Abstract
Given the history of tribal peoples in the modern nation state of Afghanistan, regional tribal diasporas and the dynamic nature of their world-views, regional political analysis is complex to say the least. This complexity and the necessity to justify Coalition involvement in the Afghan conflict has led to an oversimplification in description of the present situation. This oversimplification has had significant effects on Coalition policy and strategy regarding engagement of combatants in Afghanistan. In this document we put forth a more robust definition of actors in the conflict and argue that the present situation in Afghanistan is not an insurgency, though it may at one time have resembled one. Instead, our belief is that the present situation in Afghanistan is a part of a persistent cycle of violence that has been present in this region for hundreds if not thousands of years. This cycle which defines the relational nature of the region and the nation state of Afghanistan is what we are referring to as a Chaotic Cannibalistic State. We are defining it as a political state, as well as a state of being that exists in constant flux and chaos, resembling an egoistic anarchy; a state of violence, oppression and power-mongering that feeds on itself and its citizenry until a foreign body is introduced, at which point the internal actors, once feeding on each other, coalesce and feed on the foreigner.
Authors:
COL Kevin Meredith, Team Leader, HTAT AF-18
Sergio Villarreal, Social Scientist, HTAT AF-18
Mitchel Wilkinson, PhD, Social Scientist, HTAT AF-18
The views and opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and not those of HTS, TRADOC, the U.S. ARMY, or the U.S. Marine Corps.
This paper is primarily based on field experience and research conducted prior to the author’s involvement with HTS.
The Authors would like to convey special thanks and credit for editing and collaboration to the AF18 Human Terrain Analysis Team Research Managers: Sheraz Ali, Elizabeth Berry and MSG David Babin. We would also like to convey our thanks to Major General Richard Mills, Commanding General, 1 MEF FWD RCSW for support and encouragement.
Given the history of tribal peoples in the modern nation state of Afghanistan, regional tribal diasporas and the dynamic nature of their world-views, regional political analysis is complex to say the least. This complexity and the necessity to justify Coalition involvement in the Afghan conflict has led to an oversimplification in description of the present situation. This oversimplification has had significant effects on Coalition policy and strategy regarding engagement of combatants in Afghanistan. Among these oversimplifications is the tendency to place a single moniker on The Enemy, calling them Taliban; another is labeling the situation Insurgency. In this document we put forth a more robust definition of actors in the conflict and argue that the present situation in Afghanistan is not an insurgency, though it may at one time have resembled one. Instead, our belief is that the present situation in Afghanistan is a part of a persistent cycle of violence that has been present in this region for hundreds if not thousands of years. This cycle which defines the relational nature of the region and the nation state of Afghanistan is what we are referring to as a Chaotic Cannibalistic State. We are defining it as a political state, as well as a state of being that exists in constant flux and chaos, resembling an egoistic anarchy; a state of violence, oppression and power-mongering that feeds on itself and its citizenry until a foreign body is introduced, at which point the internal actors, once feeding on each other, coalesce and feed on the foreigner. In this document we will discuss conceptual actors of instability and enemies in Afghanistan, how our presence may be a coalescing force and therefore adding to this instability, how both of these factors fit into the cycle of conflict and violence in Afghanistan and how this theory may serve as a foundation for a political exit strategy from the war.
The concept of enemy drives public opinion and support for war. Identifying a conceptual enemy for a nation to ideologically rally against requires the development of an image that the general public will recognize; an image that will provide a simple binary equation for war. The enemy must be bad – we must be good. The enemy must be wrong – we must be right. The enemy must be evil – we must be righteous. The enemy must be The Enemy; a singular group with a singular name and a singular leader. In the case of the world theater, we have made our enemy Al Qaeda; in Afghanistan, this enemy is the Taliban. Mullah Omar, the ubiquitous leader of the Taliban has captured the imagination of the public and the press and has become infamous and powerful. When the greatest military superpower in the world identifies, recognizes and accepts a leader and his followers as an Enemy, we empower them. When that enemy survives ten years of conflict, we have encouraged them and other groups to stand with impunity against democracy.
The theory of The Conservation of Enemies (Hartmann, 1982) (Keen, 1991) asserts that as a superpower, we should not accept just any enemy that comes along. Wise selection of an enemy must be accomplished judiciously and that enemy must meet certain criteria. We must select an enemy that is defeat-able and that will not bring the fight to our soil. In the case of Afghanistan, it was easy to convince the general public that there was a group of terrorists led by Osama Bin Laden and a mysterious one-eyed mullah named Omar. The public was traumatized by the attacks of September 11th and required a face to put on a leader and an Enemy to hold accountable. When reminded that we once helped Afghanistan to defeat our old Enemy the Soviet Union, it only took a slight information spin to convince well intentioned but uninformed lawmakers that we should help these people again to defeat their own internal enemy; taking the fight to their soil, so it would never again reach our own. The citizenry of the free-world bought into a strategy that included liberation of the oppressed in Afghanistan and the presentation of the sacred gift of democracy to a people that would surely greet us with open arms. Unfortunately, the long-history of Afghanistan was ignored over preference for the short. The short-history of Afghanistan led us to believe that we could install a Western style democracy that by popular support would take root and hold. The ensuing insurgency should have been quickly suppressed. Rather, the long-history revealed a Chaotic Cannibalistic State fraught with power brokers bent on localized control and corruption, a state not unexpected by the Afghan people. U.S. policy makers have failed to heed lessons learned from our own successes and failings in diplomacy. In the recent history of U.S. Latin American diplomacy, it proved to be much easier for the U.S. to deal with dictators than with functioning democracies. Examples include Pinoche in Chile, Noriega in Panama and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico. The latter was instrumental in pushing NAFTA onto Mexico, arguably sparking the Zapatista Movement in 1994. Democracy, though ostensibly preferred by a hopeful Afghan public, has not garnered widespread public support and local power lies in the hands of strongmen, corrupt Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) officials and the Taliban; all actors of instability.
The internal actors of instability, backed and prodded by external actors of instability and funded by the international community interact in a historically choreographed dance of synchronized chaos. The indigenous groups involved in the present Afghan conflict share a long history of animosity: There are splits along ethnic, tribal and geographic lines; There are disputes over water, land and resources; There are differences over religious interpretations; all existing under an economy that consists primarily of illicit trade and international charity. What we call collectively the Taliban are actually multiple groups of anti-GIRoA fighters that engage in destructive and lethal activities for multiple reasons, the greatest of which is personal gain. These groups include actual Taliban fighters, traditional tribal leaders, drug-lords, smuggler-band leaders, and war-lords. GIRoA is fraught with corrupt individuals that utilize power and authority to increase personal wealth and holdings. Analysis of the historic relationships between all of these groups of people reveals that they have contentiously existed in shifting cycles of alliance, war and violence, punctuated by periods of compulsory peace throughout their long history. The justly deserved alias for Afghanistan as The Graveyard of Empires (Jones, 2010) is not awarded for the fighting prowess of the Afghan people, but for the no-win scenario that is presented to any outside entity attempting to put in order that which is founded in and thrives upon disorder. This is not to say that the small internal actors are disordered or unpredictable, or that the people do not appreciate peace. On the contrary, groups within Afghanistan are hierarchical and operate under established guidelines and rules; the rules however are highly contextual in nature. The cultural precedence for peace is prolifically evident in their literature and poetry; however, it is often couched within a context of being under the rule of benevolent dictatorship. It is the cultural worldview that thrives on conflict and is dependent on strong local leadership as opposed to centralized power that drives the context of the present situation and illustrates the history of Afghanistan. What is predictable about Pashtun behavior, for example, is the necessity for a strong leader and the inevitable greed and hunger for power that drives this leader into conflict with other leaders. These leaders and groups create temporary alliances and engage in short-term conflicts with other leaders, only to ally with their enemy at a later date when a change in the situation makes it convenient to do so. What appears to the outsider as chaos, is really a sort of equilibrium within a certain range of human tolerance. Though this range is outside the tolerance of most cultures in the world, it is what Afghans have developed as their norm. Our inability to grasp the constantly changing landscape of shifting relationships between these individuals and groups encourages us to take the simpler explanation of the binary equation discussed earlier.
The writers make several good points, and I tend to agree with them. My first hand observartions coincide with theirs, in that tribal fighting, very violent fighting, breaks out all the time. And that is not going to stop, given the millenia of tribal animopsity all over the country we recognize as Afghanistan.
That being said, if I understand them correctly, the solution that “professional consultants, political, diplomatic and law enforcement advisers must take on a greater role of capacity building than they already have” is simplistic and gives no recognition of the security situation that preclues doing such a thing without significant US force presence to ensure conditions under which that could occur.
Significant troop withdrawals will make the security of the aforementioned “professionals” so untenable as to render their presence ineffective.
2011 is not, in my opinion, realistic at all.
I cannot imagine why FPJ would reproduce this awful piece of essentialist, naturalizing, racist garbage. I have corresponded with Jeremy Hammond, and he seemed to be a cut above this kind of vulgar, low grade orientalism. Leave this piece on Small Wars Journal, where such puerile nonsense belongs.
LOL! Thanks for weighing in, Maximilian. I think it has value in that ISAF guys are denouncing COIN and saying the best thing would be to get out because our presence is just exasperating the situation. As for the vulgar orientalism, I’m glad to see FPJ readers such as yourself find it transparent. I trusted that would be the case when I published it. ;)
Max,
Your criticism lacks critical examination. It is obvious that you have read neither article, but are merely giving a knee-jerk response to what you obviously already know. Not really open-minded….
What are your suggestions for the situation from your long experience in Afghanistan? And what are you doing to help the situation, besides sniping at others who are attempting to fix things and get us the hell out of there?
Amen Kitsune! Apparently Max has vast experience in that theater of operation, I can tell from his very informed comments and his really big vocabulary, I’m impressed. What Max seems to be missing is that there are people actually trying to solve this situation as opposed to those of Max’s caliber that can only snipe from cover. Get out in it Max, then you may have something of some relevance to speak of. Until then – well, you probably know the rest, being as blindingly intelligent as you seem to think you are.
I just did a google search on Max and the authors of this piece. I would put my money on the authors opinions, based on their backgrounds; oh yeah, and I read the whole article and understand the context and message. It seems that Max is the founder of a blog called Zero Anthropology (should be called Zero Accountability). He claims to be a believer in anarchy. Well, Max, why don’t you go to Helmand, where the authors are and experience anarchy for yourself, rather than hypothesizing from your elitist, entitled position within the ivory tower. Though the solutions the authors give may be simplistic, they do not approach the topic from an Orientalist perspective. If you had read the article, you would see that they speak about the present state being a product of years of colonial oppression and outsider influence. To be racist and Orientalist would be to assume the inferiority the Afghan people as a product of their own culture and inability to accept Western models of society.
Again, I ask, what are you doing for the world Max? Making money, eating cheese, drinking organic fair-trade coffee? Sounds like a productive life to me.
“To be racist and Orientalist would be to assume the inferiority the Afghan people as a product of their own culture and inability to accept Western models of society.”
To be racist and orientalist would be to assume the inferiority of the Afghan people by assuming they should “accept Western models of society”. Max’s comments are right on.
Show me in the article please.
what I see is the opposite:
“Today’s Afghans have never in their lifetimes, known an effective central government in their country. They have not even heard stories, passed down by their ancestors, about what life was like under an effective central government. So, we are asking them to accept on faith that a strong central government is what they need and what they should actively support. We, who are considered by most Afghans as an invading army, are asking a people who have endured numerous invasions, to trust that we know what is best for them. For most Afghans, certainly those who live outside of the central districts of the major population centers, this simply does not compute.”
“As ISAF endeavors to convince these people of the merits of representative democracy, we will be continually hamstrung by the dysfunction and overt corruptness of the very representatives they have “democratically elected”.
I read this as the Afghan people do not want a western style democracy and it does not fit. So we need to reevaluate what we are doing there.
Perhaps I’m misinterpreting, but, respectfully, I got the same impression as Max, which is that the chaos is being attributed to the backwardness of the Afghan people, rather than to the foreign interference that they have been plagued with, from the Great Game through the U.S. proxy war against the USSR from ’79 throughout the 80s and to U.S. war beginning October 7, 2001 and continuing today. There are certainly many excellent points made here, and many insights into Afghan society, but in my view attributing the situation to their lack of interest in democracy pretty much ignores the devastation the U.S. has wrought there. It also assumes the war has something to do with spreading democracy, which is no more plausible in the case of Afghanistan than Iraq. We certainly do need to reevaluate what we are doing there. While I don’t agree with some of the assumptions herein, this fundamental point is certainly a very good one, and with the preceding as a caveat, it’s well argued.
Perhaps I should have worded things a bit differently in the article. As a professor of International Studies and Ethnic Studies, and as an Indigenous man, it was not my intent to imply that Western models of democracy were superior, inferior or appropriate for the people of Afghanistan.
About the Afghan people being “backward”, on the contrary, I love the Afghan people and see many similarities between them and my own people, as well as their situation and what has happened to my own people. I would not be in Afghanistan if I did not believe in helping to make their lives better and improve their chances at physical and cultural survival. The effects of colonization, drawing inappropriate historic lines of demarcation, invading armies, invasive militant philosophies, the flight of anyone who could and the exacerbation of local conflict has devastated the people and cultures of this place.
It is truly heartbreaking to live with and speak to people who are caught between the violence of criminal elements and the violence of fighting these criminal elements. It is encouraging that they retain the most fundamental roots of their traditions in the kindness, hospitality and reciprocity that they share. It is encouraging that when they find out I am Surkh Postyem (literally “Red Skin” I Know, but that is a discussion for colonized linguistics) they treat me as a relative. When we interact, the similarity in our traditions of interaction and communication are amazing. (I digress)
As a Native man from a wealthy country, I believe it is my duty to utilize my privilege and education to attempt to make the world a better place; but that is another story for another time.
As for this piece, the intent was to help define the situation with a bit more clarity for those who have not been here. The intent was to create discourse about sources of instability in Afghanistan and to develop a more robust language and foundation for addressing this instability in a more productive manner.
Thank you for your comments and know that they are taken to heart. I will attempt to be more concise with my intent next time.
-m-
Thanks for the further comment, Mitch. It seems I have indeed misinterpreted, judging from your remarks here. For what it’s worth, I think had you included some of the above in the piece (e.g. “The effects of colonization, drawing inappropriate historic lines of demarcation, invading armies, invasive militant philosophies, the flight of anyone who could and the exacerbation of local conflict has devastated the people and cultures of this place”), it would not have come across to me as being Orientalist (in the Edward Said usage of the word) and beholden to American exceptionalism. I very much appreciate you taking the time to add your further remarks here, and I hope readers of the article will also take the time to read your comment.
Mr. Maximilian Forte,
Thank you for your opinion. Now take a break, you don’t have to be a prick all the time. This article is regarding Afghanistan, not your local donut shop. I have read both articles and you don’t have an idea of what you’re talking about, hence your comment how you “cannot imagine why FPJ would reproduce this awful piece of essentialist, naturalizing, racist garbage.” So, tell me what you think about Afghanistan? Where were you deployed while you were here? And how many local people did you talk to while you were here? Have you even talked to an Afghan? I’ve been in Afghanistan going on my third year now and both articles, in relevance to this country, are very well written. In fact, the ground truth is much closer to these articles than you think. The “guys” running around singing the COIN song are in for a big surprise when they realize what country they’re dealing with. There is no insurgency in this country; just rivalry, revenge, tribal feuds, and corruption. I strongly agree with Kitsune. I cordially invite you to come down here and spend one day with us in a village. You won’t last the flight here let alone a village. You make me laugh. Thank you for making me feel smarter.
The word “Orientalism” and “Islamism” — and any other “ism” words that you overly smart “Westernists” (ignorant typical Americans who think their way is the right way and the world is ass backwards) come up with is when you can’t explain what the phenomenon is about (by the way geniuses, the word Orientalism is not in the dictionary,yet). How about just reading the article and saying “hey, that’s not a bad analysis of the Afghan mentality in the present era.” Instead, you have to debate and nit-pick minor issues because your heads are too big. That’s the problem. You’re too educated for your own good or anyone else’s good for that matter. As for me, I have very little care in the world. I’m a self-made millionaire who won that lucky lottery ticket a few years ago and is now living the good life. With that being said, I bid you adieu.
From one genius to another, here you go:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orientalism
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/islamism
When Max and I use the term “Orientalism” we are using it in the sense that Edward Said wrote about it in the book by that title in 1978.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_%28book%29
Adieu.
Thanks Jeremy.
Apart from Mitch, these others seem to be suffering from severe distemper. They usually do react in this discombobulated manner anytime someone contradicts them–and since they are likely to find many Afghans hostile to their views, I pity Afghans for being under the boots of such arrogant, abusive, and intrusive strangers.
Afghanistan has never known a functioning central government? Right there the article falls apart. Never mind the gross cultural assumptions and the invocation of “cannibalism.” I don’t post comments on Small Wars Journal, where this mess was first posted, and torn to shreds by others who have also been to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army. The article stank the first time, and it doesn’t get any better by being reproduced.
Thanks for the biting, outraged remarks. They tend to prove my point about the kinds of minds that endorse this material.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/10/afghanistan-the-deevolution-of/
If anyone is interested in the other article. BTW, I must be missing something or do not understand the term “Ripped to shreds”. I do admit, however that my twenty years since RIP and no access to a computer allowed me to screw up the names in my Ranger history.
-m-
By the way, if any of these howlers ever want a real lesson in Afghan history, and insight into its society and culture, from an anthropologist and an Afghan himself…they are welcome to come trot this manure out in front of my colleague, Jamil Hanifi. Anytime.
Different article than SWJ and I appreciate all comments. Thank you to all.
I would be interested to hear from Jamil Hanifi.
-m-
I believe the article was written by the authors using academic analysis. Although everyone that reads this article will have a different opinion due to what they read based on their upbringing, religion, and ethnicity. I do not believe this is the right forum to put someone’s work down, I however do believe in a good debate. If you are putting the article down please back it up with your own academic research or your own written article so the readers can decide for themselves. I will not respond to any ill will comments or questions. Good job to the writers of this article.