The Tragedy of Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s collapse was all but inevitable it seems, largely because of two underlying factors: ignorance on the part of Americans and widespread corruption in the Afghan government. Some would add a third factor, namely the duplicity of Pakistan in its support of the Taliban, but I will leave that aside for now. I draw these conclusions from my reading of the work of anthropologists and other scholars who have extensive experience studying Afghan society.

 

In 2015 Indiana University anthropologist M. Nazif Shahrani wrote an article with this pessimistic subtitle “Karzai-style Thugocracy or Taliban Theocracy?” Quoting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, among other American officials, Shahrani wrote that we made the decision to cooperate with warlords despite their lack of support from the local Afghans, mainly because these “thugs” were useful in combat against the Taliban. They were, but only for a limited time.

 

Here are some excerpts from Shahrani’s article:

 

‘‘The U.S. initial support of warlords, reliance on logistics contracting…and the deluge of military and aid spending which overwhelmed the absorptive capacity of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) created an environment that fostered corruption…

‘‘The necessary preconditions for combating corruption did not exist due to delayed understanding of the nature of Afghan corruption, decreasing levels of physical security…, lack of political will on the part of both the international community and [the Afghan government], and lack of effective popular pressure against corruption.” (p. 284)

 

Later, in the same article, Shahrani predicts a Taliban victory - six years before it actually took place. Here’s what he wrote:

 

“The Taliban...have intensified their fight because they think they can overrun the chronically corrupt, ethnically divided, and morally bankrupt thugocracy the U.S. has left behind. Sadly, Afghanistan is likely to fall victim, once again, to the Taliban - or ISIS style theocracy—men with loaded guns, sharpened knives and explosives strapped on their chests, ready to butcher and die for total victory.” (p. 297-98)

The trust-destroying effects of official corruption was made worse by the failure of American or NATO officials to understand and accommodate locally established systems of justice in rural communities. The legal cases that most concerned the Afghans were about property boundaries and legitimate rights of inheritance. And, while Afghan villagers traditionally relied on clan elders and other community leaders to adjudicate their disputes, the American-backed government set up formal courts reflecting western ideas of what a proper judiciary should look like. Distrust of the government weakened these courts and so did their failure to pay attention to the villagers’ needs. Here are some observations by anthropologist Noah Coburn*, who has spent much of the past two decades living in Afghanistan:

“…in the small Afghan town in which I spent time conducting research between 2006 and 2008…, there was little demand among town residents for a formal judicial presence, particularly in the form of a court or local prosecutor. For the most part, small-scale disputes were resolved through local councils of elders…and for larger cases, people would head to one of the courts in the larger town down the road.”

But the American-backed officials ignored the traditional system of justice that the Afghans had always relied on. American efforts were directed at drug trafficking and prosecuting major crimes which were barely relevant to most Afghans. They seemed to have no interest in or understanding of how Afghan villagers traditionally handled disputes

The Taliban, of course, knew how to respond to the disputes that the locals cared about and, though not everyone admired their harsh version of justice, they at least were providing the judicial services that the locals demanded. Their integration into local communities and the lack of such integration on the part of the corrupt urban government was the Talibans’ ticket to success.

The fall of the Afghan government has been shockingly sudden, even though many have seen it coming for years. There is great tragedy in the American and Afghan lives that have been lost on this mishandled mission and in the horrors that many Afghans will now face under Taliban rule. The women of Afghanistan are particularly vulnerable to Taliban religious fanaticism. We can only hope at this point that the abuses they suffer will not be as cruel as our worst fears lead us to expect.

 * Noah’s latest book: Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America’s Global War

Dusty Quagmire

Last week I watched Armadillo, a film that follows the actions of a Danish combat platoon in Afghanistan. I was surprised at how similar the Danes were to the American troops I’ve seen in similar documentaries - down to their buff, tattooed bodies and their rough teasing and jostling of each other.

Spoiler alert: The film concludes with the platoon leader telling his men that there should be no talk of their having shot and killed wounded and helpless enemies during their recent dust-up with the Taliban because "nothing like that actually happened." This little drama followed right after scenes of the engagement referred to, a fight in which the soldiers killed wounded and helpless Taliban. I wonder if some sort of Copenhagen court martial is in the offing.

This film brought home to me again just how bizarre America’s continued involvement in Afghanistan is. We went there to get Al Qaeda, which no longer has a significant Afghanistan presence. Most of the local Afghans don’t like us, and many of those who do are simply enriching themselves by pocketing our financial aid. Afghanistan today is looking more and more like Vietnam in the 1960s.

But how many Americans understand Vietnam of the 1960s? Two of our recent presidents certainly didn’t. George W. Bush argued that we made a mistake, not for getting into the Vietnam War, but for getting out of it.

OK, you’re probably thinking I’m cheating by citing George Bush, one of the most bodaciously ignorant people ever to occupy the White House.

He was, however, president, and yes, there are millions of Americans who would vote for him next year if he ran against, say, Barack Obama. The same can be said of Ronald Reagan, only more so.

Reagan was at least as ignorant as Bush, and even more popular. Like Bush, Reagan seemed to enjoy unnecessary wars. His killing fields were not in the Middle East, but in Central America, where he justified his backing of terrorists and other right-wing factions by claiming that Nicaragua was a lot like Vietnam.

And what was Vietnam like? According to the history that flourished in Ronald Reagan’s head (but nowhere else in the cosmos) Vietnam’s Communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, refused to allow elections in his country once it had gained independence from France.

But outside of Ronald Reagan's head, that is, in the real world, Ho Chi Minh actually supported an election while it was the United States that did not. In fact, according to a 1954 Geneva agreement, elections for the leadership of Vietnam were scheduled for 1956 and representatives from Canada (NATO), Poland (Pro-Soviet) and India (neutral) were supposed to observe the polling and make sure it was free and fair.

The U.S. blocked these elections because, as former President Dwight Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs, experts on Vietnam agreed that Ho Chi Minh would easily win any popular vote. He was, as Republican Senator Thruston Morton said, Vietnam’s George Washington. He had led the fight that freed Vietnam from French rule, and by doing so had made himself the hero of the Vietnamese people, both north and south.

So why did Ronald Reagan claim the Ho Chi Minh prevented the election? The short answer is that where history is concerned, Ronald Reagan was not exactly a genius. Actually, you could also say that about President Reagan’s understanding of economics. Or government budgets. Or race relations. Or environmentalism. Or education. Or…OK, Ronald Reagan was not very smart about almost everything, but he was a “Great Communicator,” and this made him popular. I guess the questions to ask here are, “If his thinking was so divorced from reality, what, exactly, was he communicating?” and “Will the American public buy any brand of idiocy, as long as it’s presented in an affable, folksy manner?”

Please don’t answer those questions. I’m depressed enough as it is.




Ketchup is a vegetable!

Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do!

Nicaragua is close enough to invade Texas!



- The wisdom of the Gipper





The real story of America’s war in Vietnam is this: Our government lied to us as it dragged us into a thoroughly pointless fight against a popular leader, and in doing so threw away lives, treasure and the trust of the American people – something that hasn’t been recovered yet, and for good reason. The war in Afghanistan, like the earlier one in Vietnam, is a pointless exercise whose only goal seems to be a demonstration of American strength.

But does it demonstrate strength to dribble away our resources, shed American and Afghan blood, and do so with no possibility of success? If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he might claim that it does, but I’ve got to say, for me, the answer is a big fat no.

Is Our Adults Being Educated?

I had a terrific time last week attending the American Anthropological Association meetings in New Orleans -- site of my debauched youth, and still one of my favorite cities. This is particularly true now that I managed to purchase, in a funky French Quarter shop, an intriguingly sinister cane. For a handle it has a glassy blue knob decorated with silver bats. And “bats” is what Darla implied I was when I bought it, but I still think it’s kind of cool.

Anyway, the anthropology convention was rewarding. There are an awful lot of brainy people in anthropology and what I particularly like is that so many of them have been to interesting places and are able to talk about them with first-hand knowledge. One session I attended focused on Afghanistan, and there I learned that even though I’ve read a bit about that conflict, my ignorance of the real situation is so profound that if I were in Barack Obama’s place I wouldn’t want to make a move on Afghanistan policy without first consulting with such experts as Thomas Barfield, Andrea Chiovenda and Noah Coburn. Mr. President, proceed with caution.

In another panel, Georgetown University Professor Rochelle Davis made the point that American officers and enlisted personnel in places like Iraq and Afghanistan tend to regard American style democracy and American society generally as so clearly superior to anything the local people might be doing that resistance to “Americanization” seems either foolish or evil, if not both.

Actually, it’s not just the “boots-on-the-ground” guys who are misled in this way. The actions of Viceroy J. Paul Bremer, when he gutted the Iraqi economy and attempted to set up a “free” (i.e., “corporate-friendly”) economy in Iraq, show that this “Our way is best and they better get with it,” mentality was shared all the way up the chain of command. As I have argued before, the arrogance of this mindset is responsible for much of the bloodshed and suffering that Iraqis and Americans have experienced since the early days of “shock and awe.” For a definition of “shock and awe,” see “terror.”

I’m kind of bragging on my fellow anthropologists here, but naturally there are plenty of disciplines in the academic world where people motivated by a yearning to understand things have managed to accumulate a treasure trove of knowledge. It seems to me that the best way to make sense out of what's happenin' in the world is by consulting these experts.

During the years of Y2K fever, for example, there were all kinds of irresponsible reports about how disastrous the turn of the millennium would be. To me the simplest way to gauge the level of the coming “disaster” was to check in with my friends in the computer science department here at Rollins. Their report: “Don’t worry, Y2K has been adequately handled ahead of time so that problems will be minimal.” Consequently I wasted no time or nervous energy fretting about it.

I have heard different factions of the Tea Party denouncing the Federal Reserve as though it were an agency of Satan, so I asked some of my pals in economics what the story was here. “Well,” they explained, “the anti-Fed fanatics are just a subcategory of those people who resent government in general.” Got it.

It seems to me that America is splitting into two separate worlds, Education World where people respect what curiosity-driven knowledgeable experts have to say and Fox World where people depend on cheesy self-promoters in the profit-driven media, people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

Here’s a simple True-False test to figure out which World you belong to:

T F Barack Obama is a socialist.

T F Smaller government means more democracy.

T F For the good of the country, Congress should dedicate itself to undermining President Obama.

T F Our taxes are higher than ever these days, especially for the rich.

T F So-called "global warming" is a hoax perpetrated by evil scientists who are plotting to...I don't know, do something evil.

T F We should all apologize to BP for the mean things everyone said about them last summer.

T F Sarah Palin would make a fine president.

T F Reigniting the nuclear arms race with Russia is a smart way to make us safer.

T F Barack Obama is a Muslim.

T F FEMA camps are being prepared where innocent Americans will be incarcerated.

T F We would all be so much better off if President Obama had just allowed the economy to collapse last year.

T F Fox News is fair and balanced.

Well, I’ll let you figure out how to score this quiz.

Really, isn’t this split into Education World and Fox World the very thing that underlies the irreconcilable partisan divide now undermining our government’s ability to act? Well, IMHO it is. I’m old enough to remember the days when reasonable Republicans like Richard Lugar, could make deals with reasonable Democrats like Barack Obama, and our country was able to accomplish great things thereby. Are those days gone forever? And if they are, how much responsibility does Fox News hold for this condition? IMHO, lots.

Here follow some pictures from Morocco, a place I've learned about from my anthropologist friend, Professor Rachel Newcomb, and from Noureddine, my friend from Fes.






Professor Newcomb and Noureddine with Camel












A Moroccan Village
















A Couple of Friendly Moroccan Chaps



















 


 Village Kids Playing Soccer







Leatherworkers of Fes













Household Courtyard












Moroccan Pool Players
























Berber Tent, Set Up for Hospitality (The politically correct word for Berber is "Amazigh.")




















Farewell, Friendly Fes



Anthropology, Education and Morocco: three things I believe in.