A halfway intelligent lance corporal knows that the Afghans are sick of our presence, are united by xenophobic nationalism, and that a great many are skeptical of the kleptocratic Afghan government and military. So the following exchange with General Petraeus suggests a man whose demand for precision ebbs and flows with his desire for a particualr conclusion:
When asked whether nationalism is putting down roots in Afghanistan‘s tribalized society, Gen. David Petraeus is judicious: “I don’t know that I could say that.” He adds, however, that “we do polling” on that subject. When his questioner expresses skepticism about the feasibility of psephology — measuring opinion — concerning an abstraction such as nationalism in a chaotic, secretive and suspicious semi-nation, Petraeus, his pride aroused, protests: “I took research methodology” at Princeton.
Some things can’t be put into a powerpoint slide. They just are known intuitively, based on long experience with the people involved. We lack this experience in Afghanistan. We lack this experience in Iraq. We are trying to do some good things, and we are doing them honorably on the whole, but the payoff in terms of national security is hard to see. The alternative–the occasional punitive raid–seems more easily accomplished and more consistent with the primitive conditions of these nations, as well as the limitations of the American government and American military.
I certainly respect Petraeus’ intelligence and his broader view than many of his peers. That said, his apparent penchant for statistics in the inchoate realm of counterinsurgency suggests a certain hubris. He is understandably unlikely to announce when the strategy and overall mission are destined to fail. He is an impressive “can do” person. That said, the mediocre results in Iraq have been redefined as a great victory, even though Iraq is securely in Iran’s orbit and is still a violent, unfriendly place. His remarks on “methodology” in particular reminded me of something John Lukacs wrote critical of certain tendencies in academia in his book Historical Consciousness:
For the image of the people-obscured as it is by rhetoric and obfuscated by statistics–is an elusive phenomenon. We live in an age of democracy, of popular sovereignty, of popular rule: but who are the people? Intelligent opponents as well as some of the proponent of modern democracy recgnized that of Aristotle’s ‘s three principal types of government–monarchy, aristocracy, democracy–the last one, government by the people, by the many, is the most difficult. But there more to this. Rule by “the people” is not only difficult; it is also the most complex; and the most abstract. It is abstract, because while it is possible to find out, and later relatively easy to reconstruct, what a certain ruler wanted, or even what a ruling group wanted, who can say what “the people” wanted–with any reasonable degree of certainty.
General Petraeus needs to consider this. We don’t know Afghanistan. Polling of the smallish number of accessible Afghans in the city won’t change that. We don’t know Afghanistan, in part, because of the failure to train up specialists in the relevant languages that could help us know what the hell these people are saying, thinking, writing to one another, and the like. We are, in spite of ourselves, the arrogant, ugly American, giving people what they don’t want and surprised when they turn around and want to kill us and our proxies.
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But how do you accomplish a punitive raid in a place like Afghanistan and what do you get out of it?
How do you get the intel? How do you identify a center of gravity? How do you prevent the targets from simply dispersing into the population at the slightest wiff of trouble? Once you do kill somebody important, how do you prevent the organization from just carrying on under a new leader.
Look at how difficult it is in Pakistan, where we have troops just across the border and the cooperation of a semi-functional national government. Yes, we’ve scored some major successes, but that didn’t stop the New York city bomber from doing 6 months of training there.
Where the punitive raid model works is someplace like Saddam’s Iraq, where you have a government and a well-established elite that has a stake in the existing order. But Afghanistan is the situation you end up with after a punitive raid. What’s the point of threatening to send someone back to the stone age when they are already there?
I guess the question is this – how is there any viable strategy to deal with the threat so long as we continue to let the enemy into and out of the country at will? I certainly see the problems with garrisoning 3rd world hellholes, but I am not convinced punitive raids would really accomplish much.
Fair enough, but cordoning them off and not letting their people in is something we can do and that we’re not doing. I frankly think a dozen nukes at Afghanistan after 9/11 would have sent a very strong message of disproportionate response.
Of course keeping them out of the country is the obvious solution (along with dealing with the ones already in the country). But that’s a political issue. What does the military do about it?
If you are Petraeus, and you know there is no chance in hell of addressing this, the most glaringly obvious issue, what do you do? Resign and say “sorry dudes, you’ve dealt me a losing hand, I refuse to have anything to do with this until you address the immigration issue.” Or do you push a strategy of hasty withdrawel, knowing that it is very unlikely to be followed up with punitive raids or continued kinetic engagement, and thus is basically just a defeat? Or do you the best job you can of killing and cutting off the support of the bad guys in the places we are already engaging them?
I don’t pose this question as some sort of obvious set up for choice 3. It’s just that I am just not sure that given our ridiculous political constraints, our military strategy of boots on the ground isn’t the best we are going to come up with.
Let me put this another way. You are coming up with the solution you would devise if you were the dictator of America and had the ability to devise a coherent grand strategy of defense covering both the domestic and international spheres.
But let’s say that you are not the dictator of America, but just the Centcom commander. What the heck do you do?
I sure don’t know what I would do.
I don’t envy his task. I think instead of pushing for surge, he could just say let’s pull in forces, support Pakistan remotely, and deal with Afghanistan like Iraq, with a few trainers and SF and not a big footprint. A big footprint probably made sense in 02 and 03 to find bin Laden, install new government, kill lots of bad guys, but it’s been too long and it’s acquiring a never-ending life of its own.
The Afghan war is a contest over the control over the Afghan heroin trade, pure and simple.
Chris. Being one of the senior level planners at Central Command I think I can give you another perspective on Afghanistan for how things are working. First of all your title asks, “What do the Afghans want?” I would say our current operational strategy focuses on this very subject. The first and foremost thing that every Afghan wants today is to see tomorrow, literally. Our operational strategy developed by ISAF is currently focused on protecting the populace with a focus of our forces on 80 key districts within AFG. Now the issue that is open to interpretation (as you seeing between McChrystal and Eikenberry) is that one may see protection based on physical protection, a stronger ANA, etc. However, another may see protecting the populace as developing infrastructure. Nonetheless every Afghan wants to see tomorrow. As for CENTCOM’s focus the uniqueness of our situation is that AFG is a NATO run operation with Commander ISAF being the senior NATO officer so the complexity for CENTCOM is how do you balance a NATO lead operation in your AOR that is boarded by key Central Asian States.
I think it’s true most Afghans want safety, security, etc. I think it’s good to limit the mission to something direct, quantifiable, and achievable like that. But throughout history men have risked and given their lives for things besides seeing tomorrow, for abstract and spiritual causes like kicking the Austro-Hungarians out of Yugoslavia or recapturing some lost land or the Crusades or the like. Nationalism is a very real force in history that transcends mere safety. I am sure Petraeus and everyone knows this; this is why the ANA is key, for instance, but the latter like many “national” governments in history is not seen as truly national by some, or their tribal allegiance outweights their commitment to nationalism, or it’s simply at times incompetent, as the President has pointed out numerous times. So it’s a very tricky situation, and I think it’s true that probably most Afghans want to live, some don’t. As the Islamic terrorists say repeatedly, “We love death more than you love life.” It’s a hard enemy to deal with.
While we have a large presence on the ground in Afghanistan a stronger national government may seem to make sense, as it creates a simpler line of communication between us and the Afghan authorities. I doubt, however, that attempting to create a strong national government is the best long-term path to security. Once we leave or we seriously draw down forces, we are likely to see Afghanistan return to its highly decentralized ways, and many of the governors and tribal leaders who were favored by the central government will quickly be replaced. This will force us to deal with a new set of local authorities who we don’t know, and who may be hostile to us (for instance, the Taliban).
It seems to me that a better bet is to let Afghanistan decentralize now, when we still have the power to shape who ends up in charge where, and we still have the time to get to know them. There should really be two simple criteria for our support, a) that they are anti-Taliban and anti-al-Qaeda, and b) that they the possess the local loyalties and the strength necessary to effectively control their territory with only limited support from us. We should support the national government only to the point that it is secure within its Kabul base and it provides a national figurehead. In most ways, however, it should just be another local authority we will deal with.
An added benefit of this approach is that it is probably much faster than trying to build an Afghan national identity and create a functioning bureaucracy, infrastructure, national army, etc, etc. I understand that it’s probably difficult to pick and choose among warlords, but I am sure its easier than making Afghan into anything approaching a modern nation state.
Once the process of decentralization is complete, we can reasonably hope that the Taliban will be kept out, and we will know exactly whose palm to keep greased, or on the other hand, who to knock off if their attitude towards the Taliban or our other enemies changes. Afghanistan won’t be any materially better off than it was in the past, but at least it’s likelihood to generate threats against us will be lowered and we can get the heck out of there.
I would not use the term ‘xenophobic’, because it undermines the credible and rational understanding of foreign influence.