Politically and strategically, the most important level of governance in Afghanistan is neither national nor regional nor provincial. Afghan identity is rooted in the woleswali: the districts within each province that are typically home to a single clan or tribe. Historically, unrest has always bubbled up from this stratum—whether against Alexander, the Victorian British, or the Soviet Union. Yet the woleswali are last, not first, in U.S. military and political strategy.
If the authors wanted an even closer comparison, they could have been to the place where US forces are also currently stationed: Iraq.
[The 'wisdom' below is drawn in large part from my 2007 honours thesis: Freedom's Call, the United states in Iraq. Sources for evidence cited available]
Iraq too is a country where the national government has rarely been the most critical (Saddam was the first to really be seen as an Iraqi, usually it has been foreigners seeking to conquer the land between the two rivers). Iraq may correctly have been seen by the Neo-Cons as one of the more modern, cosmopolitan societies in the region, but still well over 80% of Iraqi's identify with a tribe, including those in the very inner city of Baghdad and Mosul.
The USA completely missed this during their first few years in Iraq, diagnosing the state as having been too large and too invasive (Which seems obvious when looking at a totalitarian society, yet it was one which ran on fear and local level thugs, with little apparatus or functioning core left behind when Saddam and the fear was driven away). As such when US troops came in, and US state builders failed to provide the essential services people turned to their tribal links (or were controlled by criminal ones), all of which created a functioning basis for the insurgency from those angry at the changes, and denied legitimacy to the new top heavy focus on state building coming from the US's taskmasters.
It was only with the change in 2006 away from Rumsfeld's 'small footprint' strategy that the US really began engaging the tribes, in a serious and long term fashion. Through good work and good luck, by early 2007 many Iraqi tribes had turned against Al Qaeda and the insurgency, denying it resources and protection. It was this, far more than the 20'000 odd extra troops (who mainly operated in baghdad) that has helped stabilise the country, though we are yet to see if the national government can regain the legitimacy once denied.
That this history is still being ignored in Afghanistan, which is much much much more diverse, broken up ethnically, linguistically and culturally, and yet still it seems the insistence by US state builders is to try and mirror the current conditions of the US, and focus on build a big secular central state govt, ignoring alternate forms of organisation such as the tribe to their peril.
Personally, I'm not even sure Afghanistan is governable. The idea that the large formal post-westphalian nation state can occupy the 25% of the world covered by land is simply wrong. But something will always end up governing those areas, and with countries like Afghanistan we may be able to see in a system of tribal and regional organisation that provides no solace to terrorist groups (and opium growers ideally if alternate industries can emerge), whilst never seeing one group rise largest above the others to take over ala the Taliban (who required the support of the ISI in Pakistan to do so).
Maybe long term in the future Afghanistan will emerge as a functioning, modern state. Until then the basics of state building 101 is to work with what you have. To ensure the basic supply of services and provision of order. Without this it doesnt matter what labels you apply to yourselves (democracy!) or your opponents (totalitarian!) the people will always support those who ensure services and order. Hell even within the article a unnamed "US official" notes the Taliban are doing exactly that - But are we listening ?
(As one U.S. officer recently noted, they’re “taking a page from the Hezbollah organizations in Lebanon, with their own public works to assist the tribes in villages that are deep in the inaccessible regions of the country. This helps support their cause with the population, making it hard to turn the population in support of the Afghan government and the coalition.”)
The US failed this in Iraq (its gotten better with the order part), let us hope they learn before too long to not do the same in Afghanistan)
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