what is wrong
usa is getting its *** kicked
lolz
and so will obama as well
and he is already has such a skinnny he will be kicked all the way to moon and michelle will have to go to retrieve him
that is if he tries any silly tricks like bush -only decency begets decency -
and american afghan policy is anything but decent
no way is america getting any cake in afghanistan ,iran or pakistan and that is for sure
inshallah
Winning in Afghanistan
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Now if you're empowering the clans—the tribes—at that level, don't you risk undermining President Karzai's bid to strengthen the central government?
One should recognize that Kabul has always been rather symbolic. The national government has never mattered that much to the rural Pashtun hinterland. Afghanistan has never had a strong government such as the present constitution calls for except for a guy named Abdul Rahman, or the Iron Emir, in the late 19th century. And he was a very strong and decisive figure who actually built towers of skulls from his opponents. One of the complaints I heard time and time again is that Karzai doesn't have a lot of respect in many areas because he's a weak president … So the point is that national governments have never been strong in Afghan history and have never had that great of an influence in the hinterland area anyway. These areas have their own governance, tribal governance, they have their own laws, tribal laws and they never looked very favorably on things coming from Kabul. In fact, historically, when Kabul has tried to exert its influence in the Pashtun hinterland it's usually caused insurrection or insurgency.
Some of this sounds familiar from General Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. Are you talking about replicating the model in Afghanistan?
Afghanistan and Iraq are really very, very different. Iraq has traditionally had literacy rates of well above 90 percent of the population, Afghanistan you might have 15 percent of the population. Iraq is basically an urban society with some very major urban centers that have driven the traditional intellectual and social and economic life of the country. Afghanistan is 80 percent rural. The cities have never mattered that much. A rural insurgency is very, very different than an urban insurgency, which we're facing in Iraq, and you have to pursue different policies. Plus, in Iraq you've had a very dynamic pattern of sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shia. And while there are differences between the Afghan Sunni and Shia, it's never been one of the driving historical epics in the country.
Go back to the comparison to the Soviet occupation. The conventional narrative roughly is that the Soviets had a strong hold over the government until the U.S. started supplying the mujahedin with shoulder-fired rockets that brought down their helicopters and that led to the undoing of the Soviet occupation. You're saying their strategy from the start was, like ours, an urban strategy, and that's what led to their failure?
Absolutely. And if you look at and analyze the mujahedin presence during the Soviet occupation, they controlled 80 percent of the country, the rural areas. The Soviets controlled the urban areas. And like the present conflict, the conflict during the Soviet area was a rural insurgency. And while they would go into the villages temporarily, and in fact the Soviets followed policies that bordered on genocide which of course we're not doing, they still were never able to insulate the villagers from the mujahedin, just like we can't insulate the villagers from the Taliban.
Which is precisely what counterinsurgency doctrine calls for.
Right. Classic. Absolutely.
You were contracted to develop information operations against IEDs. What can you tell me about that?
Well, I'm convinced that much of the prosecution of our war in Afghanistan has been devoid of sophisticated understanding of the tribal mores and the cognitive structure of the Pashtuns. So I'm presently pursuing a study with government sponsorship, looking at different types of Taliban counternarratives that hopefully will drive people away from the use of IEDs.
Can you give us an example of the strategies?
I think we want to stay away from the details.
Discuss