Thread by @ThreshedThought

Probably time for another thread on Afghanistan.

Thread👇

There seems to be a bit of an (internal) debate amongst US commentators (many of whom have never been to Afghanistan) about whether the US achieved its goals or whether it was worth it.

Sort of like a post mortem.

Well, let me help them try and answer.

Originally the US went in the Afg, with a couple of others like the British, in order to get OBL and to destroy AQ. The Taliban were seen as an AQ enabler and would be dealt with when they got in the way.

There wasn’t really a plan for what to do afterwards.

In terms of AQ and OBL - they were largely neutered pretty quickly, although it too a decade to actually kill OBL because he was hiding out as a guest of the Pakistanis. In reality he was actually a sort of insurance policy for the Pakistanis…

… if at some point the US got really pissed with Pakistan over something (I mean REALLY pissed) OBL would be handed over (“oh we found him in a cave in Waziristan”) to demonstrate that they were super …

… hawks on terrorism (as opposed to the sponsors of multiple armed groups that they are).

This is a bit like every time the US had a summit with them there would be some army sweep operations in KPK/NWFP against the Pakistani “Taliban” (whoever they are).

The US would usually go away mollified because they figured that the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban we linked, mostly because they both had “Taliban” in their names.

Anyway, I digress. The US had achieved most of its aims by 2002 and then it was like ‘what the fuck do we do here?’.

Like most outsiders in Afghanistan, they projected their own ideals (not reality, ideals) into the country.

“I know, let’s build a democracy”

So they recruited a certain @KarzaiH (Hamid Karzai) to their cause.

Now Karzai was *literally* a tribal leader. He was the head of the Popalzai tribe (one of the seven Durrani Pushtun tribes) centred around Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan.

So far so normal in Afghanistan. For most of the time since Ahmad Shah in 1747, the Durranis have provided the kings. Ahmad Shah himself was Popalzai and his descendants ruled until 1842 when he was deposed/usurped by a Barakzai lineage.

(The British tried and failed to reinstall the Popalzai line in the first Anglo Afghan War). This is another big story for another time.

Anyway, you can either run a country on a feudal tribal system or you can run it as a one person one vote democracy.

You can’t do both.

(Sorry about all these diversions into Afghan tribal history but they are really important when trying to understand Afghanistan)

But when Karzai looked in electoral terms to, for example the south of Afghanistan, he saw tribal alliances to be made, not electoral political ideas to be sold.

And so in Helmand for example he had to get the Alizai on side. They were a big tribe and could deliver loads of votes. More than that: they were in competition with the Barakzai for control. And this helped Karzai - because he was in competition with the Barakzai in Kandahar.

And Karzai needed to control Kandahar, which meant keeping it out of the control of the Barakzai. (The Popalzai and Barakzai are close but they compete over Kandahar due to the historical rift over the royal line).

Karzai also installed his half brother - Ahmad Wali - in Kandahar to keep an eye on things; a position he used to turn into a massive narcotics exporter (but that’s a story for another day).

This is how power moves around in the south; elections are totally irrelevant.

There is also the side story of how the US special forces in the south ended up in bed mostly with the Barakzai (kinda by accident really) whilst the state department was obviously pushing Karzai and his alliances. This led to some ridiculous situations (again, for another day)

So what’s my point here?

Building “democracy” in a tribally divided country isn’t going to work ESPECIALLY IF THE PRESIDENT IS A TRIBAL LEADER.

We think in individuals; they think in groups.

The next president @ashrafghani was an expert on post-conflict reconstruction. You couldn’t hope for a better qualified person to lead the country.

Except most of that post-conflict crap is theoretical and not rooted in the specific realities of a country (see tribes etc above)

So the pendulum swung to the other side. Ghani surrounded himself with educated diaspora technocrats.

You’d think that this was a recipe for success, except THEY DIDNT KNOW HOW THE COUNTRY WORKED, nor the ‘logic’ of the ‘backwards’ districts and provinces they sought to lead.

And all of the above occurred without even touching on the absolute fucking disaster that was the coalition military operation.

So to answer my first question:

The US succeeded in its aims in a few months, and because of the lack of a follow-through plan, made up some stupid shit about democracy, which cost them $2.3tn (I know, trillion!), and which they totally failed at.

Sadly, a moderately informed view of the country may have helped them avoid this disaster. A disaster for them, but more importantly a disaster for the Afghans.

ENDS

Oh and, buy my book please:

An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict

amazon.co.uk/dp/1849048916/