Afghanistan: The Good, the Bad, and the Newsworthy, pt. 1

I'm happy to see Afghanistan back in the news after a conspicuous absence lasting, oh, say, four years (every since we invaded Iraq).  Since 2003, there has been an oft-heard refrain among disgruntled military types and anyone else ranting about American strategical failures/inconsistencies in the Middle East-- it goes something like this: ". . . . and NOBODY is talking about Afghanistan anymore."  You might have heard it like this: ". . . . and you wouldn't even know there's a war going on in Afghanistan."  Gripes about the downsized media coverage of Afghanistan are legitimate; though a smaller scale conflict by roughly 130,000 soldiers (U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan have fluctuated between 18,000 and 26,000 over the past two years compared to Iraq's "surge" increase since January 2007 from 138,000 to 163,000), a losing war in Afghanistan poses no less of a security threat to U.S. and global interests than loss in Iraq.  

In Afghanistan, loss means the collapse of the Karzai government and the return of the Taliban. Loss also means the unchecked resurgence of the opium trade and the end of seven years worth of sustainable economic development initiatives.  Finally, real loss in Afghanistan means true failure for Bush's misguided Iran containment plan (U.S. bases supported by stable pro-U.S. regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan).  Whether or not Iranian containment is the most pressing issue in the region is another story entirely.  

Should U.S. and NATO forces (the latter also at an all-time high of 26,000 since December) leave Afghanistan, precious influence over and upon Pakistan's tribal regions will also be lost.  As everyone knows, the mountainous regions of northern Pakistan (esp. Waziristan) -- just over the Khyber pass from Afghanistan's Tora Bora cave network -- are home to nearly unfettered Taliban and al-Qaeda training camps and operations strongholds.  Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf claims to have global anti-terrorist interests in mind and strong anti-terrorist military policy in place.  He remains "pro-U.S." and anti-Taliban/al-Qaeda.  But as last summer's Red Mosque siege, the Bhutto assassination, a quadrupling of suicide attacks in Pakistan, and recent Taliban successes in Afghanistan show, Musharraf's iron fist needs some alloying from his allies.  

These issues -- threats to development, the risks associated with allied failure in Afghanistan, and the ultimately feeble hand of Musharraf are the subject of recent articles in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Washington Monthly.  Last week's Sunday edition of the Post included a series of articles on Iraq, the most powerful of which was an article about the effect of Iraq's many displaced populations on regional stability and economic/political development. 

This Sunday's Post gives all its attention to Afghanistan, with a strangely comforting interview with Afghan President Hamid Karzai (perhaps dismaying, depending on whether you take Karzai's answers as dejectedly noncommittal or optimistic) and an article about small success in Jalalabad overshadowed by Taliban success on the other side of the country.  Karzai shocked me with his answer to Lally Weymouth's question about Iran: 

Q: How much influence does Iran have in your country right now, Mr. President?

A: We have had a particularly good relationship with Iran in the past six years.  It's a relationship that I hope will continue.  We have opened our doors to them.  They have been helping us in Afghanistan.  The United States very wisely understood that it is our neighbor and encouraged that relationship.  I hope Iran would also understand that the United States is a great ally of ours and that we value that alliance with the United States.  So that is the foundation of our relationship with them, and I hope that it will continue as it is.

Wow!!: "The United States very wisely understood that [Iran] is our neighbor and encouraged that relationship."  Is that the same United States that calls Iran an Axis of Evil country and maligns Iran for providing Iraqi insurgents with the materials that go into EFPs (a new breed of armor-piercing shape-charge IEDs)?  Is that the same United States that recently added Iran's Revolutionary Guard to its dread list of terrorist organizations?  The same United States that, up until a month ago, was threatening bunker-busting bombing missions over Iran's potential but actually non-existent weapons facilities?  I know Karzai's in between rocks and hard places (actually three rocks when you include Pakistan), trying to please Tehran, Washington, and Brussels, not to mention a swath of formidable warlords and domestic political forces; but are such answers nothing more than the squeals of a pinched man?  I hope not.  I hope it's true that Iran is a positive actor in the future of Afghanistan.  And oh how I hope it's true that some representative agency of the United States "very wisely," officially or unofficially, recognized where Afghanistan's logical friends and enemies are in the region.  Such an "agreement" or "realization" would be called "diplomacy" by some, something that has been lacking between Iran and the United States for almost thirty years.

Afghan insecurity poses a threat to the region as a whole, and Iran has as much of a stake in Afghanistan's future as the United States, if not more.  It's helpful to remember that Iran is managed somewhat tentatively by its slim Persian majority (51%), holed up mostly in Tehran and its environs.  Instability in Afghanistan invites instability along Iran's ethnically and economically repressed southeastern border, where the regionally prominent Baluchi population -- which moves between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan -- remains a threat to the Iranian state.  This from the Congressional Research Service's May 2007 "Report for Congress": "In March 2007, a group called Jundallah attacked a government motorcade which left 20 people dead, kidnapped a number of hostages, and executed at least one member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards."  I'd say that's a significant attack; if such an attack were carried out on U.S. citizens by any splinter group it would be the biggest insurrection since the Civil War.  I'd also say increased instability of southern Afghanistan -- a region known (and feared by Iranian and Pakistani authorities) for its major smuggling industry -- only presents the possibility of more attacks like this one.  Hence Iran's support for a stable Afghanistan.  If Iran is supporting Karzai's government, and supporting U.S. interests in doing so, why would Iran encourage Iraqi instability?  

Similarly repressed and militant ethnic populations exist on Iraq's borders (Azers and Kurds), and instability offers these groups freer reign too; so wouldn't it be in Iran's interest to promote Iraqi stability too?  Maybe they are, but Bush's Axis of Evil rhetoric prevents the sort of diplomatic dialogue necessary for an expansion of Iran's role (or at least of our truthful awareness of it).  Maybe it's only because Afghanistan has been so far out of the limelight that U.S. and Iranian agents have been able to "wisely understand" each other; the lack of media attention has ensured no Washington firebrands would notice.

Karzai shocked me with another of his answers:

Q: Are you going to run for another term in 2009?

A: Well, I have things to accomplish.  Who was it who wrote -- Robert Frost? -- "The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.  And miles to go before I sleep."

WOW!  Can you imagine President Bush quoting poetry at all?  Let alone poetry in a foreign language?  Karzai wins me over with that response.  I only wish our own presidential candidates were able to focus on their jobs over their presidential aspirations like Mr. Karzai. Had Bush not been wholly focused on winning in 2004, I wonder if 2003 - 2006 would've been such botched years in Iraq and Afghanistan (hmmmnn . . . I wonder if we would've gone to Iraq at all, had Bush's sole concern -- and the concern of all those riding along with him, or maybe it's better to say 'all those for whom he chauffeured' -- not been neocon re-election).

The same Outlook section also features an article by David Ignatius about a tentative development success story in Nangahar province, titled "An Afghan Province Points the Way." "You can see in Jalalabad what success would look like," writes Ignatius; "the challenge is to make that picture real across Afghanistan."  Focusing mostly on the blend of factors leading to relative stability in Jalalabad, Ignatius also examines the increasing instability in southern Afghanistan and the sad potential of a northward spread of the violence.  As evidence of that potential, he cites the minister of education, Hanif Atmar, who reports that "Taliban terrorist attacks killed 147 students and teachers over the past 10 months and seriously injured 200 others. This campaign of intimidation closed 590 schools last year, up from 350 the year before.  In areas where students are too scared to go to school, stability and security are still distant goals."

Contrarily, "the American contribution to stability in Jalalabad," writes Ignatius, "is twofold.  First there's the PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) effort.  With its focus on economic development, the team is reaching out to the very people whose support the Taliban insurgents need to survive. . . .  A second component of U.S. success here is the low-visibility but high-impact mix of combat and intelligence operations. . . . When you visit places like Jalalabad and see things working the way they're supposed to, there's always a disconnect with what you've been reading and hearing about the larger war. . . . The reality is that the larger war in Afghanistan isn't going as well as it seems to be in this province.  Roadside bombs and suicide attacks were up last year.  The Taliban is gaining strength in some parts of the country.  The Afghan national government is weak and disorganized.  And NATO's operations are a ragged quilt--with no other nation matching U.S. effort, either in combat firepower or people friendly PRTs."

Ignatius makes an interesting point with his take on the claim that "counterinsurgency wars are . . . about creating a state of mind.  Security is a habit," Ignatius wisely understands, "born of weeks and months of ordinary life."  The problem, he continues, is that "insecurity, too, is a habit, born of fear that a suicide bomber may attack your village or your Kabul hotel, regardless of how infrequent those attacks may really be."

(To be continued)

George F. Will charges Dems with Manicheism

In a Washington Post op-ed piece entitled "Waiting for Straight Talk" (Sun., Jan 20) George F. Will writes "There are decent, intelligent people who believe that equity and efficiency or both are often served by government setting prices. In America, such people are called Democrats." Putting aside Will's obvious condescension -- those of us who believe in evolution and human-induced global climate change subtly deride the nation's Evangelical science-deniers with the same language -- we should look instead at his criticism of Democratic over-reliance on Government regulation of markets. Such a charge is hard to deny. Dems tend to expect a bit too much from the government when it comes to making sure everyone gets paid the wage they want and not the wage they deserve, or the wage "the market" can sustain. "Living Wage" campaigns across the nation over the past decade illustrate the power of misplaced hope to motivate the masses.

During my first year in Charlottesville, VA, University of Virginia students mounted a large and long-lasting protest/propaganda campaign for a "Living Wage" for University employees. With the backing of the University Democrats, the "Living Wage" folks, decked out in t-shirts and buttons, flooded the school with flyers and posters demanding $10.72/hr for all entry-level employees. The "movement" culminated in a round-the-clock occupation of the President's office building, with students camping out on the front lawn and encouraging passersby to "Honk for a Living Wage!" University employees were conspicuously absent from the demonstrations, and, as it turned out, from the Living Wage Campaign's meetings as well. Perhaps they did not want to lose their jobs, or perhaps they weren't as outraged as the students themselves.

I remember being approached by one student organizer who asked me, "hey, would you be willing to get arrested?" The question struck me as odd, so odd that I actually listened to what the kid had to say. He and some of the more hardcore Living Wagers were going to sit-in until the cops came to arrest them, he told me, and their arrests would surely cause enough public outrage that President Casteen would have to compromise. "Well, no, actually I'm not willing to get arrested," I told him, "at least not for this." And, sure enough, about a dozen of the stalwart protesters wound up in the Charlottesville City Jail for a few hours one night in late spring. I've always wondered how much their protest cost the city courts. As for the "Living Wage" itself, it died away without the President's approval. Where did the number $10.72 come from, many students wanted to know. Turns out the Living Wagers borrowed the amount from a similar protest that took place in Washington DC. President Casteen praised the students' commitment to social justice, lamented their unfortunate decision to take their protest too far, and encouraged future protesters to remember that a "Living Wage" in DC and a "Living Wage" in Charlottesville are two different things. UVa employees, Casteen reminded us, begin several dollars above the state's minimum wage.

The "Living Wage" hoopla was one of my first experiences of political organizing -- if we might call it that -- on the local level. I was impressed by the entire event, especially by the students' ability to get the entire city fired up about the issue, on one side or the other. But the most powerful lesson I took away from the debacle was a bit less inspirational: it was the first time I was ever embarrassed by the confluence of idealism and over-zealousness. Well, maybe not.

Later in the article, in which Will accuses McCain of attempting to control political speech and markets (especially the pharmaceutical market) in non-Republican ways, Will recounts, "In the New Hampshire debate, McCain asserted that corruption is the reason drugs cannot be reimported from Canada. The reason is 'the power of the pharmaceutical companies.' When Mitt Romney interjected, 'Don't turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys,' McCain replied, 'Well, they are.'" Again Will throws the apostate McCain to the Dems, but this time with less simple scorn and a bit more vitriol, one might even say unselfconscious over-zealousness: "There is a place in American politics for moralizers who think in such Manichean simplicities. That place is the Democratic Party, where people who talk like McCain are considered not mavericks but mainstream."

Will's charge is laughable at best. In recent years our Republican President has presided over an expansion of Manichean American rhetoric not seen since the days of J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy. I doubt that even Richard Nixon would sling words like "evil" and "bad" around as recklessly as Bush has. Childish, over-simplifying phrases like "Axis of Evil" and "bad men" belong in comic books, not State of the Union Addresses. Worst of all, such rhetoric proves that the Bush administration holds the American public in very low esteem; only an idiot could swallow that kind of Manichean mumbo-jumbo without retching. Bush has presided over intellectual regression on a national level, refusing to engage in the sort of international diplomatic dialogue that acknowledges world leaders -- even enemies -- as sovereign heads of states that represent complex viewpoints and are woven into a complicated fabric of global issues, dilemmas, and geopolitical forces. Were we to follow George Bush with unblinking allegiance, we would have to agree that the world is made up of "good" people and nations and "bad" people and nations, and we would have to acknowledge "evil" as a real, unitary force in world politics. Manichean theology rests on a notion of an eternal struggle on Earth between "good" and "evil." When it comes to espousing such absurdly over-simplified notions of the world -- notions which, unfortunately, gain ground with seemingly intellectual work like Sam Huntington's Clash of Civilizations -- it's Republicans, not Dems, who have anointed themselves Masters of the Universe.

Trip to Colombia.

I've just returned from a three week trip to Colombia. I travelled around the city of Cali, home to more than three million Colombians, and the mountainous province of Quindío. Quindío contains some of Colombia's most beautiful mountain terrain. The lush hills are home to hundreds of small coffee plantations and plantain farms. The numerous valleys -- which must have been all but impenetrable before the advent of the automobile and modern roads -- are perfect for horse farms and cozy haciendas. The rugged terrain would be perfect for the guerilla, but for some reason which isn't quite clear to me, the guerilla have never found a foothold in Quindío. The military presence is strong, and, according to some of the people I was traveling with, the local identity of the "paisas" -- descendants of tough basque settlers -- works to ward of guerilla recruitment techniques. A successful coffee region for nearly a century, Quindío's citizens have not suffered the mass poverty suffered in other regions, where small farmers turned to illegal production of coca either by will or by force, and where youth respond to guerilla promises out of desperation or are conscripted at gunpoint. Now Quindío has a thriving tourism industry that attracts foreigners from Latin America and the broader world and also large numbers of Colombians with disposable income. In Quindío's small towns, one of which houses the national amusement park (Parque del Café), amidst advertisements for rafting trips, Senderos Ecologicos, and zipline canopy tours, it's easy to forget the reason for the large military presence. It's easy to forget that elsewhere in the country soldiers from other units patrol similar towns looking for signs of the guerilla. Other Colombian soldiers follow the sendero ecologico into ambush after ambush in the regions of Colombia where the guerilla remains strong, in many places stronger than the army.

In the city of Cali there are signs of a good deal of economic development. Notably, three or four enormous home improvement centers. Think Home Depot, but twice as big, so big that you can drive your car through the aisles (and you're supposed to, half of the store is drive-in-drive-out loading). There are also a slew of new shopping districts and beautiful restaurants designed with innovative architecture and boasting creative menus. Clearly there are a few thousand people with money to drop on new windows and tile flooring as well as chic dining. But what about everyone else? The slums are incredible, shanty towns lining dirt streets that turn to impassable mud with the first hint of rain. The overwhelming majority of Cali's residents live in poverty, and drug money offers one of the only escapes. Cali's small cadre of bourgeois citizens do not attempt to hide the fact that most of the signs of development are the result of trickle-down drug economics. The "traquetos" -- junior level narcotraficantes -- have a lot of cash on hand, and they're the ones keeping business afire at the city's shopping malls and discotechs. But narcotraffic is not sustainable, and certainly not a foundation for development. What will happen when narcotraffic crashes (if indeed it does crash)? Apparently Colombia is on the verge of signing a free-trade agreement with the United States. Perhaps free-trade will offer enough growth in the labor sector and sustainable manufacturing foundations to regrow the Colombian economy from the ground up. But the broad failures of NAFTA -- particularly for Mexicans -- do not offer much room for hope. Colombians are enjoying this period of growth, and well they should after more than a decade of total stagnation and paralyzing urban violence. But no one is without doubts, and no one will be surprised when dark days return.