The failure of liberal dreams for Afghanistan
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh’s death sentence is a compelling demonstration of how thoroughly the west has failed in Afghanistan. The death sentence was issued by an Afghan court in response to the allegation that Kambaksh had downloaded and distributed a report about the oppression of women. This is not the first time a death sentence has been issued for blasphemy in Afghanistan since the imposition of the Karzai government, but it is a pretty egregious case. Yesterday, the sentence was confirmed by the Afghan Senate.
Is the whole point of the war in Afghanistan the replacement of one brutal band of thuggish warlords with another? Admittedly, the present government is better than the Taliban was, but that is hardly a ringing endorsement. Canada is considering an ever-more long term commitment to the protection of this government while, at the same time, we cannot trust them not to torture detainees that are transferred to them.
What is to be done in response? Do we become hard-headed realists, asserting that aiming to empower women or promote human rights was never a realistic or appropriate aim of the war in Afghanistan? Supporting a government just because they seem relatively pliable and seem to say the right things about cracking down on groups that worry us is certainly a practice with a long history. That said, it isn’t a very successful one. After all, it is why the west armed the Mujahideen in the first place (not to mention the Pinochets and Musharrafs of the world). Do we become isolationists, then, despairing of our ability to effect any progressive or worthwhile change in the world? That doesn’t seem practically or morally tenable in a world as interconnected as ours has become.
Perhaps all we can do is become a bit more cynical and a lot more critical about the supposed justifications for interventions. Rather than aspiring to replace oppressive societies with somewhat better ones, perhaps we should admit that overthrowing governments - however awful - will normally lead to horribly broken societies. That is not to say that it is always the worst option available. A horribly broken society is better than one in which an active genocide is occurring. With such exceptions admitted, it does seem as though the dream of a transition to liberal democracy through military intervention has been essentially invalidated by the experience of western states in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
More on Afghanistan:
‘Enduring Freedom’ and Afghanistan
Sunday, October 28th, 2007
Afghan opium
Monday, August 27th, 2007
Defining state failure
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007
Dangerous Afghan skies
Monday, September 4th, 2006
On Canada and peacekeeping
Sunday, May 14th, 2006
February 4th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
With such exceptions admitted, it does seem as though the dream of a transition to liberal democracy through military intervention has been essentially invalidated by the experience of western states in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.
I think a more cynical and critical attitude leads fairly straightforwardly to the conclusion that neither the war in Iraq nor Afghanistan was intended to create democracy. A lie rather than a dream, perhaps? Which, frankly, is re-assuring, because if it liberal democracy was the goal it implies our governments’ foreign policy is more stupid and incompetent than I’ve been hoping.
February 4th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
If the whole idea of spreading democracy was a cynical lie to begin with, what was the purpose Canadian leaders had in mind for our intervention in Afghanistan? Was it just a matter of standing by allies, specifically the US and NATO? Was it motivated by concerns about domestic security, given the overt support the Taliban gave to Al Qaeda?
Iraq is obviously quite a different situation.
February 5th, 2008 at 1:57 am
Afghanistan has been our way of:
-Justifying our absence in any formal sense from Iraq by engaging in a mission that to a greater extent seemed to reflect Canadian values,
-Telling the Alliance and the United States that Canada is back and no longer a free-loader with regards to security cooperation, but instead ready to contribute with blood and treasure,
-Reinvigorating the Canadian Forces, which since Martin were recovering from a decade of nelgect and at the end of the day, shame,
-And finally reintroducing the Canadian Forces and the notion of our country as one with a warfighting military to the Canadian public.
In short, the goals of the mission have been wholly self-serving, and it remains one that we should be committed to, in some form or another for decades. An Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar by Stein and Lang remains an essential read on the subject.
February 5th, 2008 at 6:33 am
I fail to understand the way you state this as a problem. Is the senate, because they have confirmed this sentence, a band of thuggish warlords? Are all senates that do not grant women rights thugs? What about European states that didn’t grant women voting rights until the late 20th century? Were they run by groups of thugs? Probably, but we like to say those are real democracies.
What distinguishes a “group of thugs” from an autocratic rational state is law - fascists have no law they have only the spoken word (propeganda). If we restore Afghanistan to a law abiding, rule of law state, then whether or not women have any rights at all, it will still be a meaningful success.
To know to what extent do we have a duty while rebuilding afghanistan (and we do have this duty - since it was our war - US versus Soviets, which destroyed it, produced the northern alliance which carried out huge crimes after the war, and produced the Taliban as a positive alternative, even popular - we should look at what kind of state Afghanistan had before the the Soviet - US ally altercation. If that was the kind of state where someone would be sentenced to death for distributing blasphemous propeganda, then?
As for the requirement to go beyond that, we didn’t go to East Timor. We didn’t do the right thing in Rwanda. We commit horrible atrocities all the time and you are worried that women don’t have civil rights in Afghanistan? Interventionism is good and fine, and proper, but not every case is justified.
To
February 5th, 2008 at 9:26 am
You obviously see validity in liberal values, hence the condemnation of the death sentence, but you have lost faith that such values can be spread militarily.
This is a sensible enough position, now bolstered with additional evidence.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Comic about the West in Afghanistan
February 5th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Is anyone talking about how the war on drugs means killing peasants for acting in their rational economic self interest?
The fact is, we need opiates. The more fear we instill in the farmers of them, the more we bolster warlords.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Lawyers urge co-management of Afghan prisons
Having Canada, NATO help run jails would protect detainees from abuse, Amnesty International, B.C. Civil Liberties Union tell court
February 5th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
In Helmand a 20-year-old battle involves at least three main factions competing for control of the province’s huge opium trade. The dominant grouping since 2001 has been that of the Akhundzada family, who are members of the Alizai tribe, and their various allies. Sher Mohammed Akhundzada was Helmand’s governor till he was ousted in December 2005 under British pressure over his links to the drugs business. President Hamid Karzai has now called his ouster a mistake, citing the Taliban’s successes in the area since then. It is true that Mr Akhundzada had kept the scale of the fighting in check. But the thuggery of his regime had also provoked widespread anger, and sowed the seeds for the Taliban’s return.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Afghans speak out on Nato and security
As Nato discusses the nature of its future mission in Afghanistan, people across the country discuss aspects of daily life and the impact of foreign troops.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Afghan reporter shocked by trial
In South Asia
An Afghan reporter sentenced to death for blasphemy says his trial lasted just four minutes.
After a month in jail Mr Kambaksh was charged in court with blasphemy and other crimes against Islam.
In late January he expected the trial to start but instead was taken into the courtroom just before it was due to shut.
He says the judges and prosecutor repeated some details of the case and then declared him guilty and announced the sentence was death.
“The judges had made up their mind about the case without me,” he told the Independent.
“The way they talked to me, looked at me, was the way they look at a condemned man.
“I wanted to say: ‘This is wrong, please listen to me,’ but I was given no chance to explain.”
At no point in the closed-door proceedings did Mr Kambaksh have a lawyer and he says he was not allowed to defend himself either.
The Afghan Senate confirmed the sentence on 30 January, but backed down a day later after an international outcry.
The jailed reporter’s appeal is expected to be heard in an open court in Kabul, the Independent said.
President Hamid Karzai would have to approve the death sentence for it to be carried out.
February 26th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
In the eyes of many, one of the Afghan war’s virtues has been that NATO has participated as an entity. But NATO has come under heavy criticism from U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates for its performance. Some, like the Canadians, are threatening to withdraw their troops if other alliance members do not contribute more heavily to the mission. More important, the Taliban have been fighting an effective and intensive insurgency. Further complicating the situation, the roots of many of the military and political issues in Afghanistan are found across the border in Pakistan.
If the endgame in Iraq is murky, the endgame if Afghanistan is invisible. The United States, its allies and the Kabul government are fighting a holding action strategically. They do not have the force to destroy the Taliban — and in counterinsurgency, the longer the insurgents maintain their operational capability, the more likely they are to win. Further stiffening the Taliban resolve is the fact that, while insurgents have nowhere to go, foreigners can always decide to go home.
February 26th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Over time, the United States and NATO brought about 50,000 troops to Afghanistan. Their hope was that Hamid Karzai’s government would build a force that could defeat the Taliban. But the problem was that, absent U.S. and NATO forces, the Taliban had managed to defeat the forces now arrayed against them once before, in the Afghan civil war. The U.S. commitment of troops was enough to hold the major cities and conduct offensive operations that kept the Taliban off balance, but the United States could not possibly defeat them. The Soviets had deployed 300,000 troops in Afghanistan and could not defeat the mujahideen. NATO, with 50,000 troops and facing the same shifting alliance of factions and tribes that the Soviets couldn’t pull together, could not pacify Afghanistan.
But vanquishing the Taliban simply was not the goal. The goal was to maintain a presence that could conduct covert operations in Pakistan looking for al Qaeda and keep al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan. Part of this goal could be achieved by keeping a pro-American government in Kabul under Karzai. The strategy was to keep al Qaeda off balance, preserve Karzai and launch operations against the Taliban designed to prevent them from becoming too effective and aggressive. The entire U.S. military would have been insufficient to defeat the Taliban; the war in Afghanistan thus was simply a holding action.
February 26th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
As the situation in Iraq settles down — and it appears to be doing so — more focus will be drawn to Afghanistan, the war that even opponents of Iraq have acknowledged as appropriate and important. But it is important to understand what this war consists of: It is a holding action against an enemy that cannot be defeated (absent greater force than is available) with open lines of supply into a country allied with the United States. It is a holding action waiting for certain knowledge of the status of al Qaeda, knowledge that likely will not come. Afghanistan is a war without exit and a war without victory. The politics are impenetrable, and it is even difficult to figure out whether allies like Pakistan are intending to help or are capable of helping.
Thus, while it may be a better war than Iraq in some sense, it is not a war that can be won or even ended. It just goes on.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Regarding the arguments among NATO members about troop strength in Afghanistan, I continue to be amazed that nobody ever discusses the Soviet Union’s debacle there more than two decades ago. If a superpower that was immediately next door could put 100,000 troops into Afghanistan for ten years and still ultimately retreat in defeat, what are the lessons for NATO?
March 17th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Long and interesting article on Afghanistan:
Battle Company Is Out There
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:04 am
Talking to the Taliban
Multimedia feature from the Globe and Mail
April 8th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
The state of NATO
A ray of light in the dark defile
Indeed, a recent report overseen by General James Jones, formerly NATO’s supreme military commander, declares: “Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan.” Failure, the report says, will “put in grave jeopardy NATO’s future as a credible, cohesive and relevant military alliance”.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:07 am
[...] Seeing how total air superiority, expensive armoured vehicles, and sophisticated electronic countermeasures can be no match for some guys with rusty old artillery shells and some wire is a humbling reminder of the limited utility of military force. Ingenuity, practicality, and humility will probably prove to be essential qualities as the US tries to find the least bad path out of Iraq, and while NATO tries to salvage the situation in Afghanistan. [...]