'Who art thou, seller of dog's flesh,' thundered Tallantire, 'to speak of terms and treaties? Get hence to the hills—go, and wait there starving, till it shall please the Government to call thy people out for punishment—children and fools that ye be! Count your dead, and be still. Best assured that the Government will send you a MAN!'
'Ay,' returned Khoda Dad Khan, 'for we also be men.'
As he looked Tallantire between the eyes, he added, 'And by God, Sahib, may thou be that man!'Kipling, Rudyard "The Head of the District", Life's Handicap (p. 127). Kindle Edition.
The Afghanistan campaign has always been problematic. It didn't help that the previous American administration got bogged down in Sisyphean nation building. And the current one conducting a policy of letting the war run on autopilot didn't help. Nor did, when that option ran out, settling for a slow-motion surrender to the Taliban by announcing a withdrawal date.
It certainly was an insane idea to treat the Afghans like a load of Germans or Japanese who just needed a bit of aid to get them on their feet rather than a barbarian people who needed a British Empire-style district officer to keep them in line until they learned how to govern themselves. The moment Afghan soldiers started shooting ours and we did nothing about it, the whole thing became impossible.
It can still be salvaged, but I can't see the theatre commander (Not the American ambassador) having Kharzi hauled in under armed NATO guard and told in the bluntest terms that NATO is there for our defence, not theirs and that if we leave, we'll come back the next time they give us trouble and settle for making the rubble bounce and perdition with the hearts and minds.
If this sort of Kiplingesque approach isn't used, we might as well pack up now and not leave a single man behind.
4 comments:
I've decided that Afghanistan is like a sack of gravel. Britain, at its height, tried to break it with a hammer. The USSR, more advanced technologically after a century, tried to break it with a bigger hammer. Now the US has been trying to make friends with every individual rock. Or rather, with each chain of valleys, each with its headman, each of whom is happy to tell the armed men offering him nice rifles that he's their friend, and half of whom are at least as happy to stab them in the back once they've gone to penetrate into the next valley.
Solution? The problem remains that a chaotic, lawless place attracts bandits and pirates. I'm not sure how much Mr. Kharzi (does it matter, Kharzi or Karzi? I'm not up on British slang) is able to break heads at any distance from his capital, despite the assurances of friendship that he may be giving the men with the guns. Straight up murdering everyone and paving the place over is something Putin could do if he had the hardware, or Red China if it were given a reason to be in Afghanistan rather than say, in Africa. That goes way beyond Kiplingesque and into genocidal.
David & Sergej;
From all I can tell from history, only the Mughal Empire in India (pre-Raj) had any lasting success dealing with Afghanistan. In their time, the various squabbling Afghan tribes, clans, and families mainly entertained themselves with their own internecine blood feuds, only occasionally raiding across the border in pursuit of loot.
The Mughals' response was simple. Find out which clan did the deed (other clans were always eager to rat their enemies out). Then cross the border in force, kill every member of the clan they could find, raze their villages to the ground, and then leave.
The message was simple. "We don't care what you do to each other. But stick your hands in our pockets, and we will cut your heads off."
You can only "reform" a culture based on tribalist principles by first destroying it; Japan and Germany in 1945 are cases in point. (Yes, Germany was "tribalist", too; that was rather the point of Nazism.)
Trying to reform the culture while it is still largely intact, and still being run by those who benefit from its structure by their own definition, is an exercise in futility. (We do not see "honor killings" and the oppression of women as beneficial, but the typical Afghani male is not "us".)
IMHO, the real problem is the "tribalist" nature of Islam as a whole, but that, as Conan's chronicler said, is another story.
It's a simple equation, really. And goes back to Wretchard's 3 Conjectures. We really can't "do anything" about Afghanistan, unless we are willing to destroy it. And more importantly, if the Afghani believe we'll actually do it.
And even then, I'm not sure some of them might not provoke us just for the pleasure of beating their chests about being "proud warriors of Allah".
It is difficult to deal rationally with people who insist on being irrational. And even staying away from them isn't always effective, as their irrational "reasoning" often demands that they force you to bow to them, just as the schoolyard bully demands your lunch money- and then beats you up anyway.
The best we can hope for is that, if we leave, they won't follow us home.
cheers (sort of)
eon
It's good ol' time Christian capitalism when you spend tax money on killing other people.
And godless communism when you spend it on healing your own.
Anonymous: Please explain the reasoning behind this vague, ludicrous and insulting epigramme. What killing? What healing? Of whom? by who? Why?
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