Opinion Over tea in Kabul
Spend but a minute in Afghanistan,and you realise why US strategy there has to change
A few vignettes to explain why I believe Americas strategy in Afghanistan isnt working:
Scene 1: A home in Kabul where Im having tea with a remarkable woman,Soora Stoda,who runs a logistics company serving the American military.
Ms Stoda despises the Taliban and shudders as she remembers her terror as a seventh grader when the Taliban stormed her secret school for girls. She said Taliban thugs beat the girls and murdered the teacher,her aunt.
Yet Ms Stoda,like all contractors,has to pay off the Taliban directly or indirectly to work in insecure areas. She estimates that for every $1,000 her company is paid for work in such places,some $600 often ends up in the hands of the Taliban. Its the same with all contractors,and the upshot is that the American taxpayer has become a significant source of financing for the Taliban. One estimate: one US soldier causes enough money to leak to the Taliban to recruit another 10 fighters trying to kill that American.
Scene 2: A dusty shantytown in Kabul,with a group of hundreds of disgruntled men from war-torn Helmand Province.
The men say that they will probably end up joining the Taliban. What intrigues me is that the men dont seem particularly ideological. They said they were sickened when one commander recently beheaded seven of their fellow villagers. Their preference would be to get regular jobs and live in peace. But there are no jobs,and now they are being told that they will be kicked out of their camp. They say the threatened expulsion is the result of a land deal by tycoons tied to Karzai.
Several men say that they were recruited by the Taliban with a pitch that was partly ideological but also partly capitalist,promising hundreds of dollars a month and free food,tea and sugar. Our counterinsurgency doesnt include enough counterrecruitment.
Scene 3: A group of distinguished Afghans sit on a carpet in an office,telling stories.
They break my heart by wondering aloud whether the Russians or the Americans were worse. America does development projects, acknowledged a brigadier general in the police. But not as many as the Russians did. A retired brigadier general in the army added: If you go to the villages and ask people who was better,the Russians or the Americans,theyll say the Russians.
Grrr! The Soviet invasion helped destroy Afghanistan,while American troops these days try hard to be respectful and avoid civilian casualties But after nine years,many Afghans are sick of us.
My latest visit leaves me with 100 such vignettes suggesting to me that our strategy in Afghanistan is unsustainable. Were inadvertently financing our adversaries. Were backing a corrupt government that drives people to the Taliban. And were more eager to rescue the Afghans than the Afghans are to be rescued.
-NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
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