Eggs Laid by Tigers
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Hussein's audacious Afghan surge
The issues are:
•••• What the present surge in Afghanistan is designed to do;
•••• What makes the design necessary and difficult of achievement;
•••• Why we should stay in Afghanistan in spit of danger and near universal disapproval.
President Hussein and General McCrystal are embarked on a n audacious experiment in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. General McCrystal, in this pic, is eyeing a bullet wound of a sailor [?], wounded in Helmand Province. You know what President Hussein looks like.
Helmand Province is the home of the greatest concentration of Taliban fighters. It is also home of the most flourishing opium poppy production.
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The Marines' objective in Helmand Province has been changed: No longer do Marines find their first duty to kill the enemy; their new prime directive is to make Helmand Province safe for the residents.
Time quoted the prime directive thus:
"'What we really want is the equivalent of a peaceful takeover, where the Taliban are forced out,' McCrystal told TIME. Three days later, the general issued a 'tactical directive' to ISAF forces reinforcing the point: 'We will not win based on the number of Taliban we kill,' McCrystal wrote, 'but instead on our ability to separate insurgents from the people.' To that end, the directive explicitly enjoined force leaders 'to scrutinize and limit the use of force like close air support against residential compounds and other locations likely to produce civilian casualties.'"
What has been obvious for some time in Chitral has now become clear in Afghanistan: the residents of Helmand are, mostly, Pashtun; the Pashtun in Helmand -- as in Chitral, Swat, and all the Pashtun areas -- are governed first by pashtunwali. Pashtunwali is a complex set of rules of behavior that Pashtun live by, even define themselves by. Although many Pashtun are nominally Muslim -- and Taliban are fanatically Muslim -- still it is the moral and ethical precepts of pashtunwali that govern their lives.
Many of those precepts are found in, say, the history of my Texas ancestors, who engaged in blood feuds resulting from slights of honor. For present purposes, revenge is the most important of the pashtunwali precepts. If I kill your father or nephew, you have a categorical imperative to kill me, no matter what the cost to you.
"Categorical imperative" is defined as, say, the moral principal that behavior should be determined by duty. Emanuel Kant is the father of the concept. Susan Miller, my mother's mother, was a firm believer in the concept: "You don't have to be happy; you have to do your duty," she would say. Often. It was Susan's immediate ancestors who engaged in a blood feud, doing their duty. And do her duty Susan did, as a country housewife: she kept her house beautifully, and served its master -- my grandfather -- with dedication and style all the days of her life. May Miller Douthit, my mother, had a different formulation. "Be happy" -- no matter how adverse the circumstances -- was the prime directive for her, and one which, on the whole, I think she managed pretty well. For me, I got a combination of both: "Your duty is to be happy." That worked very will for a number of years, then faltered, until, in my early 40s I discovered sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
So there are elements of pashtunwali that we have in our systems, changed by time and distance [I am not including the extreme seclusion of women, which is more Muslim than Pashtun.]
When an unmanned drone kills your father -- no matter than your father was found to be in the presence of enemies of the drone's master, you have a categorical imperative to kill the maker of the drone, if you are a Pashtun. To fail to extract revenge is un-Pashtun, and makes you an outcast in your home and village.
Last year alone, 828 civilians were killed by U.S., allied, or Afghan troops, 552 of them in air strikes.
Now, notice that many of these dead folks' families had lived near each other for many hundreds of generations and the dead folks are well known to many. You may cordially dislike you father or uncle; you may even harbor a design to kill you father to get his land. Killing to gain land is not entirely frowned upon by Pashtun — one of the less attractive features of pashtunwali is than it encourages disharmony. But if someone outside the family comes along and kills a relative of yours, you have a burning desire for revenge that neither time nor distance will slacken.
So General mcCrystal is commanding his young marines to avoid doing what they have been trained to do; he is commanding them to learn how to talk to these people -- I fear that McCrystal actually says "these people" but perhaps I underestimate him-- and make them safe from "the Taliban".
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For a discussion about the relationship between the Muslim religion and pashtunwali, go here. It may be that, in our eagerness to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and in our generous support of Pashtun and Taliban, we created a monster.
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How do you tell if a Pashtun is a member of the Taliban? Not an easy task for a Marine, I would say. Our for you and me.
What do you suppose these guys are doing? Is this football played with a human skull? I suppose not, but seeing this bunch come at you might unnerve you, nor would you be shamed thereby.
But it's good to see that polo is played in Helmand.
I guess that's polo.
We think of polo as British and civilized. Pashtun think otherwise.
I would not have you to think that all Pashtun are dreary, angry, poppy-growing hoodlums. Here is the final polo tournament held last month between Chitral and Glemet, played every year since the memory of man runeth not to the contrary; played this year in spite of threats by Taliban and warnings of government officials; played even though tourists stayed away; played on the highest polo field in the world; played for the sheer joy of doing it. [Chitral lost, damn it!]
But Afghans have been in and at war for a long time, most recently with the British, then the Russians, and, for the last eight years, with us, and constant war takes a toll on exuberant joy.
Here are folks you must deal with, if your mission is to find peace in Helmand. These are refugees from Helmand province who wait to collect clothing parcels from an Arab NGO. The men were furious at having to rely on generosity from the Middle East while being ignored by their own government.
Can you spot, in this pic, the Pashtun who is devoted to your destruction; the one who is looking to you for security?
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One of the design problems with Hussein's new Afghanistan plan is the problem social workers have in child abuse cases, and to a lesser extent, that lawyers have in child custody cases.
On the one hand, social workers are required to seek the family's trust, so that healing, if possible, may begin. On the other hand, they are required to gather information useful to the prosecutor, whose interest is in putting the "perpetrator" behind bars for years. In poetic terms, the social worker represents war and peace at the same time.
There must be a Greek God who embodies attributes of war and peace simultaneously, but I can't think who it would be. Apollo and Dionysus alternate, a practice we mortals should emulate. It would be a mad God, I guess one who tears himself to bits only to find himself continually reconstituted . Rather like Prometheus and his liver. Or any number of burnt-out social workers I know. Any suggestions?
Here, our young soldier is asked to gain the trust and confidence of the village elders, so that he and they may mutually secure the peace of the village.
What a task! First, you can talk only through an interpreter, who may or may not be honest and competent.
Second, how can you know if this White-Beard harbors a desire to kill you, in revenge for a relative you have killed.
Third: consider how many centuries apart his culture is from our Marine's! It is hard enough for a Texan to work effectively in a Hawaiian community, though they share a common language and many cultural assumptions. How much more difficult is the task this young trooper has been assigned!
At the same time our topper is trying to establish a working relationship with the village elder, he is at war. And a dirty and dangerous war it is. In this pic, a U.S. Marine, from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, has a close call after Taliban fighters opened fire near Garmser in Helmand Province of Afghanistan May 18, 2008. The Marine was not injured.
Sgt. Jacob Tambunga, here with Nava residents, Helmand, describes in a good New York Times article from July 26, how fighting in Helmand differs from fighting in Iraq, where he served two tours. Taliban are more tenacious and have adapted to US tactics more than the Iraqis in Anbar did. The Taliban don't have the heavy weapons that Iraqis have. If they had, we would suffer many more callosities.
This map focuses in on where the fights are, and therefore where the challenged are.
The Times article says that more Marines have been killed in Helmand in the last month than at any comparable time since 2001.
Buddies are dead at the enemy's hand, and our trouper, the one who is charged with making peace, is asked to set feelings of sadness and rage aside.
I doubt that I could have done so, had the North Koreans overrun our positions while I was in Korea.
And our trooper is called upon from time to time not only to kill but to act in other ways that cut against the need to strive for cooperation.
Of course Hussein knows all this, having worked as a community organizer with some success.
For a wonderful photo essay by the Department of Defense showing Marines in Helmand at both tasks, click here.
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Although Helmand is inhospitable, even fro a Texan's point of view,
there is an austere beauty in the destruction,
[here is an abandoned village]
there are quiet interludes, even in battle
and some occasion for fun.
Not, however, much chance to spark girls, if you are inclined that way. When I say "moderate" Muslim, "moderate" must be taken as a relative term.
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To get a sense of the difficulties facing our young Marine, here are two works from earlier efforts to tame Pashtun. They center around our desire to curtail poppy production, a serious political issue for us, and a non-issue to the practical Pashtun.
Poppy production is a major source of income, for good 'ol classical economic reasons.
The opium poppy os a right pretty flower.
Its harvesting and cultivation is labor
intensive.
Our trooper looks bemused.
Note that production in Afghanistan was at its lowest during Taliban rule. This is NOT a sufficient justification for Taliban rule, and it perhaps says something about us.
Getting the farmers in Helmand to switch from poppies to, say, an improved winter wheat, has proved to be tough going.
There is quite a history of trying to get the farmers to switch.
Here is a glowing report, in typical bureaucratic language, on the subject. When I was a community organizer trying to use government to create jobs for persons who had low income I saw, over and over,well-meaning, optimistic reports like this. I wrote some, myself, so recognizing the false sense of promise easily.
A more realistic, personal, and disturbing report is found here. Holly Burns Higgins is one of those fearless, romantic, implacable women, determined to do her duty no matter the obstacles, that are the blushing pride of Texas. Hawaii has at least one.
In 2007, Ms. Higgins took on a job for the USDA in Lashkar Gah, the capitol of Helmand Province. The job was to encourage Pashtun farmers to give up their profitable poppy crops for some other venture.
Ms. Higgins, 36, is blond. She is, of course, female. She was sent to one of the places in the world that most closely guards women from contact with men who are not relatives, and who give women the smallest opportunity to crate a life of their own choosing, This being a moral imperative for the Pashtun, they naturally expect everyone else to treat women the same way. To the Pashtun, our exposing Ms. Higgins as we did was deeply offensive. Ms. Higgins was expected to do an impossible job, even for a Pashtun man. Impossible in part because poppies are our problem, not theirs.
This pic is of girls on their way to school.
Ms. Higgins writes of her danger and courage, and the courage and danger of the woman who worked with her, whose lives were continually threatened. She also writes of her disgust at an administration that would send one such as she on such a hopeless and expensive a mission, and she writes of it movingly and convincingly.
You have only to read Ms. Higgins narrative to understand why I call President Hussein and General McCrystal audacious in both its senses: showing a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks; and showing an impudent lack of respect for the likelihood of success.
Well, I voted for him. So did most of you who voted. I wish him well.
I personally know young Marines who will work their hearts out to follow McChrystal's directives. I'm sorta proud of those men, and proud that our president is audacious. Nothing short of what is planned seems to have any chance of working against pashtunwali, which has successfully allowed its followers to withstand every empire from Alexander the Great to, now, us.
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Lashkar Gah has a curious history. It was built, by us, in the 1950s, to house our engineers, who were building a huge hydroelectric plant, and creating irrigation ditches, along the lines of the successful Tennessee Valley Project. The irrigation ditches and the electricity generated by the dam now waters many an opium field and provides electricity for much of Afghanistan, for which we get little enough credit. Don't know why we did it. Do you?
When we built Lashkar Gah, we built wide boulevards and brick houses with generous lawns, as we are used to. Those houses now have typical Pashtun walls around them.
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Why stay, if staying is so daunting?
The Pakistanis want us to leave. They claim that we are driving Pashtun over the border with Balochistan, in Western Pakistan, endangering the Balochs. They argue that they are being made to deploy troops away from the Indian border to Balochistan, and it is India who presents the greatest danger to them.
Here is the way the Europeans treated the Balochs when it came time for the Europeans to draw national boundaries.
[Afghans treat Balochs with respect. Pakistanis leave them to their traditional ways, but take the natural resources from their territory, without compensation -- as the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs today, only the Chines are more brutal. The Iranians require that the Baloch abandon their language and religion [they are Sunni in a Shiite country] and in general are brutal to them. We have seen some mild attempts in our country -- and not so mild when it comes to Hawaiians and Native Americans -- to compel conformity with a majority identity, with no recent success, I'm happy to say. But that's another story.]
It is unusual for the Pakistanis to express concern for the Balochs. Balochistan is a desert, and it is ruled by feudal families, and by the all-powerful Government Water Master, who reminds me of the worst of Hawaii's own bad government workers. Who remembers when the Land Use Commission was allocating water in Waihole Stream to Central Oahu, so even more houses could be built?
Many of the people in Afghanistan, and most of the people of the world, would like to see us leave. However, many see a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and most think that is a bad outlook. For a more nuanced view of world public opinion, see here.
WHY I, A HARD-CORE PACIFIST, THINK WE SHOULD STAY
It seems to me that if we leave, we leave Afghanistan to the Taliban. That is bad news for women, who are treated worse by the Taliban than by any other people except Saudis. I think that is the moral argument for staying. I'm not so concerned for those who supported us: a precept of pashtunwali is that "agreements" may be freely broken; and President Karzai's family is deeply involved in the opium trade.
The strategic argument is compelling, even for those who reject the moral augment.
An Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban threatens Islamabad, where the Atom Bombs are stored. I don't need to elaborate.
And of course my favorite Chitral would suffer. Can't have that,can we?
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There is a wonderful Herblock cartoon entitled "Childe Harold to the Dark Power Comes", about the Bomb. Help me find it, please.
I take the prospect of the Taliban getting the Bomb seriously. Perhaps I would think differently if I had friends who were dedicated to Taliban principals, but I haven't. I wouldn't like Radical Republicans, the ones called the Birthers, who believe that the President is an undocumented alien, to have the Bomb, either, and for similar reasons.
To explain my automatic fear of the Bomb, I show you how we were taught to fear the Bomb when we were in grade school. It was effective at instilling fear, which stays with me yet. As I suppose it does with many of you, too.
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For all you Anglophiles, here is a picture of your Prince, at War in Afghanistan.
Good form.
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And finally, from Queen's Beach on beautiful, peaceful Hawaii Nei,
Labels: Afghanistan, Chitral, General McCrystal, Helmand Province, Obama, shirtless
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