The Roots of Some Failures in Kabul

[When reading what follows, bear in mind that I do not write from first hand knowledge, or even third-hand knowledge.  Read, for instance, https://www.u4.no/publications/corruption-in-afghanistan-and-the-role-of-development-assistance]

I read a very interesting article that arrived in my mailbox, courtesy of one of the newspapers, which I wanted to disseminate to our readers, but I have inadvertently deleted it.  But let's stumble through the main idea anyway.

The article was written by a political correspondent stationed in Afghanistan, who was so stunned by what she was hearing from rural Afghanis, that she quit her job, and moved to rural Afghanistan, to try and help the people there, especially the women.  She was recounting what she discovered when talking to these people.

The main thing is this: an enormous proportion of the money sent to Afghanistan, for the relief of the worst-off members of the population, was essentially stolen.  Of course, we in the US tend to expect this; we throw up our hands, what can we do when the the country is fighting guerilla gangsters?  As the story continues, we learn that the very people the US had installed as the civilian government in Kabul were the worst sort of racketeers.  Much of the food and supplies that were intended for the people, the troops, the hospitals etc, were actually channeled away---sometimes in the dead of night, sometimes in broad daylight---into the distant compounds of the so-called warlords.  A lot of the actual US dollars that were earmarked for the war effort, found their way into the bank accounts of terrorist leaders hunkered down in Pakistan.

As an aside: the groundwork for systematic, built-in corruption in Afghanistan was laid decades ago by the narcotics trade.

In fact, we have now learned that the so-called US ally, Pakistan, is in fact the location of a lot of insurgent hideouts, and many of these fellows came swarming into Afghanistan the second the US began to pull out.  (Recall that Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan when the Seals got him.)

Let's take a slightly longer view of this problem.
When the US, in the middle of a war, or at any time, wants to support the institutions of a foreign country, it seems to take it as inevitable that the people it deals with are corrupt.  Usually this attitude is justified; the bureaucrats in foreign governments are usually either corrupt, or easily corruptible.  (Trump assumed that the US government was no different, but he was not entirely right about that.)  So the Pentagon budgets (verb)---I suppose---a certain amount of money to spend on corruption.  (This same problem crops up when the US establishes charities to help hardship in foreign lands.  A lot of the money raised in the US for the charities go to, I think, paying out bribes.  I don't know this for certain, and I'd like to be proved wrong.  In any case, a large proportion of the funds go to maintain the American---and even local---administrators and managers of these funds in the style to which they're accustomed.)

To conclude, the conservatives in Congress are often eager to prosecute wars abroad, for various reasons, chiefly to bolster our tendency to put the USA forward as a global policeman.  Even now, the conservatives are furious that the US is in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan.  (The Democrats are not much better; they have been no less enthusiastic about some of these wars.)  The 'nice' thing about these wars is that they help out the arms industry, which is friendly towards conservative congressmen and senators.  However, as the war winds down, the vast numbers of Afghan citizens whom we had to depend on in Kabul: translators, drivers, orderlies, lawyers, what have you, are petitioning to be taken into the USA as refugees.  (Of course they should; for them to remain would be to get killed at the drop of a hat.)  But the Conservatives see this as just immigration in another guise, and can be expected to resist these initiatives.

Many political wonks are of the opinion that we should have settled on a permanent presence in Kabul (or somewhere in Afghanistan) to keep a lid on "our interests" there, rather than completely cut and run.  This would entail a constant stream of bribes to keep the local Afghanis happy, and would probably end up with a stream of US-origin firearms being trickled out to insurgent groups based in Pakistan, etc.  This would be "foreign aid" of the worst kind.

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A Complete Outsider's View of the War

When it comes to foreign wars, I am a complete outsider.  Of course, I have opinions.  But I know little or nothing of the so-called "calculations" that the generals in the Pentagon make.  At best, these calculations yield probabilities of success.  At worst, they yield highly unreliable, and worse: subjective, estimates of how effectively nation-building will proceed in a theater of war country.  We have been out there, tilling the fields in Korea, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Iran, in the Philippines, with only partial success in Korea.  We have inched in into Syria, and that's not going to work, either.  (This is partly because at least half the USA wants to do a good job of nation-building; the other half wants to establish business opportunities over there.)

Well, the Taliban have been interested in controlling Afghanistan long before the USA stepped in (in the wake of 911).  In fact, the USA enlisted the help of the Taliban in order to oppose the Soviet ambitions in Afghanistan back in the 60's.  (Either the US wanted to oppose anything the Soviets wanted to do, or the Afghanistanis begged the US to come in and help against the Soviets.)

What are the Taliban, anyway?  I honestly don't know.  All I know about the Taliban is that (1) they're religious extremists—signified by their fury at girls and women being educated; (2) they don't like girls and women being educated, which follows on from (1); (3) they hate the USA (which is no wonder, because we have been fighting them for 20 years, and preventing them from getting any sort of political power.   On the other hand, I don't know much more about the gentlemen who have political office in Kabul—those who are opposed to the Taliban.  All we can guess is that (4) they don't like the Taliban, (5) they do like the US, because after all, we set them up in power.

The Taliban is defeating the Afghan forces, and taking over dozens of government centers around the country.  Pretty soon they're going to roll into Kabul, and the whole country will be in their hands.  Girls and women have to stop going to school, and all the (American-style) cultural progress that has been made in Afghanistan will be rolled back, just like Trump rolled back much of what Obama did to make life better for poor Americans.  The Taliban is the 'Trump' of Afghanistan.  As long as we do cultural advancement in the image of the US in Afghanistan, the Taliban will not rest until they change it back.  Let's face it: nation-building in Afghanistan is not something the USA is equipped to do, no matter what GOP military dreamers think.  We may have led the horse to water, but it isn't drinking.

Wherever there has been a repressive Islamist regime in place in a country, if women have acquired rights, it is by their own efforts.  Foreign travel, and the Western experience merely introduces them to how women live in the West; then it is up to Islamic women themselves to push for a measure of liberty.  Afghani women are not going to permanently win any concessions because the US decrees that it should be so.

What are the Taliban going to do to the women?  Kill them all?  That would be horrible, and it is one of the few things that might spur Biden into carpet-bombing the place.  We know how dismal life is for Indian women in (certain parts of) India, but we have not done anything about it—so far.  But there's no saying what these fellows will do.  For 20 years we haven't succeeded in persuading them to think that the American Way is anything they can subscribe to; what are the odds that we can do it another few months?

HOWEVER, there is nothing to say that if other Islamist nations were to attempt to moderate the enthusiasm of the Taliban, it won't be effective.  It is time that these nations stepped up to do something about the situation.  (There is a problem that the wrong denomination of Islam will not succeed at this task; I believe the Afghans are Shia, which means that the only country qualified to address the nation-building of Afghanistan might be Iran.)  Leaving Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the Taliban seems to me to be a waste of a perfectly good country, despite that we couldn't make a deal with them to supply us with cocaine.  (I'm being sarcastic; you addicts can go back to sleep.)

The GOP is inclined to blame Biden for either abandoning Afghanistan, or not doing it the right way.  Never mind that Trump wanted to do it the same way.  But they have been inclined to make silly accusations of the Democrats, and Biden, anyway.

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