Green on Blue: causes and responses (merged thread)

[Entropy]

The largely unreported number of attacks by Afghan soldiers on their own forces bears this out.

Not really surprising. We in the West keep thinking these people are "Afghans" in the same way that we consider ourselves to be "Americans" or whatever nationality. We assume their national loyalty is roughly the same as ours. In Afghanistan, national identity is usually a second or third tier concern. To expect them to gel into a cohesive force and put aside their other identities and loyalties in favor of a national identity is foolish whether we are talking about building an army or limiting corruption.

Look at what's happening to the Syrian military which is fracturing along ethnic and sectarian lines even though it was a cohesive national force for several decades. Yet we expect to actually build a national force from scratch in Afghanistan? It might work long enough for us to exit Afghanistan, if we're lucky.

[carl]

Not really surprising. We in the West keep thinking these people are "Afghans" in the same way that we consider ourselves to be "Americans" or whatever nationality. We assume their national loyalty is roughly the same as ours. In Afghanistan, national identity is usually a second or third tier concern. To expect them to gel into a cohesive force and put aside their other identities and loyalties in favor of a national identity is foolish whether we are talking about building an army or limiting corruption.

I understand what you are saying but I think you might be overstating it. Everything I've read seems to indicate that the Afghans do think of themselves as Afghans. Taliban & Co are always careful to portray themselves as an Afghan movement, not a Pathan group. No group in the country talks about partition to my knowledge. They have been a definable country for a lot of years. National loyalty may not be the same as ours but it is there. The Indian Army is able to accommodate radically differing identities within an organization that is loyal to the center. Maybe they have something to teach, something along the lines of the Pathan Rifles and Hazara Light Infantry.

[Entropy]

I understand what you are saying but I think you might be overstating it. Everything I've read seems to indicate that the Afghans do think of themselves as Afghans. Taliban & Co are always careful to portray themselves as an Afghan movement, not a Pathan group. No group in the country talks about partition to my knowledge. They have been a definable country for a lot of years. National loyalty may not be the same as ours but it is there. The Indian Army is able to accommodate radically differing identities within an organization that is loyal to the center. Maybe they have something to teach, something along the lines of the Pathan Rifles and Hazara Light Infantry.

Most Syrians think of themselves as Syrian, yet they are in civil war. Same with Lebanon. Same with Iraq. How does one square the idea of an Iraq national identity when the Kurds have a semi-autonomous enclave and when, just a few years ago, there were active campaigns of sectarian cleansing?

So, I'm not saying national identity doesn't exist, I'm saying that on many matters other identities trump national identity. For Afghanistan, the various groups talk about one Afghanistan, but their ideas about how that one Afghanistan should be organized and who should control the levels of power vary widely. If you look, for instance, at voting patterns in Afghanistan they highly correlate to ethnic and/or sectarian identity.

[carl]

Entropy:

I can't make a real strong argument about the Afghans having a stronger sense of national identity than the Syrians, Iraqis and Lebanese. But I think that possibility exists. Afghanistan was a country for a long time before all those places were. They have only been what they are now since just after WWII. Before that they were briefly run by the British and the French and for a long time before that they were part of the Ottoman Empire. Afghanistan has been more or less Afghanistan (more or less everybody, more or less) since the late 1700s I believe.

[carl]

Ryan Crocker does not mince any words when discussing the current situation in Afghanistan in this story.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2...-reckoned.html

This is what he had to say about Sec Panetta's statement about the the green on blue killings being signs of Taliban & Co's last gasp.

"I will believe it's their last gasp when I've got my boot on the throat of the last one of them," Crocker told Bloomberg News after his remarks at the Carnegie Endowment.

He said these things about Taliban infiltrators into the ANSF.

"I think we underestimate at our peril" the number of Taliban "sleepers" in the ranks of the Afghan National Security Forces that the allies have been pressing to take the lead security role, Crocker said in remarks Monday to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

We have been wondering here why the sudden increase in the rate of green on blue killings in the recent past. Sarah Chayes says in the same story that it just took some time for Taliban & Co to get the program up to speed.

"So do I. There was an explicit announcement by the Taliban that they were planning to infiltrate," said Sarah Chayes, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment and a former advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"When insider attacks increased sharply some months after that announcement (by the Taliban earlier this year), there is no reason to dismiss the idea that they executed their strategy," Chayes said.

Lastly and most interesting to me Amb Crocker said it is possible that another 9-11 could be launched from a Taliban II controlled Afghanistan and he said this about promises.

Crocker also warned of a possible bloodbath if the U.S. pulls out before ANSF is ready to take over. "Who gets it in the neck? It's all those people we made all those promises to, starting with the women" of Afghanistan who have struggled for civil rights and education in the male-dominated society, Crocker said.

This was a very interesting story.

[carl]

Here is a link to the video of Amb Crocker's remarks to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/09...ghanistan/drea

I haven't watched it yet. I only read the story quoted in the post above.

[Madhu]

on CSPAN.

Good set of links on infiltration, carl. I've been a bit leery of official explanations, to be frank - even of the widely discussed study on these incidents showing them to be mostly about personal grievances. Not fair, I know, but after years of hearing certain statements over and over again, and then comparing the statements to reality, I've learned to be a bit wary....

(He did mention what I like to call the "Pressler Canard". Drives me batty. Why this continued restating of a narrative history that isn't "quite so" by diplomats and SA experts? I will never understand it. I honestly believe it's hurt our efforts.)