Dispatch 3: Thursday 21 June 2007

Thursday 21 June 2007

Thursday is the end of the workweek. This week ended with the BBC announcing the Taliban has stated they will adopt the tactic of Al-Qaeda style suicide bombs to target ISAF in Kabul. Whether this is a propaganda statement by either side or is a genuine promise that will materialise remains to be seen. We have always been taking the precaution of not traveling during the morning and evening rush hours and avoiding obvious targets as much as possible, so this news will not affect our plans.


Hamid my friend and colleague at York emailed to inform me that Friday has always been the day of rest in Afghanistan as it is in most of the Muslim world rather than imposed by a Taliban edict. Hamid's email is a reminder I should triple check my sources even on the simplest facts.

There are so many myths about the Taliban both in the West and here that it is difficult to find the grains of truth that lie behind these myths.

In general, many of the people we have met in Kabul are very sceptical of all claims made in the Western media.

One question we have repeatedly heard from people in Kabul is: why have the most powerful militaries in the world not defeated the small force of the Taliban during what is now almost six years of occupation?

My first answer is that although the combined military forces of the American coalition, NATO, and ISAF are overwhelmingly powerful, the civilian losses that would result from the kind of intense aerial and artillery assault needed to completely eliminate the Taliban are unacceptable both in the West and in Afghanistan. However, while this humanitarian logic plays well politically in the home states of the occupying armies there are also other complex logics at work.

First of all, the Western militaries adopted the same industrial concepts of lean production that every other large corporate organisation had adopted in the late 20th century. Contemporary militaries function using the same model of management by stress as any other large organisation. In this model, labour efficiency is evaluated by cutting staff to a point where too many individuals within the system begin to breakdown. It is at this point of imminent collapse that the system is deemed most efficient, because it is only at this point that people can be coerced to work at their maximum output. Individual capacities of the Western soldiers in Afghanistan are genuinely stretched to their limits. Fear, fatigue and boredom combined with almost total separation from the Afghani people also causes among other things a desensitisation to the people of Afghanistan. Canadian General Rick Hillier calling the Taliban "scumbags" adds more fuel to this volatile mix to allow these soldiers to dehumanise both their enemy and their supposed hosts.

Another reason we have heard to explain the military failure of the West is that despite the hatred felt by most Afghani ethnic groups towards the Taliban, many people feel equal enmity towards who they regard as arrogant Western invaders rather than liberators. Consequently there is reluctant support for the Taliban as the only organised resistance to the Western occupation.

Another argument we hear is that the Western militaries are failing because Western strategic planners do not really want a quick victory. The Western states need an excuse to maintain a long term occupation of Afghanistan, because of its geo-strategic importance situated as a buffer between Russia, China, Pakistan, India and Iran. Using Afghanistan as both a buffer and a battleground between great powers is what the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid calls the "New Great Game" in reference to the "Great Game" that played out between Russia and Great Britain in Afghanistan during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Another point is that if the Western states are to maintain the political support to keep both their military industrial complex and their complex of security and intelligence services growing following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new enemy is necessary. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda provide the perfect foils to the American empire – shadowy networks of illiberal "criminals" with the capacity to terrorise the world. A UN worker who works throughout Afghanistan we met with informally states it has become evident to him and his co-workers in their travels that both the U.S. and Britain have made deals with the Taliban. He says he feels sorry for the Canadian soldiers, because they are taking the brunt of what he thinks is an American and British strategy to maintain Taliban strength by deliberately maintaining the Taliban supply lines. However, the many anecdotal stories alleging covert relationships are unlikely to be proven for many years just as other covert operations around the world including past American support for both the Mujaheddin and the Taliban only came to light years after occurring.

Despite the lean military model currently used by the Western forces in Afghanistan, the military capacities the Western powers and especially the United States hold in reserve are immense. Failures in Afghanistan and Iraq of the lean military model could be used as evidence to support an argument to employ far greater military force in the future either in Iran or elsewhere. American strategic planners of late are reviving the age old argument developed by Machiavelli that a short brutal invasion regardless of high civilian casualties followed by large scale reconstruction – such as WWII and the subsequent Marshall Plan – is more humane in the long term than a long drawn out occupation and counterinsurgency operation that will inevitably result in generations of bloodshed.

Coming full circle, there is support growing among elite leaders in the West for the supposedly "humanitarian" argument, rationalised by prominent thinkers like Michael Ignatieff, to use far greater force in future imperial military operations than we have witnessed at any time since the end of WWII. As Ignatieff argues, if Afghanistan is the proving ground for what he calls "Empire Lite", it is a dismal failure.

Unfortunately, the militaristic answer proposed by thinkers like Ignatieff and adopted by Western policy-makers as the antidote to the current fiasco in Afghanistan is likely to be a disaster not only for Afghanis but for all the peoples of this region.

Kabul, Friday 22 June 2007

Since Friday or Jom'a is the day of rest, we took the day off too. Friends picked us up for a drive north of the city into Shamaly in Parwan Province. While driving out of the city, we discussed the history of the many battles that took place during the last three decades in each of the neighbourhoods we passed through.

The worst devastation to my mind is the damage done to the orchards and vineyards that begin beyond the mountain pass bounding the north end of Kabul. The fruit and nut orchards and vineyards of this lush green region were an important part of the economic base of the country, but these devastated farms will take many more years to be rebuilt than homes and infrastructure. The Shamaly is surrounded by snow-capped mountains that feed the many rivers that in turn feed a maze of irrigation canals. In many ways the valley reminds me of the Imperial Valley that sits on the Arizona, California and Mexico borders. Farmers are replanting their orchards and vineyards, rebuilding the mud brick walls that enclose them and repairing the complex network of irrigation canals that make the soil of the valley so productive, but a generation will pass before this area is again as productive as it once was.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant with outdoor seating on the banks of a rushing river – an idyllic setting if not for the skeletons of Russian tanks sitting in the river where they were ambushed while attempting to ford the river.

Our hosts asked if we would care to try the local fish. I agreed without first seeing what it looked like, which was probably for the best. The fish is a small carp about three times the size of a canned sardine. It is gutted and then deep-fried with head and tail intact. The result is the ugliest and boniest plate full of fish I have ever seen. But despite its unappetising appearance, the crunchy fried fish, which is rather like fishy pork rinds in texture and taste, was quite delicious bones and all when washed down with a cold beer. I suspect the deep-fried delicacy is not particularly healthy though.

On our way into the restaurant we had stopped at a roadside kiosk to buy drinks to accompany lunch. German beer was prominently displayed in the window despite a supposed ban on alcohol. Under the counter was Chinese "Johnnie Worker" vodka and Afghani hashish. Hamayon explains that despite an official prohibition of alcohol and other drugs; "beer is tolerated, vodka is illegal, but hashish is beyond the law."

After lunch, against my better judgement, but succumbing both to the warm weather and peer pressure, I joined some of my friends jumping into the rapidly flowing river to be swept downstream for a few hundred meters. The icy cold snow-fed river was refreshing; I just hope I didn't catch any exotic diseases during my journey down the river.

Back in Kabul we sampled our Johnnie Worker vodka – the strangest vodka I have tasted – accompanied by cucumber and mango – apparently a traditional accompaniment for alcohol – and talked away the evening.

Kabul, Saturday 23 June 2007

After a couple of frustrating hours struggling with painfully slow internet connections, we walked to the old city of Kabul – the heart of the city and the market for the poorest of Kabulis – to interview passers-by.

We began to attract a sizable crowd of onlookers, even as we set up the camera. It did not take long for a national police officer to arrive and rudely inform us that we needed a special permit to film in the street. As Hamayon questioned why we needed a permit in what is supposed to be a democratic state, a second police officer arrived. This friendly officer told us that we do not need a permit and we are free to film anywhere we like. However, by this time no one in the crowd wanted to talk to us considering so much obvious attention from the police.

We moved to another location in the market where we were able to conduct a number of interviews. The poor Kabulis on the street demonstrated considerable knowledge and intelligent analysis of the situation their country is in. With the exception of an English-speaking Pakistani man, none of the people we interviewed support the Western occupation. These people are extremely frustrated by what they perceive as the self-serving strategy of the Western powers.


We were forced to wrap up our filming as we experienced another bad-cop-good-cop routine play out. A rather mean-spirited police officer chased away the crowd gathered around us. A second friendly and polite officer then informed us that they were there for our protection. We decided that as long as these police were protecting us, we would not find any more passers-by willing to talk, so we called it a day.

Aside from the police, another problem we encountered is that it is difficult to get women to speak to us in the street. Despite claims the Western occupation re-introduced women's rights, most women, with the exception of international workers and perhaps the small percentage of the wealthy elite, life does not seem to have changed much for the average Afghani woman.

At the end of the day, the BBC reported the Western forces killed fifty civilians during the past week, but local reports are higher. The Afghan president Hamid Karzai stated that the civilian deaths caused by Western forces are a result of "the extreme use of force, the disproportionate use of force." He added: "You don't fire a field gun from some thirty kilometres away… That is surely bound to cause civilians casualties." Karzai is smart enough to recognise that the mood in the street has turned against his government and the Western forces. He needs to appear to stand up to the Western forces if he is to remain in power.

There are also reports today of American forces firing into Pakistan causing civilian casualties.

What we are seeing today is a situation the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) identified as early as 2003. The AREU, a large research team well-financed by the World Bank and the Western states, warned that the Afghani peacebuilding project would be doomed to failure if it merely attempted to impose order – a negative peace – rather than developing economic, political and social sustainability – a positive peace. What we are still seeing in Afghanistan today is the imposition of order by force with little consideration for the impact on the Afghani people. •