What the Drive by Media not telling you about Afghanistan

Banditry has always been a big problem in Afghanistan.

There has never been an effective national police force, and army operations merely caused the bandits to scatter back to their villages.

The basic problem is that there is not one Afghanistan, but hundreds. Each tribe and warlord has its own army which polices its neighborhood. Everything outside that area is considered potentially hostile territory. Men are free to go outside the tribal area and become bandits. Loot taken in battle (or armed robbery) has always been a big deal in Pushtun tribal culture.

So while most Afghans can understand the usefulness of keeping the main road from Kabul to Kandahar open, many of those same Afghans condone their kinsmen robbing people on that highway, as long as it's done to "strangers" (not from our tribe or, even better, foreigners.)

While a lot of Afghans, especially those living in urban areas, try to get away from these medieval attitudes, the majority of those in the countryside are more traditional in their attitudes. This is where a lot of the violence comes from.

Journalists tend to blame it all on the "Taliban," but in fact, most of it is just those gun totting country boys doing what they've always done. More are on the payroll of some drug gang, than a Taliban outfit.

Life would be so much easier, so the conventional wisdom goes, if peace could be obtained by just destroying the "Taliban." But the real enemy is a set of cultural attitudes that aid and abet the lawlessness. It's a much more elusive target.

Cities like Kabul have become very different parts of Afghanistan. You see lots of women without veils (even as Western media report "Taliban terror creeping into Kabul"), and men without beards. Videos and music are freely available, as are alcoholic drinks.

A lot of these city slickers are fresh from the country, where the restrictive lifestyle of "tradition" continues to drive the more adventurous away. This is the sort of thing that offends tribal and religious leaders. These guys don't want change, because it tends to mean less power and money for them. That's why the Taliban has such a following in the countryside, and not in the cities.

News reports about Pakistani troops exchanging fire with NATO and U.S. helicopters at the border appear to be more stories than news. Many of the border guards (a force recruited from local tribes) are pro-Taliban (or on the Taliban payroll), and quick to fire on aircraft and any armed men they are not familiar with.

That's been going on for decades, and was the cause of tension with the Russians in the 1980s.

Real violence between Pakistan and the United States is unlikely, because the U.S. is the major financial and military supplier for Pakistan. Thus without U.S. support, military upgrades don't happen and the economy tanks. Religion is one thing, defense and economics are something else (that is more important to more Pakistanis).

Meanwhile, the government makes the right noises about "defending Pakistan's borders" while doing nothing to actually interfere with American operations on either side of the border.

Over 20,000 Pushtuns have fled from Pakistan into Afghanistan to avoid the violence between Taliban gunmen and the Pakistani army.

The Pakistani Taliban are under attack in several areas (Waziristan, Swat Valley and Bajaur) and losing in all of them. The head of the Pakistani Taliban has just died, after being ill for several months, leaving behind a power struggle. The Pakistani Taliban is in disarray and falling apart. This is being felt in Afghanistan, where fewer "volunteers" are coming across to help out the Taliban there.

In the face of this, the Afghan Taliban say they will keep fighting throughout the Winter. NATO responds by announcing another Winter offensive. This will get interesting, because NATO forces are more mobile in Winter.

Traditionally, Afghans stay indoors during the Winter. Getting a chill can be fatal, and the rain, snow and ice make it difficult to get around.

The government has again openly called for Taliban leader Mullah Omar to come negotiate with the government. This comes in the wake of several years worth of successful negotiations with lower level Taliban leaders.

Many of these guys have left the Taliban as a result. There are also reports, denied by the government, that Saudi Arabia is sponsoring secret peace talks between the government and the Taliban.

One has to ask, why would the Taliban want to negotiate? Put simply, while the drug gangs are doing well (despite heroin production falling 20 percent from last year), the Taliban are on everyone's hit list, and are taking a lot of hits.

Now defeated al Qaeda operatives are moving in from Iraq and elsewhere, and blowing people up. That generates more hostility than support, and this hurts the Taliban as well.

Within the Taliban, a debate is on over how to deal with the lack of progress. The Taliban have been able to generate more violence, and dire headlines in the West, but not much else.

True believers are getting discouraged.

U.S. and NATO commanders believe they can largely shut down the Taliban and al Qaeda if they have some more troops. The U.S. has agreed to send three more brigades next year. NATO nations, urged on by France, are trying to muster more troops for Afghanistan.

By next year, changes in Pakistan, and growing attacks on Afghan drug gangs are expected to weaken the Taliban even more.

The new government in Pakistan is behind the recent army offensives against the Taliban, and has just replaced the head of their intelligence agency, the ISI, which originally invented the Taliban back in the 1990s.

The ISI has long been full of Islamic conservatives, but the new head is different. How different will become apparent by early next year.

HOO-ah: Curse Of Competent Officers

Eight years of efforts to create new armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq has reminded American military and civilian leaders that culture makes a big difference in determining the military capabilities of a nation.

This not a politically correct, which is why decades of U.S. Army Special Forces experience pointing this out, never took root in the Pentagon. But now the truth of this unpleasant reality has to be confronted.

As Special Forces operators have noted for decades, while they trained soldiers in foreign countries, not every culture absorbed their lessons the same way.

The Special Forces are a unique organization. A large part of their training is learning all about foreign cultures. The Special Forces training services provides these Special Forces operators with valuable immersion in the cultures they study.

What the Special Forces have learned is that military effectiveness tends to vary according to the economic success of a culture.

In other words, those nations that have a thriving economy, tend to be capable of absorbing the Special Forces training and becoming very effective soldiers.

The critical factor, though, is not temperament of the troops, but the abilities of the NCOs (sergeants) and officers. As the old saying goes, "there are no bad troops, only bad officers."

This was demonstrated in the 18th and 19th centuries, as European nations established colonial empires in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Everywhere they went, they created local military forces. They trained the troops they same way they trained their own, but using European officers and NCOs.

Eventually, they developed local NCOs and officers, but this took years. You can train an illiterate local guy to be a competent infantryman in a few months. But you can't create effective military units with these guys unless you have good NCOs and officers.

Since the local leadership tended to be corrupt, obsessed with social status (rather than performance) or simply not interested in the working that hard (and long) to become a Western quality officer or NCO, the Europeans provided their own people to do the job, until some of the local worthies could be persuaded to accept the Western way of doing things.

So the Special Forces have long known that training the low level troops is easy, it's developing equally competent officers and NCOs that is really difficult.

If the local leadership were as dedicated and civic minded as in the West, the local economy would be prosperous, and the government would be competent and effective. And even when effective officers and NCOs are selected and trained, you have another problem.

These military leaders soon realize that they are the only competent and effective leaders in the country.

Unless the rest of the culture shapes up, you start down the road of alternating military dictatorship (as the officers take over the government, "for the good of the country") and chaotic civilian rule (which screws things up and triggers another military takeover).

This goes on until the civilian leaders realize that the ancient customs of tribalism, corruption and, well, you know the rest, won't work in the modern world.

Even the royal family in Saudi Arabia (and several other surviving monarchies) recognize this, and are trying to reform their cultures to create a population capable of providing effective leadership for the economy, government and military. These aristocrats know that, at best, they will get a constitutional monarchy (as found in several European nations, like Britain, Spain, Sweden and many others).

At worse, they will get a republic or dictatorship, and a monarchy in exile.

But the alternative is falling behind economically, and eventually becoming a poverty stricken backwater.