Seth Jones, last seen campaigning for Karzai, got an article published last month in the National Interest about an embed he did in March with fellow Georgetown professor Bruce Hoffman. It is emblematic of why embeds are so problematic in that war.
In short, and this is to their great credit, Hoffman and Jones do an admirable job of describing the current security situation—from the many competing insurgent groups to the problem of having the military be the lead agency in development and governance, even to the fact that assassinations and decapitation strikes are deeply counterproductive to the counterinsurgency effort, they describe the situation inside Afghanistan quite well. (They are, sadly, the exception to the embed rule). What they miss, however, it everything else—analysis, Pakistan, politics.
Indeed, just like Jones’ defense of Karzai, the authors gloss over the many serious problems of governance and corruption, choosing instead to blame all of Afghanistan’s woes on Pakistan. They devote barely a sentence to the role of opium cultivation. And, in what can only be called an editing error, they abbreviate “Federally Administered Tribal Areas” as NATO (though it could be an attempt by the NI’s editors at wit).
I’m a bit surprised they didn’t see the switch from kinetic to non-kinetic operations, or more properly the development from a low-intensity war to a war of sporadic fighting seamlessly mixed with development efforts, as what General Charles Krulak called the “Three Block War.” Given their qualifications, backgrounds, and teaching areas, that should have been included since they describe the situation there almost the exact way Krulak did.
But once the descriptive part of their essay is over with, serious problems emerge. They describe being shown “the requisite command PowerPoint presentation,” but then uncritically repeat everything in the slides, including “they were able to show that things are better in Afghanistan.” The authors make note of the incredible growth of Afghanistan’s telecommunications industry, which is a truly admirable achievement that is not bragged about enough (the title, “Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush,” is a reference to this). But in the very next paragraph, the authors admit that “progress has been slow and… as fragile as it is tenuous.” Considering the way the security situation has been degrading over the last year, it is a tough sell to say that most Afghans feel better off than they did a year ago, even if they are still better off than in 2001.
Similarly, while the authors are quick to blame all of Afghanistan’s problems on Pakistan, they not only can’t describe Afghanistan’s insurgency well, they can’t even discuss Pakistan well. While ignoring the local reasons for fighters joining the insurgency—as Giustozzi argued, most of the neo-Taliban’s recruits are locals fighting for local grievances—the authors simply list off insurgent groups with little discussion of why and how they are different, and what makes some, like the Haqqani network successful, and what makes others, like Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i Islami, unsuccessful. This is surprising, as later on the authors concede that all politics in Afghanistan are local, and even briefly note that there are some local grievances, but then they went right back into describing the landscape again. Yes, Afghanistan is a desert, and Rudyard Kipling set a novel in Nuristan, but the people there are interesting as well—let’s hear more about them.
Sadly, the people themselves are entirely missing from the authors’ account. While they do an excellent job of describing the situation the military is in, and what it faces, the actual people whose hearts and minds the military is trying to win are sort of left to the side. The Taliban and al-Qaeda have a vastly more superior IO campaign in place—they could have noted the impressive research Abdulkadeer Sinno has done into how the Taliban have managed to mobilize large numbers of Pashtuns when other Pashtun Islamists, like Hekmatyar, have failed (it has a lot to do with how they play off Pashtun sensibilities).
Their section on Pakistan is, sadly, incoherent. The authors say Pakistan’s “fluid, unstable domestic political situation” is complicating the problems in the FATA; this is perhaps true, if one is to also argue that Pakistan is in a permanent state of instability. Some have. They don’t, almost as if Musharraf’s reign was this magical period of instability only disrupted by those pesky civilians and their “democracy.” They drastically misunderstand the role, history, and place of cease-fires in the FATA, writing them off as civilians capitulating to the demands of terrorists, rather than Musharraf inking deals with the wrong people to please an impatient U.S. Rather than doing their own research into what, exactly, the Frontier Corps is, the authors simply quote at length one of the many anonymous officers who have opinions on the unit, despite the fact that all of us have an equivalent amount of time spent studying them in person (that is to say, none).
Furthermore, the authors misconstrue U.S. policy toward Pakistan. Rather than noting the role the U.S. played in the “Talibanization” of the tribal areas, which is not only not as severe as they make it out to be, but goes much further back than to 1998, they could have pointed to the ways threats of U.S. strategic bombing influenced Pervez Musharraf’s decisions in the first couple of years after 9/11. Armitage’s ultimatum is absent from their discussion of “unambiguous sticks and carrots.”
The authors, too, don’t seem to understand what development would bring to the FATA. While missing Haqani’s description of Pakistan as an Islamic state first (which helps to explain, from an ideological point of view, why they tend to suppress secular parties and groups), they don’t go the step beyond simply noting that Islamabad isn’t sure how to handle the area. They miss the fact that a century-old colonial law, the FCR, still governs relations with the tribal areas, and that the locals do not enjoy full voting rights, nor do they enjoy political representation in Parliament. “Yet short of undermining the power of militant groups,” they write, “it remains unclear who will benefit from development funds in FATA.”
What? This isn’t to say Pakistan isn’t a problem, but considering the diligence the authors did in getting the complexity of Afghanistan at least mostly right (and that is an enormous task), they do their readers a deep disservice by being so lazy in describing Pakistan. The tribal areas are at least as complicated as eastern Afghanistan, yet it is accorded only a few paragraphs in many thousands of words. If these areas are the genesis and, ultimately, the key to Afghanistan’s security, they owe it us to get the area right. That they don’t, choosing instead to simply quote a couple of Army and Navy officers as if they know any better, is disappointing… and perfectly symbolic of the problems with flashy military embeds that impress doughy scholars with helicopters and armored vests. There is more to Afghanistan than the FOBs, and any real assessment of the country must take into account what life is like outside FOB-land.
Even so, this is good overview of just how monumental the task is in Afghanistan, even if it is missing the true depth of the problem. Just, remember it’s barely a sketch.
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