The recent Washington Post (WP) expose on Afghanistan tells a hard tale: more than 2,300 US soldiers killed, another 1,100 Allied soldiers, some 3,400 US contractors, and some 150,000 Afghans (including some 42,000 Taliban) killed, and a bill of almost $1 trillion dollars to DOD.

The Institute for Spending Reform estimates that Afghanistan has cost another $1 trillion among all other US Government departments and agencies, and a further $500 billion in accrued costs for veterans benefits over the next 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion. There will be additional costs in replacing of equipment that’s been used at higher than anticipated rates and will need to be replaced sooner than expected.

As the article pointed out, the US entered Afghanistan for the purpose of destroying Al Qaeda and ending the threat it posed to the United States. But, as the article points out:

“… as the war dragged on, the goals and mission kept changing and a lack of faith in the US strategy took root inside the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department.”

Overall, the article tells a tale of ignorance in the Pentagon, corruption in Kabul, and horrific planning all around.

“We don’t invade poor countries to make them rich,” James Dobbins, a former senior US diplomat who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan under Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. “We don’t invade authoritarian countries to make them democratic. We invade violent countries to make them peaceful and we clearly failed in Afghanistan.”

Perhaps. But at the war’s root lies one fundamental error, an error in assumptions. And as every planner knows, if you get the basic assumptions wrong, the plan will fail. And one assumption that underlies our efforts in Afghanistan, and arguably much of what we have attempted in the Middle East over decades, is that what we understand as a nation – as a country – is not what is understood as a nation in the Middle East.

There is a classic – Western Civilization – concept of a modern nation that requires meeting several conditions. Unfortunately, Afghanistan has, arguably, only one of them.

The conditions are these:

– Geographic Integrity
– Economic viability
– Political viability
– Raison d’être

Certainly there is a place on the map labeled Afghanistan – though the border with Pakistan remains a bit obscure (the Durand Line, of 1893, did not precisely define the border, and has only been tentatively agreed to by the Afghan government).

While there is potential for economic viability – there is a virtual (virtual is the operative word) cornucopia of natural resources that could be developed) – the fact is that the country’s main products, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, is opium and terrorism. As was pointed out in the Washington Post article, the only thing that seems to have flourished since the US occupation has been the opium harvest.

Politically, no one is in charge, but several claim to be. While it’s a moving target, Taliban forces control substantial portions of the terrain. The Long War Journal estimates that the Taliban control 17% of the terrain, and 12% of the population; the Afghan government controls 33% of the terrain and 46% of the population; and 49% of the terrain and 42% of the population are “contested.”

But what Afghanistan doesn’t have, in seemingly any meaningful degree, is that most critical of elements, that thing that separates one nation from another: the raison d’être, the “reason to be.” It’s important to understand that a nation’s raison d’être is not about ethnicity, it’s about political philosophy; it’s about the people on one side of a river looking at those on the other side and saying: “we are different, and here’s why.”

This is what makes a nation a real nation. Most nations have one, though the left in Europe want to eliminate them, and paint all countries with the same brush. (Brexit is more about the Brits saying: “we are different from Europe, we have a reason to be British,” than it was about everything else.)

The concept of a raison d’être is central to the idea of a modern state, or at least to a modern, Western State. It is also, in large part, at odds with many of the nations of the Middle East. The reason for this is Islam.

The West, based on Judeo-Christian tenets, has worked out a strong separation between church and state; Islam sees no separation between church and state. Rather, Islam insists the basis for society should be adherence to Sharia, law derived from the Koran and Hadith (tradition).

What that means from the Western perspective, is that the idea of making a modern nation-state in the Middle East, while at the same time insisting that Islam can flourish in that state, is a chimera. As has been pointed out by the President of Egypt, the path forward will require changes in how Islam is viewed by the population. In short, there needs to be a separation between church and state, a de facto reformation, something presently rejected by much of the Islamic world.

This point is never discussed by planners in the US government. Rather, it’s assumed that we can go to country X, (pick a country – Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, etc.), establish some sort of military and political stability, and that miraculously a stable political system will materialize that at the same time both keeps Islam at arms distance but doesn’t alienate Islam. Yet Sharia isn’t about nation-states or a country unique raison d’être or an independent political system; for a nation that follows Sharia, Islam is the raison d’être.

The long and short is that, in a very real sense Afghanistan is not, in the sense we want to use it, winnable, nor can it be. It will never be a nation that is “sort of like a real western nation.” This problem is the root of the political instability in the Middle East and the reason that the only stable countries are all led by strongmen.

Until US planners understand that fact we are likely to make little long-term headway anywhere in the Middle East, East Africa or North Africa.

Copyright 2019 Arrias
http://www.vicsocotra.com