The Obama administration’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan seems headed for failure. Given the alternatives, de facto partition of Afghanistan is the best policy option available to the United States and its allies.
The counterinsurgency strategy of President Obama (first under Gen. Stanley McChyrstal and now under Gen. David Petraeus) is a population-centric form of counterinsurgency. Population-centric (pop-centric for short) is normally summarized in three point form: clear, hold, and build.
Clear an area of insurgents, hold the swept area (instead of just going around killing bad guys) through the creation of a local army and police force who take control of the security situation, and then build infrastructure, a local economy, and a rising standard of living.
The rationale behind this strategy is that by getting to the jobs/build phase and creating a vibrant economy and a viable wage in the area, the local populace will turn en masse against the insurgency, eventually suffocating the insurgency into defeat.
In short, this strategy requires the buildup of a nation-state in the country of Afghanistan: security, government, economics, legal infrastructure, political rights, financial instruments, the list goes on and on.
And this strategy is failing as Blackwill states.
The popcentric counterinsurgency strategy is dependent upon a largely corruption-free, effective, and non-sectarian local government taking over in the wake of the occupying army’s military victories against insurgents. In the Afghanistan case, the President is ineffective and weak, his brother is corrupt, and the Afghan government (such as it is) is losing out in the south to Taliban-created courts of justice.
Moreover, the country is awash in aid money, drug money, gun money, and so forth. The possibility of creating a healthy local economy is drowned under the flow of volatile short term, fast loose black market cash.
Also the training of the Afghan army and police are taking longer than had been expected. And thanks to the recent revelation of Wikileaks, the insurgency is being funded/trained/supported directly by a major power: Pakistan
This pop-centic strategy I argue never had a chance to succeed across the whole country of Afghanistan. It does however have a potential in certain portions of the country and as such, from the view of integral theory, the least worst (or best option of all the bad options) would indeed to allow the country to break into constituent pieces.* This political breakup would allow the various constitutive geo-political pieces to evolve on their own terms, each taking the next best (half) step in their own social development.
From an integral developmental perspective, the recent history of Afghanistan can be charted along the path of development.
First a very brief introduction to the concepts I will now employ. I will use the research of Jean Gebser and David Ronfeldt. Gebser studied the development of worldviews within human societies moving from magical to mythic to modern to postmodern to integral. Ronfeldt described the development of human social organizations from kinship based clans/tribes to hierarchical institutions to competitive markets to multi-organizational networks.
If we compare Gebser and Ronfeldt we see a parallel development in both theoreticians. Gebser’s magical worldview generally correlates historically with Ronfeldt’s kinship formation; mythic with hierarchical institutions; modern with competitive markets; and postmodern with multi-organizational networks.
Gebser’s work describes the interior collective dimension of cultures while Ronfeldt described the exterior social expression of the same phenomena (usually called society). In integral terms, these represent the Lower Left and Lower Right Quadrants respectively.
I say in general these two sets of developmental sequences correlate because they need not always be in perfect alignment. As Ken Wilber has pointed out, the Lower Right Quadrant (based in technology and exterior social formation) tends to move slightly faster than interior cultural (LL) development. In fact in the case of Afghanistan what is needed for the country to move forward (in many regards) is a healthy mythic cultural foundation with an effective and not insanely brutal hierarchical institution (as was experienced under The Taliban of the 90s) that could allow for the formation of a competitive market(s) to push eventually down the line towards a modernist cultural worldview.
As Wilber says the technological-economic structure (LR) of a society is the single greatest determiner of the average mode of worldview development (LL). Note the preciseness of that definition: single greatest determiner (not the only one) of average aggregate worldview (not for all individuals) in any society. By that Wilber simply means the reconstructed cultural center of gravity.
These concepts will help clarify the major cultural and social waves of development in Afghanistan. My argument is that by understanding these concepts and their application to Afghanistan (on a large macro or general scale), we see why the US/NATO effort to create a unified strong central Afghan state is bound to failure.
Brief Review of Recent Afghan History
Afghanistan in the 1970s was a unified state, with a weak central government. It was on the periphery of the Soviet communist empire. The city of Kabul was a proto-modern city, a mini-state unto itself with no real power in the hinterlands of the country. Those hinterlands were largely shaped by tribal forms of human existence.
Then to shore up the failing pro-Soviet puppet regime, the Red Army invaded in 1979, sending the country into 30 years of civil war, violence, poverty, and oppression. The mujihadeen, the “holy warriors”, driven by mythic belief systems and tribal hatred of foreign entities on one’s soil, led an insurgency against The Soviets. They were of course aided by the US itself in a global modernist civil war between communism and capitalist democracy (aka The Cold War). Afghanistan became a proxy battlefield between the US and Soviets and within Afghanistan itself represented fights between various value memes.
The Soviets left in defeat and the inner contradictions of the local Afghan insurgency came back to the fore, as a civil war ensued in the wake of the power vacuum left by the Soviet retreat.
With the destruction of the weak central state (hierarchical institution), the country fell into tribal civil war (clan kinship system). The country was ruled by warlords (classic tribal figures) who gained power in regions through control of the tribal magical/early mythic values of blood oaths, power, shame/pride, and loyalty.
The existential conditions of constant civil war, led to the need for a trans-tribal group who could destroy the power of the warlords and reunite the country under law and order (mythic hierarchy). So arose The Taliban in the 90s, eventually winning The Civil War and ruling Afghanistan with an iron grip.
At first The Taliban were welcomed by many. The small merchant class (modern-competitive markets) appreciated their “no tax” policy. The Taliban squashed the drug trade given that it was considered impure and unholy according to their mythic belief structure, undercutting the economic base of the tribal warlords (clan/kinship).
But then of course The Taliban expressed their pathological mythic side in an attempt to create a (dys)utopia realm through forced public adherence to puritanical rules and regulations. Rather than following in the footsteps of a Lee Kwan Yew or Deng Xiaoping, attempting to build an authoritarian capitalist state (hierarchical political institution + competitive market economics) that would bring in foreign investment, keep public order (hierarchical institution), and create economic opportunity (competitive markets), The Taliban drove Afghanistan into a complete hellhole from which it will not soon if ever recover.
The Taliban during their rule in the nineties welcomed in the trans-national terrorist organization known as al Qaeda who then used Afghanistan as a launching pad to attack the US, culminating in the attacks on New York and Washington DC, Sept 11 2001.
This attack brought the swift and overwhelming US counterattack, quickly driving The Taliban from power. As the mythic (hierarchical institution) foundation collapsed under the US attack, Afghanistan returned to tribal realities. From 2001 to the present, the country has been ruled by warlords (e.g. Hekmatyr Gulbuddin, Mahmoud Dosta, Walid Karzai, the president’s brother). The Taliban regrouped in the sanctuary of the Pakistani tribal lands (as they did during the anti-Soviet jihad), reconnecting with their ethnic brethren, The Pashtun.
With the influence of Taliban and al Qaeda elements in Pakistan, a native Pakistani Taliban rose to power, attempting to implement a mythic hierarchical system in the tribal lands of Pakistan, historically ruled by a latifundia (tribal) system of landowning feudal lords with mass wealth and power and a mass of human poverty.
This mythic energy has largely come from the Pashtun peoples, the dominant ethnic majority in southern Afghanistan and the tribal lands of Pakistan-Afghanistan. The Taliban are a Pashtun-based group.
The Afghan Taliban spent the last decade regaining power in the south (their traditional power base), and attempting to bring justice (mythic-hierarchical institution) to a country ruled by corruption and lawless warlordism (magical-kinship).
The clear, hold, and build strategy of the US/NATO in the South of Afghanistan is working against an already ingrained memetic system. The Taliban are in effect already the government (such as there is one) of southern Afghanistan.
As a consequence, President Karzai and even perhaps the US are already in discussion with The Taliban to accept/recognize their rule of the majority of the southern portion of Afghanistan. This is not an entirely positive development, given their brutal history (especially towards women), but without a completely international majorly funded effort of 20-40 years, southern Afghanistan is going to be ruled by The Taliban. Hopefully they will not be as brutal as last time. The idea seems to be that The Taliban will return to share power in a coalition government with Karzai and his allies. While not completely out of the realm of possibility, this outcome seems quite unlikely and unfeasible.
Nevertheless, the northern half of the country, dominated by non-Pashtun peoples (i.e. Daris, Hazari, Tajiks) would be very ripe for an intelligently deployed clear, hold, and build strategy. There are potential roadblocks to this strategy. The Hazari people for example have long standing grievances against The Tajik Afghanis for ethnic violence committed during The Civil War. But their natural alliance nevertheless would be to work together against a potential Taliban resurgence and recapturing of power.
The US/NATO military would focus entirely on the north and accept the de facto partition of the country into (at least) 2 political units. India, Iran, and Russia would be aligned with the Northern country and Pakistan with the Southern/Eastern country. The US/NATO would offer air protection to the Northern country against a possible Taliban incursion to the north. [Note: The Taliban do not possess tanks so other than guerrilla or terrorist style attacks in the North, they pose no real military threat to the north with US air power].
Countries like India, Iran, Russia, and China could bring in developmental/economic aid and infrastructure building to the northern country (competitive markets), while the US covers the military protective side, allowing a local government to form and take power (hierarchical institution).
The North would be given order (hierarchical institution) from the security and then a rising modern economic sphere (competitive markets), leading hopefully down the line to greater social and political freedom. As well local militia forces could be well deployed in the northern sections of the country.** This is an extremely crucial point as increasing levels of violence are creeping further and further north in Afghanistan--see here and here for examples.
The inevitable negative consequence of such a policy would be to resign the southern/southeastern half of the country to Taliban rule (already in many ways a reality). The southern portion will likely stay locked an impoverished clan-based society merged with potentially pathological mythic hierarchy (i.e. if the Taliban attempt to recreate their mythic shariah state). Also civilian deaths will likely rise in certain sections of the country given the reliance on air power (though perhaps some of that is due to increased military operations in the southern portion of the country).
The policy I’ve argued for here is one that clearly consigns large portions to a short/medium term of great suffering. So long as the US/NATO forces (and their home countries) are spending billions of dollars without seeing any large scale advances, the chances of a total withdraw increase exponentially. A total withdraw from Afghanistan would leave the country even further immiserated. The policy of providing air cover for the northern/western country is a policy of salvaging what can be salvaged, protecting it, and creating the conditions for it hopefully to flourish in the upcoming years.
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* The other option available to the US is to allow the country to return to a completely tribal based reality by routing around the Karzai government and directly funding and training local tribal or clan based militias. Gen. Petraeus has pushed for the creation of localized tribal militias but they are meant to be placed within the authority of the Afghan central state.
** Scholar-practicioner John Robb’s integrated view is of a kinship militia force at local levels that would create security throughout the country backed by networked resilient communities (postmodern social formation) bypassing what he sees as the poisonous globalized economic platform (pathological global competitive markets) as well as the need for a strong nation-state (hierarchical institution). While undoubtedly brilliant, I see absolutely no chance that his view will soon see the light of day. Given that reality, the next best (really least worst) option in my mind is to allow the partition to take place that is already well underway.
