[lbo-talk] Juan Cole interview: WITDB in Afghanistan and why

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Nov 11 22:13:44 PST 2009


http://www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=14540

November 11, 2009

Metro Times (Detroit)

Tread lightly

Juan Cole argues against sending lots of troops to Afghanistan

By Curt Guyette and W. Kim Heron

<snip>

Metro Times: By most accounts, the debate in the White House right

now isn't over whether to escalate or de-escalate the war in

Afghanistan, but rather over how many more troops to send there. If

you were talking to the president right now instead of us, what

would you say to him?

Juan Cole: If you are going to accomplish anything in Afghanistan,

you need a very light footprint.

MT: What would that footprint look like?

Cole: Let's back up and talk about what the goal is in Afghanistan.

Your strategy and your tactics are going to come out of your goal.

I'm a little bit afraid that, in regard to the goal, you see a lot

of mission creep. The goal has become standing up an Afghan

government and an Afghan military that's relatively stable and can

control the country. There's a lot of state-building involved in

that.

I am a severe skeptic on this score. I don't think that's a proper

goal for the U.S. military. I think we are dealing with a tribal

society of people who, as a matter of course, are organized by clan

and have feuds with each other, and feuds with other tribes, and

feuds with their cousins. I think that Washington misinterprets this

feuding as Talibanism, and thinks that if you put a lot of troops in

there, you can pacify the country and settle it down.

I just think it is a misreading of the character of the country.

Afghanistan is a country where localism is important, where people

don't like the central government coming in and bothering them.

There's a sense in which the communist government of the 1980s,

backed by the Soviet Union, wanted to drag Afghanistan kicking and

screaming into the late 20th century, and to do that you had to

impose central government policy on the countryside and on the

villagers. And the villagers rose up and kicked the Soviets and the

communists out. They were outraged, in part, against the

centralizing tendency of Kabul.

So, I just think that Afghanistan is a country that needs a light

touch. You just have to accept that there's going to be a certain

amount of disorder in the countryside as long as people are

organized tribally. And if you put 100,000 or 150,000 Western troops

in there, that's just more people to feud with.

MT: Given all that, what do you think success in Afghanistan would

entail?

Cole: If you are asking what I think is a plausible goal, I'd say it

is training an Afghan army and police force as best you can. But you

are just going to have to accept that it's going to be a weak

government. You can shore it up to some extent, but you need to

shore it up behind the scenes. It can't be seen to be a puppet

government, because that will undermine its legitimacy.

A government that can provide more services to people is good. Road

building is good. Encouraging the markets to open is good. But as

far as fighting what the U.S. is calling Taliban, they are really

just regional warlords. They might have a tactical alliance with the

old Taliban of Mullah Omar, but it's a mistake to sweep them all up

into a single category.

MT: Do you think there is a possibility that the Taliban that was in

power before the U.S. sent in troops could return to a position of

power that they held before?

Cole: It is unlikely the Taliban will come back in that way.

First of all, the opinion polls show that only 5 percent of Afghans

think well of Taliban. Five percent is a pretty low approval rating.

Of course, Taliban are mainly from the Pashtun ethnic group, which

is about 42 percent of the country, so there might be a few

districts that would be under Taliban rule if people have their say.

But the country's other ethnic groups don't support the Taliban. So

I don't anticipate them coming back.

And, even when they were in power, it was fairly easy to dislodge

them. All the U.S. had to do in 2001 was to give close air support

to the enemies of the Taliban. What I don't understand is why that's

not a standing option. This may be part of what Vice President Joe

Biden is saying, that it is always the case that if things get out

of hand we just give close air support to the enemies of the Taliban

and push them back.

MT: One version of events of 9/11 is that it was part of bin Laden's

strategy to lure us into Afghanistan and bleed us the way the

Soviets were bled ...

Cole: Bin Laden said this explicitly in 1996.

MT: So why do you think we fell for the trap?

Cole: It's just so tempting for a great power to have an area to go

into. Central Asia is rich in resources -- natural gas, and

Kazakhstan has petroleum and gold -- and there was this opportunity

to assert U.S. interests in Central Asia and push Russia back. There

are all kinds of reasons for which bin Laden was making us a very

attractive offer. He was offering us a very large, delicious piece

of cheese. Of course, it turns out that there was a very large

mousetrap attached to the cheese.

MT: What about the terrorism component of this -- the fear the

Taliban will shield al-Qaeda and provide a safe haven that will give

them a staging area to plan another attack on the United States?

Cole: First of all, that premise is flawed. There is virtually no

al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. As we speak, something on the order of 10

to 15 percent of Afghanistan is more or less controlled by Taliban.

And yet, there is virtually no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. So if the

idea that Taliban equals safe harbor for al-Qaeda isn't true in the

present, why would it be true in the future?

In fact, why is it we don't think the Taliban can learn? They're

pretty smart people. They took on the Soviets and defeated them.

Surely they're dismayed at what happened to them after al-Qaeda

attacked the United States. I imagine a lot of them would slit

al-Qaeda's throats if they came anywhere near, out of anger at them

for ruining the good deal the Taliban had in Afghanistan.

MT: Al-Qaeda is a presence in Pakistan, though. How do we pursue

them there?

Cole: Al-Qaeda is a presence in some parts of the Administered

Tribal Areas of Pakistan, not in Pakistan proper. There are 15

federally administrated tribal areas. They are extremely craggy

countryside. Very, very difficult to penetrate.

And how many al-Qaeda operatives do you think are in the tribal

areas of Pakistan? Five hundred? A thousand? What I can't understand

is the argument that we need 100,000 troops in neighboring

Afghanistan because there is a small number of Arab radicals hiding

out in the hills of Waziristan. What can they do from there exactly?

I can't imagine that they have high-speed Internet. They're just

hiding out. Obviously, the way to deal with them is to have the

Pakistani government deal with them.

MT: We're increasingly seeing references to the AfPak conflict. Is

there a way that conflating issues involving Afghanistan and

Pakistan hinders understanding that those two countries are so

dissimilar?

Cole: It's crazy to put Afghanistan and Pakistan into the same

basket. Pakistan is a real country. It has a big civil service, and

it has a big army, and it has a long tradition of central government

rule. To conflate it with Afghanistan, which is just a very rural,

tribal, undeveloped place, is crazy.

MT: What do you think about the policy that began under Bush and

apparently increased under Obama to use unmanned drone aircraft to

take out suspected terrorists remotely in Pakistan? Do you think

that is working, or is that simply creating more enemies because

innocent civilians are also getting killed in those operations?

Cole: I think it is a very bad policy. First of all, it is illegal

under international law. It is a kind of summary execution. Second

of all, it angers the Pakistani public, and we want the Pakistani

public on our side. It detracts from the legitimacy of the Pakistani

government. The Pakistani government denounces us for doing it in

public, but we know behind the scenes that they are fully

cooperative with this program. In some ways it is laziness; those

drone strikes are substituting for the Pakistani government actually

asserting itself in Pakistani villages. It would be much better if

the Pakistani constabulary and security forces could actually assert

the prerogative of the Pakistani state in those areas. But we're

bombing them from the air. It is alleged that the U.S. drone strikes

kill far more civilians than terrorists. It's not the case that

they've killed no terrorists. Some known bad guys have been struck

in this way, but the price is too high.

MT: The war on terror is also one in which there is really no end

point. Isn't that one of the problems here?

Cole: The Obama administration, to its credit, has abandoned the

terminology of a war on terror. They are calling it an overseas

contingency operation, which sounds very temporary indeed. So, the

rhetoric of a long war is gone, but the policy of using this

sledgehammer of the Pentagon to deal with the mosquitoes of al-Qaeda

is still in place, and that's what needs to change.

MT: While Obama has been weighing the decision about what to do in

Afghanistan, and where to go from here, former Vice President Dick

Cheney has accused him of dithering. Do you think that is a fair

criticism, that Obama is coming off as being Hamlet-like and afraid

to take action?

Cole: Given that Cheney rushed us into at least two wars and seemed

eager for more, with hardly any debate, I just wish we'd had more

deliberation and planning in the past when he was in power. No, I

think the criticism is a complete crock. It's just an attempt to

play politics.

Look, when Obama came into office, the Afghan presidential elections

were scheduled for Aug. 20. How is Obama going to make policy about

Afghanistan without knowing who the president is going to be as of

Aug. 21? In fact, in Afghanistan, politics is very personalistic, so

it is important to know who your partner is going to be. I think

Obama came in hoping [Afghan President] Hamid Karzai might be

defeated; he thought that Karzai is part of the problem, and then

Karzai tried to steal the election, and we've had a lot of ups and

downs since then. It now appears that Karzai will remain in power.

But whether you do counterinsurgency or counterterrorism as policy

will depend very much on whether you have a reliable Afghan

government to fight with. And the Obama administration clearly

doesn't believe that Karzai is such a credible partner. So, I don't

see how he could have made policy with this political backdrop. It

would have been very dangerous. Now, the situation has been

clarified. It's not a good situation, and Obama will be in a

position to come to a considered, mature opinion.

MT: As we're talking, Abdullah has pulled out of the presidential

race and the Afghanistan runoff has been canceled; Karzai is talking

about cleaning up corruption and reaching out to the Taliban. Do you

think either of those things is likely to happen?

Cole: I think reaching out to the Taliban has already been

happening. Saudi Arabia has hosted meetings between Karzai's

representatives and major opposition forces. There are some groups

that are being called Taliban that are not; they are simply

religious Pashtun nationalists who have a beef with Karzai. They can

be cajoled; they can be offered positions; they can be offered

services from the central government. So they might be brought in

from the cold.

And, to his credit, that is one thing Karzai has been trying to do

-- to negotiate with his opposition. However, when you talk about

cleaning up corruption, even if Karzai wanted to do it, he wouldn't

be able to. Afghanistan is the fifth poorest country in the world,

with a culture of corruption that pervades the government. It's just

a way of life over there. If somebody does a favor for you, even if

they are in government service, they expect a tip. For us to imagine

that it is gong to be different anytime soon would be foolish.

MT: There is a widespread impression among a lot of people that the

troop surge worked in Iraq and that same type of effort could be

transferred to Afghanistan. Could you talk about that?

Cole: That would be a book, all of the reasons for which the two are

not the same. Iraq is a relatively advanced country. It's probably

60 or so percent literate; it has an industrial infrastructure. And

it is possible to have a government that functions in Iraq. In

Afghanistan -- and people don't understand this, but -- 90 percent

of the new Afghan army is illiterate. So you send these guys into

Kandahar to an address and they wouldn't even be able to read the

street signs. So, you just can't analogize from one to the other.

It's just crazy to try. They are not the same kinds of societies.

Also, I don't think the surge is what mainly turned things around in

Iraq. The Shiites won the civil war in Iraq. Nobody is winning civil

wars in Afghanistan. In fact, in Iraq, we were betting on the 60

percent majority Shiites. In Afghanistan, we're betting on the

minority against the Pashtun plurality. So the demographics are not

working for us in Afghanistan.

So, a) I don't think the surge is mainly what turned things around

and b) it's just not the same situation. So, if they are making

policy in Afghanistan by analogies from Iraq, that is very

dangerous.

MT: Speaking of Iraq, Obama has been committed to removing all U.S.

troops from there by the end of 2011 under the Status of Forces

agreement. Do you still see us on track to do that?

Cole: Obama is ahead of schedule on the Iraq withdrawal. In fact,

it's clear to me he's won that argument in Washington and with the

Pentagon. When he first came in, Petraeus and the other big generals

were on his case and were trying to reverse his commitment to get

out of Iraq, and they failed. And now, they appear to have become

convinced that he was right.

Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog is at juancole.com.

Curt Guyette and W. Kim Heron are news editor and editor of Metro

Times. Send comments to cguyette at metrotimes.com.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list