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Originally Posted by ganbaru
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In amongst the "fact checking" of last night's Republican debate in today's
New York Times nestles this remarkably informative discussion about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan:
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While NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan are widely seen as a failure by many Americans and Europeans (who have played a larger role there than in the occupation of Iraq) there is little hope the country’s own security forces, whose attrition rates are high and who have little participation by ethnic Pashtuns in the most crucial and war-torn areas, can control the insurgency without enormous support from Western forces.
The Taliban is overwhelmingly made up of Pashtuns, who dominate the country’s east and south, and a combination of sympathy and fear has made it all but impossible to recruit and deploy Pashtun troops into many of these areas. While Pashtuns make up only a little more than 40 percent of the country’s population, the remaining major ethnic groups are viewed warily in Pashtun areas and there are great concerns about how effective troops made up of these groups can be and how much support they will ever get from Pashtun locals.
The Hazara, the Shiite minority who were long disadvantaged and oppressed by the country’s Pashtun rulers but who now have disproportionate over-representation in the Afghan security forces in Pashtun areas, are viewed with particular suspicion. And the fear is very mutual, as memories of massacres at the hands of the Taliban remain fresh in the minds of many Hazara.
For sure, many Pashtun even in rural areas have no love of the Taliban, but the problem is that, compared with the Western-backed and hopelessly corrupt and feckless Afghan government, many Afghans see the Talibs as a less-worse alternative for how to order society. While they may be considered “radicals” to many in the country — especially regarding the treatment of women — they are also seen by many others as less corrupt than the NATO-backed official government, and better at resolving important everyday disputes in the Pashtun countryside, such as over land ownership, a common issue that splits families and tribes.
As for Governor Perry’s hope that lots of schools and infrastructure will be built, that is optimistic. Despite funneling tens of billions of NATO dollars into the country in the past decade, little serious non-military infrastructure has been erected in the country’s Pashtun areas, and much of the Western aid money has been diverted to warlords, Afghan political leaders and power brokers, and to the insurgency.
In recent years the Talibs have shut down schools and brutally discouraged women’s education, sometimes throwing acid on schoolgirls on the way to classes. It is hard to see how that changes for the better anytime soon.
One exception has been in the country’s Hazara heartland as well as in Hazara-dominated western Kabul, where boys and girls have been receiving educations the past half-dozen years that their parents could never have imagined when the Taliban ruled the country, vaulting Hazara students far ahead of Pashtuns in terms of success at college qualifying examinations and other yardsticks. The Hazara are fearful of what will happen after NATO forces leave, and whether their gains will be wiped away. —RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
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The future sounds pretty dismal once again in Afghanistan. If the West leaves it seems nearly impossible that the Taliban will be kept from returning to power, and we know what that means for those little girls attending schools today. Partition might be a solution, but I can't see any of the foreign powers that want to exert control over Afghanistan accepting that. Not to mention it pretty much occupies the
same area now as it did hundreds (maybe thousands?) of years ago.
NATO
reiterated that it intends to adhere to its timetable for withdrawal regardless of today's attack. Western leaders all know their publics have had it with this war and can't be convinced that there's anything worth fighting for in Afghanistan, particularly the Karzai government.
Perhaps the Afghan army might consider recruiting a few women for pat-down duty at guard posts? The BBC report (linked above) suggests that the Taliban infiltrated the area near the Embassy and NATO complex by dressing themselves in burkas. "'We don't have female police officers to search females,' General Ayub admitted."