Finish the Job: How the War in Afghanistan Can Be Won

By Paul D Miller
Foreign Affairs, January-February 2011, Volume 90

Pessimism abounds in Afghanistan. Violence, nato casualties, corruption, drug production, and public disapproval in the United States are at record levels. Ahmed Rashid, a prominent Pakistani journalist and an expert on the region, declared the U.S. mission in Afghanistan a failure in his scathing 2008 book, Descent Into Chaos. Seth Jones, the leading U.S. scholar on the Taliban insurgency, has argued that the United States had an opening to make a difference in Afghanistan after 2001, but that it “squandered this extraordinary opportunity.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates attempted to manage expectations when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in January 2009. “If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose,” he argued, “because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience, and money.” U.S. policymakers and the public increasingly doubt that the war can be won. These assessments are based on real and credible concerns about the rising insurgency, the drug trade, endemic corruption, and perennial government weakness.

INSIDE TALIBANISTAN

INSIDE TALIBANISTAN

FROM A DISTANCE, YOU MIGHT THINK THE TALIBAN IS A MONOLITHIC ENEMY. FAR FROM IT.

By Peter Bergen, Biran Fishman, and Katherine Tiedemann

After a summer ot souring reports on Ihe state of the war in Afghanistan, the “surge” of 30,000 additonal U.S. troops now in place. And not a moment to soon: U.S. President Barack Obama has already pledged to make a decision in July 2011 about how many trops bring home. So the window of time in which to contain or sufficiently weaken the taliban is rapidly closing. The problem is, the “Taliban” doesn’t really exist-or least, not in the way the term is normally used.

The original movement was a pakistan-supported militia built around a core of well-armed Afghan religious students (“Taliban” means “students” in Pashtun) that took power in the mid-1990s. But today the term has become meaningless, used to describe virtually any militant organization in Afghanistan and many in Pakistan-though they sometimes diverge widely in their allegiances, targets, and strategies.

Here’s a guide to understanding one’s enemies: not the Taliban, but the Talibans.

How the US Funds the Taliban

By Aram Roston
The Nation, 11/11/09

On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.

Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace: State

“The tribes consider the king rather differently to the Tajiks, the latter vesting the king with many powers, whereas for the tribes he has limited prerogatives; the tribes are largely selfgoverning.” (Elphinstone 1815)

State and nation

A nation is, wrote Benedict Anderson (1991), ‘an imagined political community’. Although the state exists as a political entity with recognized territory and institutions of governance, the nation exists in people’s heads and provides a sense of belonging. Nationalism, the sense of attachment to a nation, has often been a driving force for state formation; a force that in recent times has had so many negative associations that it is hard to remember it was once viewed positively.

Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace: One size fits all-Afghanistan in the new world order

Reasons for war

A pickup bearing formless, faceless women drives into the stadium. They get out and walk to their execution. The crowd looks on. Overlaying all is heavy music, heralding death.

Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace: Ideology and difference

“In Afghan history the communists had an ideology and the Taliban had an ideology, they were fighting for something they believed in. It is good to believe, to have an aim. You didn’t see that with the mujahideen, or even now. In the communist time the people in key positions had just a few possessions, they didn’t want to misuse government property, or to have bribes. It was the same at the beginning with the Taliban. Now, the government does not have a strategy, an ideology, a goal. This is a disaster. Where is the sense of value, the spirit of building a country, the honour?” (Exgovernment employee, now NGO worker, Kabul, 2003)

Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace: Foreword

Afghanistan is not a wellunderstood country. This is something of a paradox, for a great deal of impressive scholarly work has been devoted to the analysis of its politics, economy and society, and events such as the Soviet invasion of December 1979 and the US overthrow of the Taliban in October-November 2001 earned it a prominent place in the headlines. Yet, all too often, Afghanistan is popularly depicted in terms of crude stereotypes-hirsute warriors, wildeyed religious extremists, women consigned to the margins of social life. The complex realities of this exceptionally diverse territory have somehow not connected with its wider image. The course of events since September 11, 2001 has not greatly improved the situation. Now a different set of misleading images has been injected into the public realm, images which paint Afghanistan as an American success story, a threshold democracy, and a model of what the Bush administration’s approach to ‘nationbuilding’ can achieve. Ordinary people comparing these images have every reason to feel thoroughly confused.

Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace: Preface

The idea for this book first emerged in August 2001 when we realized that between us we had lived in Afghanistan and witnessed the history of international engagement here since 1989-an experience that seemed worth reflecting upon. Events since September 2001 have served to make the subject matter even more important, and of more global relevance.

Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace: Contents

Contents

Preface

Foreword

1. The mirage of peace
Illusions of peace
‘Liberation’
Raising the stakes
Bombing in a peace
Losing hearts and minds
New beginnings?
‘Failure is not an option’

2. Identity and society
New values and old
Rooted in Islam
Identity and others
Civil society?
Making decisions, being represented
War and social change
Ethnicity
Closing ranks
Managing the world beyond
Dreaming a past

3. Ideology and difference
Confronting the Taliban
The UN and the Strategic Framework for Afghanistan
An alien way of looking at the world
Could it have been different?
The legacy of confrontation

4. One size fits all-Afghanistan in the new world order
Reasons for war
Early courtship
Changing attitudes
Isolating the Taliban
Aid, rights and the US project
Stitching up a country
Human rights
NGOs-wanting it both ways
Failing the Afghans

5. The makings of a narco state?
Seeding recovery
Or corrupting the state?
Transitional attitudes
Agency responses
Double standards-or caught in a bind?

6. State
State and nation
A short history
The Taliban state
Aid and the state
The UN and the failed state model
The legacy of centralization

7. Bonn and beyond, part I: the political transition
Inauspicious beginnings
Imagining a state
The political transition
Building state failure
Enduring security?

8. Bonn and beyond, part II: the governance transition
The state: who is in control?
International failure
Letting the Afghans down

9. Concluding thoughts
Who’s who
Parties
An Afghan chronology
Further reading
References
Index

Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace: Praise, Book and Authors

Advance praise for this book

“A vivid, intelligent journey through post 9/11 Afghanistan and the wider region. Thoughtful, astute and deeply moving-this account of the postwar crisis in Afghanistan addresses all the major issues of our disturbed world today. The clarity and intellectual forthrightness of this book will help us to understand the violent and confused world we all live in now. This is a deeply sincere book in which the voices of ordinary Afghans describe their past and their future. The most powerful book on post 9/11 Afghanistan that you will be likely to read.” (Ahmed Rashid, author)

The Talibanization of Southeast Asia: Losing the War on Terror to Islamist Extremists: Introduction

Behind the Veil of Successful Counterterrorism

Prior to the September 11, 2001 (hereafter the 9/11 Incident), attacks on the United States, governments and security planners in Southeast Asia had already been preoccupied with the threat posed by religious extremism and terrorism. There is a long history of both secular and religious-oriented terrorism in the region. In particular, the region has long been threatened by Jihadists, armed Islamist groups who declared war against various central governments with the goal of either gaining greater political autonomy, as was the case in southern Thailand and the Philippines, or outright secession, as was the case in Aceh, Indonesia.

The Talibanization of Southeast Asia: Losing the War on Terror to Islamist Extremists: Preface

Southeast Asia had been afflicted with the danger of terrorism, long before the United States and the Western world became aware of the threat in the wake of September 11, 2001 (hereafter referred to as the 9/11 Incident), attacks on New York and Washington. Various enduring factors such as historical developments, nature of geography, ethnic-religious makeup, accessibility to external forces, the role of extraneous actors in dominating the politics and economy of the region, and the nature of regimes in the region have entrenched terrorism, particularly associated with religious extremism in the region. This was evident in Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Philippines since the end of the Second World War in 1945.

The Talibanization of Southeast Asia: Losing the War on Terror to Islamist Extremists

Bilveer Singh
Praeger Security International, London, 2007

(Bilveer Singh is Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. A former Fulbright Scholar, he is also the author of nine books, including Succession Politics in Indonesia: The 1998 Presidential Elections and the Fall of Suharto (2000), Defense Relations between Australia and Indonesia in the Post-Cold War Era (2002), and Politics and Government in Singapore: An Introduction (2007))

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Glossary of Key Islamic Terms

Chronology: The Al-Jama’ah Al-Islamiyyah in Southeast Asia

Introduction: Behind the Veil of Successful Counterterrorism

1. Religious Extremism and Terrorism: A Conceptual Framework
2. Southeast Asia’s Experience with Old and New Islamist Extremism and Jihadism
3. The Rise of Al-Jama’ah Al-Islamiyyah as Southeast Asia’s Leading: Transnational Terrorist Organization
4. Counterterrorism in Southeast Asia: One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward?

Conclusion: Southeast Asia’s Failure in Its War on Terror against Islamist Extremism and the Road Ahead

Appendix 1: General Guidelines on the Struggle of Jama’ah Islamiyyah

Appendix 2: ASEAN Agreements on Combating Terrorism

Appendix 3: ASEAN’s AJAI Operatives Who Have Been Detained, Released, or Killed (as of June 2007)

Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Chapter 3)

Part 1 History of the Taliban Movement

Chapter 3
KABUL 1996: COMMANDER OF THE FAITHFUL

Travelling by jeep, truck and horseback hundreds of Afghan mullahs began to descend on Kandahar in the cool spring weather of 1996. By 20 March more than 1,200 Pashtun religious leaders from south, west and central Afghanistan had arrived in the city. They were housed and fed in government offices, the old fort and the covered bazaar, which were turned into enormous dormitories by the simple act of throwing hundreds of carpets on the floor so that the mullahs could sleep.

It was the biggest gathering of mullahs and ulema that had ever taken place in modern Afghan history. Significantly absent were local military commanders, traditional tribal and clan leaders, political figures from the war against the Soviets and non-Pashtun representatives from northern Afghanistan. Only religious leaders had been summoned by Mullah Omar to debate a future plan of action, but more importantly to legitimize the Taliban leader as the all powerful leader in the country.

Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Chapter 1)

Part 1 History of the Taliban Movement

Chapter 1
KANDAHAR 1994: THE ORIGINS OF THE TALIBAN

The Taliban Governor of Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Hassan Rehmani, has a disconcerting habit of pushing the table in front of him with his one good leg. By the time any conversation with him is over, the wooden table has been pushed round and round his chair a dozen times. Hassan’s nervous twitch is perhaps a psychological need to feel that he still has a leg or perhaps he is just exercizing, keeping his one good leg on the move at all times.

Hassan’s second limb is a wooden peg-leg, in the style of Long John Silver, the pirate in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. It’s an old wooden stump. The varnish rubbed off long ago, scratches cover its length and bits of wood have been gouged out-no doubt by the difficulties of negotiating the rocky terrain outside his office. Hassan, one of the oldest Taliban leaders at over 40 and one of the few who actually fought Soviet troops, was a founder member of the Taliban and is considered to be number two in the movement to his old friend Mullah Omar.