According to an Al-Jazeera report (see transcript), the Taliban are planning on using six to ten thousand militants in their Spring Offensive. “Throughout Afghanistan,” according to Mullah Dadullah, the new charismatic Taliban spokesman. He also brags of their new weapon, imported from Iraq: the suicide bomber. Five hundred of them. Most chilling is the sound clip of one supposed future “martyr”:
I understand what a self-sacrifice operation means. I am an educated student from a well-off family. I have no mental problems or anything like that. I could complete my studies and become a doctor.
This is worrisome, both for the sentiment, if true (it’s worth more to strap on explosives and kill oneself rather than become a doctor and heal people), and for the savvy it represents. This Taliban kid, in the wilderness of Afghanistan, knows enough about how many in the outside world view suicide bombing to tailor his statement to try to diffuse the typical explanations behind its use: poverty and desperation. It is his non-chalance over blowing himself up that is meant to terrify us.
All of this comes on the leading edge of NATO’s own Spring Offensive, which is now reaching its arm into Helmand to disrupt the gathering Taliban wave (how florid!). One of their main objectives is securing the Kajaki Dam, which, if you recall, was the target of much hopeful rhetoric a few months back when a nearby Taliban camp dangled the possibility of repair. The Kajaki Dam is highly symbolic, as it represents the investment westerners could pour into Afghanistan should they get the chance, as well as the surest sign that the Taliban are not going away any time soon.
Sitting just 25 miles from the Kajaki dam is Musa Qala, the site of a major uprising against the Taliban in the last 90′s, but now the site of a major defeat for the NATO forces (it has been under Taliban control since early February).
Mixed in with all of the messiness is the renewed eradication campaign in Helmand and other southern provinces. I’ve written at length about how attempts at eradication will continue to fail, especially if all the U.S. can do is bring in the failed drug czars of faltering antinarcotic campaigns on far-flung continents. Put simply, unless some way can be found of providing the same level of licit income as the farmers get from opium—whether it be subsidized food crops, highly specialized non-food crops, or legitmization—the problem cannot simply be bulldozed over. And Dyncorp doesn’t have enough planes to wantonly spray every suspect field.
All of this highlights the simply appalling human cost of the war.
“If I shave my beard and take off my turban, I will be killed by the Taliban. If I grow my beard, I will be killed by [NATO forces],” says Kandahar resident Dost Mohammed, standing on a street corner. “It is a place with two governments – we don’t know who we should surrender to.”
Like most Afghans both here and elsewhere, Mr. Mohammed speaks not from fear but from an oppressive fatigue born of the mounting sense that his country is once again descending into the cycle of revolution and civil war that has consumed it for a generation. Along with a lingering hope, there remains a deep fatalism that no matter what Afghans do, they will be swept into the whirlwind of war – ever the victims of forces beyond their control.
The events of recent weeks have helped strengthen this perception.
On one side, Afghans see the Taliban, which they almost universally consider a Pakistani-equipped army designed to destabilize Afghanistan and who spawn suicide bombers so despicable that they will target the opening of an Afghan medical clinic, as was the case in Khost late last month.
On the other, Afghans see foreign forces who, according to common perception here, usurp the authority of local elders, happily let their male soldiers search Afghan women, and are inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.
Indeed. For a long while, both the resiliency and deep, deep fatigue of Afghans, especially in the south, has resonated with me. I think there is a real chance to make things better. But it requires some truly unorthodox thinking—thinking that is, at best, haltingly coming from the political, economic, and military leaders from the west.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust