An Open Letter to President Obama

[Steve the Planner]

Dayuhan:

Right. It ain't pretty, nice, or safe.

Expect mass resettlements/exoduses, and many civilian casualties short of serious and grizzly negotiations that get to the heart of converting public issues to a stable public process. (I doubt that process would be grounded in elections).

[JJackson]

As I have followed the posts there is much with which I am in broad agreement but inevitably there are some points with which I would take issue and some that are key and I would like to highlight.

Carl asks the question ‘how do we make them do it?’ [Post #10] – referring to agreeing to a negotiated solution. The ‘them’ refers to the government prior to our invasion of Afghanistan and the government we anointed. The ‘we’ would be the US & friends and other interested parties are Pakistan, China and India. The most important interested party, for whom any solution should be principally tailored, will not be represented but is correctly identified by Carl in “The tragic thing about this is the wishes of the long suffering Afghan civilian don't matter much”

I still maintain a sustainable solution should be bottom up, based on a mix of traditional and Islamic structures with which the silent majority (AKA ‘long suffering civilians’) can identify.

I don’t have any real problems with Bob in [#11]. He correctly identifies the US foreign policy Achilles heal - a failure to apply, or understand, the ‘veil of ignorance’ test. I do not know if this is a manifestation of ‘exceptionalism’ or just a failure to appreciate irony.

Tequila’s post [#12] I have problems with. The Taliban may be a convenient label for one side of ‘them’, and Karzai for the other, but I do not believe they are as doctrinally united as you think. I suspect most of those fighting are principally interested in ending the occupation. As in pre-awakening Iraq local Muslims joined up with AQ to fight a common enemy but at heart they wanted a return to their traditional Islam/Tribal fusion. If I understand Steve [#17] correctly he is warning us that imposition of radical foreign governance structures, that run counter to the traditional way of doing things, is an uphill battle which we will not win. They will be subverted by the people and replaced with something more comfortable and familiar. If negotiation could provide a path to total withdrawal of coalition forces the Taliban hard-core would want to fight on but most would view it as mission accomplished and want to go home. Tequila also posits that as they are winning why negotiate but I do not think they will win, in the sense of a return to full control, anymore than the coalition - fighting for Karzai - will. What we have is an Orwellian ‘perpetual war’ with each side having their own territory plus an area of fluctuating control/influence. Tequila also thinks that the Taliban and Pakistan have a financial disincentive in a negotiated peace but it is Karzai’s side of the equation that I think really benefits from the gravy train – plus of course very powerful vested interests in the US. Pakistan is falling apart because its government backed the US against the instincts of its people. There are certainly big financial beneficiaries but the country as a whole is much worse off since the invasion. The government aiding the US has caused horrendous internal divisions and created a new domestic terrorism. It is very much in Pakistan’s interest to find a stable solution as long as it does not result in an Indian proxy. Like wise for China but in their case the proxy can not be Indian or American.

I think Carl’s defining enemies [#14] has a lot of holes. By this metric we should be bombing the hell out of Saudi Arabia as they are the principal funders of the terrorists we are trying to stop, as well as the spiritual home of the ideology.

Dayuhan [#16] thinks it is hopeless as it is ‘a winner take all environment’ but I think the parties are more pragmatic than that. It is Karzi who does best out of the status quo, without our intervention he would never have been in a position of power and he and those who have risen, and got rich, with him fare well as long as the money flows into the country and the coalition militaries guard his back. Karzi has the most to lose as everything he has has been given to him by us, if it is not made very clear to him that maintenance of the status quo is not one of the option then negotiations will fail.

The long and the short of it is the big losers in a negotiated settlement, that is viable in the long term, need to be the US and Karzai. The US has tried to impose an unsustainable system, of which Karzai is the beneficiary, and it needs replacing not with Taliban totalitarianism but a consensus system that harks back to traditional arrangements that accommodate regional, tribal and Islamic sensibilities.