Update: U.S. President Barack Obama relieved Gen. Stanley McChrystal of his post as top U.S. commander in Afghanistan in Wednesday, replacing him with Gen. David Petraeus. Obama described his decision as a “a change in personnel but ... not a change in policy.” Before the decision was made, Thomas Ruttig of the Afghanistan Analysts Network filed this dispatch from Kabul arguing that whoever’s in charge, it’s that policy that needs changing.
Great, General, that was really helpful! The austere, Bud Light
Lime-only, non-plus-ultra ‘Jedi’ commander has spoken to the Rolling Stone, him and his population-centric "handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political
operators and outright maniacs" (and gay-haters, as the author of the
famous Rolling Stone story cautiously implies), badmouthing people with
whom they should be working. The Boss is "angry," says the BBC. Result:
Everyone within the Beltway, i.e. the whole world, is speculating
whether The General will be MacArthured. Think tankers are already
demanding his head. That seems to be what really what matters. Not
Afghanistan.
The Boss should be angry -- or better: concerned -- about something
else: here, on the ground, things are on fire. Violence is even
increasing, ‘attributable,’ as the latest UN report on Afghanistan puts it, "to an
increase of military operations in the southern region during the first
quarter of 2010" but also to the Taliban’s counter-surge. A government
lacking legitimacy by half-way decent elections, apparently concerned
mainly for their families’ and friends’ business interests and even
considering an unprincipled embrace of the insurgent leaders in order to
cling to power, is creating fears of an all-Pashtun coalition,
deepening the ethnic divide, acutely risking the alienation of half of
the population for good while, by the same action, strengthening warlord
rule in the North even further. The U.S. military is happily looking
forward to the withdrawal of the ‘sissy Dutch’ and Canadians so that
they can ‘kick ass’ and dismantle all the cautiously built respect with
local tribal leaders who straddle the blurred frontline between ‘us and
them.’ And finally, Pakistan leading the U.S. and its Kabul ally by the
nose -- having made clear that a political settlement will only happen on
ISI terms.
Actually, from the start, it didn’t look like the brilliant new U.S.
strategy was working. Has anyone, including The General, really expected
that he could bomb and black-op the Taliban to shreds, in Marjah, that "bleeding ulcer," Kandahar or elsewhere while there still is an
unchanged, predatory government in place in the provinces? (Probably
they did, considering their successes in Ramadi and Falluja.) With
figures at the top of the government who are regularly visited by the
top-most U.S. military and civilians or bolstered with contracts worth
millions, while there is full knowledge (not only since the latest
congressional report, ‘Warlord, Inc.’) that are involved in all kinds of
stuff that undermines the ‘nation-building’ which, according to some,
the US is still attempting in Afghanistan? Remember all the media
stories from Uruzgan, Spin
Boldak, Kandahar and the forgotten one from Kunduz (only mentioned so that we do not forget that
this is not only about the south).
This strategy has been too little too late from the start. Hearts and
minds were lost long ago across Afghanistan and they cannot be won back
by throwing money at them. See the -- really -- brilliant Andrew Wilder,
deservingly quoted in the Rolling Stone story: "A tsunami of cash fuels
corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment
where we’re picking winners and losers." And The General’s strategy has
another major flaw: It is dominated by the military. It "cannot by
itself create governance reform," as CFR’s Stephen Biddle puts it in the
same Rolling Stone story. Remember that also outgoing Kai Eide had
warned against a ‘militarization’ of ‘our’ effort in Afghanistan?
For most Afghans who usually do not read Newsweek or the Rolling
Stone, The General was just another general saying what other generals
have said before. What reason could they have that he would actually
change things? Yes, the percentage of civilian casualties caused by the
NATO troops went down but still The General tells his black ops guys, as
the Rolling Stone relates, "[y]ou better be out there hitting four or
five targets tonight" but that he also will "have to scold you in the
morning for it." Only joking?
At the same time, all his Special Forces and Local Defence militias,
not to mention the ANA and ANP, are not able to save the lives of those
who are supposed to be building on the military ‘successes’: Kandahar’s
deputy mayor Azizullah Yarmal, Abdul Majid Babai the head of the
province’s culture and information department, Abdul Jabbar the district
governor of Arghandab and Haji Abdul Hai an Abdul Rahman Tokhi the
tribal elders -- all killed in the past few months. Not to talk about
Matiullah Qate the provincial police chief killed by the thugs of a guy
who calls himself the ‘Nancy Pelosi of Kandahar’ and the uncounted other
Afghans. In Kabul, committed Afghans are discussing whether they should
pack their bags again and leave. Even in the North, people mentally
prepare for a possible return of the Taliban. Meanwhile, the ‘strategic
communication’ people try to alter the ‘negative’ narrative into a
direction even they themselves probably do not believe in.
Furthermore, the question again comes up (as put to me by al-Jazeera
yesterday) whether Karzai has been ‘the right man’ to work with. I did
not give them my bad-mood answer that even a combination of Mandela, the
Dalai Lama and Jesus Christ reborn couldn’t have pulled the thing off
singlehandedly.
Wrong question: It’s the system, stupid.
The over-centralized, presidential, non-prime minister system created
in God’s -- pardon, the U.S. system’s -- own likeness, resulting in a
sidelined parliament, a non-impartial Supreme Court, the lack of a
Constitutional Court and, not least, a marginalized civil society and
democratic forces.
During all the fuss between the Karzai-bashing Obama pre-election
team and the Karzai-endorsing Obama post-elections team and all the
policy reviews, the moment was missed when the whole thing could
possibly have been stopped: when it became clear during the voter
registration for the 2009 election that millions of voters (mainly
women) were blatantly invented for an exercise in fraud which the
Guatemalan generals who used to register the dead from the cemeteries
would have been proud off. The power whose "exclusive property"
Afghanistan is according to the Rolling Stone, should have said enough
and started working for a Bonn II, which, this time, would be inclusive:
with the Taliban, yes, and Jalaluddin and Gulbuddin for God’s sake but
also with the pro-democratic civil society forces kicked out of Bonn I
one its eve.
The worst that can happen now is that the Afghanistan war skeptics
and the down-sizers of aims and expectations get their way and The
General’s media blunder is used as an excuse to slam on the break and
even accelerate the withdrawal. Am I arguing for The General -- and the
troops -- to stay? Ask me another time.
But I am sure of one thing: If this happens, AAN’s chairman of the
Advisory Board, an former UN and EU envoy, Francesc Vendrell is right
when he says in today’s issue of the Australian The Age:
Having failed dismally to make the Afghan people our allies, we
will inevitably abandon them to a combination of Taliban in the south
and the warlords in the north and - having somehow redefined success -
we will go home convinced that it is the Afghan people who have failed
us.
From Dr. Hook’s lyrics:
We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills
But the thrill we've never known
Is the thrill that'll get you when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.
Thomas Ruttig is the co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, where this was originally published. He speaks Pashtu and Dari.
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