[And Iraq isn't much like the story the elites now think. It's the numbered bullet points after the intro that are esp. good and clear.]
http://www.juancole.com/2009/09/is-afghanistan-vietnam-or-iraq-arguing.html
Informed Comment Juan Cole
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Is Afghanistan Vietnam or Iraq? Arguing with Obama and Rubin
<snip>
I was one of the first analysts to warn that Afghanistan could turn
into a Vietnam for President Obama, so of course I do not agree with
Rubin. And his remarks frankly worry me because he is making an analogy
from Iraq to Afghanistan, which just won't work.
First of all, official Washington has never understood the real reason
for which rates of civilian deaths fell dramatically in Iraq in late
2007 and through 2008, compared to the almost apocalyptic death rate in
2006-2007 during the Sunni-Shiite civil war kicked off by the Feb. 2006
bombing of the Askariya "Golden Domed" shrine in Samarra.
Beginning in a big way in summer of 2006 and continuing for at least a
year, the Shiites of Baghdad and its environs determinedly and
systematically ethnically cleansed the Sunnis from the capital. I
figure that over a million people were likely displaced. Mixed
neighborhoods such as Shaab became wholly Shiite. Baghdad went from
being 50/50 Sunni-Shiite, more or less, in 2003 to being perhaps
85%-90% Shiite today. Much of the violence of the civil war period was
the result of neighborhood fighting between adherents of the two
branches of Islam, so when the Sunnis were expelled (many of them all
the way to Amman and Damascus), the violence naturally declined
substantially.
Rubin thinks that the violence declined because the US government began
being willing to enlist Sunni militiamen to fight radical
fundamentalists and Baathists. But the Sunnis took the deal in part
because they were losing so badly. And, the main effect of the
Awakening Councils or Sons of Iraq was in al-Anbar Province, which only
has a little over a million people out of Iraq's 27 million, not in
Baghdad. In the capital they probably just stopped the ethnic cleansing
of Sunnis.
The reasons the Shiites won the civil war in Iraq include:
1) Shiites were the majority, with 60% of the population;
2) Shiites had militias such as the Badr Corps and the Mahdi Army to
carry out the ethnic cleansing;
3) Shiites had gained control of an oil state and had significant
monetary resources;
4) Next-door Shiite Iran offered enormous resources and facilities to
the Iraqi Shiites, helping them avoid being strangled by the Sunni
Arabs of the west and north. In essence, the US caught a big break
insofar as its main regional enemy happened to have the same basic
objectives in Iraq as did the US, reinforcing Washington's policies.
5) Most Shiites and their Kurdish allies (altogether some 80% of the
population) saw the al-Maliki government as legitimate, though most
Sunni Arabs did not.
6) Shiites had gained control of the newly trained army and security
forces and could deploy them against Sunnis, since the new recruits
were largely literate, increasingly well-trained, and motivated to stop
Sunni violence against their relatives;
7) US troops disarmed the Sunnis in the capital first, before turning
to Shiite militias, leaving the Sunnis helpless before 2) and 3) above;
and
8) Most Sunni Arabs in Iraq were and are secular nationalists who
resented the religious extremism of many of the guerrillas, and whose
tribes began to have a feud with the Islamic State of Iraq because it
bombed Sunni young men seeking recruitment into the national police.
Afghanistan differs from Iraq in the following respects:
1) The Pashtuns from whom the anti-government forces derive are some
44% of the population, not a 20% or less minority the way the Sunnis of
Iraq are. While most Pashtuns still reject the guerrillas, so did most
Sunni Arabs reject the extremist guerrillas; the latter still
controlled significant swathes of Sunni Iraq. The Taliban and kindred
groups are a significant presence everywhere there are large Pashtun
populations.
2) The Tajik and Hazara militias have largely been demobilized and are
not available for deployment against the Taliban and other
fundamentalist groups. The pro-Kabul Pashtuns typically do not have
militias.
3) The pro-Karzai Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazara Shiites and Uzbeks that form
the ruling clique are not united, and the government they dominate is
extremely weak and poverty-stricken (the GDP in international currency
[not purchasing power parity] is only about $9 bn a year, and the
government budget is a little over $1 bn.). Iraq has something close to
$70 bn. in reserves from oil sales. The Afghan government controls only
30% of the country. The country is resource-poor and there is no
prospect of it having a proper tax base for a competent bureaucracy and
army any time soon.
4) The Pashtun plurality is backed by the enormous Sunni country of
Pakistan, whereas the pro-Kabul Pashtuns have no regional foreign
patron to speak of; Iran generally supports the Tajiks and Hazaras, but
it is hard to discern that they have pumped very significant resources
into the country. In essence, Washington's regional ally, Pakistan, is
ambivalent about the Tajik/Hazara/Uzbek takeover of Kabul and not close
to Karzai's faction of Pashtuns.
5) In the aftermath of the recent election, probably a majority of
Afghans and of Pashtuns sees the Karzai government as corrupt and
illegitimate.
6) The Afghan army has faced extreme difficulties in training and
expansion. Some 90% of the troops are illiterate, which limits how much
they can be trained and even their ability to read street signs when
they are sent into an unfamiliar city. (Iraq's literacy rate is 76%).
Many Afghan troops lack discipline and some proportion regularly use
recreational drugs during work hours. There is no evidence of any great
esprit de corps or attachment to the Karzai government, in contrast to
the Iraqi army's willingness to fight for PM Nuri al-Maliki and his
ruling coalition.
7) US troops have proven unable to disarm the Taliban, Hizb-i Islam, or
the Haqqani group. The number of fighters attached to these guerrilla
groups has grown from 3,000 a few years ago to 15,000- 20,000 today.
They are local, know the terrain, and receive patronage and support
from Pashtun tribes who resent the foreign troop presence.
8) Pashtuns are not for the most part secularists, and a combination of
religious and nationalist rhetoric such as is deployed by old-time
guerrilla leader Gulbadin Hikmatyar and his "Islamic Party" has a great
deal of appeal to them. Although the Taliban are only thought well of
by 5% of Afghans in polls, that is probably 10% of Pashtuns. And many
of the guerrilla groups opposing Karzai are not properly called Taliban
(Pashtuns in Kunar Province are not thinking of Islamic Party when they
denounce Taliban). Virtually no Pashtuns, who are a plurality of the
country and the largest single ethnic group, want US or NATO troops in
their country.
So Afghanistan is not very much like Iraq (there are other differences,
as in the organization of the tribes), and if Rubin advises H. Clinton
and Obama to depend on a "surge" plus a "Sons of Afghanistan"
artificial militia policy, I think that would be dangerous advice.
Afghanistan is more like Vietnam than Obama and Rubin suggest. And, it
is becoming more like it all the time.
By the way, Mr. Rubin, we Americans don't call "anything that is hard"
Vietnam. We don't call keeping up a space station "Vietnam" or getting
universal health care "Vietnam." We invoke Vietnam against long, costly
Asian land wars, the objectives of which are murky and the medium-term
and long-term success of which is in significant doubt. And by these
criteria, Afghanistan has "Vietnam" written all over it.
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/17/2009 12:47:00 AM