Gloomy US intelligence assessment coming or Let's hear from the spies

[Dayuhan]

The cultural reality of Afghan patronage. This is an all or nothing society. If you are on the in team, you have full chance at power, land, influence, wealth. If you are on the out team you get scraps. When there are major swings of political power it drives an equally major swing of patronage.

Agreed.

The losers cannot accept this. They cannot accept this outcome and they cannot accept this constitution. Both offer little but effective slavery for entire families, tribes and regions. This guarantees insurgency.

This outcome is implicit in the cultural reality that you described above. The only question is who gets the top chair and who controls the patronage. That's what's being fought over. The constitution is irrelevant to anyone but a foreigner: whatever document is put in place will be twisted to fit the cultural reality, or ignored. Culture defines documents, documents don't change cultures.

I do not know if it is possible to regulate a reconciled form of patronage that breaks up this ageless system and divides power wealth and influence more equitably across the populace. Perhaps, but only if we recognize that this is critical and that must be forced on Karzai and the Northern Alliance, as it is not in their interest lead reform and give up what they hold now by both might and right.

How is this compatible with your earlier comment about the "cultural reality of Afghan patronage". Are you suggesting that "we" can restructure Afghan cultural realities? I don't see how an effort to "break up this ageless system" is something we can or should be messing with. Trying to dictate how other countries need to be governed seems to me to be something we should be avoiding, not pursuing.

Restructuring patronage systems is not likely to be easy or polite. Factions will fight over profitable milking cows. They will try to butt in on each other's territories. In essence you'd be going back to what you had between the Soviet withdrawal and the rise of the Taliban: chaos and conflict. We can pretend to ourselves that we can "regulate" this or assign who gets what and lay out a "system" for sharing the spoils... but that's a dangerous illusion. The culture is the culture. We won't change it, and it will take over no matter what system we put in place.

I'm recalling the transition from the Marcos dictatorship to the fragile Aquino democracy... Marcos was more corrupt, but things functioned, because the corruption and patronage were largely organized: you knew who to pay, and how much, and you generally got what you paid for. Once that system broke it was a free-for-all, with multiple parties fighting over rackets, everybody wanting a cut and nobody even trying to deliver on their promises. This sort of thing doesn't always make for an improvement.

The brand of COIN I promote is primarily waged in Kabul and focused on tearing down the mechanisms of governance that are at the causal roots of the insurgency. Do that well and the good effects will flow across the Durand line as if it is not there (and for COIN and insurgency it is not there)

Tearing down what you referred to as "the cultural reality of Afghan patronage"? You said it yourself: this is an all or nothing society. Do you want us to change that? Of course we can tear down the government we installed and try again, but whatever goes in will be a product and reflection of the same cultural reality.

I'd love to see Crocker and Allen make a full-spectrum reconciliation and follow-on constitutional loya jirga the condition precedent to all development and any hope of ISAF leaving any presence there to help out. Unless we are willing to walk away we will remain a patsy of the Northern Alliance, filling their pockets and protecting there status at the top of the patronage heap.

Somebody will be filling their pockets and protecting there status at the top of the patronage heap no matter what we do. It's not something we are going to change and it's not something a new constitution will change. It's a cultural reality and we have to work within cultural realities. The culture may evolve to a new reality but it won't happen because we want it to, and the process is going to involve a bunch of mess no matter what we do.

I think your diagnosis is reasonably accurate as a broad picture... but do you really think the US should be committing itself to an effort to restructure Afghan cultural realities?

My opinion only of course, but I don't think our problem is that we built the wrong kind of governance in Afghanistan, but that we tried to build governance in Afghanistan in the first place.