Understanding Afghanistan

If there is one thing that the recent anti-American, anti-international riots in Aghanistan showed the world, it is the dangerous extent to which the "western" media misunderstands and misrepresents the place. Little attention is given to the fact that the Karzai government only rules over a small area of the country. In the rest of the country, US-supported warlords, and fragile tribal alliances maintain "law and order." Moreover, it seems Iran and Pakistan are effectively and actively manipulating politics in various regions of the country, and Karzai's government seems powerless to prevent this interference.

Aid worker Sarah Chayes, in her fascinating op-ed piece in the New York Times, attempts to explain the complexity of Iranian and Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan, but most especially the dangers of US collaboration with corrupt officials and Afghan warlords, who routinely abuse human rights, often while working in concert with US military.

What most Afghans have complained to me most consistently about is the inexplicable staying power of predatory, corrupt and abusive officials, on both the provincial and national level. Having waited patiently through the emergency loya jirga, or national assembly, in June 2002, the approval of a new constitution at a second loya jirga in December 2003, and the presidential election last fall, Afghans are at a loss as to why the Karzai administration and its American backers repeatedly put their confidence in unqualified and often criminal officials. By blindly allying themselves with some of the most destructive elements of Afghan society (over-armed, under-disciplined thugs), American forces paint themselves in the ugly colors of their Afghan proxies. The extortions, murders, unwarranted searches and unfair monopolies on lucrative work contracts are seen as integral components of American policy.

Somehow, in the three-and-a-half years that the United States has been here, it has not figured out how to avoid this trap. This incapacity for institutional learning is perhaps the most surprising failing on the part of the Army that I have witnessed. Each new contingent starts from scratch; knowledge of local tribal dynamics, geography, customs and personalities painstakingly acquired by the previous unit is never properly transferred. And so the same mistakes are made again and again.