The Grey Lady treats us to this profile of a man who just won’t go away: Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Omar’s reputation as incorruptible, and a fierce fighter (who, after an eye was wounded during a battle against the Soviets, removed that eye and kept fighting, according to the story anyway)… who has shown a remarkable military sophistication despite being only semi-literate… are all legendary. Omar is either a military genius in his own right, or he has been made one care of friends in the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
The result is the same: a once wildly unpopular Taliban that is now operating as rag-tag guerrillas, both on their own and in conjunction with other local warlords, has confounded the Mightiest Military in the History of the World (TM), and our NATO allies, who, alas, have, in the interest of “nationbuilding on the cheap,” thrown our lot in with a fundamentally corrupt Karzai government that leaves much to be desired. Among its many failures is that it has not been able to provide basic security or any other government services to most of Afghanistan-a gaping vacuum which the Taliban has filled (despite its insane unpopularity).
The Grey Lady can’t bring itself to utter the words “Pashtun Honor Code” as to why Omar won’t give up bin Laden or A.Q…. but that’s why. Omar has extended his hospitality to OBL, and having done so, pledges to protect his guests if necessary with his own life and the lives of his family, tribesmen, et al. and… well, that’s that. Getting the Taliban to hand over their guests will, in short, be somewhere between “not easy” and “not going to happen.”
At the end of the day, the quagmire fatigue that has already taken over the Iraq mission (which goes on largely because casualties from there tend not to be reported so much) will eventually subsume the Afghan mission as well (particularly if Gen. McChrystal’s “surge” requests are heeded and 40 or 60 thousand more American targets are brought to the theater on a “mission” that doesn’t bring us any closer to a resolution there). And Mullah Omar will still be there. And so will the Taliban. And so will their A.Q. guests. Something to keep in mind as we consider “negotiating” with the Taliban, which, said quagmire fatigue will eventually force us to do.
Well, Smartypants College Classmate of The Guy With the Nobel Peace Prize … what’s your “solution,” TD?
That’s wildly over my pay grade. But unfortunately, there is an answer, but it is rather boring, and unsatisfying to an American populace that measures progress in terms of sh*t blowing up on CNN. We need to provide basic “on the ground” security, stability and infrastructure so that the Afghans can have a sustainable economy, growing things like raisins rather than opium. Our troops, and we will indeed need more of them, will have to have a defensive posture, not in barracks, but in villages and hamlets, protecting the locals from rampaging warlords (and, of course, the Taliban) and otherwise providing “order”… because the Taliban gain ground because they can provide “order,” as even their brutality is at least “order”. It won’t be exciting, it will be time-consuming and expensive…but unless we help the Afghans gain enough stability on their own… we will never “win.” We will just have to put away our video-game mentality, and play this the patient, time-consuming way that Mullah and Omar and our enemies are playing it: old school. Will we do it? Not how you bet… but there is no other way.
tdog
I’m not convinced even the scenario you portray can work – in the very unlikely instance that it’s tried. The old saw about Afghani tribalism is, I think, true. The bulk of Afghani people have a very distant and hands off relationship with even a “good” central government. And for an outside force to create a “good” government is next to impossible.
Michael:
I can suggest these things freely knowing that they are not going to be tried! The generals are big on Rummy type “metrics”… i.e., blowing sh*t up. This presents a bit of a problem in Afghanistan as most sh*t worth blowing up has already been blown up.
I agree with you re: we can’t impose a central government, let alone a “good” government in Afghanistan; but my suggestion really amounts to “bottom up” order: first, secure the villages to the point where they can at least take steps to secure themselves and not have to turn to the Taliban for basic order; then we can move on to local alliances with local provincial war-lords, at least the ones with a track record of being able to do business with us (and not, say, problem children like Hekmatyar or even Dostum, for example). All of this will be boring, expensive, immensely time consuming, and unpopular here, and hence… it’s not going to happen.
The related point is that since that is the ONLY possible “good” we can do, and we’re just not going to do it, we might want to consider bugging out earlier, rather than later.
Again, I fully understand that the military industrial Congressional complex will no more allow that than they would allow a withdrawal from Iraq, or for that matter, a disengagement from the over 120-plus countries in which we maintain military bases.
But, since no one is going to listen to me, I may as well tell it like it is.
I just found your blog and I like it.
I think a lot of your solutions are based on false premises that we have been fed by our lying government and press. This seems to be kind of a “stand the up as we stand down” plan you have thought out.
Consider this…
What if we really don’t give a crap about them, and we are really playing a two faced game, and are staying there to destabilize Pakistan?
We are really there because of the pipeline and the minerals, The Taliban are local too – Pashtuns, the Afghans aren’t going to be ruled by outsiders. Whereas the Police we’re training aren’t local.
There are a lot of false flag bombings going on in Pakistan. The real Pakistan Taliban bombings are against the Nato/US targets and the Taliban takes credit. The others are just like the Iraqi suicide bombings that target markets and lots of people. No one takes credit for these.They’ve also killed some of these potential bombers, and upon inspection of the bodies they are uncircumcised Indian Gurkhas.
This reminds me of the standard terrorism tactics used by the P2 group in Italy, called the strategy of tension.
Fear creates sheep, which allows the state to enact “security” measures that would be resisted under ordinary circumstances.
If you listen to what Hillary said in her last trip there, about how the government must not let the camel nose into the tent.. etc, and consider the AID money (Kerry Lugar bill) that was practically forced on them against the will of the public, in return they have to allow our drone bombings that kill innocents.
They also suspect that the pentagon is controlling some of the news because the reports are trying to push nationalism/tribal/regligious pride and division based on borders – thats is foreign to them so they view it as fake jingoism- Allah is the god of the word, not just Pakistan. I can see stupid americans doing this too. The blogger that I read also referred to this as the “Iraq plan”.
I’m trying to learn alot more by reading Pakisani blogs, and writers like Pepe Escobar. I think this is just the “Great Game” and our vultures are in desperation mode.