In Afghanistan, Let's Keep It Simple

September 8, 2009   This piece from the September 6, 2009 Washington Post makes great sense to me. 

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In Afghanistan, Let's Keep It Simple

By Ahmed Rashid

Sunday, September 6, 2009

For much of the 20th century before the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan was a peaceful country living in harmony with its neighbors.

There was a king and a real government, which I witnessed in the 1970s when I frequently traveled there. Afghanistan had what I'll call a minimalist state, compared with the vast governmental apparatuses that colonialists left behind in British India and Soviet Central Asia.

This bare-bones structure worked well for a poor country with a small population, few natural resources and a mix of ethnic groups and tribes that were poorly connected with one another because of the rugged terrain. The center was strong enough to maintain law and order, but it was never strong enough to undermine the autonomy of the tribes.

Afghanistan was not aiming to be a modern country or a regional superpower. The economy was subsistence-level, but nobody starved. Everyone had a job, though farm labor was intermittent. There was a tiny urban middle class, but the gap between rich and poor was not that big. There was no such thing as Islamic extremism or a narco-state.

In 2002, I spent a great deal of time in Washington trying to urge the Bush administration to focus on rebuilding Afghanistan's minimalist state, which had been utterly destroyed by 30 years of war.

At that time a bunch of experts in Washington, some now closely associated with Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, estimated that it would cost the international community about $5 billion a year for 10 years to re-create a basic Afghan state that could counter any threat that al-Qaeda or the Taliban might pose.

The keys were investment in agriculture, because that is where jobs lie; rebuilding the roads that used to link the major cities and border towns, so the economy could take off; and investing in an Afghan army and police force. In addition, the country needed a workable government model, modern and inclusive education and health programs, and a functioning justice system.

We all know what happened. The Bush administration left Afghanistan underresourced, underfunded and in the hands of the CIA and the warlords, and went off to fight in Iraq.

When al-Qaeda and the Taliban saw that George W. Bush was not serious about Afghanistan, they found it easy to return. The insurgency began in the summer of 2003, as the Taliban reoccupied large chunks of the country, used drug money to arm its men, and improved their firepower and tactics so much that the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, recently said the situation is "serious" and "deteriorating."

Now any operation to patch together a minimalist Afghan state would cost between $10 billion and $15 billion a year and require tens of thousands more Western troops, which nobody is willing to provide. The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is widely expected to request additional forces, but he's not going to get that many.

Today Washington is bickering over what constitutes success in Afghanistan, whether the Obama plan will work, how long American public opinion will hold up, how many more troops and dollars are needed and how to stop its alleged NATO allies from slipping out through the back door. Asked what success would look like, Holbrooke even quipped: "We'll know it when we see it."

Many dissenters in Washington, such as columnist George Will, insist that the Afghans are incapable of learning and unwilling to build a modern state. Others, including former British diplomatRory Stewart, argue that Afghan society should be left alone. But the dissenters do not sufficiently acknowledge the past failures of the Bush administration that led us to this impasse. What's worse, they offer no solutions.

So what needs to be done? First, the American and European people need to be told the truth: Their governments have failed them in Afghanistan over the past eight years, and not a single aspect of rebuilding the minimalist state was undertaken until it was too late. The capital, Kabul, for example, got regular electricity only this year, despite billions of dollars in international aid. Millions of dollars for agriculture has been wasted in cockamamie schemes to grow strawberries and raise cashmere goats.

Governments also need to explain that the terrorist threat has grown and that al-Qaeda has spread its tentacles throughout Africa and Europe. And the West must admit that the Taliban has become a brand name that resonates deep into Pakistan and Central Asia and could extend into India and China.

Second, the minimalist state must be rebuilt at breakneck speed. President Obama understands this. His plan for the first time emphasizes agriculture, job creation and justice; on paper, at least, it's an incisive and productive blueprint. But will he be given the time to carry it out?

The Democrats want to give him just until next year's congressional elections and then start bringing the troops home. For the first time, more than 51 percent of Americans want their men and women back from Afghanistan. The Republicans are looking for slipups, such as the apparent fraud in the presidential election last month, so they can pounce.

However, the Obama administration needs two or three years before it has any chance of success. So the president's first task is to create public and congressional support to give the plan sufficient time.

Third, the insurgency can never be defeated as long as the rebels enjoy a haven. The retreating Afghan Taliban was welcomed in Pakistan in 2001 and is still tolerated there because of a certain logic put forward by the Pakistan army that mainly involves containing India's growing power in the region and in Afghanistan in particular.

Bush never really pushed this issue, choosing to treat then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf with kid gloves. Today the Islamabad government is divided between civilians and the military, and as the civilians show themselves more inept, the army's power is once again ascendant.

In recent months the army has seemed more determined to take on the Pakistani Taliban -- since April it has lost 312 soldiers and killed some 2,000 Taliban members. Yet there is no strategic shift to take on the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda in the tribal areas that border Afghanistan.

Despite Holbrooke's attempts to pursue a regional strategy, there is still no breakthrough with Pakistan. And India continues to act tough with Islamabad, offering the Americans little room to maneuver. There is no easy way out of this quandary except time and more international aid to Pakistan.

Last, there have to be Afghan partners on the ground to help build a minimalist state. Unfortunately, Bush ignored that too. The corruption, the growth of the drug trade and the failure to build representative institutions after partially successful elections in 2004 and 2005 were all glossed over, as Bush feted President Hamid Karzai and did not ask hard questions.

The apparent rigging of the Aug. 20 elections has plunged Afghanistan into a political and constitutional crisis for which neither America nor the United Nations has any answer. (In another sign of turmoil, the deputy intelligence chief was blown up by a suicide bomber last week, and the Taliban claimed responsibility.) But the electoral fraud was assured months ago when Karzai began to ally himself with regional warlords, drug traffickers and top officials in the provinces who were terrified of losing their jobs and their lucrative sinecures if Karzai lost. It seemed obvious to everyone except those who mattered in the West.

To emerge from this mess with even moderately credible Afghan partners will be difficult, but it has to be done. (The Americans could start by forcing Karzai to create a government that includes all leading opposition figures.) Without a partner, the United States becomes nothing but an occupying force that Afghans will resist and NATO will not want to support. Holbrooke's skills as a power broker will be sorely tested, with his past successes in the Balkans a cakewalk compared with this perilous path.

The Obama administration can come out of this quagmire if it aims low, targets the bad guys, builds a regional consensus, keeps the American public on its side and gives the Afghans what they really want -- just the chance to have a better life.

There is no alternative but for the United States to remain committed to rebuilding a minimalist state in Afghanistan. Nothing less will stop the Taliban and al-Qaeda from again using Afghanistan and now Pakistan to wreak havoc in the region and around the world.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who has covered Afghanistan for 30 years, is the author of "Taliban" and "Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia."

Home and Home

July 29, 2009 After 5 months in Kabul, I returned home to Washington, DC in May. I am back in the fold of family and friends, starting up newspaper subscriptions, going to my Sunday Farmer’s Market, and sorting out next steps. I miss Afghanistan. I miss bumping down Street #3 in Ansari Watt to get to my office on Street #6 in Taimani. I miss Habib’s scrambled eggs with onions, Ali’s fried chicken, and Mantoo and Ashak at the Safi Landmark Hotel. I miss struggling to speak Dari with Qader and Sayed Mohammed, my drivers. I miss the gleeful feeling of understanding something they have said to me in Dari. I miss Mirwais, Rashid, and Zaher, my beloved bodyguards, fighters from Panjshir province. I miss choclets in glass dishes, Nan at every meal, carrots the size of a Louisville Slugger. I miss café latte and tuna melts at the Cabul Coffee House. I miss the smell of baking bread floating up and down the street. I miss it all.

Afghanistan became home for me, and, indeed, it felt like home from the moment the armored car that claimed me at the Kabul Airport on January 1 drove out onto the main road leading to the city. Looped barbed wire on top of concrete walls. Wedding halls as big as a city block festooned with neon palm trees and brides and grooms. Roadside stalls, donkey carts, Humvees. Adobe houses and ruins of adobe houses. And dust. Lots of dust. I took it all in and with my first breath, Kabul felt like home.

There is home and there is home. In May, I came home to my beautiful daughter who met me at the airport early on that May morning. I had not seen her for 5 months. I can’t begin to describe the feelings that overcame me when I spotted her on the other side of Customs. Tears and more tears and then a fierce hug. This is home to me: my children.

Two days later, my daughter and my aunt and I drove north to my son’s graduation from Wesleyan University. We were joined there by my brother and one of my best friends from high school – my son’s godmother – and her daughter – my goddaughter, and a dear friend from high school and her partner. More home. Marking my son’s huge accomplishment was a thrill, a passage into a new cycle of life.

With a wonderful Commencement behind us, I set off for California to visit family and friends. My niece, Sophia, charmed me with her soulful manner. My nephew, John, left me in the dust, a bundle of boyish energy. Time with high school friends – sisters to me – was precious. We have been together, first as boarding school classmates and since then as friends, for almost 50 years. And we always pick up where we left off. Was Mrs. H. really having an affair with Mr. H? Why did Mrs. Berry insist on calling the Filipino staff “The Boys” when not one of them was a day under 50? Why, when four of us were caught smoking 6 weeks before graduation, did Mrs. Bill ask us, “Whatever possessed you to smoke on May Day?”

On to Napa Valley and a dreamy party in a dear friend’s backyard. This is a friend with whom I share a birthday and so much more. Decades of sharing, caring, and laughing. Many cherished friends came to that dinner. I sat in a circle of loved ones and talked about Afghanistan. My friend, Faith, the photographer, arranged the burka I brought from Afghanistan as if it was lounging on a hammock and declared it a “burka-lounger!”

Now I am back in DC looking ahead to next steps, reconnecting with family and friends, settling in at home. Not a day passes that I don’t think of Afghanistan and long to return. In my pocket, I carry the tasbeh (prayer beads) given to me by Qader. I puzzle the agate surface of the ring I bought in Afghanistan with my thumb. I look at the framed photo of my friends Ali, Tamim, Mojib, Sayed Mohammed, Rashid. Zuhal, Kamila, Modera, Meena, and Parwana. I miss them.

Home is a corner of my heart where I tuck memories and images. The days my children were born. Their birthdays. School graduations. Athletic events. School plays. Notes they have written me. Funny things they have said. Holidays together. Home is wherever my children are. I am home now and I am happy. And, yet, my other home beckons. I long to see the mountains ringing Kabul, to bump along those rutted streets, to visit Abdul Qadeer’s carpet shop on Chicken Street. I miss Afghanistan. I miss my kind, generous Afghan friends. I long for the smell of Nan baking in a streetside oven.

I am drawn again and again to James Michener’s Caravans, published in 1964, the story of a young diplomat assigned to rescue an American girl who has disappeared in Afghanistan. Michener writes:

I’ve been told that diplomats and military men remember with nostalgia the first alien lands in which they served, and I suppose this is inevitable; but in my case I look back upon Afghanistan with special affection because it was, in those days, the wildest, weirdest land on earth and to be a young man in Kabul was the essence of adventure.

The city of Kabul, perched at the intersection of caravan trails that had functioned for more than three thousand years, was hemmed in on the west by the Koh-i-Baba range of mountains, nearly seventeen thousand feet high, and on the north by the even greater Hindu Kush, one of the major mountain massifs of Asia. In the winter these powerful ranges were covered with snow, so that one could never forget that he was caught in a kind of bowl whose rim was composed of ice and granite.

I will be back, Afghanistan.

Happy Mother's Day from Kabul!

May 10, 2009 This morning as the car rounded the corner on Street #6, Taimani Watt, Kabul, Afghanistan, the balloon seller was making his way down the road, stopping to let neighborhood children admire his bouquet. I couldn’t help but smile and feel lucky to have this Mother’s Day in Kabul!

Happy Mother’s Day to one and all, near and far, especially to the two who call me Mom!

"I'll have two, please!"

Pure joy!

The balloon seller's bouquet.

Upside Down

May 8, 2009 This week, the world turned upside down for my son and his friends and classmates at Wesleyan University. A beautiful, bright, young girl, filled with promise – a junior at Wesleyan – was murdered as she worked at her job in the campus bookstore. A senseless, devastating act has caused unimaginable pain and grief to a family and a community.

Living in Kabul, I am almost half a day ahead of East Coast time, so it was not until I woke up Wednesday morning to 108 email messages that I learned of this tragedy. The subject line on many of the emails read “shooting on campus?” From there, I searched first for a message from my son and then for a message from the university administration. My son’s message sought first to reassure me that he and his roommates were safe. Safe but sad. The university’s message was also reassuring, although it informed parents that the killer was at large. The campus was immediately locked down, students instructed to remain inside their dorms and houses.

I called my son and heard the grief in his voice. He lost a friend to a car accident when they were in high school. I remember then looking at the boys in suits following their friend’s coffin up the center aisle of the church at the memorial service and thinking “boys to men.” Overnight. Boys to men. Such grief seems untimely.

I remember, too, the expressions of pain on the faces of the mother and father and sister who lost their son five years ago. And I thought of the unbearable grief thrust upon the family of this beautiful young Wesleyan student. I thought of the family receiving that phone call. I thought of Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan University, making that phone call.

For the past two days, parents in the Wesleyan community have reached out to one another through an email list, grieving, comforting, questioning. Being held in the comfort of this community of Wesleyan parents makes me think that there is a lot more love in the world than there is hate. While none of us can claim to understand one family’s grief and loss, we all mourn for this dear girl. We all want to reach out and hold her family and our children close.

There are no easy answers. What could cause such torment in a person’s spirit that he could take a life so easily? What must his family be feeling? Why?

When things go upside down, how long does it take to put them right again?

Leeda's Speech

May 2, 2009 Imagine living in a country where a woman risks her life simply by going to school, getting an education, and getting a job. Imagine a society so dominated by religious extremism that women are not allowed to look another person in the eye, let alone laugh. Imagine a young woman coming of age in Afghanistan.

At the age of 20, fourth year Afghan law student Leeda has lived through civil unrest, oppression, and Taliban rule. She was forced to flee her home to continue her education. She was told she was a second class citizen. Hers was the best revenge: she refused to abandon her dreams.

On March 11, I had the privilege of hearing Leeda address an audience of her law school colleagues and professors. Her words capture the anguish of life for Afghan women under the Taliban and the hope for renewal that beats in the heart of every Afghan woman. Leeda points the way into the future for thousands of young Afghan women who dare to dream.

Leeda’s speech
March 11, 2009

Pretend that you woke up in the morning and found yourself crying, bound by time and change. You can’t walk or talk or even breathe easy. That’s the story of every Afghan woman.

There are three kinds of women.

One woman doesn’t feel the change anymore.

One has accepted the change as her reality, who says this is how my life should be, who accepts it the way it is.

The third is the one who struggles for freedom, who wants change on her terms.

I am the third kind.

I was born into a family where I learned that there wasn’t any difference between me and my brothers. That I could do anything. That I had the same abilities as a boy.

I was a running champion at school. No boy could outrun me. I ran fast and I was very confident. I did everything a boy did.

Then schools were closed and I had to sit at home because of the Taliban. For basic education, my family had to leave everything behind. We had to leave our country for Pakistan so I could study.

As I grew up, I realized that I was treated differently from my brothers. I was treated differently from my classmates. I was treated differently from my playmates, the boys. I was treated as a second sex.

When I walked, someone would tell me, ‘Walk like this.’ When I talked, someone would tell me, ‘Talk like this.’ I could not smile or laugh because it was not appropriate for a girl. I could not look into people’s eyes. As a girl, you should never look into people’s eyes, especially a man.

I changed from a smiling girl, a happy girl, into someone who would not look into people’s eyes, who would not try to get out of the house, who hated people, especially men, because they had all the opportunities. I looked at men and I looked at boys and they were free. They walked about freely and I could not, so I hated them.

Then I read an article by Simone de Beauvoir. She said “A woman is not born a woman, a woman is made a woman.”

That sentence made me buy her book, The Second Sex, and read it. That book changed my life. It taught me that I was not the only woman in the world that feels like I do. That I am not alone anymore. That there have been and there are women in the world who feel like me, who are like me.

I don’t feel alone anymore. The Second Sex changed my life.

And now I stand here in front of you looking into your eyes and saying that a woman is not the second sex. I am not the second sex.

Leaving Kabul

April 24, 2009 Living in Kabul is hard. Leaving Kabul will be just as hard. I am accustomed in four swift months to the smell of Nan baking on an open fire on any city street, to the bumps and jostles on Street #3 as our armored car plows along to work, to the little altar of ironed laundry that greets me when I return to the Guest House after work. The muzzein’s call to prayer awakens me every morning, shakes me to awareness at noon, and ushers in the evening. I have friends here.

Some days the sensory overload knocks me out. Body odor, sewage, garbage, goats, meat, even the soot smells. I hold my breath and then I exhale. I don’t want to be one of those silly people who blanch at the slightest discomfort. I practice mindfulness. There is dust everywhere in Kabul. You can measure the passage of time in the layers of dust.

Much of the time, something here doesn’t work. Satellite TV flickers in and out. Channels switch, so what was once the BBC Lifestyle Channel is now the Peace Channel. Bollywood rules on the air waves. The generator flips on and off like clockwork every day at 4:00 PM. One stop light in Kabul City works from time to time, if you define “working” as maintaining a steady red or green light for 24 hours straight. Showerheads, made in China, work for a time and then they inexplicably explode, hurtling projectile parts in the direction of the bather.

The contrasts stack up: the Safi Landmark Hotel stands resplendent in the Shar-i-Naw district of Kabul, a glass and steel monument to 21st century form and function. The mud houses scaling the hillsides surrounding Kabul tenaciously cling to their dirt foundations. How do the owners get the building materials up those precipices, I wonder every time I look out my window?

Donkey carts cut in front of busses offering “Special for Tourists.” Cars dare each other to the brink, honk, and get on with it. School girls in clusters of a dozen or more, dressed identically in black suits and white chador, walk together giggling and holding hands. The children of Street #6 line up at the well to pump water to bring home. I wonder if they know that they live in the Afghanistan we hear about in U.S. media.

Three months is chump change in Afghanistan. Just enough time to pull back the veil and catch a glimpse of the antiquity that seeps into every corner of Afghan culture and holds this country hostage to a past century. Women in pale, dusty blue burkas shuffle through the streets, heads bowed low. Men in turbans, pakols, karakols (Karzai caps), plaid scarves, salwar kamiz. But then, just when you think you’re stuck in the last century, there are young women in tight jeans, sandals showcasing painted toenails, leather jackets, and head scarves, giving the lie to the burka. Men in Armani suits and Rolex watches straight off the cover of GQ.

Kabul’s bridal shops feature Anglo mannequins that stare off into the far horizon as if mortified to be caught in the 1950s style bridesmaid dresses they are hawking. In the Fancy Wedding Store, they are decked out in heavy satin floor length gowns in dark colors with intricate beading. Most of the mannequins lack complete arms, stopping at the elbows.

I have sunk roots here, but I have gotten tired. I have so much more than I need, while my Afghan friends struggle against such hardship, whether poverty, oppression, or violence. I am not courageous, nor brave compared to the Afghan women who put their lives on the line two weeks ago to protest a law that diminishes women. My simple acts of activism pale in comparison to young Afghan women who stood shoulder to shoulder to reject the notion that women should have to seek permission from their husbands when they want to leave the house, that women should have to “preen” at the whim of their husbands, that women should have to submit to sex on demand by their husbands. These young women stood up to the stones thrown at them and to the chants of “whores” issued by men and women alike who turned out in huge numbers to put the protestors on notice that they had better go home and submit in silence.

How am I going to leave my Afghan home? Who will tell me every morning that “you have beautiful eyes, Mum?” Who will put a dish of sweets outside my office before I arrive? Bring me hot tea? Serve me rice and Nan and fresh fruit at lunch? And who, when I thank them for all this abundance, will respond, “Why not, Miss?” which I figure is the first English phrase most of my Afghan colleagues have learned in the English course they are offered at our office. “Why not?”

These days, I dream of hugging my children. We have never been apart for this long. My beautiful Louisa who cares for her charges as a kind hearted, brilliant social worker, and on top of that worries that I am not safe, especially after hearing on the Today Show that Kabul is ‘the most dangerous city in the world today,’ who always makes sure her Ma and her brother are safe and sound. My handsome Alex whose creative passion is bursting into bloom, who quietly but surely cultivates extraordinary ideas from seed to film, who unfailingly loves his sister and his mother, who worries in his own way. I ache to hug them.

But it will be hard to leave Kabul. In some small ways – and this will sound grandiose, but I don’t know how else to say it – I see myself as a surrogate for my country. I was here the day Barack Obama was sworn in as President. That was the day my Afghan friends asked me if Barack Obama would help Afghanistan, and listed all that needs doing: security, poverty, infrastructure, employment, education, women’s rights. “Yes,” I told them, just short of a promise, “Barack Obama wants to help Afghanistan.” And I believe he does. But I also see that the proposition is enormous. I have toiled in these fields for too short a time.

A Child's Smile

April 6, 2009 This morning as the car pulled up to our office on Street #6, three children stood outside the compound watching the car ease forward. I asked them if I could take their photo, and the older girl quietly took the other two in tow.

The past week has taken a bite out of my hope for change in Afghanistan. Afghan television stations broadcast a news clip showing the public beating in Pakistan of a 17-year old widow for the "crime" of walking with a man in public. One man held her down while another flogged her, with a crowd of cheering men looking on. Then came the news that President Karzai had signed the bill I described in a previous post which demeans and objectifies Afghan women. Life should not be so hard. Women should not have to justify their place in the culture. Men should not enjoy such dominion.

The smile on the older girls' face in this photo seems to me to hold the mystery of life as an Afghan woman, handed down through the generations.