Original post on |03/31/2011 09:44 am at Yahoo blog
...is paved with good intentions.
To state the obvious vis-à-vis Afghanistan: Truth is never black and white...but a complex, nuanced, grey. Those who want the Holy Grail (solutions to our “Afghan problem”) appear to be blind.
The constant reinvention of the wheel vis-à-vis Afghan research is akin to dissecting an already well dissected corpse….all the while hoping to discover some new tid bit of proof to explain the current quagmire.
I keep getting emails requesting research assistance (pro bono) or guidance on some specific subject on Afghanistan….all well intentioned queries but they, nonetheless, irritate. Why? Because all this intellectual “effort” misses the larger, critical, picture…the grail itself: We’ve bet on the wrong horse from the get go when we could have supported a winner just like the British did with Shah Shuja in the 19th century. Then the populace wanted the popular Amir Dost Muhammad but had Shah Shuja imposed on them courtesy of British troops. The Brits wanted Shuja because he was “weak” and thus was malleable; while Dost (Pashto/Dari for “Friend”) Muhammad was too “independent.” It led to a blood bath of the Indus Army in retreat. And, Dost Muhammad got reinstated on the throne in the end regardless of British imperial intentions.
That should ring some bells. Common (horse) sense dictates that bolstering an illegitimate, highly unpopular, regime (thus making us look like the bad guy however well intentioned we may be) only leads to problems down the road for all concerned parties. Our mission will fail in the long run if we continue on this trajectory. Studying each and every physical attribute of Afghan provinces, or culture, won't make a damn bit of difference (pardon my French).
We have botched Afghanistan once again…that is what pains. Its déjà vu in many ways, only the stakes are now global not regional. Perception is what galvanizes gullible people who are discouraged from thinking for themselves. “Talibanization” (translation in Arabic is “studentization”) as a concept being bandied about is laughed at in the region; just like the term "Taliban" to describe the Dushman (Pushto/Dari for “enemy”) is. The more apt terms are “Wahhabization” and/or “Islamization” but no one wants to touch either of these elephants in the room. Deliberate ignorance is not a solution to a problem any more than appeasement was/is.
My paper “The Creeping Wahhabization of Pukhtunkhwa: The Road to 9/11” TBP in the April 2011 issue of Comparative Strategy (being published after many rejections elsewhere), enunciates the cultural disparities between the Pushtuns and the Wahhabi/Salafi Arabs. A fact that has not been fully understood nor leveraged. The key --in the long term-- in the region is to promote an authentic, original, identity over an "Islamic" one. This is the key... ideas, though, are well embedded and tough nuts to crack. We will see...inshallah as they say.
This is ultimately a struggle of narratives, identities and a defense of said identities in one’s own land be it here in the United States, Afghanistan or anywhere else.
To close with Kipling's sage words in The Ballad of East and West :
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
tho' they come from the ends of the earth!
