see a profoundly changed situation in Afghanistan."

The U.S. and its allies are driving the Taliban from some of its strongholds, he added, and the bad guys are striking back the only way they can — by blowing themselves up. Across the Potomac, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that "the rise in violence and attacks such as we saw in Kabul are the manifestation of a group that has lost in regular military terms in 2007, and is turning to terrorism as a substitute for that." And although Gates said he couldn't confirm it, a militant web site reported Thursday that Abu Laith al-Libi, a top al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, has been killed in Pakistan.
But at the hearing, Lugar remained unimpressed. He likened the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan to a political campaign in Indiana. A candidate can tell his supporters, "I've been to Clinton County, I've touched base, and we're doing well over here in Kokomo,'" Lugar said. "But if the final result is that you get 25% of the vote and lose three to one, this is bad news."

Retired Marine General James Jones, who once led the Afghan campaign as NATO commander and who contributed to two of the critical reports issued this week, also offered the panel a grim assessment. There is a "loss of momentum" in Afghanistan that could lead to "backsliding" if not soon regained, he said. Jones warned that the failure to curb opium production and stand up a government with functioning police and courts remain major problems. "The safe havens for the insurgents are more numerous now than they were one or two or three years ago," Jones added. "If we are correct and there's a spiraling situation in an unfavorable direction, the ultimate solution is not a military problem, but it could become one."

Democrats repeatedly cited the Iraq war as draining the resources needed to prevail in Afghanistan. Senator Joseph Biden, the panel's chairman, noted that the U.S. has spent the same amount on aid and development in Afghanistan over the past five years as the military burns through in Iraq every three weeks. "If we should be surging forces anywhere," the Delaware Democrat said, "it's in Afghanistan, not Iraq." But Boucher argued that the U.S. and its allies must be prepared to fight in multiple theaters simultaneously to prevent the emergence of terrorist safe havens that could hatch another 9/11. "You can't neglect any portion of the planet," he said.

There is, of course, a sense of deja vu here: Last year, Congress, much of the military and assorted think tankers were leery of President Bush's plans to surge 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq. But he did it anyway, and it has succeeded in quelling violence across that country, at least for the time being. For now, the Bush Administration seems to be willing to bet it can repeat that performance in Afghanistan

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