A bunch o' peace organizations have created a coalition to push a nationwide day of reflection on and renunciation of military escalation in Afghanistan. I'm totally sympathetic to their cause, and always a fan of stepping back and considering non-military solutions, but also feel confused on this issue. As I've written previously in this space, I'm most concerned with what the nonviolent citizens of Afghanistan, especially women, want the U.S. to do.
Contrary to the tired old rhetoric about the U.S. soldiers swooping in and and "saving" poor, repressed Afghan women, there is a vital movement of Afghan women working to change their own communities and cultures. It is these women that I want to hear from, these women whose opinions I trust the most. And yet, it's hard to figure out--all the way over here in my little Brooklyn hovel--who these women are and if there is any sort of consensus on what it is that they want from the U.S. When I was at the Code Pink Mother's Day Vigil, an Afghani woman spoke about the horrific conditions that so many Afghan women are facing. After she left the stage, an interesting discussion took place between her and some of the Code Pink members in which she asserted that, contrary to the peace movement's assumptions, Afghan women want the U.S. military to stay in Afghanistan. "They don't feel safe," she said. "The international presence makes them feel safer."
Of course, she was just one woman. It would be reductive to expect all U.S. women to think unilaterally on such a complex issue (think presidential election 2008 and all the ridiculous "THE women vote" talk), so why would Afghani women be any different? This video, produced by Code Pink, features a dynamic woman who opposes military escalation:
So here I am, paralyzed by all the complexity. Anyone have bright ideas or trusted sources to contribute? If you're convinced that military escalation is wrong, here are some things you can do about it.
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I don't have anything brilliant to say, Courtney, but I am grateful that you posted this. I have thesame conflicted view and would really like for military action in a country such as this to be guided by the will of the most voppressed/voiceless citizens.
It's not necessarily the presence of Coalition forces in Afghanistan that drive the local Pashtun population to oppose them. However, the tactics we employ leave much to be desired in regards to a successful counter-insurgency. Currently the US military really only knows how to escalate any given situation, and are tactics essentially come down to bumping into the enemy and calling for air strikes.
Air strikes against "militant positions" have most likely already lost the war/occupation for us as the "collateral damage" has been tremendously costly to the civilian population of Afghanistan, at the cost of support for occupation forces.
There's also the issue of resistance to Coalition forces being primarily Pashtun, the Taliban included. The Pashtun tribes are not completely contained within Afghanistan and have a large concentration of peoples in neighboring Pakistan. The border between them is largely irrelevant to them given that it was created by colonial forces whose authority they do not recognize. Coalition forces cannot operate with such a luxury and must respect Pakistan's sovereignty or run the risk of destabilizing the country to such a degree the gov't collapses and militants assume control. Our cross-border raids and air strikes into the region don't help to calm this situation down. Historically, when the Pashtun engage in Afghan wars, the Pashtun win. It usually takes some time and doing but they are well funded, well supplied, well trained and highly motivated.
There's also the issue of various tribal/ethnic allegiances. Afghanistan is not Switzerland, and won't be for quite some time. Their country is not ours to remake however we see fit. The arrogance displayed by such an attitude has also cost us allies in Afghanistan. By working with the Tajiks you slight the Pashtuns so on and so forth.
What the military should be doing is learning the art of de-escalation, which is integral to counter-insurgency. If it appears a fire fight is to take place and there is a risk of producing civilian casualties, Coalition forces should withdraw and pick and better time and place to fight. Events like this will help to prove to the local population that we are there to help, not harm. Successful counter-insurgency more closely resembles the Hippocratic oath, and this is the attitude with which we should be approaching it, "to do no harm." However we have a military enamored with expensive and largely useless weapons systems and putting "steel on target." As an institution our military has not changed much since WW1.
Or we should do what the Russians and British eventually did when they realized victory in Afghanistan was impossible: withdraw. Negotiate with the Taliban and withdraw.
When the British retreated from Kabul in 1842, they negotiated for safe passage for the army (4,500 men) and the women and camp followers (12,000). One man survived the retreat, and everyone else was massacred.
The lesson you should draw from the British ans soviet occupations is that you can't win in Afghanistan; but you also can't choose to withdraw on your own terms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Elphinstone%27s_army
Like saintcatherine, I feel conflicts when I think of this. I don't think the U.S. helps Afghani women when it makes them worry about their children getting blown up. Also, I don't think the U.S. puppet regime in Afghanistan gives a shit about the women of that country. However, I don't think anyone else there, does either. Only the women of that country know what their interests are. I place most of my trust in RAWA. They oppose both fundamentalism and U.S. intervention/occuptaion. I just can't trust the U.S. to look out for the interests of Aghani women, when it was the U.S. who helped the fundamentalists come to power in the first place.
I've always trusted the voice of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (link).
And here's their link on wiki.
In The Subjection of Women, John Stuart Mill (in 1870 or so) talks about misogyny as being the last remaining instance of the 'law of the strong' being upheld. Since the Enlightenment, says Mill, society has been slowly eradicating instances of domination based on physical power: and I think it's irrefutable that this has indeed been the trend. But he points out that the treatment of women at the time was still rooted in this law of physical domination. It still is today, although less firmly.
If we were fighting a war that truly was in favour of equal society (and therefore women's rights) it could not be a violent one.
That's not to say that violence is an unacceptable tactic in the pursuit of equality; but that a philosophy where we (the Western, NATO nations) impose our will with violence is fundamentally incompatible with women's rights.
I find it hard to consider claims by Western nations that the war on terror(/ the middle east) is being fought in part to protect the rights of women anything more than false justification. NATO clearly had no concerns about gender politics when it began the mission, and (which is a good thing, in a way) it makes for good PR to fly the flag of women's rights (only in other countries). But even if it was sincerely thought that the war could help Afghanistan's women, I am sure that we're going about it in a completely counter-productive way.
Take the marital rape law: obviously conceived with patriarchal notions based in the law of the strong--but under a government that the West has supported. The war we are waging serves to confirm the association of physical power with morality which leads to this thinking and to heinous treatment of women.
But, we are dealing with alternatives to military escalation. What alternatives can I propose? I don't see any possibility but that of peaceful discussion resulting in action
In a way, the Western idea that we can change minds with a war is as foolish as the thought that terrorist attacks will show the West what we're doing wrong.
The West is an aggressor: we are involved in a clash of disparate philosophies and we maintain that we will never consider any adjustment on our part, of our values as a society--and we insist that the change happen at the other end, to bring our ideological enemy around to our side, in a long, slow, murderous process of coercion and violence.
sorry, left a sentence hanging:
I don't see any possibility but that of peaceful discussion resulting in action that will truly advance the cause of a just society, in Afghanistan or elsewhere. It sounds idealistic, sure, but where all else has failed...?
If we were fighting a war that truly was in favour of equal society (and therefore women's rights) it could not be a violent one.
The core of the Taliban cannot be dealt with any other way. COIN efforts have a requirement for persuasion, for development, and soft power. But they also have a requirement for military force.
Insurgents aren't stupid, they are fighting to stop the changes being instituted and that means they'll stop the civilians and NGOs with or without NATO presence. Even western doctrinal documents on conducting insurgency advocate the disruption of anything which might sway the populace.
Could there be more development? Absolutely, conventional military force and development are mutually reinforcing, and some of the most successful COIN operations have balanced these two factors. But if you attempted to only approach Afghanistan with development and angry letters, the Taliban would simply kill the aid workers and ignore the letters.
I'm not so sure.
Do we aim to convince people to adopt our way of thinking, or will we beat them into submission? In terms of gender issues, which seem to me the area in which the West most disagrees with the Middle East, is it possible to change the situation in any other way than changing minds?
If the conflict between NATO and the Taliban continues as a violent one, I see no success for the West. Why do we think it's possible to weaken ideology with violence, when this is plainly the same logic terrorists attack the West with?
I see the war as creating a culture in which the West becomes increasingly an enemy, leading to such things as people joining the insurgency on principle but not because they agree with its values. I see it as leading people to join the fight against NATO to avenge the deaths that the war has caused. Every insurgent or civilian death hardens minds against the Western way of thinking, and sends even more people to the front.
I once talked to an Iraqi man, who had just returned from a visit to Iraq as a Red Cross medic or something equivalent. He said that for every insurgent we kill, three civilians join the insurgency. It's probably not literally true, but it's still a perfect example of how violence is futile against opinions.
The society that we're trying to build in the Middle East doesn't seem to have been pre-evaluated in terms of the way in which it will treat women. So far it's failed. We've set out restructuring a society (as the Taliban did) and I believe that we're headed down the wrong track, because we have mistaken priorities (installing democracy) that mislead us from the true nature of the struggle and the real problems that need to be addressed.
Air strikes against "militant positions" have most likely already lost the war/occupation for us as the "collateral damage" has been tremendously costly to the civilian population of Afghanistan, at the cost of support for occupation forces.
Air strikes have been substituted for Main Battle Tanks by many of the NATO nations to reduce collateral damage.
From a Can Open Government be measured by a Military Press Release?">Danish Release (translated by the Canadian American Strategic Review)
"Tank fire, which is frightenly accurate, pentetrates walls but usually does not level a mud-brick compound the way large bombs dropped by aircraft can. This makes reconstruction in the area far easier once the Taliban have been removed."
What the military should be doing is learning the art of de-escalation, which is integral to counter-insurgency. If it appears a fire fight is to take place and there is a risk of producing civilian casualties, Coalition forces should withdraw and pick and better time and place to fight.
Depending on the circumstances this is what soldiers are trained to do. But the military also needs to defend communities. This is inherently dangerous to civilians, but far less so then if the Taliban took control of the town, killing any suspected allies of the NATO forces, and destroying any projects which were created.
Thanks for your post on this. Here's a blog post called "A message to progressives on Afghanistan (Part 2): women’s rights." It deals with the issue of helping women in Afghanistan and makes the case for why promoting a non-military strategy in Afghanistan makes sense. It also cites a lot of Afghan women and groups that work with Afghan women.
http://blog.peaceactionwest.org/2009/04/07/a-message-to-progressives-on-afghanistan-part-2-womens-rights/