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Creating islands of peace in Afghanistan
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“I supported the war in Afghanistan because 3000 of our people were murdered and I thought we had a right to defend the people of the United States.” Howard Dean
After 9/11 there was perhaps one person in America opposed to invading Afghanistan to fight bin Laden and al Qaeda and hold them accountable for the savagery of that day. In short order our incomparable military kicked the hell out of the Taliban, decimated al Qaeda, and freed millions of Afghans from tyranny, bringing elections sooner than in Iraq, opening schools, building hospitals, forwarding women's rights, helping the people along the road to freedom.
Do we still have a right to defend ourselves? Are we still there to destroy al Qaeda and the Taliban? Are we there to nation build? Are we there to put pressure on Iran? Are we there to provide support to Iraq?
President Obama's main military general in Afghanistan, McChrystal, says time is running out. With a resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda activity, without 40,000 more American troops, he tells the President Afghanistan is lost.
Are we best served by engaging a massive offensive against all enemies? This is the counter-terror option promoted by VP Biden.
Do we surge with 40,000 more troops to focus on insurgents? This is the counter-insurgency strategy, a war plan from the Bush administration, similar to the surge that succeeded in Iraq, keeping in mind, Afghanistan is vastly different than Iraq: more complex, more primative, less equipped for self-governance.
Do we send only moderate troop increases and hope for the best?
Do we get the hell out altogether, the George Will option.
Ralph Peters of the NY Post, saying Gen. McChrystal has been promoted beyond his skills set, supports the Biden option: an all out war on terrorists of all kinds both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
President Obama, signaling a preference for the Bush plan last March, now appears leaning toward a moderate troop build up, "hoping for the best."
Peters calls this a shameful non-decision that leaves our troops at risk, guarantees defeat, leaving Obama an out to blame Bush, but also leaving our enemies in a much stronger position, risking an even more unstable situation in nuclear Pakistan.
Meanwhile, McChrystal, insists he needs 40,000 more troops, a move that will surely anger Obama's leftist base.
No wonder Obama "dithers" as Dick Cheney said this week. He pays a high political price at home for listening to McChrystal, and if he acts accordingly, he then appears Bush-like.
If he goes with the Biden plan, as endorsed by Peters, he pays an even higher political price, risking the chance he starts looking like Lyndon Johnson.
And if he goes soft pedal he will appear weak, ala Jimmy Carter.
Yet the more he delays a decision the weaker he appears anyway. And a complete pull out would radically contradict his campaign promise to win in Afghanistan and serve up bin Laden's head on a platter.
Meanwhile, here is a report from the heart of Pashtunistan from Marines on the ground, an area largely controlled by Taliban:
Before a battalion of U.S. Marines swooped into this dusty farming community along the Helmand River in early July, almost every stall in the bazaar had been padlocked, as had the school and the health clinic. Thousands of residents had fled. Government officials and municipal services were nonexistent. Taliban fighters swaggered about with impunity, setting up checkpoints and seeding the roads with bombs.
In the three months since the Marines arrived, the school has reopened, the district governor is on the job and the market is bustling. The insurgents have demonstrated far less resistance than U.S. commanders expected. Many of the residents who left are returning home, their possessions piled onto rickety trailers, and the Marines deem the central part of the town so secure that they routinely walk around without body armor and helmets.
"Nawa has returned from the dead," said the district administrator, Mohammed Khan.
It appears Marines and soldiers with the U.S. Army know how to kill the bad guys and encourage the good guys, if the politicians and the pundits would get out of the way and give them the resources they need.
And it would also appear this Pakistani military officer has the best solution of all, falling right in line with what the Marines did in Nawa:
Major Mehar Omar Khan---Source here
An Alternative Approach for Afghanistan
Excerpt
Now what ‘can be’ done:
The list is very short. Don’t try to arrest the sea. Create islands. Having gone well past the phase of breaking the back of Al-Qaeda and dispersing the Taliban, concentrate on ‘creating and building’ examples. Set the beacon and you’ll see that all the lost ships and boats will come ashore. Here’s how to do it.
First and foremost, believe that it’s not God that drives these people crazy; it’s poverty. Believe that Pashtuns don’t submit to the Taliban out of sheer love for the one-eyed Mullah Omar; its deprivation and fear that drives this herd to the first man holding the flag of power and promise. Raise your flag higher than the Mullah’s and the half-blind lunatic will be devoured by Pashtuns. What is being done is unfortunately not the right way of raising the banner. It defies the logic of ‘can’t do’s’ given above. The Pashtun face of the country is not sufficiently visible.
Kabul or the Provincial Reconstruction Teams will NOT work. Provinces are too big a governance laboratory for Afghanistan. Instead, pick a few districts (nothing more than that) in the heart of areas worst-afflicted by the Taliban-led insurgency. Invest heavily in these districts.
Do it in two phases; first craft the message, then two, let the message spread itself.
Here’s is how to create the message. In selected (preferably non-contiguous) districts, give them an honest and polished leadership from ‘amongst themselves’, a transparent and efficient court, a model Pashtun police heavily armed with both weapons and motivation, schools (separate for girls and boys), a few hospitals, electricity, money for farming and setting up small businesses through a few efficiently functioning banks, paved roads, a model transport system and, not the least, build a beautiful grand mosque and an FM station that recites Quran with Pashtu translation 24/7. If possible, build a few plants and job-creating projects around mineral mines and informal fire-arms industry. Let these people serve as an example for rest of the Pashtun country. Having created these models, international community can then work ‘upwards’ and ‘outwards’ to include more and more areas and tribes.
Simultaneously the governance, right from district up to Kabul must be painted with an unmistakable Pashtun color. As of now, Pashtuns are being seen and treated like Sunnis of Iraq. In reality they are a majority and deserve to be empowered like Shias in Iraq.
A few examples of model districts would unmistakably mean this: that the USA means good and only good; that Islam is not the sole monopoly of Mullah Omar; that Islam and Quran can co-exist with banks and schools and hospitals and businesses; that life without bloodshed is a good life and that what Americans do is better than what Taliban do or plan to do. The approach will give Pashtuns an irresistibly attractive reason to ditch the message and manipulation of the Taliban in addition to stripping Mullah Omar and his Al Qaeda cohorts off their narrative and their manifesto.
Militarily, the coalition must hold fast to these model districts as bases and let the Taliban fester and sulk in the outlying, ungoverned margins. Their lack of ability to give in their areas of influence what coalition gives in its area of control will delegitimize them in due course of time. This may sound like giving away vast swathes of land to Taliban. In reality, it means a considerable improvement on the current situation. The Taliban structure of governance stands on a foundation of both fear and promise. The existing effort to pursue them everywhere leaves them surviving everywhere. They thrive on the coalition chasing their shadows. This new approach of excluding them from selected pockets will progressively deprive them of targets for violence and an audience for propaganda. Their brutalities in areas without coalition presence will discredit them while doing no harm to coalition’s image. Relative peace in coalition-governed districts will fuel discontent in Taliban-controlled districts. It will also give coalition and Afghan Forces the strategic advantage of operating from the ‘interior lines’ instead of having to hopelessly roll up the Taliban from the margins to the center.
Such ‘model district projects’ should not be the responsibility of the USA alone. Other members of the international community must also partake by taking up a district each.
These islands of peace and prosperity, though small, will be seen by all the lost mariners in the sea (of chaos and cruelty). It is my sincere belief that these model districts will serve as the ‘clarion call’. Pashtuns, hungry for food and promise, will come running and rally to the cause that gives hope of a better future, of peace and of return to the ‘throne of Kabul’.
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