I respect the work of Dexter Filkins, who wrote this weekend’s New York Times Magazine story “Stanley McChrystal’s Long War.” Filkins is a seasoned war correspondent whose characterizations of Iraq ring true. Much of his latest piece resonates with my ongoing experiences in Afghanistan. Despite the great length of the article, the few points that did not resonate were more trivialities for discussion than disagreements. Filkins did a fine job.
To be clear, I have developed a strong belief that the war is winnable, though on current trends we will lose. Filkins seemed to present a similar argument. In my view, we need more troops and effort in Afghanistan — now — and our commitment must be intergenerational.
In Filkins’s article, a couple of seemingly small points are keyholes to profound realities, and to a few possible illusions. For instance, the idea that Afghans are tired of fighting seems wrong. Afghans often tell me they are tired of fighting, but those words are inconsistent with the bitter fact that the war intensifies with every change of season. The idea that Afghans are tired of war seems an illusion. Some Afghans are tired. I spend more time talking with older Afghans than with teenagers, and most of the older Afghans do seem weary. Yet according to the CIA World Factbook, the median age in Afghanistan is 17.6. The culture is old, but the population is a teenager. Most Afghans today probably had not reached puberty when al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks. Eight years later, Afghanistan is more an illiterate kid than a country. The median age in the U.S. is 36.7. In addition to the tremendous societal disconnect between Americans and Afghans, there would be a generational gap even if those distant children were Americans.
We ask Afghans for help in defeating the enemies, yet the Afghans expect us to abandon them. Filkins pointed out that Afghans don’t like to see Americans living in tents. Tents are for nomads. It would be foolish for Afghans in “Talibanastan” to cooperate with nomadic Americans only to be eviscerated by the Taliban when the nomads pack up. (How many times did we see similar things happen in Iraq?) The Afghans want to see us living in real buildings as a sign of permanency. The British forces at Sangin and associated bases live in temporary structures, as do the Americans at many of their bases. Our signals are clear. “If you are coming to stay,” Afghans have told me in various ways, “build a real house. Build a real office. Don’t live in tents.”
A great many Iraqis wanted assurances that we would stay long enough to help their country survive but were not planning on making Iraq part of an American empire. It thus became important to convey signs of semi-permanence, signaling, “Yes, we will stay, and yes, we will leave.” Conversely, Afghans in places like Helmand tend to have fond memories of Americans who came in the middle of last century, and those Afghans seem apt to cooperate. That much is clear. But Afghans need to sense our long-term commitment. They need to see houses made of stone, not tents and “Hesco-habs.”
It’s crucial to hold in constant memory that Afghanistan is the societal equivalent of an illiterate teenager. The child-nation will fail unless we are willing to adopt the people. Many Afghans clearly hope this will happen, though of course we have to phrase it slightly differently. Afghans are, after all, proud and xenophobic. They are not just xenophobic but also Afghanophobic. Most houses are built like little Alamos.
Half-solutions failed in Iraq and are failing in Afghanistan. There will be no cheap, easy, or quick compromise that will lead to long-term success in Af-Pak. Adopting a scaled-back counterterrorism approach would be like dispatching the potent but tiny Delta Force to the Amazon jungles with orders to swat mosquitoes. We could give the Delta troops every Predator and Reaper in our arsenal, yet 20 years from now they’d still be shooting Hellfire missiles at mosquitoes.
Gutting mid-level enemy leadership has been very effective in Iraq and Afghanistan, but only in a larger context. Using strictly a counterterrorism approach, we’ll end up killing relatively zero mosquitoes — the Afghan birthrate alone will ensure that we never win — before coming down with war malaria. Counterterrorism in today’s context remains important, but only as part of a broader strategy. Afghanistan was a special-operations playground for more than half a decade. Nobody can argue that our special-ops forces were not given plenty of assets and discretion. They also got more than a half-decade of free passes in the press. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is asking for more troops, not fewer. We need to provide him with the resources needed to win.
If Afghanistan is to succeed, we must adopt it. We must adopt an entire country, a troubled child, for many decades to come. We must show the Afghans that together we can severely damage the enemies, or bring them around, and together build a brighter future. The alternative is perpetual war and terrorism radiating from the biggest, possibly richest, and most war-prone drug dealers the world has ever seen. Under that scenario, Afghanistan could become the swamp that harbors the disease that eventually kills Pakistan, leaving its nuclear weapons on the table.
Adopting this child-nation means more than building up Afghan security forces. Afghanistan cannot finance its police and army, much less the education system and vast infrastructure needed to fashion and fuel a self-sustaining economy. Its uncontrolled population growth stems from ignorance. Only through the spread of education and opportunity can narcotics production, criminality, warlordism, and fanaticism be eroded.
Finally, while it is important to learn from the Soviet Union’s successes and failures in Afghanistan, close comparisons between Coalition activities today and Soviet efforts in the 1980s quickly become silly. The Coalition can succeed where the Soviets failed. For that matter, we should also remember that the Soviets failed in the “easy” places where democracy now thrives, such as Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and other countries that are now helping in Afghanistan, and where the U.S. is now welcome. I remember Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and others during the dark days. It is no wonder to me that the Soviets failed while freedom and democracy succeeded. People who saw Prague then and can see it today likely will have great difficulty explaining the differences to the uninitiated. The Coalition in Afghanistan is largely comprised of nations that have suffered greatly in recent times. They get it.
We should adopt Afghanistan for the long term. If not, there will be perpetual and growing trouble. We can succeed in Afghanistan where others failed.
– Michael Yon is an independent reporter whose work is reader-supported.