Tag: Afghanistan
A helpful reminder of the Ottoman Empire
Why is this helpful? Because it illustrates how many of today’s enduring conflicts–not only those termed “Middle Eastern”–are rooted in the Ottoman Empire and its immediate neighborhood: Bosnia, Kosovo, Greece/Turkey, Armenia/Azerbaijan, Israel/Arabs (Palestine, Syria, Lebanon), Iraq, Iraq/Iran, Shia (Iran)/Sunni (Saudi Arabia, Egypt), North/South Sudan, Yemen.
Ottoman success in managing the many ethnic and sectarian groups inhabiting the Empire, without imposing conformity to a single identity (and without providing equal rights) has left the 21st century with problems it finds hard to understand, never mind resolve.
In much of the former Ottoman Empire, many people refuse to be labeled a “minority” just because their numbers are fewer than other groups, states are regarded as formed by ethnic groups rather than by individuals, individual rights are often less important than group rights and being “outvoted” is undemocratic.
A Croat leader in Bosnia told me 15 years ago that one thing that would never work there was “one man, one vote.” It just wasn’t their way of doing things. For a decision to be valid, a majority of each ethnic group was needed , not a majority of the population as a whole.
In a society of this sort, a boycott by one ethnic group is regarded as invalidating a decision made by the majority: the Serbs thought their boycott of the Bosnia independence referendum should have invalidated it, but the European Union had imposed a 50 per cent plus one standard. There lie the origins of war.
The question of whether Israel is a Jewish state is rooted in the same thinking that defined Yugoslavia as the kingdom of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and it bears a family resemblance to the thinking behind “Greater Serbia” and “Greater Albania.” If it is the ethnic group that forms the state, why should there be more than one state in which that ethnic group lives?
Ours is a state (yes, that is the proper term for what we insist on calling the Federal Government) built on a concept of individual rights, equal for all. The concept challenges American imaginations from time to time: certainly it did when Truman overcame strong resistance to integrate the US Army, and it is reaching the limits of John McCain’s imagination in the debate over “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the march of American history is clearly in the direction of equal individual rights.
That is a direction many former Ottoman territories find it difficult to take, because some groups have more substantial rights than others; even when the groups’ rights are equal, they can veto each other. A lot of the state-building challenge in those areas arises from this fundamental difference.
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One more for withdrawal from Afghanistan
Another Afghanistan report for that shelf you cleared: Gilles Dorronsoro says we can’t win and argues for ceasefire, negotiate, withdraw.
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Another moment of truth
International Crisis Group has put out its latest on Afghanistan, offering a definitive answer to the question of whether Karzai is worth it:
Any plan that fails to deal with the decay in Kabul will not succeed. President Hamid Karzai no longer enjoys the legitimacy and popularity
he once had and he has subsequently lost his ability to stitch together lasting political deals.
This is followed by a well-documented litany of failures in areas directly relevant to whether the mission as a whole can succeed.
But ICG then somehow manages to turn 180 degrees and recommend, in a backhanded sort of way, engagement rather than exit:
Overcoming the trust deficit between the Afghan government, the Afghan people and the international community will rely on more concerted efforts to increase political representation, to expand access to justice and to confront corruption.
This amounts to no more than wishing it weren’t so–if it wanted to be listened to, ICG would have done better to go where its analysis points: drawdown, presumably on the currently agreed NATO schedule.
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The week the world slowed down
Or was it just me? After a week of over-indulging, and 10 hours of driving yesterday, I needed an update. So here is the exercise, intended to get us back into form for the race to December 25:
- Sudan: registration for the January 9 referendum on South Sudan independence extended to December 8; still no agreement(s) on Abyei.
- Iraq: on November 25 (while we were stuffing down turkey) President Talabani formally asked Nouri al Maliki to form a government–he’s got 30 days.
- Afghanistan: warrants issued to arrest election officials who disqualified candidates President Karzai wanted to see elected in the September 18 poll.
- Palestine/Israel: still hung up on the settlement freeze, so far as I can tell. Someone correct me if I am wrong!
- Koreas: the U.S. and South Korea went ahead with naval exercises, China is calling for six-party talks and North Korea continues to sound belligerent.
- Iran: sounding more defensive than belligerent, but offering the Lebanese Army (and Hizbollah) assistance and still thinking about executing a woman for adultery.
- Lebanon: bracing for the Special Tribunal verdict (still), with PM Hariri reaching out to Tehran to cushion the impact.
- Egypt: voting today, after crackdowns and a severe tilt of the playing field towards President Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.
- Balkans: Kosovo getting ready to vote for parliament December 12.
I won’t say it was the week the earth stood still, but I don’t feel I missed a whole lot. One more thing to be thankful for. Enlighten me if you disagree!
P.S. In case you were wondering about Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi is still moving cautiously.
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Take off the training wheels!
The Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), one of Kabul’s leading thinktanks, thinks Afghanistan has problems implementing high-level policy prescriptions:
While donor influence on the making of policy has generally been high, formal policies have proven to be very limited in the shaping subsequent action, and are often quickly discarded or replaced. Thus, much policymaking at the national level is best understood as a means of representation and of negotiating donor-government relationships.
AREU had already expressed doubts about the latest reconciliation efforts.
None of this surprises, but it is an important reminder: national plans are nice, but donors need to leave the Afghans to make more of their own decisions. No one ever learned to ride a bike with the training wheels still on!
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Fewer troops, more politics
The Center for American Progress weighs in with another report that advocates reducing military efforts in Afghanistan. This one should go on that shelf I suggested you clear: it makes a good, strong argument for an improved political and diplomatic strategy.
While trying to avoid criticism of the Administration, the report is forceful and clear in faulting current efforts for failing to define a clear political end-state for Afghanistan and for giving Afghanistan a higher priority than it deserves in the hierarchy of threats to U.S. national security.
The report fails however to ask or answer explicitly that vital question: “is Karzai worth it?” But it gives a clear enough implicit answer: no, not unless he cleans up a good deal, and even then there is a compelling need to decentralize, thus reducing his control, enlarging the political pie and enabling more local power brokers access to a slice. Failing that, CAP would have us withdraw both troops and money more quickly than currently planned.
Where the report fails to convince is in arguing that troop drawdown and increased political and diplomatic effort are compatible. When did we ever manage that trick in the past? It gives ample examples of problems the troop presence creates, but do we really think thinning out in Helmand and Kandahar before making more progress is going to improve the situation there?
The report is big on leverage, conditionality and benchmarks: give the Afghans things we want them to do, and cut funding (or the troops) if they don’t do them. There may well be too much money in Afghanistan (we are spending several times the country’s GDP), but conditionality and benchmarks have rarely worked well elsewhere (certainly not in Iraq). It is not clear why they would work much better in Afghanistan.
So yes to more politics and diplomacy, but so long as we are willing to ignore the question “is Karzai worth it?” we’ll likely do better not drawing down the troops too fast.
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