NOTE: re-telling of an investigation I conducted and unclassified situation report I composed that was elevated to the Ambassadorial level in Kabul, some 400 kliks and quite literally a world away.
To my mind, at least, we are confronting the undoing of Western absolutes by the unbearable “greyness” of being. Usually, the unbearable greyness of being refers to the downward spiral of a life prospect darkening, with the soul eventually going from grey to black to suicide.
In the larger world of politics writ large in Afghanistan, however, the unbearable greyness of being occurs when the lines between the bad and good or between Taliban and counter-insurgent blur, and blur perceptibly. Let’s take one simple example: girls’ schooling in Northern Afghanistan. The Taliban apparently took over a part of Kunduz, long known as a hot-bed for anti-U.S. and NATO sentiment, not to mention the local subversion, as an after-thought of the no-show Afghan government.
The initial reports from private-spooks on the counter-insurgency beat was that the Chahar Dara (southwest part of Kunduz) was ‘owned’ by the Taliban; that the insurgents had closed the girl’s schools, forbade any female education, blah, blah, blah. Not coincidentally, the purveyors of grim tidings were the 'instructors' of a billion dollar police-training contract, the contractor of which is facing uncertainty over the necessity of the extension. Hmmm.
Guess what? The Taliban did not close the girls’ schools. Instead, they ended the practice of Principals pilfering funds from teachers’ pay-checks. Likewise, these talibs set about making sure teachers did their jobs with men teaching in all boys’ schools and women teaching in girls’ environments. Not an alien space-ship proposition for this part of the world.
And guess what? The villages in the ‘contested area’ love the new arrangement! The challenge now remains training women to teach in high-schools to avoid a tenth-grade choke-point. The talibs should toil for this remedy since they were the ones who fired and harassed female educators during their reign of terror in the late 1990s.
Then comes mystery number-2: four alleged incidents of mass-poisonings at girls’ high schools in Kunduz. No one found incontrovertible proof that certain poisonous attacks actually took place. No one bothered to ask the basic questions of why 80-100 high school girls may have suddenly – as if spontaneously – fallen ill, but not seriously so. As thorough lab tests as possible did nothing to resolve the mystery.
Rumours also contributed to a feeling of spreading hysteria -- that the Taliban is out to wreck girls’ schooling. What? After all of the effort to shore-up primary school education in Taliban strongholds? The Taliban has come out, through credible sources, condemning the attacks. Yet nobody seems to ask three basic questions:
- Is there a cheap perfume or cologne popular with teen-age girls that may be poorly made, leaving a residue of insecticide (or something) that induces these symptoms?
- Does one contractor own the right to clean the floors, etc. of these schools but in doing so with a lacquer that may be mixed too strongly?
- Could insecticides seasonally sprayed have been applied on school days when such things, if over-used, might temporarily inhibit one’s breathing?
Latest studies, considered defining and exhaustive, released by NATO, indicate that the third possibility was the problem. The guilty substance was bleach and / or chloroform mixed in with water and sprayed heavily to kill off malarial mosquitoes. The Taliban had nothing to do with the scare, unlike the reports of NBC and others.
So, we face two challenges with this unbearable greyness of being, the ‘transubstantiated‘ Taliban is now fighting a “counter-counter” insurgency by improving substantially upon a critical service the established government is supposed to provide, but has not in Chahar Dara. Far from being the perpetrators of alleged poison-terror attacks, the local Taliban actually supported the protection of people by announcing that it would bring any wrong-doers to justice.
Well, having investigated the incidents and delved into the Taliban’s twisted, twittering mind, I say that NATO and its allies ought to congratulate the Taliban for work well done. Secondly, NATO should urge the Taliban to aid the justice system in providing quicker, firmer disposition of cases. The government's side? To moderate Taliban justice.
And, lastly, use that common interest – the protection of girls – as a pivot point for bringing the locals back into the fold. This reconciliation should start soon before these local Taliban, who have a stake in the tranquillity of their communities, be over-run by infiltrators from Kandahar, Pakistan, Chechnya and beyond. These latter, far uglier insurgents have less concern for the boys and girls, mother and fathers living in these contested villages.
