Letter-26: Christmas wish for Afghanistan

A former FaceBook friend wrote me an impassioned response to my sending a soldier an e-mailed Christmas card with the additional comment of hope that our younger brothers and sisters be home unharmed and in time.

Though I can no longer respond directly to her, I am posting specific comments in response to parts of her e-mail; they appear as comments to this shorter letter. The intellect involved here is far stronger than mine and these angry comments should have currency this Christmas season.

Afghanistan remains dreadfully transparent, even in the North where I was. The United States is caught between Iraq and a hard place (as King Hussein used to say about Jordan). My response expresses a helpless sense of ambivalence about Afghanistan; it comes across as weak.

Personally, I am at the point where enough is enough; I have lost confidence in the crowd that thinks “this time will be different”. In writing this, I want to repeat that I know and respect many soldiers facing very difficult situations this Christmas. They actually make a big difference in the everyday lives of beleaguered people.

While I have butted heads with many of these soldiers during my four stints in war zones, I could never lose sight of the fact – and it is a fact – that these people have been among the finest I have known. And it is time for our soldiers to come home, the sooner the better.

Apparently, troops will be in Afghanistan until or through 2014, implying a 2½-3½ year time-line. This time-line is a depressing disappointment. Since a phased withdrawal may take more time than the one year I would prefer, my disappointment falls short of disillusionment.

Political calculation may be at play, here, in trying to get this increasingly troubled misadventure off of the re-election radar in 2012. Things are neither simple nor subtle. Afghans exhibit the same ambivalence toward U.S. troops that Americans used to have towards Congress: “Congressmen are corrupt and rotten, with the exception of mine."

Likewise, many Afghans hate the Americans except for 'their' Americans. For all of its high-profile glitz, the ‘Whole-of-Government’ approach simply does not work. USAID’s development model is, when viewed charitably, ineffective; other USG Departments are having difficulty fielding workers.

The soldiers in the communities - not over-paid USAID or USDA field-workers - provide much more direct (and appreciated) community development. There remain two fundamental concerns with a precipitate withdrawal. First, would a likely Taliban victory in Afghanistan lead to an expansionist 'Pashtunistan'?

This uniting of the Pakistan and Afghan Taliban, quarrelsome as the two appear to be, would probably emerge from the almost certain collapse of Pakistan, hardly a nation in its own right. A bigger, bloodier war over Kashmir might then erupt among two nuclear powers and a nuclear renegade from the 12th century.

Further, a Taliban victory might precede a whole sale slaughter of thousands of Afghan women activists and local leaders brave enough to challenge an archaic and brutal culture. The mainstream arguments cited most often against withdrawal are elegantly geo-political but inevitably amoral.

Another sense of the word withdrawal comes to mind: the withdrawal involved in de-toxifying from drug abuse. Every drug-addict hates it; but, to be free, the unpleasant transition must occur sooner or later. There are always a thousand excuses for putting off the difficult, but rarely an over-riding reason.

As eloquent as the interventionists’ arguments are, the circumstances, upon which they base their arguments, will be there in a another year, two or ten. Another approach is now in order, is it not? So, I say: let the surge be the surge. Then pull back the development efforts to those truly secure parts of Afghanistan, maybe just 5-10%.

With the funds saved by a full withdrawal by mid-to-late 2012, the U.S. governmnet can lead multi-lateral efforts to ring-fence ‘Pashtunistan’ while re-settling in safer areas current women activists and local leaders standing up to the Afghan Taliban.

If we leave without protecting those brave Afghan men and women currently risking their lives for the establishment of human rights and local governance, the blood from their likely slaughter will be on our hands and conscience.