Over the summer, the Afghan Taliban's military committee distributed "A Book of Rules," in Pashto, to its fighters. The book's eleven chapters seem to draw from the population-centric principles of F.M. 3-24, the U.S. Army's much publicized counter-insurgency field manual, released in 2006. Henceforth, the Taliban guide declares, suicide bombers must take "the utmost steps . . . to avoid civilian human loss." Commanders should generally insure the "safety and security of the civilian's life and property." Also, lest anxious Afghan parents get the wrong idea, Taliban guerrillas should avoid hanging around with beardless young boys and should particularly refrain from "keeping them in camps."
The manual might be risible if the Taliban's coercive insurgency were not so effective. Afghanistan's self-absorbed President, Hamid Karzai, might even consider leafing through it; if he could account for his citizenry's appetite for justice and security half as adaptively as his enemies do, Barack Obama would not be struggling so hard to locate the "good war" he pledged to win during his campaign for the White House.
Afghanistan's deterioration cannot be blamed on one man, and certainly not on Karzai. After the Taliban's fall, he was a symbol of national unity in a broken land—for several years, he was perhaps the only Afghan leader able to attract the simultaneous confidence of northern Tajik militias, southern Pashtun tribes, and international aid donors. The landslide he won in the 2004 election truly reflected his standing. Gradually, however, Karzai seemed to succumb to palace fever and corruption...
Much more at The New Yorker.
Comments
"Instead of concentrating on the critical mission of keeping Islamist terrorists on the defensive, we've mired ourselves by attempting to modernize a society that doesn't want to be--and cannot be--transformed....
Initially, Afghanistan wasn't a war of choice. We had to dislodge and decimate al-Qaeda, while punishing the Taliban and strengthening friendlier forces in the country. Our great mistake was to stay on in an attempt to build a modernized rule-of-law state in a feudal realm with no common identity.
We needed to smash our enemies and leave. Had it proved necessary, we could have returned later for another punitive mission. Instead, we fell into the great American fallacy of believing ourselves responsible for helping those who've harmed us."
Ralph Peters