Kandahar 5

Things are supposedly beginning to wind down here. The Canadians are already starting to pack up some of their equipment, and indeed, when I spoke with some of my combat engineer spin-class friends, they told me that they don't go outside the wire anymore because their job now is primarily clean up. They have just under 90 days in country. Most of the Romanians very recently left. They stayed in sleeping barracks along the way to the dining facility that I usually go to, and they were always hanging around outside, smoking cigarettes and drinking orange Fanta, in their shorts and/or shirtless (they must not have gotten the NO SUNBATHING ALLOWED! memo), giving each other back rubs, seemingly having a relatively swell time of things, all things considered. And then, POOF!, they're gone. I think that the reality is that we're not really going to wind down as much as it might seem - the US at least - and our military will remain here in not insignificant numbers for many years. For one, I still hear about bed shortages for new incoming troops; also, there's still a lot of construction going on around here on KAF. I was recently on a new base that was in the midst of construction. We're talking newly dug fence lines with newly poured concrete and newly set fence poles in them - they haven't even gotten around to stringing up the Concertina wire along the top.

Very recently the Stars and Stripes, one of the military newspapers, has been reporting that both the Iraq and Afghanistan governments have been "requesting" that US forces remain in their countries in greater numbers and beyond the timelines officially stated. If we do leave en masse, without significant financial and other support, I think this place is going to fall apart again into various factions and under the influences of other players, some not so friendly, e.g. Pakistan and Iran. It burns me that we have made a Faustian bargain where we give Pakistan billions of dollars a year in order for us to continue this war (transporting materials overland and some intelligence assistance). Meanwhile, the ISI, Pakistan's equivalent of the CIA, is channeling that money to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, not to mention they harbored bin Laden for years despite being our "friends."

Post WWII, the US spent the modern day equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars to help Europe rebuild. As much as I enjoy living in Germany, we really shouldn't be there anymore - certainly not nearly in the numbers we are - almost 60 years after WWII and nearly 20 years after the end of the Cold War. And yet at Ramstein they opened a monstrosity of a mall - a gaudy abomination, really - just a year or two ago. Certainly Geilenkirchen, where I am, and all the tiny little bases and outposts should be done away with.

The fact is that the US isn't leaving Germany anytime soon, however, and we've been at peace with die Germans and generally like them. Although I did just read an article that the US will be decreasing the official number of troops by 5,000, down to 37,000, from a high of over 200,000 in the early 1990s. The 37,000 number is deceiving, though, as it doesn't count all the civilians living there and being paid by the US government (also very generous compared to what they'd make in the States - your tax dollars at work) in various support and other roles, including medical and education (i.e. teachers), not to mention those affiliated with weapons systems and the like.

In fact, people of German ancestry make up the largest single ethnic group in the US, and, during World War I, German Americans predominantly took a neutral position to US involvement in the conflict. During WWII, US soldiers actually liked the German people with whom they came in contact (at least when they weren't shooting at "our boys") moreso than even the English, and certainly more than those prickly French. Stephen Ambrose, in Band of Brothers, noted that of all the peoples the American G.I.s encountered in Europe during World War II, they identified most with the Germans, whom the American soldiers regarded as "clean, hard-working, disciplined, educated, middle-class in their tastes and life-styles ... just like us."

The point is die Germans happen to be a hell of a lot more like "white Christian" America than "white Christian" America is similar to Afghans. I don't see even a tiny fraction of the money and effort the US gave to rebuilding Europe going into helping Afghanistan rebuild. Also, there's just not as much incentive for us to be here. Yeh, sure, they grew some terrorists here while the Taliban had control, but overall, the country is horribly underdeveloped, and although there are some mineral resources that could apparently be exploited, there's absolutely no significant infrastructure to collect and transport it, not to mention the persistent security issues.

This seems particularly unlikely what with the financial concerns our country has gotten itself into, in no small part because a decade ago our country's leaders thought it would be a good idea to start the two longest running overseas wars in US history. Also, they decided that it's better to spend trillions of dollars blowing the place up - contractor profits at least grow that way, as do the subsequent campaign donations - rather than helping a failed state rebuild so that ordinary people can try and live ordinary lives. It really hurt that the Bush administration neglected Afghanistan in favor of starting another war in Iraq, which was unsubstantiated, Dick Cheney's recently published autobiography be damned. The Congressional bipartisan September 11 commission found "no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States." The rest of the international community was of the same mind, and the US squandered much of the good will we'd received after the events that occurred in 2001. After the initial, and relatively modest, effort here, the Taliban had basically been run off, and the US forces had the general gratitude and good will of the Afghan people. Helping Afghanistan rebuild at that time would have most likely come out to a tiny fraction of the cost in blood and treasure of the conflict that's been ongoing since, and many experts think that the rebuilding would have had a very good chance of being successful, assuming the support and attention from the international community had remained focused.

I just finished reading an interesting book about the cultural and political history of Afghanistan, and particularly liked one short anecdote the author told. He was living and studying in Afghanistan during the 1970s. People in the rural areas of Afghanistan had recently gotten access to radios and heard reports about the Vietnam war. He then relates, "When I was informed about the end of the Vietnam War by some nomads who had heard about it on the radio, they insisted that Vietnam bordered the United States. When I objected that the immense Pacific Ocean separated the two by many thousands of kilometers, they said I must be wrong because you could not fight a war with a country unless you were next to it. They were wrong on the facts but perhaps right on the principle." While I understand that things are more complicated than that, it seems like that would be a very good place to start with our foreign policy, particularly as it pertains to waging wars. (You hear that Canada? Eh? You guys are next!!)

One of the main concepts that ran through the book was the idea that Afghanistan has been a difficult country to rule, for their own rulers and for foreign powers who have tried. The moniker "graveyard of empires" has been used to describe this characteristic, though it's not entirely accurate. The author of the book I read says, “Afghanistan uses the hyperbole of history (unconquerable and a graveyard of empires) to exaggerate its strengths in order to deter invaders. It has relied on its indigestibility to get them to leave. But like the puffer fish, this is a tactic employed by the weak and vulnerable, not the strong and secure. It comes with a high price tag too, since when deterrence failed, the ensuing conflicts, particularly over the past thirty years, devastated both the country and its people.”

One reason it's been difficult is that the Afghan people have been pretty independent-minded, particularly in the rural areas. Afghan tribal customs are fairly egalitarian in the sense that anyone could envision his own rise to leadership. The traditional saying goes something like, "Me against my brothers; my brothers and me against our cousins; my brothers, cousins, and me against the world.” Sort of how it's OK for me to beat up my little brothers, but no one else is allowed (and you know I can still take all of you, so don’t even think about trying anything). So they don’t really like being controlled by others all that much, not least of all each other.

If a foreign, particularly non-Islamic, state tried to control Afghanistan, different groups might all come together to run them off, but tended to immediately resume old rivalries once the common enemy was run off. Whereas to outsiders they might seem very patriotic to the idea of an Afghanistan nation, they are actually hindered by various internal divisions. Historically, as long as the central government in Kabul met basic expectations (e.g. basic security), didn't demand excessive tribute, and then left them alone, the population living outside of the capitol cared little what the ruling elite chose to do.

For a lot of its history, this country has been valued primarily for trade routes (the "Silk Road" network) linking the Far East, primarily India and China, to the Persia/Iranian empire, the Ottoman/Turkish empire, and eventually to Europe. Particularly during the colonial era it was seen as a buffer state between British-controlled India and the Russians, the so-called Great Game (or Tournament of Shadows as the Russians called it) for control of Central Asia, all those "Stans" down there. In fact, this has been the real difficulty in subduing the country - fighting off the other empires and countries that have wanted to control this area, rather than the rebellions by the inhabitants or the legendary fierceness of the Afghan fighter. I guess the other reason is the "because it's there and because I'm a megalomaniac" factor of emperors and conquerors.

I mentioned some of my concerns previously with contractors being so significantly involved in the business of war, and it is a business. And in our country, where CEOs and boards are more or less legally obligated to only maximize profits without concern for the greater public good, I find that more than a little disturbing. It's not enough just to make money, however. We hear all the time on the news how relatively successful Company X has made millions, even billions, of dollars in profits, but because the company didn't make as much as they projected, or as much as shareholders think they should have made, Company X gets taken over, or the CEO gets replaced (but not before getting a lucrative severance package) by some other psychopath who will fire as many people (who don't get lucrative severance packages) as it takes to make the books look better. A business that's organized around providing services for military endeavors is still a business, and they want to, at the very least, maintain profits, if not grow them. So it begs the question ... who's next? Iran? Somewhere in Africa? We still will have people here in Afghanistan, so at least there's that, but "growth" is the operative word in all of this. (You hear that Canada? Eh? You guys are next!! I'm serious!)