The following note by Joshua Foust was lifted from the comments section of yesterday’s note about an article by George Friedman of Stratfor, due to its length and value. Foust is an expert in Central Asian affairs, frequently posting at Registan.net (“Central Asia News – All Central Asia, All The Time“).
Regarding Stratfor, as a long-time subscriber I believe it to be a window into the thinking of America’s business and government elites. Like all good service vendors, they stay in close harmony with the views of the customers. The almost dreamlike nature of some Stratfor analysis in recent years (unlike the solid work which build their fine reputation) reflects, in my opinion, the similarly disordered thinking of US elites about economic and geopolitical affairs. Our national OODA loop is broken in these matters.
This can be read by itself, or in counter-point with Friedman’s article. The war in Afghanistan is important for America; it is even more important as an example of the flawed decision-making process by which America conducts its affairs.
The key question raised by Foust, beyond the scope of this note: if Afghanistan is important to America, what should we do? Is waging war, as part of a War on Terror, the correct policy?
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Note by Joshua Foust, 27 February 2008
It is a smart bet to consider everything written in STRATFOR to be questionable unless verified by other sources. At least with regard to Central Asia, they’ve declared that, after Sapurmurat Niyazov’s death, Iran was the country most likely to invade (neglecting to mention the U.S, China, or Europe). They also declared that Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan were inches away from falling into a violent ethnic conflict on an Iraq scale, all while assuming that in the aftermath Kazakhstan would military occupy all three countries for their mineral wealth.
Here, I don’t see much change. Friedman writes that the U.S. was never interested in the Taliban, when the public speeches of both George W. Bush and even Bill Clinton before him would offer reams of contradictory evidence. Similarly, his comparison of the Soviet and NATO campaigns is shallow and inadequate: there is no one major power funneling weapons and billions of dollars of cash to a semi-organized mujahideen movement today — the sources of Taliban funding are far less transparent (deriving mostly from opium trafficking and private donations, with logistical support from elements within the ISI), the movement much more scattered, and their followers number hundreds of thousands fewer. The Soviets probably could have conquered the country if the U.S. and Saudi Arabia hadn’t flooded the countryside with billions of dollars in cash and sophisticated weaponry.
Mixed in with this, he misses the critical point: the problem with all foreigners in Afghanistan is they want the cities, when real power is derived from the countryside — and the countryside is exactly what gets neglected in a “light footprint” model.
Where is he getting the idea that the goal from the start was to score a jumping off point for covert operations into Pakistan? No one — not a single policymaker, save the long-ignored analysts of the region — thought the frontier regions would be a major problem. Is Friedman now trying to sell us on some hyper-brilliant, long-term strategy for systematically undermining Pakistan’s tribal areas five years after we realized we might want to shore up the border?
Calling Afghanistan a war without exit or victory is stupid as well. It flies in the face of history, both in Afghanistan and in vaguely similar situations like Iraq. The issue Friedman does not address, and I suppose you don’t, either, Fabius, is that the Taliban willingly cooperated with Osama Bin Laden (I discount Mullah Omar’s claims of ignorance after September 11, considering the close contact the two had during Bin Laden’s stay in Kandahar).
Similarly, saying the U.S. has no interests in Afghanistan beyond decimating (or crippling) al-Qaeda is laughably shortsighted. If nothing else, an unstable Afghanistan means there is an unstable Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the assumption throughout the 90s was that Afghanistan was a backwater and did not matter, despite its role in insurgencies in Uzbekistan, Iran, Pakistan, and even Russia (that is, if the claims of Chechen Taliban can be believed, and there is little evidence beyond multiple, and unsourced, citings in the popular press).
The truth is quite more stark: Afghanistan is at the center of a number of nasty global issues, from oil pipelines to Islamic militancy to opium trafficking. Afghanistan in chaos puts Iran at risk, not to a democratic uprising but to yet another wave of nasty fundamentalists. Keeping Pakistan spinning wildly out of control is a bad idea for American interests in the region as well. Giving the opium lords safe haven for flooding the planet with a $35 billion a year crime syndicate is bad news for America as well. And so on. The argument that Afghanistan does not really have any long-term significance in American policies or interest is, I’m sorry to say, an ignorant one.
The complaints about sloppy intel, sloppy planning, poor strategy, and so on, are absolutely fair game — and mirrors my own critique of American policy there. But that frustrates me so much because Afghanistan is so very important, not (just) because it is also so very wasteful.
Then there is Adrian, who makes a good point as well. We made significant promises to the people of Afghanistan. If we leave now, it will be a bloodbath and there will be another massive famine in the Hazarajat and Panjshir regions.
Baduin: It is important to make a distinction between the Taliban and the Pashtuns. Though most Taliban are Pashtun, well over 99.99% of all Pashtuns are not Taliban, and in fact hate them as foreign invaders. Taliban ideology is disconnected from Pashtun history and culture, since it was mostly birthed in the Soviet-ravaged suburbs of Kandahar and the toxic refugee camps of Pakistan. Most Taliban leaders, and almost all of their fighters, are barely-literate rednecks with almost zero comprehension of the Five Pillars, Pashtun history, values, or even families (far too many are war orphans who grew up in madrassas).
You can see this distinction at play in the Swat valleyof Pakistan: peaceful, tourist-friendly Pashtuns have been overrun by crazy zealots from a well-funded madrassa in Waziristan: now they live in fear (they pleaded with Islamabad for months before they sent in a botched military raiding party), their cultural heritage in the form of ancient buddha statues has been destroyed, and their entire tenuous educational and economic infrastructure is being systematically wrecked by Maulana Fazlullah.
Mikyo has it right: Friedman is {wrong}, and does not appear to be speaking from a position well grounded in understanding the country.
Update: Registan.net articles with more information on these topics
STRATFOR’s limited understanding of Central Asia:
- Piecing It Together, Sort Of , 27 December 2006 — “A connection between Turkmenistan and Gazprom’s latest price gambles?”
- Dumb Things Written About Turkmenistan, 28 December 2006 — Aabout Stratfor’s analysis
The many ways the international community is systematically failing Afghanistan:
- The Serena Bombing, Up Close, And Where We Go From Here, 16 January 2008
- Institutional Failures Hurt Everyone, 10 February 2008
The unique, ahistorical origins of the Taliban:
- Delayed by Tragedy, A New Refugee Flight, 3 January 2008
- Quote of the Weekend , 4 February 2008 — “The Taliban was not the product of traditions, but of a world created partly on the basis, and partly on the ruins, of traditions.”
- Looking at Pakistan, and How To Tackle Tribal Militancy, 25 February 2008
How misguided covert ops are into Pakistan, and how misguided our support of Musharraf is:
- GWOT BFF Musharraf “Not particularly looking for” Osama bin Laden, 8 January 2008
- From the Department of Good Ideas, 19 February 2008 — “Nothing says “we’re aware of a delicate political situation” like unliateral strikes on an unstable country”
- How Pakistan Disproves Traditional Realism, 21 February 2008
