Behold Simon Jenkins:
Nothing will improve without the support of the Afghan government, yet that support is waning by the month. Nothing will improve without the commitment of Pakistan. Yet two weeks ago Nato bombed Pakistani troops inside their own country, losing what lingering sympathy there is for America in an enraged Islamabad. Whoever ordered the attack ought to be court-martialled, except it was probably a computer…
A moment’s thought would show that any invasion that replaced the Taliban with a western puppet in Kabul would merely restore the Taliban as champions of Afghan sovereignty. The Americans sponsored them to be just such a puppet in the 1980s, funding some 60,000 foreign mercenaries to join them against the Russians. Intervention reaps what it sows…
There is much murmuring among realists that “we” should talk to the Taliban, as if we were Her Majesty’s Government dealing with the IRA. The parallel is absurd. American special forces and Anglo-Canadian units in Afghanistan are, as they jokingly admit, rather like Taliban mercenaries, who snatch and hold towns for a while but are unable to command local loyalty. They cannot hope to garrison every settlement.
Hamid Karzai, the outgoing Afghan president, is the only one who can talk. He is no fool and has been attempting to do what Kabul rulers have always done: cut deals with whichever provincial commanders appear to control territory and can forge alliances with local Taliban or whoever. That may not be the grand strategy beloved of western think tanks, but it is the realpolitik of Afghanistan.
The same realpolitik applies to the other player in the game, Pakistan, whose civilian rulers are trying to contain an army of doubtful loyalty and seek peace in tribal areas way beyond their control. Here Al-Qaeda has again forged a lethal alliance with the Taliban, drawing on an inexhaustible supply of young militants from Pakistan and abroad, as in the 1980s. The best policy would be to hurl money at Pakistan’s impoverished non-madrasah schools, rather than starve them and pour 80% of aid into a corrupt Pakistan army.
My goodness, and I thought Ann Penketh was terribly overwrought. Let’s summarize this:
- The Afghan Taliban oppose al-Qaeda, except when they team up in Pakistan.
- The Afghan Taliban were a reliable and honest government beloved of Pashtun nationalists.
- The Taliban existed in the 1980′s and the U.S. funded them. Either that, or the Taliban is the made up of former mujahideen. Or descended from them.
- The government in Kabul is corrupt and unpopular, but Hamid Karzai is a hard working and realistic politician cutting deals with the Taliban.
- The provinces are run by Taliban-affiliated governors and sub-governors.
- Pakistan’s government is incapable of dealing with the FATA.
And so on. I lost track of which insane delusion Jenkins was peddling, as they are so intertwined and riddled with half-truths it is simply exhausting to read. Par for the course for The Sunday Times (thanks for the correction, Nick), naturally.
At least he sees the lunacy of pretending the Taliban is the IRA. It is scant comfort, but nevertheless welcome.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 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
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{ 5 comments }
Hamid Karzai is the outgoing president? Does Jenkins know something we don’t? I’m assuming he’ll run for a second term in 2009 as the constitution allows.
And I don’t think a computer ordered the attack.
As for Karzai being a “western puppet,” he is a somewhat disobedient and uncooperative puppet. If not, why would so many inside the beltway and in the think tanks be talking about the need for a new leader in Kabul?
But the “Taliban as champions of Afghan sovereignty” was by far the funniest thing he said. If Afghanistan sovereignty resides in Rawalpindi, Quetta or Islamabad, then that’s true.
jenkins=yawn.
First up – and it’s not a point of mere pedantry – but this article was written for the Sunday Times, which is actually a separate paper from the Times: different editor, different staff, different columnists etc. The editorial line tends to be more free-market (e.g. Irwin Stelzer) and more ‘Realist’ in its op-ed pieces.
Reading this article yesterday, I was struck by how similar this piece is to the many Jenkins has written on Afghanistan and GWoT for the guardian and CiF: we’re doing everything wrong, we don’t know anything, can we leave now? etc.
Jenkins is a fine writer on his pet peeves – London governance and English churches in particular – but on foreign policy he’s not worth bothering with. On the otherhand, Max Hastings is a much more thoughtful and informed commentator, having orginally made his name as a foreign correspondant, as well as being a prolific and military historian. Check out ,a href=”http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article4165577.ece”>his review of Ahmed Rashid’s latest tome (on which Josh will no doubt be offering his thoughts soon!) in which he has a sly dig at Jenkins:
‘A growing body of western critics such as Simon Jenkins argues that we must recognise failure in Afghanistan, and quit. It seems impossible to dispute their view that defeat is the most likely outcome. Yet, as Rashid so vividly shows, the consequences of abandoning the region to anarchy are so awful — above all, for its own peoples — that it seems to me we must keep trying.
The key message of his book is that while it is essential to use force against violent insurgents, in isolation tactical successes are meaningless. Unless we implement more generous and sophisticated strategies for making failing societies work, our soldiers are fighting wars in which “victory” is unattainable.’
You could also direct your ire towards another piece of ill-thought out British hackery, this time by Peter Preston on CiF.
My apologies for neglecting the actual link to Jenkins — I’ve corrected it.
And good God, Nick, I have a hard enough time mocking even a slice of the idiocy in American press. Don’t make me start tracking all the British stuff, too. I am but one man, I only have so many idle hours in airport lobbies!
But yes, all of that is quite irksome as well. There are absolutely good British journalists and commentators on and in Afghanistan—I would say a higher number than American ones, both relatively and absolutely. But there is always chaff with the wheat, so to speak.
I’m afraid Rashid’s latest tome isn’t yet in my possession. I’m currently working through Steve LeVine’s quite enjoyable second book on murder in Putin’s Russia, which I shall set off in contrast to Anna Politkovskaya’s book, (ahem) Putin’s Russia. And I had queued up history of the Khyber Pass, and Haqanni’s Pakistan as my next review project. I gotta be honest and say having to filter Rashid’s insane race-baiting out of otherwise mediocre advocacy (he misrepresents a lot of his own country, from the other Pakistan sources I’ve read) really isn’t something I relish.
I think I might pick up Rashid’s book after I finish Chingiz Aitmatov’s “Place of the Skull.” I’m up for some Uzbek hatred this summer, since I’m taking intensive Kazakh language classes. [I kid! I kid!] But seriously, Joshua is on the money about Rashid’s race-baiting, especially about it being a shame considering how even-handed he is about everything NOT concerning certain nationalities in the area.