Posted by: "Arman Duval" [EMAIL PROTECTED] armanduval
Fri Nov 14, 2008 2:41 am (PST)
The west is losing in Afghanistan in part because it misreads its Taliban
opponents. Understanding who they are is the only basis for future negotiations
Misreading the Taliban
By Jason Burke
(Jason Burke is a foreign correspondent at the Observer and an author, most
recently of On the Road to Kandahar (Allen Lane)
Maidan Shar, the provincial capital of Wardak province, 30 miles south of
Kabul, is now on the frontline in Afghanistan. Physically, it has changed
little since the Taliban were in power between 1996 and 2001. A frequent
visitor to Afghanistan during that time, I only noticed the town because it was
where the tarmac ended on the road to Kandahar, which lies a further 250 miles
and 16 hours of ferociously uncomfortable driving to the south. Today the road
is too risky for travel.
Until two years ago, the Taliban were restricted to the provinces around
Kandahar and some isolated central highland districts. Not any longer. On my
last visit in August 2008 I was shocked to find how much the situation had
deteriorated. Maidan Shar now lies on the watermark left by the wash of the
inexorably rising Taliban tide towards Kabul. A well-informed local judge told
me not to spend more than 20 minutes in the town and never to stray beyond its
limits. The governor of Wardak then spoke to me at length about how the media
was exaggerating the problems. But on leaving his well-guarded office I learned
that his counterpart from an adjacent province had been ambushed on the main
road, only a few miles away, during the course of our interview.
It is true that the Taliban are unlikely to win much more territory, as they
are nearing the limits of the land in the south and east of the country where
Pashtun tribes, who make up between 40 and 50 per cent of the total population,
are concentrated. (The Taliban are an almost exclusively Pashtun movement,
although by no means all Pashtun are Taliban.) Militarily, they will find it
impossible to capture a major city while foreign troops remain in the country.
But as senior British soldiers and diplomats have recently made clear, the
Taliban are also unlikely to be significantly "rolled back" in the near future.
This marks a strategic change in Afghanistan. "Victory" as previously defined
is now impossible.
Understanding what this means for the future means avoiding two past errors.
The first error was thinking that the Taliban are somehow not "Afghan."
Speaking to Prospect in October, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, spoke
of the west's mission to "help the Afghan people defeat the Taliban." In Berlin
in July 2008, Barack Obama said that "the Afghan people need our troops⦠to
defeat the Taliban." This is a dogma that has been entrenched since 2001. It
forgets that the Taliban are part of Afghanistan, not an outside scourge.
Despite significant evolution over the last seven years, today's Taliban remain
essentially the same movement that once took over two thirds of the country.
Their leadership is much the same and their religious ideology remains rooted
in the ultraconservative southwest Asian strand of Deobandi Islam, albeit with
an added global jihadi element. Their discourse still focuses predominantly on
Afghanistan, where their moral ideal remains rooted in a quasi-mystic vision of
Pashtun village life. The vast bulk of their footsoldiers, despite the presence
of some Pakistanis and a sprinkling of international Arab or central Asian
militants, remain Afghan.
In Wardak this summer, my interviews with local politicians, tribal chiefs and
officials corroborated reports compiled by the UN and western and local
security services on the nature of local Taliban insurgents. They are a dynamic
and multi-layered mix of local hoods, "old" Taliban, clerics, commanders of
groups such as the Hezb-i-Islami of former anti-Soviet leader, hardline
Islamist and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as well as a new generation of young
fighters who barely remember the 1990s and whose motivations are religious,
mercenary and nationalist. A common response from locals when you ask them,
"Who are the Taliban?" is bemused surprise and the answer "men from my village."
Of course, the original Taliban was aided by the security establishment of
successive Pakistani governments, who saw them as proxies who would act in
Islamabad's interests. Today, most security services believe that Pakistan is
still supporting certain Taliban factions to hedge their bets against a
possible future regime change. But this just makes the Taliban an Afghan
movement receiving external assistanceâas so many insurgencies elsewhere have
also done.
Equally, links with the international (and largely Arab) al Qaeda are often
overplayed. Despite some close personal relationships and a measure of
strategic co-ordination, the Afghans and "foreigners" remain organisationally
distinct, often separated by lack of a common language. There are no Afghans in
al Qaeda's hierarchy and no Arabs in the Taliban command structure. Similarly
the "Pakistani Taliban," the coalition of hardline tribal and religious
militias on the eastern side of the Afghan-Pakistani frontier who share
ideology and Pashtun ethnicity with their Afghan counterparts, remain a
separate, if linked, phenomenon.
This "Afghan-ness" gives the Taliban an obvious advantage in the "battle for
hearts and minds." Their vision of a future Afghanistan, informed by a
mythologised view of a rural antebellum idyll as well as a literal reading of
Koranic texts, is closer to the culture and worldview of the rural, Pashtun,
conservative populations than the west's human rights discourse and, sadly, the
views of the English-speaking members of the internationalised elite who have
long been our favoured interlocutors.
The second mistake made by western politicians is to describe the Taliban as
"medieval." Their strict and illiberal rules when in power were in part the
result of a geographical and cultural clash caused by the rapid transfer of
rural customs to relatively modernised towns like Kabul. But, as others have
noted, the Taliban's use of mass spectacle and even their strict regulation of
gender roles is consistent with other modern totalitarian movements.
The "medieval" tag also implies that they are militarily unsophisticated. Yet
all the soldiers I have interviewed on the frontline in recent years spoke of
their respect for their enemy's fighting capabilities. The attack on the French
soldiers in August was a classically executed ambush, and that on Kandahar
prison in June revealed an ability to organise complex operations. Currently
73,000 well-armed, well-trained and well-funded international troopsânearly
three times the maximum strength the Taliban are estimated to have ever
deployed at one timeâare making at best slow progress.
At a strategic level, too, the Taliban show sophistication. Targeting France,
the most significant coalition partner with wobbly domestic support, was
shrewd. Focusing scant resources attacking roads south and east of Kabul caused
maximum psychological effect at little cost. They also have a distinctly
non-medieval propaganda capability, and cleverly exploit civilian casualties
caused by coalition troops.
Western reporting on the Taliban is heavily skewed to their military side. But
the movement's strength arguably lies in its civilian capacity. Any military
advance âinto Wardak, for exampleâis scrupulously prepared. The terrain is
scouted out, old networks reactivated, and new personnel sent in. Initial
efforts are carefully focused on usurping the civil functions that the Kabul
government is unable to fulfil, particularly security and the administration of
justice. Judges in Wardak told me that few people now use slow, corrupt
government courts to settle disputes, preferring Taliban clerics. The police,
without motivation, scruples or weapons, stay in their bases and do deals with
local militants. A military campaign can then be launched. And in this phase of
the conflict at least, it seems, the Taliban have eased their puritanical
edicts: music, kite-flying, and shorter beards are all tolerated. We are often
told that the Taliban's
advantage is
that they know the terrain. Equally, they know the local society.
The situation on the ground is complex. Few locals are enthusiastic about the
Taliban. For many peopleâtribal leaders or simple peasants alikeâthey are
the least worst option. The choice is between no development and some security,
or no security and the dim hope of development at an unspecified later date.
Given it is the Taliban who they know, and who are in their villages with the
guns, the average tribal elders' choice is usually obvious. Once they have
invested in a location, the Taliban are difficult to expel.
The Taliban's increasing hold on these rural Pashtun populations is a very
significant problem. The Pashtuns have historically been kingmakers in
Afghanistan. For several centuries power has been shared between competing
Pashtun factions. Equally, the history of revolts in Afghanistan in the 19th
and 20th centuriesâagainst the British, various Afghan kings and more
recently governments heavily influenced by foreign ideologiesâunderlines the
continuing power of the conservative Pashtun base. And Pashtun support is
essential for any national authority.
The coalition thus finds itself defending a government which, despite being led
by the Pashtun Hamid Karzai, is increasingly seen locally as both ineffective
and a western stooge. One or other would not necessarily be a problem, but both
means a major legitimacy issue. The west no longer sees Karzai as a useful
actor against an insurgency that now has resources, momentum and, it seems, a
genuine popular base. This is exactly the situation the coalition hoped to
avoid.
The history of insurgencies tells us a process of compromise by the central
government and its backers will likely now begin, leading to a gradual
weakening of the insurgents as they tire (or get killed) and their supporters
recognise other means of achieving their aims. This process is about to start
in Afghanistan. Talks with the Taliban involving the Afghan government, Saudi
Arabia and other actors are already underway. The outcome is unclear. One might
involve allowing the Taliban a degree of self-government in their strongholds.
Another might be the embrace of moderate "dictatorship, " as the British
ambassador has mooted in a leaked memo. Few options are very savoury. And even
if we do succeed in building a stable Afghanistan, it will not be the kind of
country we envisaged at the start of the campaign. Think Saudi Arabia crossed
with Somalia, not Sweden.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia
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