Registan.net

Pierre Krähenbühl, of the ICRC, was speaking in Geneva today on the horrendous degradation of conditions within Afghanistan over the last year.

“Civilians suffer horribly from mounting threats to their security, such as increasing numbers of roadside bombs and suicide attacks, and regular aerial bombing raids. They also lack access to basic services. It is incredibly difficult for ordinary Afghans to lead a normal life.” …

According to Krähenbühl, “there has been a steady deterioration of medical services in Afghanistan’s remote areas, where important needs are still unmet. The civilians most in need are also the most difficult to reach.”

In other words, development must be accompanied by security. One cannot exist without the other. I bring this up because Péter Marton has written a thoughtful argument for destroying the poppy fields, which amounts to careful screening so that eradication efforts might avoid further antagonizing the locals into supporting the Taliban. It is a nice theory that, unfortunately, is unworkable in practice: the resources, institutions, and logistics required for the comprehensive survey just do not exist. And it still misses the very crucial point that, however harmless it is in actuality, spraying poppy fields is deeply unpopular even among Afghans who otherwise support the central government. It is just counterproductive at this point. And by only spraying the field where there are no Taliban nearby, such a policy would create an incentive for farmers to beg the Taliban to move into an area so their crop doesn’t get destroyed—the opposite of what the policy is meant to address.

I am simplifying Marton’s idea to a certain degree, and in this sense I am doing it injustice—it really is a good idea. But, while it is a good idea, I just don’t see how it can work.

Related to this is a point that cannot be repeated enough: NATO’s over-reliance on air strikes (though, to be fair, the lion’s share of air strikes are called in by small U.S. special forces units) is harming the mission. While I am deeply sympathetic of the need to safeguard the lives of the soldiers through overwhelming firepower, it is precisely that overwhelming firepower that is creating so much havoc and antipathy today. In fact, just today another skirmish resulted in seven friendlies killed when American troops called in air strikes. It was a pre-dawn raid, and the local policemen thought they were Taliban and fired back; the Americans thought the same and called in bombs.

The big problem here is a lack of what concerns Afghans at the local level, in the rural communities where the Taliban still tends to have the greatest sway. Just after the success of the invasion and the Bonn agreement, there was a great deal of optimism for the Americans—we have the supplies, money, and capability to provide food, develop shattered communities, and build up the state. We did not deliver, at the very least nearly fast enough for anyone’s satisfaction. Coupled with Mohammed Omar’s “melt away for another day” strategy, our own slow pace of reconstruction created an environment in which some villages welcomed the Taliban back.

As I argue in greater detail in an upcoming article, opium is a symptom of this societal chaos, not a cause. Focusing on it misses the driving factor of dissatisfaction within Afghani society: disillusionment with the United States’ ability to provide reconstruction money and projects, disastrous health infrastructure, and lousy security. As Bonnie Boyd has recently documented, the number of easily treatable diseases running rampant in the country is simply unacceptable: diarrhea, polio, and tetanus among other insect and respiratory diseases only so virulent in poor sanitation.

While we worry about drug addicts in Paris, Afghans are dying of illnesses most of us probably assumed don’t exist anymore. It is that imbalance that is driving a lot of the growing resistance to Karzai and his western backers, not opium. That is what must be addressed first, if there is to be future progress. And every civilian we kill with imprecise bombs (how precise can you be with 500 pounds of explosives, anyway, to say nothing of the 2000 pound monsters sometimes used on mud huts?) makes it that much more likely we’ll turn the whole country against us.

Stumble it!