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Stating the obvious
Afghanistan is going worse than Iraq. Not on a "how many people were killed today" basis, but on a "which country has a better chance of climbing out of its current muck fifteen or twenty years from now" metric. And no, I don't intend that point as either a critique of invading Afghanistan, which I favored, or as a defense of our very badly botched policy in Iraq. It is a simple observation: we have never had good reason to believe that the occupation of Afghanistan was going well.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 10, 2006 at 11:10 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
Well, part of the problem is akin to what has befallen Eastern Germany. Many Afghans thought that with the Taliban vanished and a democratic (at least by lips) government, prosperity lay around the corner.
Well, it obviously hasn't and now the older clan warfare has taken over again with Drug lords at the head and poor farmers producing the only thing they know will bring money: drugs.
I think the whole idea of occupation as the US facilitates today, is a thing of the past. They should have gone in, cleaned the place out and left again. The Middle East has a hard time to take-over democracy in connection with liberty.
(Well, they will take over the Bush version of democracy...)
And now, the Taliban is on the wrong and the ISAF has a hard time containing them to the southern reaches.
It's time to face it that the German-Japanese nation-building will not work in this part of the world and it also time to start thinking about the consequences...
Posted by: Max at Sep 10, 2006 1:01:07 PM
"German-Japanese nation-building will not work in this part of the world"
It certainly won't when the committment (in terms of troops involved and sacrifices on the home front) is trivial compared to what happened in the German and Japanese cases.
Posted by: cactus at Sep 10, 2006 1:53:17 PM
I don't wish to sound heartless, but Japan and Germany had the advantage of having been bombed to buggery first.
Posted by: dearieme at Sep 10, 2006 2:32:38 PM
japan and germany were rich industrialized countries pre-war. Afghanistan was not. Iraq was on serious decline since sanctions.
Posted by: Jor at Sep 10, 2006 2:45:02 PM
we have never had good reason to believe that the occupation of Afghanistan was going well.Really, not even after the 2004 elections? I recall (and shared in) some guarded optimism at the time.
Posted by: Jim Hu at Sep 10, 2006 3:45:45 PM
When the leading components of the economy are aid and poppy cultivation,
with no realistic (i.e. same order of magnitude) substitute for either,
even with a more decent international trade regime in agricultural products;
where the pool of human capital is broad but puddle-deep, with significant
cultural barriers to improvement; where there are mountain passes rather than be-harbored
coasts and the surrounding countries are not exactly open, stable and vibrant
markets; where international pressure/inducements and military action
are required to maintain national integrity in the face of the blessing
of geographically-based "ethnic" diversity...
Somehow "Singapore O' The 'Stans" never seemed a plausible outcome
Posted by: TStockmann at Sep 10, 2006 6:33:38 PM
When we invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had made enemies of the opium growers, and Pakistan was afraid of the US and willing to do whatever the US demanded. Last week, the Pakistan government folded in "the war on terrorism" and signed a treaty with the pro-alqeda forces guaranteeing the release from prison of any AQs, and that the Pakistani will not attempt to arrest or detain any other AQs. I'm awaiting the howls from the whitehouse when they notice this.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0906/dailyUpdate.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2350795,00.html
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/southasia/article_1199378.php/Afghanistan_at_tipping_point
>"[A] more significant development is an underhand deal between pro-al-Qaeda elements and Pakistan in which key al-Qaeda figures will either not be arrested or those already in custody will be set free. This has the potential to sour Islamabad's relations with Washington beyond the point of no return."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HI08Df03.html
The opium growing class isn't fighting the Taliban any more, just NATO forces. It also doesn't help that a little over half of the Afghani refugees from the Taliban were holed up in Iran, and are quite friendly towards Iran for sheltering in their time of darkness. There were more than a million Afghan refugees in Iran. The western side of Afghanistan is also quite quiet, as the Iranians tend to build what the locals ask for, unlike the US who builds stuff to appease no-bid contractors. And the Iranians don't drive over people in the marketplace with tanks and APCs. Nor shoot up wedding parties from gunships.
We never had any serious intention of rescuing Afghanistan from the depths of the third world. We invaded the place as retribution for harboring Al Qeda. There is no oil in Afghanistan. Yet there is something in that place that causes superpowers to become "unsuper" afterwards.
Posted by: Peter at Sep 10, 2006 6:47:25 PM
Frankly, I am more worried about Pakistan than I am about Afghanistan.
Posted by: The Chieftain of Seir at Sep 10, 2006 7:39:29 PM
Afghanistan is/has always been a battleground for the various regional and non-regional powers. I would welcome any argument that it has ever been anything but a failed state.
The Chieftain is justified in writing that Pakistan is/should be a greater worry. A military dictatorship with a vicious secret police/security force and a population that is furious at the West…….oh by the way, they also have nuclear weapons.
Posted by: Chairman Mao at Sep 10, 2006 7:53:33 PM
For millennia, Afghanistan has been a "devourer of armies".
A person who has been twice been elected U.S. President,
can fly a military jet and is a student of history would know this.
Even I, though much more foolish, know this.
Others are learning for the first time.
Posted by: Thomas Esmond Knox at Sep 10, 2006 8:45:31 PM
For heaven's sake, the idea that Afganistan could become a stable nation was nonsense from the get-go, and almost everybody familiar knew it. That is precisely why military resources were so soon diverted from it. It is almost the last of these countries that will be stabilized.
I leave it to the gods to figure out how the American public could have swallowed the democracy-building nonsense. The United States is a massive intellectual disaster zone.
Afganistan may ALSO be doing worse on a "how many people were killed today" basis. Exactly how would you go about, finding unimpeachable information on that?
As for Pakistan, it has given up jurisdiction on both Waziristans, to allow U.S. military incursions from over the border, to deal with a situation that the Pakistani army has been unable to control. In this limited sense, things just got a little better there.
All of that said, moderate Muslims have a long-term problem which is about to surface in their own media, Al Jazeera and the rest. The essential issue is that their conduct in all of this -- the events of the Iraqi Civil War, for example -- are a first-rate cultural embarrassment. Why can't moderate Muslims sideline the fundamentalists and make democracies? It's time to step up to the plate, people!
Posted by: Lee A. arnold at Sep 10, 2006 10:18:09 PM
Not for Americans. We aren't dying in Afghanistan at anywhere near the rate we're dying in Iraq. Nor are we spending anywhere near as much money.
Nation-building in Afghanistan was always a hopeless task. Fortunately, we never invested much in it.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 10, 2006 10:21:17 PM
Don't forget, we've been funding terrorists like PKK and MEK, among others, to destabilize Iran. Except that PKK finds Turkey to be a much softer target, so Turkey and Iran have been holding joint ventures suppressing Kurdish separatists in Northern Iraq (as much as they both can do without actually shooting at US troops). You might remember MEK, they're the ones that held our diplomats hostage in Teheran.
The balochi separatists being funded in the southern part of Iran find Pakistan to be a softer target, so they've been pushing for independence for Balochistan (most of which is part of western Pakistan, in case you didn't know).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pakistan_ethnic_80.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balochistan_%28Pakistan%29
We're busy trying to piss in Iranian cheerios, but our actions keep blowing back all over our alleged allies. For goodness sake, those guys in Teheran managed to get the US to depose their enemies to the east (Taliban) and the west (Saddam Hussein) at no cost to themselves in terms of soldiers or money.
I predict that the Afghanistan troubles will boil over into Pakistan and take them down. Pakistan currently has several nuclear weapons, and missiles to launch them with. Who gets them when they collapse? Are you willing to bet your life on the answer?
Posted by: Peter at Sep 11, 2006 12:51:07 AM
Lee: the problem is that in order to sideline the hardliners, you have to deliberately misinterpret the Koran, just as most Christians deliberately misinterpret the Bible. We have an easier time because most of us are reading translations; Muslims a harder time because most of them are reading it in its original language (Arabic), from a text that was written by Muhammed rather than his followers.
Until the moderates can make that stick, the hardliners will be perceived as the real Muslims even though they're a stultifyingly small minority.
Posted by: Russell Nelson at Sep 11, 2006 1:01:17 AM
A small minority where? In the US? maybe, in their home countries? I have a very hard time believing that one. At the risk of violating Godwin's law, would you say that the hardline Nazis were only a small minority and that most of the war machine was made up of moderates who just didn't have a good argument against Hitler's rhetoric?
Technically I guess you can make that argument, but it seems a little dishonest. Just because most of them aren't physically out there at night burying IEDs doesn't mean that most of them aren't in on it.
Posted by: BillWallace at Sep 11, 2006 3:01:16 AM
"and that most of the war machine was made up of moderates who just didn't have a good argument against Hitler's rhetoric?"
Hehe, Bill.
That's the funniest thing I've read all week.
I'd like to see a national referendum in both Afghanistan and Iraq with a single question:
Should American troops remain in your country?
If a majority of the citizens in either country vote no, it would be a great face-saving way to us to pull out. If a majority doesn't want our troops in their country...we have no hope accomplishing whatever our latest goals are for Afghanistan and Iraq anyway.
If a majority in either country votes yes, though...we can try to come up with a new plan.
Posted by: monkyboy at Sep 11, 2006 5:36:41 AM
I don't wish to sound heartless, but Japan and Germany had the advantage of having been bombed to buggery first.
Dearieme, just what kind of shape do you think Afghanistan was in, after the Soviet occupation and the tribal wars that followed?
Posted by: Anderson at Sep 11, 2006 9:38:49 AM
It is likely that most people stopped reading this thread a few comments back, but we should at least set the record straight, from Military Studies 101. The Islamic fundamentalists are a small minority, but a growing one. (The blame for their growth can be apportioned later.) This situation is NOT like Nazi Germany because the Nazis were a unified party in one of the two or three most industrially advanced countries on earth. (However, it is alike to Nazi Germany in that the hardliners are able to base their arguments on true political grievances, e.g. Versailles. But that is true of almost all other uprisings also.) Islamic fundamentalists and their power brokers are NOT united, at least not yet: Dubya of Arabia may well pull off an historical "first," in uniting them against the United States.
Most Muslims are moderates who can explain quite well why their religion is against the killing of innocents, and don't need the West to lecture them about anything. But the moderate Muslims did not have a voice anywhere in this huge region, until the rise of the new Arab media. (Again, the blame for their lack of voice can be apportioned later.) For some idea of what is really going on, forget the "Islamofascist" gibberish and the U.S. mainstream news, and read: VOICES OF THE NEW ARAB PUBLIC: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today, by Marc Lynch (Columbia, 2006.)
There is a way to fight this war; it is a war of ideas between Muslims. The physical battles may become almost secondary, of our own choosing, and fought by proxy. That still won't solve the problem of regions where no unified government has yet stuck, such as Afganistan, where the lack of government is a separate issue from the war on killer fundamentalism.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Sep 11, 2006 12:05:58 PM
In my opinion things are worse in Iraq than they are in Afghanistan. The reason I think this is because more of the fighting is going on in Iraq than it is in Afghanistan and more U.S. troops are dying in Iraq than they are in Afghanistan. I believe that Afghanistan's status will be better before Iraq's status is. It will probably take Afghanistan a few years to pull out, but it will most likely take Iraq at the least 10 or more years to pull out. Iraq will not be able to pull out until the war on terrorism has ended.
Posted by: William I. at Sep 12, 2006 3:44:28 PM
U.S. and allied troop deaths in Afghanistan have increased every single year since 2001, William:
http://icasualties.org/oef/
Not a hopeful trend...
Posted by: monkyboy at Sep 12, 2006 6:24:50 PM
The best solution to condense the brutality would be encouraging the women participation in the economic growth and development especially in the Middle Eastern countries, so by this strategy the economy will be balanced with the women workforce. This could be done by voluntarily increasing the women leadership in the countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. Since, in the above countries most of the women are homemakers their services are not reflected in the national income. Women’s role in the economy is generally higher in the developed and developing economies. Even politically, the women's role has brought lots of change.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/about/Kohli.pdf#search=%22emergency%20period%20india%20economic%20growth%22
Posted by: Prodigent at Sep 14, 2006 12:07:39 AM
