Brian M Downing
Discussion of Afghanistan policy is not being conducted with an adequate understanding of the insurgency there. Insurgents are considered akin to a crime syndicate that has expanded its influence through intimidation and violence, or to a religious cult that spreads through hortatory oration. These views are partly true but will not contribute to sound policy. The insurgents have expanded rapidly over the past few years because they offer compelling answers to unaddressed concerns.
Opposition to the Western presence
Foremost among these concerns, paradoxically enough to Westerners who see themselves as neutral mentors, is the extended presence of foreigners. Linguistic, cultural, geographic and tribal obstacles have prevented a unifying nationalism, but common experiences of foreign invasion and tribal warfare have left an abiding suspicion of foreigners. That outlook has led to common purpose in expelling intruders – the British or Russians or an adjacent tribe – but loss of unity and a return to localism soon followed.
Nonetheless, after decades of war and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, most Afghans welcomed help from Westerners. They were seen, if only quite warily, as agents of stability and growth. Eight years on, with little stability or growth, the welcome is disappearing. Traditional suspicions are falling on Western powers, and the insurgents are winning over district after district.
Western aid workers enter a region with the best of intentions, but are off-putting to elders and notables. Westerners carry an unmistakable confidence in their way of doing things. Youthful ones speak with elders as equals, or perhaps with a facade of deference. Projects are planned in accordance with engineering and agronomical principles, not local custom. The benefits of a project cannot be clearly known, but the estimates of workers and the expectations of locals will almost always diverge. Right and wrong here are not relevant; the impact on local sensibilities is.
The number of foreigners on a project today is much higher than in previous counter-insurgencies. When a French captain was seeking to win the support of Algerians in his area of control, he could have an irrigation ditch dug or a schoolroom built simply by calling in a small engineering detachment. Such projects today involve platoons of aid workers, embassy liaisons, consultants, security forces, public relations officials, reporters from many countries, and so on. The necessity of so many personnel is dubious; their impact on local opinion is not.
Development programs take a long time to begin, let alone come to completion – if they ever do. Bureaucratic plodding, inter-agency turf wars, banditry, corruption and warlords all take a toll on timeliness. Insurgent attacks on development projects, especially schools, are both well known and relevant here, but many insurgent groups permit projects to go on, if only to position themselves to take partial credit for them.
Large numbers of often haughty development workers and the delays in completing many projects leave the impression, eight years after their arrival, that Westerners have become another occupying force. Resentment builds, as do insurgent condemnations and entreaties, as do attachments of local men to insurgent bands.
Western militaries have also played an important, if not leading, role in developing antipathy toward foreigners. Some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries, owing to their prominent colonial pasts, have long if distant experience with counter-insurgency and civil operations.
They stress rapport with local people and limit the use of artillery and air strikes. Other militaries, especially that of the United States, were long trained for conventional warfare (against the Soviet Union and the Iraqi army) in which the use of such firepower was central. The US military diligently avoided counter-insurgency training, during and even after Vietnam, as such expertise might invite politicians to get involved in another lengthy and painful insurgency.
The use of artillery and air power against insurgents often inflicts heavy casualties on an insurgent band, but it also alienates much of the population and pushes them into supporting the insurgency. In recent years, insurgents have conducted engagements in a manner to incur civilian casualties at the hands of Western forces (a tactic skillfully used by the Vietcong). Word of the effects of Western firepower spreads rapidly. Afghans are increasingly hostile to the Western presence and become even more so with each incident. Many join the insurgency even though neither they nor family members have been victims; they join to avenge fellow Pashtuns and defend their homeland.
The recent US emphasis on counter-insurgency has included orders to reduce the use of artillery and air power. Whether this will be carried through and affect the insurgency remains to be seen. Another aspect of the counter-insurgency program stresses an extended military presence in the villages – a departure from past efforts that expelled insurgents, began development projects, then departed to chase down other insurgent bands. As much as the new emphasis might resonate with counter-insurgency doctrines, Western assurances of a protracted presence, this late in the war, will only underscore concerns that Westerners are another occupying power, and become a boon for the insurgency.
The prospect of better government
Insurgents present an alternative to the government of President Hamid Karzai. They build a shadow government as they move into a district, and win local support as comparatively honest administrators and judges. This was the case in previous insurgencies in Asia and North Africa and it is true of the one today in Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s harsh suppression of anarchy in the early- to mid-1990s was important in their rise to power. In the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet departure in 1989 and the fall of the Soviet-backed government, former mujahideen leaders became bandits and warlords, replacing the rule of elders and notables who had been killed or had fled abroad. There was no government. The fledgling Taliban defended merchants transiting Kandahar province then extended their control throughout the province. They ended banditry and warlordism through armed force and the severe imposition of Islamic law – much to the relief of most locals.
The expulsion of the Taliban in 2001 had a similarly chaotic aftermath, which remains in most parts of the country. Indeed, many of the bandits and warlords suppressed by the Taliban became partners with the Karzai government. Many others simply resumed their old trade.
In the south and east, offices are awarded disproportionately to members of Karzai’s tribe, the Popalzai, at the expense of other Pashtun tribes – much to the latter’s irritation. The scales of justice tip markedly toward those who deliver inducements. Officials demand a bribe for almost any request. Even a death certificate for a loved one will require an extra-legal emolument for the appropriate functionary.
A government can be quite corrupt yet be competent in delivering services, as the success of old American machine bosses indicates. Afghans will accept a high level of corruption. Most will insist on it, as practices deemed corrupt are ordinary expectations in tribal society. But the machinery of the Karzai government displays little competence, making it corrupt and useless.
With corruption and ineptitude rampant and in the absence of law and order – all under the noses of Western authorities – the Taliban are able once more to present themselves as fair administrators and the scourge of bandits and warlords. They begin their presence in a district by settling disputes in accordance with Islamic law, not in accordance with the highest bidder. They deal harshly with thieves and bandits, chopping off hands or executing higher-ups – appalling to distant Westerners, appealing to weary locals.
The alternate government then intimidates or expels local administrators, either through threatening letters or pitiless assassination. Support comes even from traders and businessmen – people who might be thought of as favoring Western-style government with its rational-legal institutions and guarantees of property and contract. However, they see insurgents as the only answer to corruption and other interferences in business. Officials and bandits steal from them; the insurgents kill the officials and bandits. And business is able to prosper where rough justice is meted out.
Counterpoise to non-Pashtun power
Pashtun tribes constitute about 45% of the population and hold fast to the venerable belief that one of theirs must head any national government. Though non-Pashtun monarchs have ruled in the receding past, other groups such as the Tajiks and Uzbeks and Hazaras generally defer to this belief. Conflicts have arisen over the centuries and one has been building in recent years – to the insurgents’ advantage.
Disparate tribes and peoples had a common purpose in expelling the Soviet Union, though no unity of command developed. The war was conducted by dozens of local commanders, who occasionally cooperated in operations but who also competed for resources funneled in by Pakistani intelligence, which favored Pashtun groups. This was not only out of kinship ties but also out of of common hostility to India, which supported northern peoples.
The Soviet departure was followed by various ethnic groups vying for power. The Tajiks once held Kabul; a grab for power by the Pashtun Gulbuddin Hekmatyar failed. By the mid-1990s, the Taliban had gathered a number of Pashtun tribes, seized Kabul, and pushed Tajik and Uzbek armies (the Northern Alliance) into a redoubt.
The US supported the Northern Alliance in 2001 and drove al-Qaeda and the Taliban into Pakistan. Who would govern post-Taliban Afghanistan? The Pashtuns were the largest group by far, but it was Tajiks and Uzbeks who had won the day. Domestic and international pressures settled on a Pashtun, Hamid Karzai, who ruled with Tajiks in the vice presidency and more importantly, in the Defense Ministry.
The Defense Ministry became a fiefdom run by a Tajik suzerain who bestowed commissions and battalion commands on a disproportionate number of fellow Tajiks. Northern Alliance warlords turned in some weaponry yet kept their seasoned armies intact.
An increasing number of Pashtuns see the army and state as parts of a sinister plot, with the West as a key adept. No evidence is needed to suspect the worst. Tradition and rumor suffice. Insurgents play well on this outlook and fuel hopes of a return to Pashtun greatness. The gathering of the Pashtun tribes to counter the threat from the north is again being done by the Taliban, as it was in the mid-1990s.
Austere religious tide
Insurgent groups, especially the Taliban, are exploiting a return to fundamentalism that is based on the misfortune the country has experienced over the past 30 years. The calamities that the Afghan people have suffered, fundamentalist thinking explains, are a judgment on those who have departed from the path dictated by the Koran. A return to strict observance will restore peace and justice.
The appeal of strict religion following a calamity is a recurrent theme in many religions. The tragedies that befell ancient Israel were seen as the result of abandoning the ways of the Torah. Dire warnings from prophets preceded the disasters and stricter observance followed them. In Christendom, the Byzantines blamed military defeats on religious deviations such as icon worship. In Islam, the Almoravids blamed the ouster from Iberia on impiety, and with their new austere beliefs, conquered an empire including parts of Iberia that had been lost. Significantly, military and political greatness ensued the return to tradition and became an essential part of the myths.
Less arcane examples can be found in present-day experience. American fundamentalists blame the September 11,2001, attacks on the US and natural disasters on sinfulness and urge a return to America’s origins as a chosen people. Following the defeat in 1991, many Iraqis, especially soldiers who suffered horrific casualties, adopted Salafism, a strict form of Islam that calls for a return to practices at the time of Islam’s founding. Amid the murderousness that followed the ouster of Saddam Hussein, many Iraqis turned to Salafism.
A similar cultural tide is underway in Afghanistan as people reflect on decades of war and lawlessness, significantly with a brief hiatus from 1996 to 2001 when the Taliban were in power. The ascetic message of the Taliban plays on this sentiment. It dovetails with other bases of insurgent support. Deviation from the path has led to Western invasion, lawlessness, Tajik and Shi’ite (Hazara) threats, governance by the law of man rather than the law of Allah. Rallying to the Taliban’s fusion of religion, state and army will expel the foreigners, maintain Pashtun pre-eminence, and bring a return to a golden age under Islamic law.
The fundamentalist message is carried from district to district by Taliban bands, most of which have members knowledgeable in Islamic law and in its appeal to a war-weary people. The message is echoed by village mullahs and finds resonance with villagers. The present situation is so hopeless that the Taliban’s period of rule is seen as having brought relative peace and justice.
The Afghan insurgency is based on concerns for which the insurgents have more compelling answers than do Western powers or the Karzai government. The insurgency has spread from a few districts to as much as one-third of the country because it plays on concerns regarding national sovereignty, fair government, non-Pashtun machinations, and the role of religion in life. Policy makers must ask if more troops and a lengthy counter-insurgency will ease or worsen these concerns.
Western efforts at counter-insurgency have thus far been halfhearted, incoherent and unsuccessful. New emphasis on detaching local support from the insurgents will face an enemy more deeply embedded in the populace than thought. Policy makers must confront this. The military forces surely will.
Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and the author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam.