Monday, October 26, 2009

Did Obama Just Lose the AfPak War?

Anyone who has travelled much has run into culture clash. Different peoples have different values, different perspectives, different customs. When you're a tourist you have to pretty much figure out what's what and get along with it. Conquering armies, however, aren't so quick to grasp cultural nuances of the places they occupy, and so it is with Afghanistan.

According to one expert on that region, former Indian ambassador, M K Bhadrakumar, the White House may have inadvertently caused irreparable damage to the West's efforts in Afghanistan by its handling or perhaps "mauling" of Hamid Karzai. From Asia Times Online:

...One look at CNN on Tuesday afternoon was sufficient to see the misery on the face of Afghan President Hamid Karzai as he lined up for a photo-op announcing that he had been stripped of the votes that would have given him victory in the presidential election, and a runoff against Abdullah Abdullah will be held on November 7. A cultural mishap has taken place. The Americans didn't seem to care it was unprecedented for a Popolzai chief to be made to admit defeat in front of his people.

Karzai insisted until last weekend he would not accept interference by foreigners in deciding the outcome of the election, which he claimed he won in August's first round. On Tuesday, he retracted in public view without offering an explanation. Karzai caved in, realizing he had irretrievably lost that gravitas without which he cannot hope to be a ruler in Afghanistan.

...In their triumphalism, however, the Western capitals haven't quite grasped that Afghans will not respect those incapable of giving steadfast friendship, either. Whether Karzai was efficient or corrupt is no more the issue. The issue is the Afghan perception that Westerners use their friends like condoms - to be discarded after use.

This will have implications for the much-touted "Afghanization" strategy. Surely, any "Afghanization" of the war in the Hindu Kush needed to be built around the phallic power of an alpha male - figuratively put, of course - and that has become impossible now. No matter who wins the November 7 runoff, he will carry the cross of being an American puppet, which undercuts the "Afghanization" strategy.

Arguably, the only feasible way of "Afghanization" was the route Karzai took - via coalitions with local commanders, warlords, mujahideen, tribal maliks (chiefs) and the mullahs. "Afghanization" depended on a key Pashtun figure with the capacity to network. Between Karzai and Abdullah, the choice is limited as that figure can only be Karzai.

Talk about "damned if you do, damned if you don't." The Americans needed a runoff election if they were to have any hope of salvaging enough support to keep the AfPak war going. But the price for that was to undermine the viability of the Afghan leadership and drive an enormous wedge between the Afghan people and the West. That's the curse of counterinsurgency - there are so many ways to lose these wars and so precious few ways to win.

Petraeus, back when he still had an ounce of integrity, warned that when you're fighting an insurgency, you're fighting for the hearts and minds of the civilian population and, once you lost that contest, you were defeated, it was over. You can still wage war, you're just not going to win. At that point all you're doing is killing.

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