Whatâs
Wrong Today:
A new book,
War
Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier by former
State Department officer Carter Malkasian takes a penetrating look at a
district in southern Afghanistan.
From the Washington
Post in 2011, about Malkasian and the Garmser district:
2009, this district along the Helmand River has seen five different Marine
battalion commanders, two governors and two police chiefs. The only constant
was a compact American whom everyone here calls Carter Sahib.
The WaPo
continues:
who had been the State Departmentâs representative in Garmser until last month,
is perhaps the only foreign official in the country to have been so widely
embraced as a sahib, an Urdu salutation once used to address British colonial
officials that Afghans now employ as a term of honor and respect.
Fluent in
Pashto, Malkasian interviewed elders, officials, notables, villagers, American soldiers,
and even many Taliban. His book chronicles the Garmser district from rebellions
against the communists in 1979 through to the present day.
He speaks
about three crucial themes that show why our effort to nation-build in
Afghanistan failed. They are: administrative competence, tribal politics, and
control of land. It was our failure to understand their historical interplay
that has doomed our efforts from the start.
He reviews
how, in the late â70s, the communists brought schooling, land reform, and an
official presence to the district. This led to resistance and then to open
rebellion from those who Malkasian calls the notables (elders, landowners) who
lost land and power, and from mullahs who resented non-religious education. In
the course of the war, many notables were killed or went into exile, and the
mullahs, previously a politically unimportant group, rose to prominence in
local affairs.
The Soviet
withdrawal in 1989 meant victory for the mujahedin bands but it also brought
infighting and chaos.
Malkasian
shows how this situation played out in Kandahar (east of Garmser) where a
tightly-knit group of former mujahedeen and students â the emerging Taliban â
suppressed warring bands, established their rule, and determined to take over
the country.
The Talibanâs rise in Garmser was based
more on politics than on warfare. In the absence of a unified opposition or
appealing alternative, Garmser fell with very little fighting.
The first
Taliban government found support from the younger mullahs, who became teachers, judges and administrators, and from the poor, who benefited from the communist
land reform, which was overturned by notables, but reinstated by the Taliban.
But the
Talibanâs appeal declined. Enforcement of austere religious codes and
conscription for the interminable war against the Northern Alliance were
unpopular. The mullahs knew nothing about getting products to markets, building
bridges and roads, or maintaining the canals that run through the district.
Education and healthcare saw no improvement.
When the US-backed
Northern Alliance swept south after 9/11, the Taliban fled without a fight into
Pakistan and the old Garmser notables returned to power â and with them came bickering,
delay, and indecision. Local government was often inept and corrupt, leaving
many residents to recall the Taliban as at least evenhanded and based on
external law, not personal or tribal interest.
Efforts at reconciliation were minimal: many mullahs were
harassed and beaten, and land was taken back from the poor.
Regrouping
in Pakistan, the Taliban saw Garmser as ripe for retaking, though not for
attacking. Mullahs were sent to agitate against Garmser notables and settle
disputes independent of the government. Cadres later came to recruit and train
local youths, who rallied to the mullahsâ denunciations of government
corruption and its reliance on foreign troops.
The District
government could not counter the growing threat. There was insufficient elite
consensus to form a strategy against the better organized Taliban. There were
no American, British, or Afghan troops in the district. By the autumn of 2006,
with only sporadic opposition, Garmser was again in Taliban hands.
The second
Taliban government found support from tribes that felt slighted by the former
district governor, from people who had been wronged by his administrators, and
from the poor who, under the Taliban, had their own land â the same land that
the communists had given them, that the notables had taken back, that the first
Taliban government had returned to them, and that the notables had again taken back.
The
Talibanâs old failings recurred in their second government. Economic
development remained weak, education worsened. The first Taliban government had
made schools chiefly religious in nature; the second closed them altogether.
In late
2008, the US Marines established control in Garmser. The Taliban were driven
far to the south of Garmser and then into Pakistan.
Malkasian,
pg 81: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
to [again] retake land [from the poor] was one of Americaâs greatest missteps
in Afghanistan.
The remaining
guerrillas still plant IED’s and intimidate or assassinate government officials.
Most ominously, many locals still think of the Taliban as fair administrators
and guarantors of land for the poor.
Today,
schools are reopened. The economy is doing better; average income is up. Tribal
militias have been integrated with the national police force, reducing the
potential for warlordism. Despite signs of progress, Malkasian notes that Garmserâs
future is in danger as American forces withdraw, and local confidence in their future
is again falling.
With
several hundred fighters just across the Pakistani border, the Taliban are
beginning to reassert their presence in Garmser, increasingly by infiltrating
the police and army.
Most
critically, Malkasian reports that the hope that absent US troops, there would
be greater cooperation between the district government, tribal elders and
landowners, has thus far not been borne out. Without such cooperation, the
Taliban will likely take over the district, just as they did twice before in
the last twenty years.
The
“counterinsurgency” (COIN) model espoused by Gen. Petraeus is a form
of muscular colonialism applied in the 21st Century, allowing President Karzai
time to try to control a country that he couldnât control.
In
place of Petraeusâ 50,000 foot view, Malkasian gives us a micro view in one
Afghan district, where the insurgents, tribes, government officials and
Americans clash, conspire and compete to install a Taliban, a tribal, or a Kabul-centric
government dominance, respectively.
Where
was this analysis when Mr. Bush turned from Iraq back to Afghanistan?
Where
was this analysis when Mr. Obama âsurgedâ our troops (and awesome civil
servants like Mr. Malkasian) without a true exit strategy and (apparently) very
little hope of making a true difference on the ground?
A government that is losing to an
insurgency isnât being out-fought, itâs being out-governed (Bernard Fall)
