Pashtun Follies

Obama promised to shift our war efforts from Iraq to Afghanistan as a campaign pledge. This is one pledge I wish he had not made; but given the fact that it’s impossible, it seems, for a Democratic Presidential candidate to win by simply opposing war, he had to pick a battle somewhere. Democrats are constantly badgered by Republicans about being soft on the ism of the day. For the past decade it has been terrorism, until the recent health care debate unfolded when the Republicans also resurrected attacks about being soft on socialism. Therefore, it was not surprising that Obama chose Afghanistan, the unfinished business, the battleground country never mastered by East or West. Of course the idea of winning in Afghanistan is delusional, given its make-up, its history, and its arbitrary construct.
We can partly blame the British for the problem on two counts. The first is they partitioned what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1893 with the Durand Line, which they drew when the British Empire was at its peak in the region. It defined the northern frontier for British India but in the process managed to cut in half a people who would much rather have had a country of their own out of the deal but ended up on either side of a politically arbitrary and geographically challenging border. These people are the Pashtuns.
The other count is also historical: the Brits successfully brought the clans of Scotland together as a model of clan-nation transformation, albeit they did it mostly by serving as Scotland’s arch enemy and eventual conqueror for a considerable stretch. This success has served to feed the notion that such nation-building can be done elsewhere, even in impossibly difficult terrain in remote locations, not just next door. However, the actual means of that nation-building has been forgotten or ignored.
The very word Pashtun gets a red line under it on my Microsoft Word program, which means that it is not even an official word in the Microsoft dictionary. That’s no wonder, because Pashtuns haven’t gotten much recognition or respect from the West up to this point. We hear a lot about Afghanistan and Pakistan but only occasionally hear about Pashtun regions, which have no Karzai or Zardari to hold accountable for their actions. What the Pashtuns want, of course, if they have to belong to a country in the first place, is a Pashtunistan, not serve as second class subjects of two different foreign nations. If there was any place where “we don’t need no stinking badges” applies, it is Pashtun territory. The Pashtun regions make troublesome areas in Iraq look like Amish settlements in Indiana.
Don’t expect to be ordering Pashtun equivalent of tartan clothing or bedspreads from LLBean any time soon. Bringing them under control will make herding cats look like synchronized swimming. I downloaded the Wikipedia information on Pashtun tribes and found that there were twelve pages of named tribes, clans, sub-clans, fractions, and sub-fractions that encompass the 40 plus million Pashtun people in the region. The idea that General McChrystal and company will make a lasting impression on that population has as much chance as a stone thrown into a mill pond. It will ripple for a bit and then disappear. This war is sheer folly and the result of a continual misunderstanding of the needs and hopes of the region as well as how to prevent terrorism in the U.S. Chasing Al Queda operatives back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan isn’t the solution.
The region is not primarily about the Taliban or Al-Queda but more about Pashtun sovereignty. If we chase Al-Queda out of Afghanistan, it will set up shop in Pakistan; if we do the reverse, they will too. At best we’ll cobble together an exit strategy that gets us out “with dignity” but we should not look for any real success in the region. The Pashtuns have to deal with all three adversaries: the Taliban, Al Queda, and us. We will not win the hearts and minds of a people who have been promised, ignored, and meddled with for centuries. And we surely won’t be waiting around to meet Karzai’s timetable of five years for developing his security force capacity and fifteen years for financial self-sustainability.
I guess if the new surge had a remote chance of succeeding, McChrystal would be an appropriate choice to lead. After all, his Scottish heritage contains some elements in common with the Pashtuns, but I don’t think the Pashtuns will be hosting a golf tournament let alone paying homage to or willingly joining an alien government, namely Karzai’s, any time soon.