Over at The Torch, a serving army officer has laid down in writing his thoughts on problems facing the Afghan mission, and some potential solutions. He speaks for himself, not for the Government of Canada or the Department of National Defence. But he has numerous overseas operational deployments, including two tours in Afghanistan - one as a Company Commander in Kandahar in 2002, and another as Chief of Joint Operations for ISAF Regional Command South Headquarters, Kandahar in 2006. He holds three post-secondary degrees, and is an award-winning author on military affairs.
As I said in the introduction his article:
While you may or may not agree with each point he makes, I believe we need to listen more to credible people like [the author] Schreiber before forming our own opinions. He is but one example of the thousands of men and women (civilian and military alike) in this country who, each individually, have amassed more academic and hands-on knowledge and experience in Afghanistan than any dozen journalists and pundits you care to name.
I think you'll find it worth your time to read the whole thing, but I found this particular paragraph stood out starkly for me:
If the bad news is that we need to significantly temper our expectations as to what can actually be accomplished in Afghanistan, especially in the next 1-3 years, then the good news is that we are already well on our way to “victory.” From a personal perspective, having done a military tour of duty in Kandahar in 2002, and again in 2006, I was completely buoyed by the progress that had been made during that time. In 2002, there was virtually no infrastructure to speak of – no real roads, electricity, medical facilities, agriculture, industry, and no contact with the outside world. Afghanistan lived as it had during Alexander the Great’s time, save for the addition of a few beat-up trucks, and the ubiquitous Kalashnikov. When I returned in 2006, Kandahar had advanced nearly 2 millennia – the electricity worked (sometimes), there was a real and effective highway that allowed a flourishing if nascent commerce to begin, there were cell phones (sometimes), and houses, and investment in construction and agriculture and business. And hope. If I had seen at the end of my tour in 2002 what I saw in 2006, I would have said that our mission in Afghanistan was complete: we’d taken a nation in ruins and despair, and given it a real if fledgling hope for a new future. And it is likely that this hope - the rising expectation that the immediate future will be better than the immediate past - that has been part of present consternation in Afghanistan. Hope begets hope, and rising expectations have a way of outpacing our ability to deliver on them. It should have been no surprise that Afghanistan could not maintain the pace of progress established, as the simpler development tasks were achieved largely in a vacuum. Further progress now faces both increasing complexity and entropy. If Afghanistan had advanced centuries in the few short years between 2002 and 2006, it has perhaps come but decades since, and now deals with all of the problems of an ethnically riven, economically challenged, politically fragile post colonial postmodern state - just like approximately 50 other nations in the world. That the election in Afghanistan has been tarnished by fraud should not be the headline; rather, the miracle is that there was a Western style election at all. That opium dominates the economy should not be seen as catastrophic, but rather as a potential source of income for Afghanistan. Concern that the radical Islamic Revolution spearheaded by the Taliban and their ilk is gaining momentum needs to be balanced by acknowledging and supporting the coalescing of moderate forces against this movement. One may despair over the wide swath of territory that the Taliban claims to reign over, but the fact is that it controls only the hinterlands, and can prosecute its campaign solely through the use of terror tactics, thereby creating the seeds of its own destruction. While much remains to be done in Afghanistan, one would be wise to look back at how far it has come in the last decade.
The piece is lengthy, so I've broken it down into two halves - Part 1 and Part 2.
And to be clear: the author's intent with such a piece isn't to end debate with an appeal to authority, but to kick start it with truly informed opinion. That's the way forward.
Posted by Damian at November 2, 2009 9:46 AMI haven't read the article yet but I can bet he won't be invited to Bowl with Obama.
Posted by: Texas Canuck at November 2, 2009 10:55 AMI think the Taliban never were defeated, they just blend into the country side. How can you possibly tell one from the other anyway?
Haven't read the article either but from here it looks like a lost cause another Vietsham.
Why they didn't toast Bin Laden's corn flake when they had the chance is another thing.
Bottom line for me is .... exterminate the Taliban. Relegate their ilk to that of the KKK.
That way everyone gets a laugh.
Posted by: eastern paul at November 2, 2009 11:32 AMI was right, no invite to the White House for this lad. There is no "quick resolution" that can make Obama look good in Mr Schriber's essay. There is no easy out, period. Western nations and their people cannot comprehend a solution that will take a lifetime to resolve, if at all. These tribes that compose Afghanistan have seen conquerers and/or saviors come and go through centuries and nothing that has been done this time around has proven any different. Most of the warlords have been ruling longer than any world leader, ecept maybe Castro.
" Afghanistan suffers from a severe case of debilitating post traumatic stress, and exhibits paranoid schizophrenic behaviour bordering on the sociopathic." And that about says it all in a nutshell. Afghanistan will never be a real country in the western global sense but we owe it to them to get them to the point of tying their own shoes.
Great essay, btw
Posted by: Texas Canuck at November 2, 2009 11:36 AMWhen you start hearing about the 32nd Mujaheddin Regiment conducting a Batallion strength attack against a NATO base, THEN you can start making comparisons between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Until then you're just exposing your own ignorance of both wars.
In one way your comparison is apt, though; much like Vietnam was lost for political reasons, Afghanistan can only be lost if our citizens and our politicians make a conscious decision to lose it.
Posted by: Alex at November 2, 2009 11:43 AMA related post at "The Torch":
"TV Nov. 10: Debating Afstan/Interviewing the RoCK"
Mark
Ottawa
It's an excellent essay and well worth reading in its entirety. Then read it again.
Congratulations to Schreiber, and to The Torch.
Posted by: Charles MacDonald at November 2, 2009 2:40 PMAlex has it.
Militarilly we won in Viet Nam.....then the democretins surrendered by cutting aid....
The more things change the more......
The big difference is that the VC and NVA were politically/patroitically motivated...the Afghan syndrome is neither political nor religious nor patriotic....just bandits.
"bandits." They are religious bandits that can blend in with the rest and how is anyone going to tell one from the other.
Militarily they can't win in Afstn. Only if the population turns on the Taliban in force which probably isn't going to happen because they probably don't even know who's Taliban and who isn't either.
Just send me a poppy.
Michael Yon said you can tell who the tally are because they wear runners and the locals wear sandals. We patch up both.
Posted by: Speedy at November 2, 2009 3:40 PMThe author is apparently lacking any knowledge of the ideology of Islam which he only obliquely references in his piece. He is your standard westerner without any knowledge of Islam. Smiling and guessing and applying a western mindset to people who have not a trace of western thought in their souls.
Posted by: BL@KBIRD at November 2, 2009 3:59 PMexcellent essays. I think there are several key points.
One, is that the people of Afghanistan are organized, not as a nation, a concept meaningless to them, but within their tribal ethnicities. And these tribal ethnicities are ancient, are land-based, and are much stronger than the Islamic religion - which is almost peripheral to the ethnic bonds. We can compare the tribal ethnic bond to the old fiefdoms in medieval Europe, where you belonged to a 'house', to a family, and not to a nation.
Two, is the pre-industrial nature of the country. And as long as the economy is local, operated within and by the tribe, the population will remain locked within their tribal bases, hostile to each other. I think, as noted, a key agency to ending the tribal era is to introduce modern communication systems: roads, hydro, telephones, central markets, schools.
I'm against his suggestion of legalizing the poppy industry; growers ARE linked to its use in far-off cities.
Tribalism, and its resultant Islamic fascism, will disappear as the tribal populations increase their capacity to live within the industrial global economy. The key is to keep the area secure so that the industrial infrastructure can be built there.
Posted by: ET at November 2, 2009 4:18 PM+In Flanders Fields+
...-
"Boy, 12, fought at the Somme
A BOY aged just TWELVE fought as a British Tommy in the First World War, The Sun can reveal today.
The lad - said to have been so tiny he could not even see over the edge of a trench - is the youngest known soldier to have served in the horrific 1914-18 conflict.
He was recalled by another under-age squaddie, runaway George Maher, who was only 13 when he was sent to the notorious Somme battlefield.
George had told a recruiting sergeant he was 18 to be packed off to the front with the 2nd King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment in 1917.
But he was found out when he broke down in tears under shellfire and was hauled before an unsympathetic officer.
George, who died aged 96 in 1999, remembered: "The major swore at me, 'You bloody fool - it costs money to get you here and you bloody well cry.'
Battalion
"Then I was locked up on a train under guard, one of five under-age boys caught serving on the front being sent back to England.
"The youngest was 12 years old. A little nuggety bloke he was, too. We joked that the other soldiers would have had to have lifted him up to see over the trenches."
George Maher
Memories ... George
George's amazing story is one of several previously unheard accounts of the war The Sun is running to mark Remembrance Sunday on November 11.
The stories have been collected by historian Richard van Emden for his book, Veterans: The Last Survivors Of The Great War.
Some will feature in Channel Four's Last Voices of World War One, to be screened on Monday.
The testimonies include that of infantry private Fred Francis, who recalled the horror of the Somme: "Going over the top, we were sitting ducks. They mowed us down like grass in the hayfield.
"As I dropped on me face, I could hear the shrapnel dropping on me helmet and I said to meself, 'There'll be no battalion left after this.'"
Royal Engineer Tom Dewing remembered watching an infantry attack: "When the mist and smoke cleared, we were able to see them going forward. They didn't get very far - they were just wiped out."
http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2707560/A-boy-aged-twelve-fought-in-the-First-World-War.html
+In Flanders Fields+
http://www.inflandersfields.ca/
Regarding the relationship between the Taliban and the opium trade, there's a new article from one of the counternarcotics experts at Brookings:
Vanda Felbab-Brown, Narco-belligerents Across the Globe: Lessons from Colombia for Afghanistan?
With the great increases in insecurity in Afghanistan and the overwhelming sense that the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is not being won, analysts and policymakers are looking for analogies to understand the conflict’s dynamics and devise counter-measures. One of the analogies that analysts are turning to is the counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency campaign in Colombia. Indeed, there are some striking similarities between the FARC and its relationship to the drug economy in Colombia and the Taliban and its relationship to the drug economy in Afghanistan. However, these similarities do not lie in what many consider the defining characteristic of the FARC, namely the loss of ideology and its transformation into a pure profit-driven organisation. Rather, from the point of view of counter-insurgency and the drug-conflict-nexus, the ideology-versus-greed debate is of far less importance than is frequently believed. Whatever their ideologies and the intensity of their beliefs, both the FARC and the Taliban are deriving not only substantial financial resources from the drug trade, but also substantial political capital. And this political capital is nonetheless greatly enhanced by government policies of eradicating the drug crops, which therefore is counterproductive for counter-insurgency objectives...
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