**As I will redeploy soon, this will be my last post on this blog. Thank you for reading.**
As I approach the end of a long year, I’ve become a bit introspective regarding my time here and self-absorbed in those thoughts. What have I done here? Have I made a difference? What have I learned? I am not unique in asking these questions. We all ask them to ourselves, but I suspect we do have unique answers. None completely right, none completely wrong, but simply a reflection of individual experiences. We all endure a snapshot of Afghanistan as very few (perhaps none?) of us have access to all of the information that can build a complete and accurate picture. Thus, the picture drawn becomes not an accurate representation of how things are in Afghanistan, but rather a picture of how one perceives things to be in Afghanistan. There is truth there, but amongst the truth one also finds scraps of bias and individual experience that mold the picture as a whole. As succinctly put by French novelist Gustave Flaubert, “there is no truth. There is only perception.” Of course, that is merely his perception of things but, I think, an accurate representation this place.
A recent article, by Lt Col Daniel L. Davis, provocatively titled “Truth, Lies, and Afghanistan,” purports to shine the light of truth on the darkness of lies and distortions of reality. Davis thus seeks to apply an absolutist view to a relative situation. Davis’ argument is grounded in moral absolutism in the sense that he proposes that his view of the truth here is the absolute truth, there can be no other. He uses this as a springboard for accusing our military leadership of lying about the supposed success here. Although perhaps cliché in some segments of society, honor and integrity have real meaning within military circles and they should not be attacked lightly. Davis’ mistake is not in his perception of a lack of success here, for my own experience causes me to agree with him on this point, but rather than he has failed to consider that, here, truth is a relative concept having a subjective value dependent upon one’s perception and experience within this highly complex environment.
To lie implies the conveyance of misleading information with knowledge that the information conveyed is indeed wrong. I do not believe our leadership is doing this with respect to Afghanistan. You should not, however, mistake this minimal defense for concurrence. I believe leadership (both military and civilian) to be wrong in their characterization of the effort here and its ultimate results. However, I do not believe them to be intentionally so. American author Upton Sinclair is credited with saying that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” This concept is applicable here in that it is difficult to perceive a situation objectively when one’s career or legacy dictates otherwise. No military leader or politician wants to preside over a withdrawal of troops from conflict, particularly when the withdrawal is in the face of a failure to achieve goals. Cutting one’s losses is an anathema, even when it does make strategic sense. But why is this so?
Americans have confused warfare and war. Warfare is the actual fighting. It is, in current military vernacular, putting steel on target. It is death and destruction and, when we want to be, we Americans are quite good at it. In pure warfare, we use technology, discipline, and overwhelming firepower to impose our will on the enemy. However, there is no such thing as pure warfare or fighting for fighting’s sake because warfare has a purpose. This is what we call war – the political tool (much like diplomacy is a tool) for achieving a political objective when other tools are deemed insufficient. The political will always influence warfare, especially in a democratic government. The political is why malign actors in Afghanistan have Pakistan as a sanctuary; it is the reason why care, beyond that which is required under international law, is taken to avoid civilian casualties, and it is why we seem to tolerate the corruption within the Afghan government even as it makes success here that much harder to achieve.
Our mistake is that once the fighting begins, we allow our concept of warfare to override the concept of war in some respects. We forget that warfare is the tool to achieve not victory, but a political objective. When that political objective changes (and it often does), we fail to understand that the warfare tool may no longer be sufficient for the job – that we must look to other tools or consider abandoning the project. There is no shame in this. It is a political calculation, as it should always be in war – a cost-benefit analysis. Is the energy we expend, in light of the political objective, worth the expected benefit? Here it is not. This is so because we will have to either expend much more energy in the short term (i.e. full on offensive, killing a lot of people) or expend the same amount of energy we’ve been expending for a much longer period of time. The simple fact is that we cannot afford the former politically nor the latter financially. Thus, the expected benefit must be overwhelming to overcome this. That is simply not the case when it comes to Afghanistan, something empires and armies have realized about this place for centuries. Davis touches on this misperception of the cost-benefit analysis and, I think, it is the crux of his frustration. I see it too, but unlike Davis, I do not believe it to be sustained by lies. It is perception.
Afghanistan is not a simple endeavor. Only a fool believes that if we simply do “x” (insert favorite strategy/tactic here), we will achieve our goals. There are simply too many things in play. Obviously, there is the Taliban that seek to frustrate our goals through use of violence. But even that observation is simplistic. While the term “Taliban” is the phrase preferred by the talking heads in the media, there are many more players here, each with their own agenda. In addition to the Taliban, there is the Haqqani Network, Hizb-i-Gulbiddin (HIG), Al Qaeda and associates, and many others. Even the Taliban are divided into Afghan and Pakistani versions. Some of these groups even have supporters within the Afghan government or have the support of foreign governments. Add to this the dynamics of having former (and perhaps once again) warlords in prominent positions within the Afghan government and one gets a sense of how complicated just determining the players are here.
However, that isn’t all. Consider the mosaic of tribes here as well. A cursory glance at the tribal situation here reveals real and potential divides between Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and other, smaller tribes. However, each of these tribes is subdivided into smaller units that may or may not have coinciding objectives vis-à-vis the Afghan government or coalition forces. For example, the Pashtun Tribe is divided into four confederacies composed of approximately 350-400 sub-tribes and clans. Some will fight for us, some for the Taliban, some for themselves. Establishing the loyalties of these tribes, sub-tribes, and clans, however, is quite easy. They are loyal to themselves. The complexity results in determining when their goals align with ours and when those goals or alignments change. The Davis article seems to ignore these, sometimes subtle, complexities.
Davis is not, however, completely wrong from my perspective. His conclusion that the results (real, imagined, or expected) are not worth the effort is accurate from my own perspective. While Davis toured with combat units, I toured with development folks working in the area of rule of law. Thus, our views become complimentary in that counterinsurgency doctrine places great importance on the development of rule of law, as it is the glue that allows hard won combat victories to mature into sustainable civil society. The issues of rule of law are every bit as complicated as the tribal and enemy dynamics described above. However, some are of our own making.
Americans have a tendency to throw money at problems in the belief that money can fix everything. Combine this with a myopic view of rule of law and the effort here becomes stagnant. Afghanistan is a poverty-stricken country with little hope of matching the influx of coalition money in the near future. Given the history of warfare here, Afghans are more likely to think in the short term than in the long term. This dictates that Afghan powerbrokers will look to absorb as much money from the coalition as possible before the coalition leaves (having an end date certainly provides incentive for this conduct). Thus, Afghan officials within the rule of law sector constantly ask for infrastructure and financial support for personnel. This is accomplished with little thought to sustainability. In other words, how will this infrastructure and personnel be paid for when the coalitions leaves? This strategy, however, does lead to a perception of success since supporters can point to the number of courthouses built, judges hired, and bad guys prosecuted without any in-depth thought to the long term sustainability of the effort. Unlike Davis, I do not see lies here – I see misperception.
Our approach to rule of law is also, generally speaking, too focused on criminal law. This, I believe, stems from the fact that criminal law is viewed as “sexy” by lawyer and layman alike. After all, Hollywood doesn’t make television shows about contract law, do they? However, when one is trying to build a sustainable government, it is necessary to generate revenue to pay for that government’s operations. Contract law fosters security of business contracts, which increases foreign investment. Customs regulations assist in the generation of tax revenue. Transportation law allows the efficient movement of people and cargo so that business can flourish. Lawyers and judges trained to settle land disputes (a huge issue here) allow for resort to courts rather than to violence. Sure criminal law is important, but not to the exclusion of civil law or the relegation of it to almost an afterthought.
The complexities of the situation here, and our seeming inability to address them, lead me to a pessimistic (although I think realistic is a more accurate term, but that’s my perception) view of the sustainability of this effort. Applying this to the questions I asked in the first paragraph regarding my contribution also results in a cynical outlook. As I do not think this endeavor to be sustainable (indeed I see civil war on the horizon) I cannot say I’ve made a difference. The men and women that reduced Al Qaeda to a shadow of its former self made the difference here, which, incidentally, was the original political objective of this war. Conversely, I have learned a lot, although I’m not sure that what I learned was actually intended. Unintended learning, though, is sometimes the best kind of learning. For that knowledge, at least, I am thankful.
