[R-G] Afghanistan's response to escalating war

[Anthony Fenton]

http://socialistworker.org/2009/03/20/afghanistan-escalating-war

Afghanistan's response to escalating war

March 20, 2009

After three years of losing ground against a growing Afghan  
resistance, the U.S. government is continuing a troop buildup begun by  
George W. Bush. In February, Barack Obama ordered the Pentagon to  
double the number of U.S. combat brigades with the addition of 17,000  
new troops, a number that could eventually reach 30,000.

Afghan opinion, once widely in favor of the U.S./NATO occupation, is  
now divided. Much of the erosion of support has come because of an  
increase in civilian casualties as the war has intensified. Kabul- 
based political analyst Waheed Muzjda told the Christian Science  
Monitor that "at least half the country is deeply suspicious of the  
new troops. The U.S. will have to wage an intense hearts-and-minds  
campaign to turn this situation around."

Anand Gopal, the Kabul correspondent for the Monitor, talked to David  
Whitehouse about the escalation of the war and the different ways  
Afghans are responding.

Afghan civilian casualties have risen dramatically in recent years

WHAT WILL the effect of deploying more U.S. troops be on the military  
situation, and on the attempt to win Afghan support for the war?

INJECTING MORE troops will mean two things: more troop casualties and  
more civilian casualties. Most of the civilian casualties come from  
aerial strikes, and there is a common misconception that more boots on  
the ground will mean less reliance on airpower.

In reality, it will most likely be just the opposite. That is because  
most of these aerial strikes are associated with so-called "close  
contact" situations: Troops are engaged in direct combat or have just  
done so, and they call in air raids. These raids provide a supporting  
function to the troops on the ground. So more troops on the ground  
will most likely mean more air raids to support them.

In addition, more troops will mean more casualty-inducing house raids.

These are the reasons why we have seen civilian casualties skyrocket  
over the last few years. It's not that the Americans have changed to a  
more casualty-inducing strategy; it's merely because there has been a  
large increase of troops over this period.

The brunt of the fighting has been in the Pashtun areas of the south  
and east. The Pashtuns in these areas are mostly opposed to troop  
increases, for the simple reason that it will mean more bloodshed,  
more civilian casualties and more Taliban reprisals.

In the north, which is dominated by non-Pashtun ethnic minorities,  
there is much more support for the troops. Again, this is for the  
simple reason that the troops won't actually be deployed to these  
areas, but rather to the volatile south. In addition, these ethnic  
groups view the Western forces as a buffer to the Pashtuns and the  
Taliban.

The ethnic divisions in Afghanistan run very deep. Unlike Iraq, which  
had relatively small divisions between Sunnis and Shias until the U.S.  
invasion, Afghanistan has been through an extremely bloody civil war  
in the 1990s that pitted the various ethnic groups against one  
another. The scars of this war have not healed.

The Tajiks and Hezaras, by and large, support the troops, whereas many  
Pashtuns oppose them. And because the northern areas (where the Tajiks  
and Hezaras predominate) are more peaceful, they have seen more  
development and aid.

AFGHAN CITIES have grown significantly during 30 years of war, so that  
30 percent of Afghanistan's 27 million people now live in urban  
centers. What is the impact of this on U.S. strategy?

WHILE THE last few years have certainly seen migration to the cities-- 
Kabul, for example, saw a population boom after the fall of the  
Taliban--Afghanistan still ranks only 181 out of 199 countries in  
terms of the percentage of the population living in urban areas. By  
comparison, Iraq ranks 68th.

Afghan cities are extremely small by modern standards--only Kabul has  
more than 500,000 people. Most of the urban centers, especially in the  
Pashtun areas of the south, are remarkably tiny, and resemble small  
villages of other countries. The capital of Logar province, for  
example, consists of a crossroads with a few shops.

In Wardak province, where 1,500 new American troops recently landed,  
only 0.5 percent of the population lives in an urban area. The  
American troops and Afghan government control the provincial capital,  
which is the largest city in the province and has a population of  
about 3,000. The vast swathes of countryside, however, are either not  
under the control of anyone, or are under the control of the Taliban.  
A similar situation persists in most other Pashtun provinces.

The point is that this is a fundamentally rural society, one that is  
radically different than Iraq. If you could somehow win control of a  
provincial capital like Falluja or Basra, you'd be able to exert  
control on the surrounding countryside, since the population's center  
of gravity is in the cities. But in Afghanistan, if you won control of  
a provincial capital, you've really done nothing at all.

This is the problem the Afghan government and the Americans are  
facing, and nothing short of troops in every village, which would add  
up to hundreds of thousands, could get around this. And hundreds of  
thousands of troops--in every six-house or eight-house village--would  
most likely not be acceptable to the villagers, for reasons already  
mentioned.

DO URBAN opponents of the occupation identify with the Taliban, or are  
there distinctions?

THE TALIBAN is predominantly a rural force, although it has urban  
sympathizers in places like Kandahar city and Kabul. There has been  
some migration of rural villagers to urban centers like Kandahar,  
which accounts for their support within the cities.

The Taliban almost entirely tailor their message to the rural  
population, and their world view is heavily influenced by rural life.  
Most urban opponents of the Americans don't identify with the Taliban,  
very much for these reasons.

In the West, the Taliban are often seen as imposing their puritanical  
vision on an unwilling society, but in reality, the Taliban's ideology  
is an extension of rural Pashtun ideology. Absolutely nowhere in the  
Pashtun countryside will you see a woman without a burqa, and in most  
cases, you won't see women at all--they are cloistered in the home.  
This is true regardless of the Taliban presence in the area. Most  
Pashtun villagers I've met are opposed to educating girls past puberty.

In traditional Afghan society, village chiefs and tribal heads held  
the land and the power. However, the years of Soviet invasion  
[1979-89] saw a partial breakdown in tribal structures. The Soviets  
targeted the tribal chiefs during their intervention here, by killing  
them and trying to break up their land. This was part of a Communist  
attempt to modernize the economy, and shift the emphasis toward the  
town and away from the country.

The tribal chiefs fought back and tried to defend their land and  
wealth, and recruited mullahs to the cause. Eventually, many of the  
village chiefs were killed or co-opted, while the mullahs were getting  
American largesse. This combination enabled the mullahs to function as  
a relatively distinct social force, but they remain tied to a rural  
outlook and way of life.

When the Taliban strode into Kabul in 1996 and took power, many of  
their members had never before seen a city. And that remains true today.

WHEN THE Taliban arose in the 1990s as a force fighting to replace the  
rule of Afghan warlords, it had a narrow religious foundation and a  
significant base among only one of the country's ethnic groups, the  
Pashtuns. Now that its opponent is an external force, has the Taliban  
changed to broaden its appeal and to construct a truly national base?

BECAUSE THE Taliban's ideology is an extension of the rural Pashun  
ideology, they are seen as an alien force in the rest of the country.

The rural Pashtun way of life is significantly different from, say,  
the Hazaras of the central highlands. When traveling in the Hazara  
areas, you will see, for example, that women can move outside the  
house, and some might not even wear the burqa. And the Hazaras are  
Shia Muslims, whereas the Pashtuns are Sunnis, and the Taliban follow  
a specific school of Sunni Islam called Deobandi.

Therefore, the Taliban were mostly supported as a popular, anti- 
warlord force in the Pashtun areas when they rode to power in the  
1990s, but they were fiercely resisted in the non-Pashtun areas. This  
dynamic still exists today. The Taliban has almost no presence in non- 
Pashtun areas.

The Taliban's ideology has transformed somewhat over the years, and  
now they talk in nationalist terms (about expelling foreign occupiers,  
for example) as much as they talk about their specific interpretation  
of Islam. But they completely lack the ability to broaden their appeal  
beyond the Pashtuns.

This is because they remain a rural force, and their conception of  
Islam is very Pashtunized. The non-Pashtun ethnic groups view the  
Americans as the lesser of two evils when compared to the Taliban,  
since the Americans have not tried to fundamentally reorder village  
life in the way the Taliban attempted in the 1990s. If these ethnic  
groups were to turn against the Americans for any reason, they would  
most likely form their own resistance groups, and would never even  
ally with the Taliban.

Because of this, it is difficult to see the Taliban as a force of  
national liberation, since they would most likely never be able to  
rally non-Pashtuns (that is, 60 percent of society) to their cause.

Moreover, the Taliban should not even be considered a Pashtun  
nationalist movement, as is commonly claimed. Afghanistan has long  
history of Pashtun nationalism--there are 12 million Pashtuns in  
Afghanistan and 25 million in Pakistan, and there is widespread  
support among these people for a united Pashtunistan. Most Pashtun  
nationalist groups on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border are  
secular and have a much stronger urban base.

The Taliban never talks about Pashtunistan, and whenever I ask Taliban  
commanders about the issue, they downplay it. And the Taliban  
government of the 1990s never made an attempt to address the  
Pashtunistan issue (which is understandable since the Taliban's  
principle patron, Pakistan, is strongly opposed to Pashtun  
nationalism). They are merely an Islamist movement that happens to be  
Pashtun, and hold a very Pashunized version of Islam.