Inkless Wells

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Obama and Afghanistan/Pakistan II: "A cancer eating away at the country"

by Paul Wells on Friday, March 27, 2009 4:30pm - 16 Comments

From the press briefing that Luiza posted this morning, Richard Holbrooke on corruption:

I would just point you to the fact that no American chief executive has spoken about corruption this way ever before in open. Isn’t that a fair statement, Bruce? And on the way out, a former Assistant Secretary of State, who many of you know, but I better not give his name… he said to me, ‘I’ve been waiting six years to hear a speech like that, and the emphasis on corruption is essential.’ You’ve all been reporting it for years. We view it as a cancer eating away at the country and it has to be dealt with. And obviously we’re not going to lay out how we’re going to deal with it. To some extent, we don’t know yet…

“Now we’ve been offered the extraordinary challenge of trying to deal with this problem. And we’re here to say, it is at the highest levels. Why? This isn’t baksheesh [petty endemic bribery of low-level officials -- pw]. We’ve got to make a distinction between ordinary problems that happen in every society. This is massive efforts that undermine the government. President Karzai himself has said this, and we need to work on this. It’s a huge recruiting draw — excuse me, huge recruiting opportunity for the Taliban. It’s one of their major things they exploit.”

Reading this I was reminded of something I heard 18 months ago in Kandahar from Sarah Chayes, the former U.S. radio reporter who now lives in Afghanistan, and whose latest op-ed I posted this morning. Chayes has an odd conflictual/cooperative relationship with ISAF officials in Kandahar. What my group saw was typical: military and civilian officials gave us the official briefing, whose message was that this mission is a challenge but it’s not going too badly. Then there was a pause, and Chayes came in and offered the direst, bleakest report you could imagine. Then the officials thanked her and said, well, you know, it’s not quite as bad as Sarah is saying… Apparently this two-step is not uncommon. From the article I wrote after that first trip to Afghanistan:

Chayes, the former journalist, said ISAF’s troop-lending countries need to stop making excuses for the Afghan government and confront it with “a really consistent message: ‘You are screwing up our battle space by being a crappy government. You are creating three Taliban for every Taliban we catch.’ ”

One high-ranking ISAF military officer had a similar thought. “I have long thought the message we should send to the Afghan people should be the image of a coalition soldier holding a rifle in one hand and a shovel in the other and saying, ‘I’ve got the will and the capability to use either. Which would you have me use?’ Now I think it’s time to replace the rifle with a crescent wrench. And the message now should be, to the Afghan leadership, ‘We are gonna take the training wheels off this bicycle. You boys had better start pedalling.’ ”

The patronizing attitude of an overbearing Western soldier? Perhaps, but Daoud Sultanzoy makes almost the same point. He is a prominent independent member of parliament, urbane, perfectly fluent in English, a critic of Karzai’s regime. “Six years have been spent on baby steps with this government,” Sultanzoy said. “You’ve been spoonfeeding them and they don’t even want to chew.”

Time to chew.

ALSO BY INKLESS WELLS: Obama and Afghanistan/Pakistan Part I, Part III, Part IV
ALSO AT MACLEANS.CA: An exclusive photo gallery from Pakistan’s dangerous Swat Valley

Tags: Afghanistan/Pakistan, Barack Obama

More by Paul Wells

http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

I was wondering if they were talking about baksheesh or something worse in your last post on parsing president’s speech.

I am glad the authorities are going to take a shot at reducing corruption because it is corrosive to any attempt to build a civil society and needs to be stamped out as fast as possible. We have been hearing about rampant corruption for at least a few years so it is good that someone has finally decided to try and deal with it. However, being a conservative, I have my doubts about effectiveness of admin attempts to change behaviour significantly if corruption is already ingrained.
Paul Wells

Corruption in Afghanistan isn’t only something the Afghans do, apparently:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702406.html?hpid=topnews

http://coyne kc

The poor man needed a lexus, in Afghanistan. Should impress the natives no end! What a sick world it is – sometime? Where was his boss? Sunning himself in France? Yet another black eye for the UN! They probably haven’t got the sense to prosecute him!

Sisyphus

I await … you have to know it’s coming at some point …. the first story on foreign involvement in the opium trade.

conservative

The same opium trade that is stoked by people insisting on safe injection sites and needle exchange programs here in Canada, a movement which strangely coincides with our occupation of Afghanistan and was preceded by the virtual elimination of heroin on the streets in Canada prior to 9/11? Those people are Bush & Co’s best friends.

The Liberal encourages the lumpenproletariat to get hooked on heroin so the Taliban and others get their fat profits to fight the Canadian soldiers that the Liberals sent to Afghanistan and extended the mission. Doesn’t make sense to me either. I know, I know, I’m unenlightened and we should legalize heroin, it’s just that I don’t see how that would help us compete with China, being all hepped up on heroin and all, at a time when our GDP is set to drop 15%.

Shenping

Ah, I love it. Drug-addicted Vancouver liberals are causing the conflict in Afghanistan.

I don’t feel the need to make my progressive trollorifics any more. There are so many bad examples making a far better argument than anything I could come up.

Are you really an incredibly stupid conservative, or a left-wingey in disguise trying to make conservatives look bad? It’s hard to tell sometimes.

Sorry, Paul — I really do read your blog for the information, not just to make fun of the idiots who post here. They just make it so easy sometimes.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

Man, this is bleak.

Mulletaur

This might cheer you up a bit. This guy represents a strategy for Afghanistan that may just work now as it has worked in the past – a combination of competent central government working flexibly with local tribal rule :

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/afghanistan-s-tribal-choice-president-prince-abdul-ali-seraj

To quote from a Globe and Mail article of 18 February 2009 :

“Mr. Seraj divides the Taliban into black, grey and white: Grey Taliban are highway robbers and thieves, an Afghan mafia exploiting the current state of lawlessness; white Taliban are freedom fighters, taking up arms in fury at foreign occupiers.

For Mr. Seraj, the real problem are the black Taliban, followers of Mullah Mohammed Omar now under the influence of al-Qaeda and its foreign fighters. They are enemies, and unwelcome on Afghan soil – even more unwelcome than the coalition forces. And this is where Western interests converge with the interests of the tribes, although you’d never know it.

For Mr. Seraj and his followers, identifying which Talib is which is easy; for Westerners, it is virtually impossible. So it mystifies Mr. Seraj why the coalition doesn’t ask the tribes for help and instead prefers to bomb all fighters from the skies using unmanned predator drones, driving a natural ally into the arms of a sworn enemy. It makes Mr. Seraj furious.

Mr. Seraj is stunned that the West insists on fighting an enemy it doesn’t understand on terrain it cannot manage, rather than repeating the successful formula of supporting the mujahadeen, as it did during the Soviet occupation.”

If his analysis is true, our strategy in Afghanistan has been totally wrong. We should have been working with the tribal leaders all along on the ground, getting them to identify the “black Taliban”. We could have offered help in strengthening their authority in return. Instead we backed a useless and corrupt central government and ignored the tribal leaders.

http://coyne kc

Makes sense to me Mullateur. As to why don’t do this. Hubris! Can there really be any other answer – actually the other answer is even worse: little brown men in robes who don’t even realize it’s the 21cen. Come to think of it, reason one and two are pretty much inseparable. Of course the Russians made the same mistakes.
It is a puzzler though that no-one on our side is around any more who can remember the successes of the 80s with the mujahadeen.

Mulletaur

When the ideology of the U.S. President was that democracy and the free market solve all, you couldn’t really expect anything different in terms of policy. Let’s see if Obama takes a more pragmatic approach.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

Thanks, Mulletaur. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Seraj. We are blinded by our “Western values” into rejecting the white Taliban because of their feudal and paterfamilial system.

Our policy is such a mess. We went in to stop Al-Qaeda using Afghanistan as a base; but that was too Realpolitiky for neo-cons and bleeding hearts alike, so our mission was magically transformed into Spreading Democracy and Healing the Wounds, because we are just so doggone good, doncha know. And heroin is not good, not good at all, therefore we will crush the drug trade, except we can’t, so we’ll just bomb the beejezus out of the Pathans generally and, well, hope for the best. Only problem is that we’re fighting the best guerrillas in the world on their home turf, against a young generation of Pathans that grew up wishing they’d been old enough to fight the Soviets. Ideal.

Man, I wish we would just fight this war in the cause of PEACE. Not necessarily a democratic peace, or a corruption-free peace, or a Charter of Rights and Freedoms peace, just — peace. That means doing deals with the tribes and the medieval barons, accepting opium production as the economy of Afghanistan, and paying cash for the heads of Mullah Omar & Co. We have one card left, IMHO: the King. But time is running out. Even though we can’t withdraw without turning Afghanistan back over to Omar & his Al-Qaeda buddies, public opinion in the West, thanks to all the Spreading Democracy rhetoric, has quite forgotten about that and will eventually force a withdrawal whether or not that means new Al-Qaeda attacks. Presumably we’ll go back in again after the next big attack. It’s incredibly depressing and wasteful and it’s all owing to our addiction to promising everybody the moon. How I loathe Peter MacKay.

Mulletaur

“Man, I wish we would just fight this war in the cause of PEACE. Not necessarily a democratic peace, or a corruption-free peace, or a Charter of Rights and Freedoms peace, just — peace.”

Couldn’t agree more, Jack. It is ridiculous for us in the developed world to think we can impose our democratic system on other nations as if it’s “one size fits all”. I wouldn’t want Afghanistan to become a dictatorship, but really, is that any of my business ? Apparently, Prince Abdul Ali Seraj’s great grandfather, known as the ‘Iron Amir’, was a real piece of work, although according to a story in the U.K. Independent, “he made slaves of an entire province, yet he is fondly remembered inside Afghanistan as one of the few rulers in the last 250 years to unite the country’s tribes.”

Dambisa Moyo in her book “Dead Aid : Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa”, quotes a study by Przeworski et al. called “What makes democracies endure?”, which relates per capita income to the endurance of democracy. They find that with per capita income below US$1000 per annum, a democracy can be expected to last 8.5 years, 16 years for $1000-2000, 33 years for $2000-4000 and above $6000 per capita, democracies are “impregnable”. It is our military presence in Afghanistan which maintains democracy there. It probably won’t survive us leaving. Our original reason for being in Afghanistan is to ensure that it can never be used again as a base from which to launch attacks on us and our allies. Karzai’s weak government will never be able to do this. Even with ISAF, the country is close to being overrun by Taliban. We need to rethink what we are doing there. The tribal approach proposed by Prince Seraj at least offers some hope.

As for the opium, it is ridiculous that so much is being grown there and there is a desperate need for pain killers in many developing countries. In view of the cost of our military and aid missions to Afghanistan, it would be better and cheaper if we just bought the whole crop ourselves, even if we just end up destroying it. At least some of it can be used to make pharmaceuticals.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

That’s very interesting about the $6000-per-capita democratic model. I’m ashamed to say that I still know very little about the economy of Afghanistan, apart from the fact that its farmland is apparently very unproductive (except for opium) and it’s not big on manufacturing. You’d think that with all those mountains there would be a big potential for mining, but I’m no geologist; and obviously mining itself (as also foreign investment) is pretty much impossible without stability. Peace, even on the strongman model, seems like a prerequisite for $6000/year, which in turn should eventually lead to democracy of a sort (even if it’s only the paterfamilias voting). I feel enthused about Prince Seraj (v. interesting piece in the Independent, btw., thanks), I hope we back him to the hilt if he beats Karzai.

Mulletaur

What percentage of the Afghan economy in GDP terms is foreign aid ? Just thinking of a book by Dambisa Moyo I’m reading …
JMD

Remember how Peter McKay was slammed a while ago when he spoke about the corruption in the governance of Kandahar? Maybe he just spoke up too soon.
http://coyne kc

“And the message now should be, to the Afghan leadership, ‘We are gonna take the training wheels off this bicycle. You boys had better start pedalling.”

I love this. That”s the America i love! Thanks for posting that Paul!
In fact the whole piece could come right out of a character from one of Lecarre’s novels: marvelous, makes me feel good to think that folks like that are being listened to now!

“One high-ranking ISAF military officer had a similar thought. “I have long thought the message we should send to the Afghan people should be the image of a coalition soldier holding a rifle in one hand and a shovel in the other and saying, ‘I’ve got the will and the capability to use either. Which would you have me use?’ Now I think it’s time to replace the rifle with a crescent wrench. And the message now should be, to the Afghan leadership, ‘We are gonna take the training wheels off this bicycle. You boys had better start pedalling.’ “