"Hamed, we are disappointed!"

Blake Hounshell decided to compose something akin to a letter on behalf of President Obama, to Hamed Karzai. I don't intend to take it on me to respond to this on behalf of President Karzai in a serious manner, but I will turn this into a fake dialogue that shall never occur, using excerpts of Blake Hounshell's monologue. The noble purpose of this is to show the kind of answers that should seem obvious options for any observer who has monitored the things going on in the region in the past decades. I am really puzzled as to how someone like Blake Hounshell could ignore these, apparently.

* * * * *

Blake Hounshell: "My dear Hamed, how are you? Sorry to drop in on you so suddenly, but as you know the security situation in your capital city is still pretty dicey."

Karzai: "I know. Haqqani and those other zealots are really nuts. Charlie "Abu al-Jihad al-Afghani" Wilson used to hang out with them, but Lala Jalaluddin really isn't that cool. And his men and his Arab guests tend to shoot and blow up stuff around here, including hotels and CIA agents. Really too bad you had to come here so suddenly. I know all about that, I live here."

BH: "Thanks for letting us bring some of your troops along for the ride. Here's hoping they'll actually be useful when we go into Kandahar later this year."

Karzai: "You are welcome to take Afghanistan's sons whom you have trained. As to Kandahar, forgive me for being a little perplexed. You do not actually mean to use troops in Marjah-style operations in an area like that, do you?"

BH: "Hamid: You're a major disappointment"

Karzai: "Sorry to hear that. Good luck living up to expectations to you."

BH: "All you seem to do is sit here in your presidential palace most days, fiddling while your country burns."

Karzai: "Good to hear you apparently do not have problems with the things I actually do. Only with the fiddling part."

BH: "The Pakistanis were in town last week, and they all but told us that your government is a joke."

Karzai: "Right... I see now! You need some very-very basic information about Pakistan. Hm. Let us see a map first. First of all I shall show you where that country is. Then there is this thing called "condom" to which people in Washington used to liken that country. The reason was..."

BH: "Your police forces are too busy abusing and shaking down ordinary Afghans to do their jobs."

Karzai: "Good to know cops do not shake down people in normal countries like yours. Unfortunately, this does tend to happen at times in places like Pakistan, for example. At least you trained many of our policemen. Perhaps you could pay them some more?"

BH: "Pakistanis urged us to stop trying to build up a central government in Kabul and try to work through regional power brokers instead."

Karzai: "Well, yes, ekhm, that is why I was starting to explain about Pakistan... But anyway, surely you don't mean we should rely on "regional power brokers." You cannot possibly mean "the warlords," can you? A couple of years before this I was constantly pressured by people like you to do more against them... Anyway, as to Pakistan..."

BH: "I tried to get them to commit to going after the Haqqani network, which has been giving us hell in southeastern Afghanistan and almost killed you several times. But each time I brought it up, they found some way to change the subject. I think they're hedging their bets."

Karzai: "Ah, fine. So you know about Haqqani and Pakistan then."

BH: "I tried to buy us both some more time by coming up with this confusing July 2011 "timeframe" to begin drawing down troops, but you and I both know that's a hope, not a plan."

Karzai: "I see. Of course I take all that you say very seriously, just like the Taliband and the Pakistanis will. And I hope we see each other soon. See you in mid-2012, insha'Allah. 1391, that is, for us."

BH: "We're just going to declare victory in Afghanistan and go home."

Karzai: "And then what?"

BH: "You remember what happened to Najibullah, don't you?"

Karzai: "But surely you do remember what happened on 9/11, don't you?"

BH: "The American people's memories of 9/11 are fading."

Karzai: "Memory loss? You are implying you want to see mullah Omar again here by 1391, to cure a memory loss? There is a chance mullah Omar will not want to see you."

State-sponsored and stateless insurgencies, during and after the Cold War

For lack of time to do something more research-intensive, I will just stop by here to once again recommend Vanda Felbab-Brown's pretty good book, Shooting up. I have finally got down to reading the non-Afghan case studies in it, too, and Peru's example made me pause to ponder an interesting aspect of the story of the Shining Path, well known by its Spanish name Sendero Luminoso... Here is why I found it interesting, first.

So often one hears the narrative that the Cold War made the world a more easily calculable place. A few extremist-orientated go so far as to (without basis) claim that the Cold War was a joint "US/SU" venture in world control, because in some aspects, structurally speaking, it tended to work more or less like that. Ironically, there are also a few who view something similar as a benevolent phenomenon: one having made state failure and similar large-scale disorder seemingly more avoidable - even avoided, as some believe. An argument connected to this is that you supposedly could not, during the Cold War, finance taking on a government for long without orienting yourself towards powerful enough external backers. This had to mean the bloc opposing to the one the government was aligned with, by default Cold War logic. Globalisation is then presented as the process that turned this on the head, making it possible for non-state actors to develop sufficient autonomy for messing with states on their own, messing up the interstate system, questioning its fundamental tenets... After so many superpower-supported Cold War insurgencies, globalisation in the post-Cold-War period is said to have brought us insurgencies feeding on/high on all things illicit... It is oft pointed out how Operation Cyclone was needed to energise the insurgencies of the mujahedeen factions, while today the Taliban are stateless narco-terrorists etc.

But of course these views are at least partly mistaken. Not only are the Taliban no narco-terrorists and not purely (or even largely) "statelessly financed" in fact, but even the view of the Cold War is flawed. Spectacular counterexamples can be offered regarding it: there were, even then, insurgencies supporting/sustaining themselves, without a critical level of external backing and manipulation... These may have been integrated into the illicit transnational economy as the Sendero Luminoso were (who were thus able to do without Soviet/Cuban assistance)... Or they may have been feeding on arms supplied earlier on by one of the parties eventually fought during the ensuing conflict - as in Malaya where some of the insurgency consisted of elements originally nurtured by Britain, against the occupying Japanese (during World War Two). Needless to say, this kind of "shooting in one's own feet" was/is one aspect of the highly complex Afghan case, too.

Moreover, and this brings us closer to the discussion of the current insurgencies in Afghanistan, even Sendero Luminoso, much as they profited from the trade of drugs, could not be beaten by equating counternarcotics with counterinsurgency. To the contrary. And that is why it is a shame, I feel, that an otherwise brilliant book as the Antonio Giustozzi-edited Decoding the New Taliban did not start with a chapter by Felbab-Brown instead of one by Gretchen Peters. The reader may end up further from "decoding" in that case, as a result. Not to say Peters' work is not informative, but Felbab-Brown's work is just much more considerate regarding long-term, complex consequences... Whereas Peters just doesn't see the "wood" because of that single "tree" she keeps focusing on... "Uff!" I spoke.

Writing al-Qaida history

Laurie Mylroie, Pentagon-commissioned author of a history of al-Qaida (available here), begins her work with a surprising statement. She says when she began her project she assumed al-Qaida had a history... but this assumption proved false. One gets the feeling this is partly implied in the sense that there is no truly good source assessing (especially) the first decade of the organisation's existence.

Of course, Mylroie is also well-known for her (not altogether uninteresting) proposition to consider much more of an Iraqi role in starting off al-Qaida as a powerful network, through what could be referred to perhaps as "the IBAQ theory," as shorthand for "Iraq/Baluchistan/al-Qaida" theory - copyright belongs here if you fancy this one ;-) - of Iraq having helped future joiners of AQ, like Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, as Baluch, against Iran originally (find details in a shorter form here). But Mylroie also overblows this of course, spectacularly in some places. Still, as I said, it is interesting. But what about the assertion that there is no truly comprehensive, good source about al-Qaida's history? May this be just selling her work better?

In any case, I am just reading one very good book on the subject, by Jean-Pierre Filiu. Les neuf vies d'Al-Qaida. You won't find it published in English yet... But I guess this shall change now, most likely as a result of this blogpost. Cover image included below to make this blog more colorful.

Crazy quote of the day, from exactly six years ago

You might want to say this was "batsh*t crazy," in fact. Probably no need to comment on this. Just look at all that followed throughout the ensuing years. (And get enlightened if you have not been, so far.)

With The Christian Science Monitor, from March 23, 2004 here:

"The Pakistani military is refining its tactics in the ongoing battle to capture Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in this semi-autonomous tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.
It's targeting a specific clan, the Yargul Khel, and Monday began bulldozing all their mud houses as a punishment for a group of clansmen providing shelter to the "foreign terrorists," as Pakistani authorities describe them.
The markets of South Waziristan's capital of Wana Monday were a scene of panic, as businessmen of the clan frantically emptied hundreds of shops ahead of a 48-hour deadline to turnover the "terrorists" or face the destruction of all tribal property."

Refined tactics. Targeting a group. Woo-hoo! And, in other news, CSM also reported:

"There are two main tribes, Ahmed Zai Wazir and Mehsud, living in South Waziristan - and they are rivals. Most of the tribesmen belonging to the Ahmed Zai Wazir tribe are illiterate and staunch Islamists."

Yes. And of course THEY were war-like, and THEY were basically idiots to be enemies of anyone when everyone was so damn friendly to THEM.

Historical quote of the day, March 13, 2010

Reading this interview with Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, editors of Abdul Salaam Zaeef's auto-biography, My Life with the Taliban, I stopped to ponder Felix Kuehn's reply to a question at one point because it reminded me of something very telling to quote. Felix Kuehn describes how many Taliban may generally view Osama bin Laden:

"... if you talk to a lot of Taliban members, they’re going to voice doubt over and over again about “How can it be, that that guy who was sitting in our mountains and didn’t even have a cellphone, did this?” And it’s not just their rhetoric; it’s really a broad fraction of people that doubt [bin Laden] did it."

The nature of the "information environment" under the Taliban regime, shaped by a number of fundamental factors such as unquestioned trust in the movement's leaders, illiteracy, the lack of functioning media, and informal practice of rule resembling governance only in traces, prevented information of strategic relevance from reaching a great number of people. And notably, information did not even get to them through the video messages sent by Bin Laden or al-Zawahiri to the Middle East and the West. Bin Laden, of course, was not someone without a cellphone, and this quote from Abdel Bari Atwan's The Secret History of al Qaeda might be telling illustration of that. (Abdel Bari Atwan is editor-in-chief of Al-Quds al-Arabi, and he was there to interview Osama bin Laden at his Tora Bora base back in 1996 when he noted the following.)

"As I was showed around the lower base I discovered that, in contrast with the primitive accomodation, it was well-equipped with the latest technology and powered by its own small generator. Here were computers and up-to-the-minute communications equipment. Bin Laden had access to the internet which was not then ubiquitous as it is now, and said: "These days the world is becoming like a small village."

The modernity of Bin Laden's communications network was quite at odds with the austerity recommended by the more extreme forms of Islamic fundamentalism and in particular that of his hosts, the Taliban. One of his aides laughed at this observation, and said the base was a 'republic within a republic.' "

Shooting up: Felbab-Brown on COIN and counternarcotics

Here is a useful quote from Vanda Felbab-Brown's book, Shooting up, from page 155.

"... the financial impact of the Taliban's ouster from the poppy-growing areas is likely to be small. (...) Moreover, its losses will be cushioned by continued access to funds raised in Pakistan and the Middle East and funds from other illicit economies."

Vanda Felbab-Brown wrote this long before the operations around Marjah, and before last year's shift of focus to Helmand.

I also pointed out similar things in my doctoral dissertation back when I was writing it, in the early summer of last year. So how did I like the book then? There were aspects of Felbab-Brown's case study about Afghanistan in it which, I found, could have been informed with somewhat more insight into the details. Importantly, she seems to miss, for example, how U.S. cooperation with Ahmed Shah Massoud against the Taliban was also made cumbersome right up till the last period before 9/11, partly because of Massoud's militia's taking money from the drugs trade. Ironically, this missing detail only reinforces her book's overall thesis (and thus mine, too). The U.S. administration was under internal pressure against allying with a militia that took money from one out of an impoverished, destroyed country's few viable economic sectors. Massoud's men did so basically for the reason that they didn't receive sufficient support from other (external) sources to continue fighting. Faute de mieux. Thus the U.S policy towards him was almost a self-enforcing one. Otherwise, Massoud was so not the druglord type that he was there in Afghanistan on September 9, 2001 instead of having fun making phone calls to his "drug-smugglers" from a Dubai villa, or wherever. That's how he could be assassinated by al-Qaida.

When you find that a book's thesis is made stronger even by something absent in its argumentation, you have a book you certainly might be interested in. And it comes with other case studies, with further evidence from very different regions/countries, of the relationship between counterinsurgency and counternarcotics working as it is described in the book (aggressive counternarcotics being to the detriment of counterinsurgency). Her reconceptualisation of what is happening in Afghanistan and elsewhere in terms of a political capital model of how one can approach illicit economies as such, is very valid in light of what one sees, and instead of what some wish to see: a "war on drugs" and on "narco-terrorists."

A passing thought

I am reading some parts of Ahmed Rashid's Jihad: The rise of militant Islam in Central Asia, and I have just bumped into a description of the 2000 battle of Taloqan, featuring the Taliban's coalition against Massoud's alliance, on page 174, where Rashid gives the following breakdown of the former party's composition: 12,000 to 15,000 on the Taliban's side altogether*, 4,000 Pakistani militants (including people from the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi), 600 Arabs, 600 Uzbeks + miscellaneous + (support, Rashid alleges, from the Pakistan Army's Special Service Group).

Now, the trivial and yet surprisingly rarely considered thought which occurred to me is this: many of the same people, or people who have taken the "torch" over from them, so to say, but for some of the same organisations/movements, are fighting these days, too. For an Afghanistan without ISAF and the Karzai government - "Kashmiri" groups, al-Qaida, IMU, but also Haqqanis, Mansoors, Hizb-i-Islami/Hekmatyar etc.; for an Afghanistan where the Taliban's alliance can come back. That they joined the caravan is an investment by them in the future, and one they must have considered carefully, after all it is a matter of life and death.

Some helpful illustration about who is fighting where, indicating some of the active factions (plus I should add the caveat, just discussed in the comments, that given what has been reported on this blog as well, earlier on, some of this map, e.g. in the north, is just simply wrong; nevertheless it can at least convey a sense of the diversity within the ranks of the insurgency and that is why I am primarily using it in this post):

* Corrected; in the earlier version I wrote "of the Taliban's own."