But, all said and done, doesn't Ingalls' argument amount to -- in different prose -- a version of the old "white man's burden"? To whit, secular democratic forces have to be developed in Afghanistan -- under the watchful eye of foreign troops.
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It's fascinating that you bring this up.
Both because it's an excellent point and also because it's more or less the objection Ingalls' friend Rahul Mahajan makes to Ingalls' ideas regarding forms of resistance in Afghanistan.
Excerpt below:
Rahul Mahajan Responds to my post
Jim,
Difficult stuff.
First, I think you bring really good in-depth info and analytical perspective to the question of what’s actually happening with the demonstrations. This kind of analysis is very important. My only quibble there would be at the end where you say the mujaheddin factions didn’t have popular support. Of course, it’s true they didn’t have village-level organizing cadres, etc., like the PDPA. Nor, I suppose, could they match membership numbers — although note that in South Vietnam the NLF always had far fewer military members than the ARVN — it’s in the nature of non-state guerrilla organizations.
On the other hand, the reason they were able to operate at all is that they were acting as the expression of views with obvious mass legitimacy among the Afghan people — opposition to any attempts to change or challenge their religious practice and opposition to occupation by foreign atheists. (Note: By legitimacy, I don’t mean legitimacy according to some normative standard, but rather in the sense of popular legitimacy, credence with the public, …) But we’re really in no position to judge, with such laughably little experience in real political struggles, and little understanding of the physical, political, and psychological difficulties they pose. And any mass resistance was inevitably going to be Islamist (of course, once the mujaheddin factions started fighting each other instead of trying to provide public order, then I imagine they lost a great deal of support — this is unfortunately in what seems to be the least documented period since the 78 revolution, so I’ve read less about it).
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full at --
<http://www.loveandsubversion.net/wordpress/?p=11 >
.d.