This afternoon, Payson Library will play host to the closing comments of the Borders of Faith Panel. The panel, moderated by the School of Law Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, is focused on improving interfaith relations. Thursday’s closing comments will address “informal efforts at joining religion with the political process in the Middle East and elsewhere.” Would that such dialogue had occurred sooner, on a national level.
The war in Afghanistan is drawing to a bloody, uncertain close, marked by scandals and slip-ups as the United States begins the tedious process of withdrawing Americans troops by 2014.
From the leaked video of Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban soldiers in January, to the Korans burned at a U.S. base in February, to the horrific massacre of 16 Afghan villagers (nine of them children) by a rogue Army Sergeant just this month — this trifecta of unfortunate events is grounded in the disconnect between military leadership, forces on the ground and the Afghan people.
Our problems in Afghanistan (and the region in general) can never be solved by holding hands in a circle and singing “Kumbaya.” But a little cultural introspection, now, that’s a different story.
That opportunity to build — be it roads, schoolhouses or relationships with the people of Afghanistan — is long gone. Now the only choice that remains for the United States is to withdraw and hope that nothing else goes wrong.
The key to slackening al-Qaeda’s hold over Afghanistan lay in the hearts and minds of the people, who are predominantly tribal, Sunni Muslims, who have adhered to the same traditions for centuries. Supplanting an American ideal of democracy in that country failed decisively under the previous administration, and the Obama Administration has turned its focus to encouraging dialogues with tribal leaders to quiet unrest.
The events of the past three months have crippled that effort severely; the shootings in Kandahar have permanently alienated tribal leaders, who had previously allied themselves against the Taliban and had been sympathetic to the Americans. The Taliban have suspended peace talks with the Americans, which complicates the timetable for a peaceful withdrawal.
The killings of March, and the Koran burning on February 20, sparked riots throughout Afghanistan and drove a wedge between America and president Hamid Karzai. In his own words (made during his comments to grieving families in the aftermath of the shooting): The Americans “are demons.” And the Koran burnings in February were “satanic acts that will never be forgiven by apologies.”
This rhetoric has toned down but the sentiment remains. The American occupation has lost all legitimacy with the Afghan people, and we can’t be out fast enough.
We came to route out al-Qaeda and its defenders (the Taliban), but that simple mission devolved into democracy building and slipshod attempts at humanitarian outreach, pockmarked with the suffering of Afghan civilians, to say nothing of the costs in blood and treasure to our nation.
Afghanistan has been the “graveyard of empires” for a very long time—turning away everyone from Alexander the Great to the British Empire, the Soviet Union and now the United States. With that in mind, Obama has played a shrewd game of juggling peaceful (and speedy) withdrawal from Afghanistan while refocusing and redirecting American resources to dismantling al-Qaeda. The events of the last three months jeopardize any hope of peaceful withdrawal, and the very real possibility of Afghanistan’s descent into chaos after American withdrawal looms large.
The plain reality of our situation in Afghanistan is this: If we had truly understood the costs and cultural/political/social landscape that the United States would have to navigate to achieve “victory” in Afghanistan, we wouldn’t have invaded in the first place.
