Page 2 of 2 US wins minds, but Afghan hearts aren't in it
By Ann Jones
My educated guess is that such an army simply does not exist. It may well be
true that Afghan men have gone through some version of "Basic Warrior Training"
90,000 times or more. When I was teaching in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006, I
knew men who repeatedly went through ANA training to get the promised
Kalashnikov and the pay. Then they went home for a while and often returned
some weeks later to enlist again under a different name.
In a country where 40% of men are unemployed, joining the ANA for 10 weeks is
the best game in town. It relieves the poverty of many families every time the
man of the family goes back to
basic training, but it's a needlessly complicated way to unintentionally
deliver such minimal humanitarian aid. Some of these circulating soldiers are
aging former mujahideen - the Islamist fundamentalists the US once paid to
fight the Soviets - and many are undoubtedly Taliban.
American trainers have taken careful note of the fact that, when ANA soldiers
were given leave after basic training to return home with their pay, they
generally didn't come back. To foil paycheck scams and decrease soaring rates
of desertion, they recently devised a money-transfer system that allows the
soldiers to send pay home without ever leaving their base. That sounds like a
good idea, but like many expensive American solutions to Afghan problems, it
misses the point. It's not just the money the soldier wants to transfer home,
it's himself as well.
Earlier this year, the US training program became slightly more compelling with
the introduction of a US-made weapon, the M-16 rifle, which was phased in over
four months as a replacement for the venerable Kalashnikov.
Even US trainers admit that, in Afghanistan, the Kalashnikov is actually the
superior weapon. Light and accurate, it requires no cleaning even in the dust
of the high desert, and every man and boy already knows it well. The strange
and sensitive M-16, on the other hand, may be more accurate at slightly greater
distances, but only if a soldier can keep it clean, while managing to adjust
and readjust its notoriously sensitive sights.
The struggling soldiers of the ANA may not ace that test, but now that the US
military has generously passed on its old M-16s to Afghans, it can buy new ones
at taxpayer expense, a prospect certain to gladden the heart of any arms
manufacturer. (Incidentally, thanks must go to the Illinois National Guard for
risking their lives to make possible such handsome corporate profits.)
As for the police, US-funded training offers a similar revolving door. In
Afghanistan, however, it is far more dangerous to be a policeman than a
soldier. While soldiers on patrol can slip away, policemen stuck at their posts
are killed almost every day. Assigned in small numbers to staff small-town
police stations or highway checkpoints, they are sitting ducks for Taliban
fighters.
As representatives of the now thoroughly discredited government of President
Hamid Karzai, the hapless police make handy symbolic targets. British
commanders in Helmand province estimated that 60% of Afghan police are on drugs
- and little wonder why.
In the Pashtun provinces of southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is strong,
recruiting men for the Afghan National Police is a "problem", as an ANP
commander told me. Consequently, non-Pashtun police trainees of Hazara, Tajik,
Uzbek, or other ethnic backgrounds are dispatched to maintain order in Pashtun
territory. They might as well paint targets on their foreheads. The police who
accompanied the US Marines into Helmand province reportedly refused to leave
their heavily armed mentors to take up suicidal posts in provincial villages.
Some police and army soldiers, when asked by reporters, claimed to be
"visiting" Helmand province only for "vacation."
Training day
In many districts, the police recently supplemented their low pay and
demonstrated allegiance to local warlords by stuffing ballot boxes for Karzai
in the presidential election. Consider that but one more indication - like the
defection of those great Islamist fundamentalist mujahideen allies the US
sponsored in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s who are now fighting with the
Taliban - that no amount of American training, mentoring, or cash will
determine who or what Afghans will fight for, if indeed they fight at all.
Afghans are world famous fighters, in part because they have a knack for
gravitating to the winning side, and they're ready to change sides with
alacrity until they get it right. Recognizing that Afghans back a winner, US
military strategists are now banking on a counterinsurgency strategy that seeks
to "clear, hold, and build" - that is, to stick around long enough to win the
Afghans over. But it's way too late for that to work. These days, US troops
sticking around look ever more like a foreign occupying army and, to the
Taliban, like targets.
Recently Karen DeYoung noted in the Washington Post that the Taliban now
regularly use very sophisticated military techniques - "as if the insurgents
had attended something akin to the US Army's Ranger school, which teaches
soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments". Of course, some
of them have attended training sessions which teach them to fight in "austere
environments", probably time and time again. If you were a Talib, wouldn't you
scout the training being offered to Afghans on the other side? And wouldn't you
do it more than once if you could get well paid every time?
Such training is bound to come in handy - as it may have for the Talib
policeman who, just last week, bumped off eight other comrades at his police
post in Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan and turned it over to the
Taliban. On the other hand, such training can be deadly to American trainers.
Take the case of the American trainer who was shot and wounded that same week
by one of his trainees. Reportedly, a dispute arose because the trainer was
drinking water "in front of locals", while the trainees were fasting for the
Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
There is, by the way, plenty of evidence that Taliban fighters get along just
fine, fighting fiercely and well without the training lavished on the ANA and
the ANP. Why is it that Afghan Taliban fighters seem so bold and effective,
while the Afghan National Police are so dismally corrupt and the Afghan
National Army a washout?
When I visited bases and training grounds in July, I heard some American
trainers describe their Afghan trainees in the same racist terms once applied
to African slaves in the US: lazy, irresponsible, stupid, childish, and so on.
That's how Afghan resistance, avoidance, and sabotage look to American eyes.
The Taliban fight for something they believe - that their country should be
freed from foreign occupation. "Our" Afghans try to get by.
Yet one amazing thing happens to ANA trainees who stick it out for the whole 10
weeks of basic training. Their slight bodies begin to fill out a little. They
gain more energy and better spirits - all because for the first time in their
lives they have enough nutritious food to eat.
Better nutrition notwithstanding - Senator Levin, Senator McCain - "our"
Afghans are never going to fight for an American cause, with or without
American troops, the way we imagine they should. They're never going to fight
with the energy of the Taliban for a national government that we installed
against Afghan wishes, then more recently set up to steal another election, and
now seem about to ratify in office, despite incontrovertible evidence of
flagrant fraud. Why should they? Even if the US could win their minds, their
hearts are not in it.
One small warning: don't take the insecurity of the Afghan security forces as
an argument for sending yet more American troops to Afghanistan. Aggressive
Americans (now numbering 68,000) are likely to be even less successful than
reluctant Afghan forces.
Afghans want peace, but the kharaji (foreign) troops (100,000, if you
include US allies in NATO) bring death and destruction wherever they go. Think
instead about what you might have won - and could still win - had you spent all
those military billions on food. Or maybe agriculture. Or health care. Or a
civilian job corps.
Is it too late for that now?
Ann Jones is the author of Kabul in Winter (Metropolitan, 2006)
and writes often about Afghanistan for TomDispatch and the Nation. War
Is Not Over When It's Over, her new book about the impact of war on women, will
be published next year.
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