As I continue to think about Afghanistan, I’m continuing to read what I can.
Then, in December 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, taking down with it the gravy train that had enabled Najibullah to buy loyalties across the country. A series of defections followed, most notably that of Dostum, who, in the spring of 1992, joined forces with Ahmed Shah Masoud in an effort to block a Hekmatyar victory. These shifts in allegiance — not superior tactics or greater popular appeal of the mujahideen — ultimately brought down Najibullah’s government.
The initial stability of Najibullah’s government suggests that Afghans will assume responsibility for the fate of their government when the foreign footprint in their country has been sharply reduced — but only if an outside patron is prepared to supply and equip Afghan forces. The central government in Kabul is strengthened when it sends gifts to the provinces rather than collecting taxes from them. But someone has to pay for this. The United Kingdom lavished resources on India in the nineteenth century; the Soviet Union sent billions of rubles to Afghanistan. Is Washington prepared to play such a role today?
I don’t think that Afghanistan is hopeless, if we define our goals correctly. I am concerned that it becomes a territorial proxy battle in a territoryless war, and that we may overemphasize it at the expense of other – potentially more important – things we ought to be doing.
But since I don’t today know what those might be, I’ll wait to comment until I do.
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There is this assumption that Afghanistan is a country and their are people called Aghanis, rather than Balichis, Pashtuns, etc.
I think this is both a dangerous, and a delusional assumption., and one that Gvosdev’s analysis points to. It also seems to be the Achilles heel of the nation building meme that has dangerously crept into American Foreign Policy since the rise of the Neo-Cons.
It might be argued that Afghanistan existed as a country for decades before the Soviet Invasion, but the control of the “country” by the central government could at best be like that of The Pakistan governments control over the tribal areas., ie. you had control only if you did not try to exert it.
Do we seriously think that we are going to be the great uniter of Afghanistan?
To head off some pro-nation building arguments that pertain to our two recent wars, would anyone like to venture a guess as to how long the democracy in Iraq will last in any recognizable form after the U.S. pullout.
My over/Under is five years.
In Afghanistan, generously three.
We need a new strategy and it is not Nation building.
Tribal cantons, like Switzerland, should be the model we attempt to impose. With local tribal leaders.
Successful Afghan leaders will … follow the money. And, unfortunately, illegal drugs is where the most money is.
The only local leaders with real power will be drug lords.
Even if there is massive industrialization and urbanization.
We need to solve this issue. Wild idea: the USA should buy all the poppy crop, direct from the farmers, before it’s ready. Then destroy it (or turn it into morphine/ medicine).
*Wild idea: the USA should buy all the poppy crop, direct from the farmers, before it’s ready.*
Actually quite a sensible idea, and cheap.
the chance of industrialization in Afghanistan is close to nil. No transportation infrastructure, no ports, landlocked. Except for Kabul and Kandahar, the rest of the Cities are at best towns. and far from one another at that. No real national market, let alone international trade.
Here is the list of cities in Afghanistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Afghanistan
And the CIA page
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html
Nearly a decade of war there and more to come? and the strategy is to build the nation and set up a lasting democratic government? I think the Neo-Cons and now this administration have been smoking the opium.
Talk about pipe-dreams!!
If we are doomed to play the role of the Soviets in this reenactment, who are the Americans this time, the ones making the insurrection against the government possible? The “ISI”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_Services_Intelligence (again)? Private millionaire “Salafist”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafist Saudis? The Iranians (even if only as the patron of “Hekmatyar”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulbuddin_Hekmatyar)?
As the article shows, it’s less important what Afghanistan’s components are than what it is a component of.
No government can be legitimate in Afghanistan unless it enshrines Islamic domination.
This will always reflect the will of the locals, since under the ferociously intolerant rule of Islam, all other opinions wither.
More importantly, it reflects the will of the umma, as enforced by whatever international or national institutions are handy to enforce it, preferably in a self-interested way.
The government of Afghans, which is to say Muslims of various tribes inhabiting a region, by a puppet government that exists to enforce the interests of unbelievers, is not legitimate. Consequences follow, persistently.
It takes faith to believe that if Afghanistan could be detached from Pakistan, no other Muslim agency would carry on jihad with effect against the puppet government.
But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is: first detach Afghanistan from Pakistan. While keeping up the yearly tribute of course. And while maintaining the popularity and political viability of this policy. Once that’s done, other miracles may follow. Why not?
By the way, this does not mean that Islamic states can never be coerced with useful effect. It only means the way to start is with the local “policeman” state. That’s why I thought, and still think, that knocking over Saddam Hussein was in principle a good idea. There would be no point to twisting the arms of nearby Muslims (like the Saudies, after the 11th of September, 2001, to stop funding global Islamic struggle) unless you dealt with the local “policeman” state first.
My interpretation of the article is that it was possible to stabilize a puppet government in Afghanistan, at the price of betraying all the values that led to such a government in the first place, and perpetual payments to maintain it in the face of perpetual jihad by the local Islamic strong-man state, but the puppet regime fell because support from the unbeliever regime failed (when the Soviet Union fell) and support from the local Islamic “policeman” state stayed strong.
Can we produce the kind of stabilization the Russians did? Yes, at the same cost, and more easily, since we never took on Islam in the first place.
The Soviets really had no solution to jihad supported by the dominant regional Islamic force. There was no plan to neutralize Pakistan and it never happened. There was only the perpetual need to pay, and defeat in waiting when the will of the unbelievers failed. OK, that’s a problem, so what’s our plan to knock out Pakistan as a threat? Do we have one? Can there be one?
I’m not a believer, which is why I say kind things about Barack Obama’s foreign policy from time to time. Upping the predator strikes as I believe he has done simply to kill a quantity of jihadists who would otherwise cause trouble may be the best he can do. Sure he’s been dilatory, but there may not be a master move in Afghanistan that he’s failing to make.
There wasn’t one for the Russians, given that they also couldn’t neutralize Pakistan.
I agree or at least it is becoming apparent to me that our takes on the situation are very similar.
What troubled me during the last administration was their inability to see that Afghanistan and the rest of the world, for that matter, wasn’t Kansas and that democracy wasn’t a political system you could either impose or graft on willy-nilly to local social and political structures.
I would agree with your take on Obama’s foreign policy as well. As much as I do not like his approach to Afghanistan huge troop deployments, nation building, etc. (this, of course is another discussion), the more I think about the “deadline” he imposed, the more it appeals to me.
As I said in another thread, the deadline is meaningless, especially that it is tied to conditions on the ground, to all parties except our government “partners”. I fully expect a tremendous amount of jockeying for position in Afghanistan among the locals as is mentioned in the Russian’s piece.
Hopefully, that will give us better intelligence as to who are our “friends” and how they can be satisfied to stay that way. As far as Pakistan is concerned, I am glad it is not my problem to solve, but it is readily apparent that is where the decisive scenes will play out.
I can not end without remarking on what has continued to irk me in Foreign Policy since the turn of the Millenium, i.e., the rise of the Neo-Cons and their Pollyanna-like Wilsonian world view. The more quickly were purge ourselves of this umwelt, the better off we will be.
_Wild idea: the USA should buy all the poppy crop, direct from the farmers, before it’s ready._
_Actually quite a sensible idea, and cheap._
Yeah, drive up the price of opium. That will really put the crimp on those drug farming terrorists.
Yeah, drive up the price of opium. That will really put the crimp on those drug farming terrorists.
My God, another simplistic knee jerk response from you MB. What a surprise!!!
Simplistic but accurate. Unless part of your plan repeals the law of supply and demand, you will be making opium more valuable, which will make the Taliban more money. How does that help matters?
Mark, you’re the one trying to repeal supply and demand.
A LOT less poppies, at a higher price, means less total opium revenue, tho more per kilo.
Plus more cash to the farmers dealing with the Americans — and this is part of the solution to nation building. Get the producers more cash, so the enforcers, gov’t or Taliban or Islamic thugs, have relatively less.
Try to separate the common farmers from the Taliban … tho there will likely have to be big tribal enforcer benefits of some kind.
I haven’t seen any better plans above.
Simplistic but simplistic would be more accurate, Mark. There isn’t any reason to have a discussion because you have already figured it out. I had forgotten you uncanny ability to reduce complex problems to zingers.
As far as your views on the laws of supply and demand, I think you would be well served by getting out of the house more often.
_A LOT less poppies, at a higher price, means less total opium revenue, tho more per kilo._
Huh? I thought we were buying up poppies to begin with. Doesn’t that money count towards their bottom line? Whatever they hold back is then worth a fortune.
_Try to separate the common farmers from the Taliban … tho there will likely have to be big tribal enforcer benefits of some kind._
First- assume a ladder. How exactly do you plan to do that? As I understand it there is really no distinction- most go where the best money is at the time.
_I haven’t seen any better plans above_
Why don’t we just give them weapons and IEDs directly? Just because there is no silver bullet doesnt mean that plenty of ideas will make things much worse. Like this one.
_”I had forgotten you uncanny ability to reduce complex problems to zingers.”_
Its a gift.
_”As far as your views on the laws of supply and demand, I think you would be well served by getting out of the house more often.”_
I see you haven’t lost your inability to rebut my simplistic retorts with anything besides invective.
I would LOVE for you guys to explain to me how creating an artificial scarcity wont inflate the price of poppies, of course _on top of_ the free money we’re handing them for the bulk of their poppies.
See, I can be longwinded if it will help toc.
Rather than buying up the poppy crop afterwards, presumably we’d do it through some form of farming subsidy where we pay them the difference between poppy prices and what they get as profit from planting “regular” food crops, as a way of restarting the cycle of their local farmers producing food that was disrupted when poppies became so profitable.
The fly in the ointment might be that Congress may want to provide USAID food instead as a way of promoting Midwest farmers, which would defeat the whole purpose but give certain Congresspeople some favors to hand out.
_”we pay them the difference between poppy prices and what they get as profit from planting “regular” food crops”_
So they end up with the same amount of money (plus whatever they hold back and sell at an inflated price obviously), what the point again?
Mark:
The hypothesis is that the farmers growing the poppies are not the ones who are buying or wielding the guns.
Here is someone “thinking”:http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:O6W6_C3wILQJ:www.cic.nyu.edu/peacebuilding/oldpdfs/Flowers%2520for%2520Afghanistan.doc+lavender+soaps+afghanistan&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us/ about possibilities for crop substitution.
_”The hypothesis is that the farmers growing the poppies are not the ones who are buying or wielding the guns.”_
If that is the case, how does this program impact the people with the guns? Is this an anti-drug program or an anti-terrorism program?
I’m having trouble seeing the point, especially if the drug farmers aren’t using the proceeds to finance their end of the war. If they are, we’re giving them _more_ resources. If they aren’t, we’re wasting our time and diverting our attention. So which is it?
“I had forgotten you uncanny ability to reduce complex problems to zingers.”
Its a gift.
_That is apparent to everyone_
“As far as your views on the laws of supply and demand, I think you would be well served by getting out of the house more often.”
I see you haven’t lost your inability to rebut my simplistic retorts with anything besides invective.
_I wouldn’t call it invective, but rather a statement of fact_
I would LOVE for you guys to explain to me how creating an artificial scarcity wont inflate the price of poppies, of course on top of the free money we’re handing them for the bulk of their poppies.
_Go to Wikipedia and type in price elasticity._
See, I can be longwinded if it will help
_What would help is for you to have a bit more respect for the people who post here and stop behaving like an adolescent_
You’re suggesting the demand for heroin is particularly elastic? Isn’t this that drug that people rob their loved ones for, sell their bodies, murder and pillage?
Elasticity is our problem- people will pay virtually anything for heroin, so whatever you do to some segment of the supply simply increases the value of whats left. The more poppies you buy the more valuable the remainder becomes. And if you want those the more you have to pay, and very quickly you realize that whatever cash you think you’re depriving the enemy of you are simply paying them directly, removing even the need for them to get them to market. How is this a good plan?
Instead of tossing econ 101 glossary terms out, why not just explain in simple terms just what you expect to happen to the supply and price of poppies?
And btw if you really wanted to achieve what you think you are achieving, you would instead legalize heroin, dropping the bottom out of the price. Not saying its a good idea, just that when you have an intractable demand you can’t destroy the supply (by whatever means). If we haven’t learned that in the last 50 years we haven’t learned anything.
Or are we really so intent on making all the exact same mistakes we’ve made in South America again?
Ok Toc, I’ll take that as a concession, since clearly you have no ability to engage my point.
On the upside- you seem to have solved our intractable drug problem. Apparently, despite 50 years of abject failure, in fact you can interdict the supply so thoroughly as to reduce demand. Fire bombing columbian jungles, buying off farmers, and attempting to interdict the entire continent for decades notwithstanding. Congrats.
For those of us in the real world- I’ll repeat: if the US government starts paying opium prices for wheat, the price of opium will rise (above the price of wheat) making it even more profitable to sell poppies, forcing us to pay more for wheat, making opium yet more valuable. This loop will continue and be seen as an abject failure long before the price of heroin hits a ceiling.
Heroin has been at historically low in prices for years and heroin addicts are probably not price shopping for heroin as a luxury item they can put off until next Christmas.
The question about price elasticity has to do with supply, not demand. For the U.S. to remove Afghan poppies from the world market will raise the street price of heroin worldwide, and any poppies the Taliban can still collect (in Pakistan or in areas of Afghanistan that remain under its control) will increase in value if the world supply of heroin suddenly becomes smaller. The street price of heroin will then come down, and bring opium revenue down with it, if the world supply of heroin increases from sources other than Afghanistan in response to the price spike. But if this happens, the Taliban can make up any revenue they lose, even after prices fall back, if poppy cultivation expands over the border in Pakistan to offset any lost acreage in Afghanistan.
The real question is whether it is possible to remove the Afghan crop from the world market in the first place. We’re not going to win over rural areas in that country if we eradicate the poppy crop without offering an alternative. If we offer a market for alternative crops, the Taliban could interdict the trade unless we can blanket the countryside with troops. Unless and until there are more troops, it is hard to see how a crop substitution program can begin on a scale large enough to matter.
Armed Liberal,
The article by Nikolas Gvosdev argues that a client regime can survive in Afghanistan at least for a time after the ground forces of its patron withdraw. The Najibullah regime left by the Russians in 1989 only controlled the larger cities, though, and could not survive without Soviet funding and airlifts of food. The Karzai regime might last longer if it has greater popular support and if we don’t cut off aid as the Russians did to Najibullah in 1992. But the Karzai regime has many of the same weaknesses and it is hard to see how change can succeed in a short timeframe.
The Johnson and Mason article in the November/December issue of Military Review lays out a view of the situation we face in Afghanistan. I wonder if there are any points on which you would dissent, either here or perhaps in a new posting.
That being said, I think our fascination with nation building is and will be a disaster throughout the Middle East, in particular. Do I have a solution, no. But I haven’t seen anyone else come up with one either.
the shadow war with drones and special forces in Pakistan seems to me to be the way to go along with playing one afghani warlord off against another, while keeping out focus on Al Queda.