AN OLD AFGHANISTAN HAND TOLD me about a buzzword now popular among US policy wonks in Kabul and Washington: “reify.” Ruefully laughing, he said “reify” refers to a concept being confused with reality. In the eleventh year of a failing war in Afghanistan, it’s about as good a word as any to use to describe the US situation.
Even as anti-American violence continues to wrack Afghanistan following the latest Koran-burning incident, and Taliban attacks are spiking to their highest levels in the war, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little was insisting the insurgency is “on its heels.” Mr. Little stated the ISAF leaders had “strong sense” that “we must continue to do everything we can to carry out the strategy [which] we believe has been working for some time.”
Based on my embedded reporting in eastern Afghanistan and investigations into the toxic system that links opportunistic US careerists, corrupt Afghan officials, and jihadist insurgents, I can testify there is little correlation between the happy talk promulgated from Washington podiums and the on-the-ground reality in Afghanistan. Despite the US government’s much-vaunted counterinsurgency offensive, the Islamic fundamentalist insurgency has continued to grow. Though the US has spent more than $20 billion in training and equipment, the Afghan security forces are still woefully incapable. The hundreds of billions of US taxpayers’ dollars wasted on counterinsurgency logistics and aid in Afghanistan has had virtually no impact on the insurgency—beyond helping to finance it. “We are funding both sides of this war,” frustrated American soldiers repeatedly told me, which I can confirm after hundreds of interviews, and research into countless government reports, white papers, and news accounts. After more than a decade in power, the Afghan government’s most notable achievement is its lofty ranking in lists of the world’s most corrupt administrations.
After decades of international duplicity, the Afghan people are understandably ready for change. Noted Afghan scholar and Indiana University professor Nazif Shahrani recently emailed me about his countrymen: “They are sick and tired of lies, especially from those who present themselves as their friends and helpers, while all they do is help themselves on their account.” Afghan ethnic leaders are girding for a reprise of the vicious civil war that ravaged the country in the 1990s. With the withdrawal of US troops, foreign policy analysts envision a bifurcated Afghanistan, with American-backed ethnic groups controlling the regions north of the Hindu Kush mountains and Taliban-led fundamentalist Pashtuns governing south and east of the range.
Polls show American public support for the war is dropping precipitously, but Pentagon press secretary Little continued to parrot the party line: “We need more time, more resources and manpower.” Late last year I sat in a military conference where a Special Ops spokesman spoke candidly about the implications of the military’s “surge recovery,” AKA troop withdrawal: He said the Taliban didn’t really care that much about US soldiers any more. They knew the Americans were on their way out. The Taliban jihadists were focusing on winning the support of the Afghan people, particularly the Pashtuns, and on defeating the puppet Karzai government. And they probably will.
We need to de-reify: bring our concepts into line with the Afghanistan reality. One way or another, there is most likely going to be a major humanitarian crisis in poor, benighted Afghanistan. And it is the clear responsibility of the United States to help remediate that disaster. We broke it. We need to help pick up the pieces.