Afghanistan

I just finished this morning Barfield’s Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. I mentioned it before, but wanted to return to it as I think it is currently the definitive book on Afghanistan’s history out there right now. Barfield comes to a few conclusions about the current state of Afghanistan that I think are worth noting.

First, Barfield believes the Karzai government has squandered their opportunity and is losing legitimacy with every day that passes. Inevitably in Afghanistan, the key to ruling the country by the acquiescence, if not the allegiance of the populace has been the perception of legitimacy of one’s right to rule. This legitimacy has not historically come through elections, but familial, religious, or nationalistic claims.

Second, the Karzai government (and initially his international backers) believed that Afghanistan had to have a strong centralized government to hold together disparate ethnic groups. This belief came despite the recorded demise of every regime that has tried to wield significant power over the entirety of the country from Kabul. Indeed, the most effective regimes have declared supremacy from Kabul, but allowed the historical regions to be largely autonomous. The key has always been to limit the actual footprint of the Kabul government in the day to day lives of the Afghans.

It was also a misreading of the ethnic divisions. They exist, to be certain, but have not manifested into the kind of dynamic we have seen in the Balkans. There is an Afghan identity, which may be secondary to ones ethnic or tribal identity, but not so inferior as to foment a nationalist uprising in specific ethnic regions.

Third, every regime in Kabul that tried to enact sweeping social changes has faced opposition from the rural areas of Afghanistan. The social changes are seen as an assault on Islam and, in some regions, Pashtunwali that have defined relationships and local governance for hundreds of years. Successful and stable regimes have fostered social change in major cities, but largely left social custom unchanged in the rural areas. This goes back to the issue of a strong central government. If social changes are enforced at the local level, then the government footprint isn’t light and resentment arises, oft leading to rebellion.

Given these observations of the current state of affairs in Afghanistan, Barfield makes two key recommendations on how to get a handle on the situation.

1) Don’t look to have a strong central government. Instead, create a federal or pseudo-federal system where governance is largely handled in the historic regions of the country. This federalization should not look like the districts or whatever that Karzai has created. Instead, the historic power centers of Herat, Khandahar, Kabul, and Mazar should be empowered to handle much of the governance. This is how Afghanistan has worked historically and there is little reason to believe it wouldn’t work now. In fact, it would feed nicely into the dogma that Afghanistan is trapped in the middle ages.

2) Everyone needs to slow down on the social changes. This is hard to listen and abhorrent to many in the West, but Barfield makes note of the failure of all regimes that tried to change social custom dramatically and uniformly across the country. Instead, he notes the shifting demography, the large number of young people, the increasing urbanization, and he recommends a model adopted by the most stable of Afghan regimes in the 20^th century. Embrace social change in urban areas, but don’t enforce it in the rural areas. Over time customs and culture change. Rather to have the people choose to change, then to have the government enforce change.

I think both of these suggestions are pretty solid, though maybe a tough political sell. Overall, I greatly enjoyed the book and it satisfied what I wanted. I wanted something that took me back to square one in Afghanistan. Barfield does that and does it well and he brings you all the way to the present and gives some great analysis of the current situation and some recommendation on how to move forward. Will American, and perhaps more importantly Afghan, policymakers learn the lessons that Barfield offers? I have my doubts, but if you want to know more about Afghanistan and put the book down with a sense of hope that there is a path out of the wilderness then I recommend picking up Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History.

About Tonight

Ah, the First Tuesday in November, E-Day. A few thoughts and predictions about this evening's outcome:
- GOP picks up between 35 and 38 seats in the House.
- Joe Sestak and Patrick Murphy win in PA
- Harry Reid hangs onto his seat.

One overarching comment directed to the Obama Administration: a mid-term defeat does not 1994 (nor, ultimately, 1996) make. The Republican Congressmen and women elected tonight are not interested in legislating and, therefore, are not interested in compromise. I would stop looking at the post-1994 Clinton White House as a model.

Latin America from on the ground

I spend the last couple weeks in Latin America and thought I'd provide my thoughts on a few of the countries I saw. Some of the lead-ins are going to sound like something out of a Thomas Freidman column. Please don't take that as an endorsement of his style, content, or being.

Brazil
I was in Sao Paulo last week and something occurred to me. These folks have a long way to go, but they are making progress. I was staying at a fantastic Hilton is what was a decidedly business district (the adjoining mall was closed on Saturdays and Sundays) thinking up new words for large, complex topics and decided to take this picture out my window.

It's a little bit hard to see, but notice the rising favellas on the hill. I was in Sao Paulo and even as I was ensconced in a fabulous hotel, I was advised not to wander too far. This is the juxtaposition of a place like Sao Paulo. Barely more then a stones throw away from Brazil's world trade center (in the foreground) was a favella. Now the government is investing heavily in this location and I would wager the days are numbered for the particular favella.

This was a theme throughout the Latin American cities I visited in the past few weeks. There are a growing number of haves, but a persistent number of havenots as well. Of course, different governments have embraced economic policy. The great contrast being between Chile and Brazil (among the countries I visited).

Chile
I was talking to a businessman in a five star hotel in Santiago drinking a pisco sour (which I was told originated in Chile) he spoke of how the country has been dealing with some issues, both short-term and long term. In the short-term the country had been dealing with a massive earthquake and the mining disaster. In fact, as we met Chilean news had minute by minute coverage of the miners with the countdown graphic as they road the Phoenix to escape the cavern that had been their prison for 2 months. Despite this, he remarked how proud his country was. They had dealt with both problems with aplomb, in his estimation, and it seemed to be validation of a system of governance and economics that allowed Chile to do better then many countries during the recession.

Of course, this prompted the long-term issue. Chile suffers from a post-Pinochet identity crisis. As the liberal, Chicago school economic policies of the Pinochet regime bear fruit Chileans are put in a weird position. Can they applaud some of the policies while deriding the man? It is a whisper on the lips of many successful Chileans, something alluded to but rarely said allowed. The mention of Pinochet can still induce a visceral reaction among many Chileans, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the economic policies and institutions his regime put in place have positioned Chile well to move past a commodity dependent economy. Of course challenges remain, and they haven't made the transition away from commodities yet. Many of the miners broke through to the surface and immediately called for new mining safety regulations to prevent the kind of accidents they fell victims to. They weren't martyrs, but messengers and they brought their message at the point of greatest resonance with the population. The government response remains to be seen.

Peru
I really liked Peru, the people, the city of Lima, the food, and the pisco sours (which I was told originated in Peru). It, like many of the cities in Latin America is a city of contrasts. Consider this picture of the tourist-y upscale district of Miraflores.















And then consider this shot of a village about 30km away near the Pachacamac ruins. As much as I loved Peru, on statistic that I had heard shocked me. I had read Hernando De Soto's The Other Path sometime ago for grad school and he talks extensively about the need to bring the informal economy into the government fold. He talks about valuing ownership, and he presents all this as a way to combat the ideology of the leftist terrorist group The Shining Path.

Peruvian President Fujimoro embraced many of the policies and indeed The Shining Path was largely marginalized. The streets of Lima were some of the safest I walked in the region. And yet I heard that 60% of the Peruvian economy is estimated to be informal. This is the largest percentage in Latin America.


So those are just some random thoughts about a few of the countries I visited. It's an amazing region with amazing people and history (and food: chicarron, feijda, ceviche). All my observations are amateurish reflections from 4 and 5 star hotels, but for what it's worth, that's what I saw and thought.

GOP: All the Benefits of Anti-Bailout Populism . . .

. . . none of the downsides.

Awakening Council Reverting

No matter how you look at it, this isn't good for Iraq or the US. It seems like there are a number of reasons for the reversion back to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, but perhaps the most troubling is the perception (or perhaps reality) that the Iraqi government isn't keen to bring Awakening Council members into the fold.

Citizens United: Another Angle

Since it fostered so much debate yesterday, I thought it would be worth while to post a link to this piece in Democracy in America. Matt Steinglass raises the question of the appropriateness of foreign money being spent to influence U.S. elections. He lays out rather logically how the Citizens United decision makes it legal (and largely untraceable) for foreign governments to spend large sums of money to influence American elections. He notes:

Surely, the Supreme Court would hold it unconstitutional for Congress to pass a law prohibiting foreign citizens from getting up on a soapbox in Central Park and stating that they prefer one candidate or another in an American election. On what basis, then, can Congress bar foreign corporations from buying unlimited campaign advertisements advocating their preferred candidates in American elections? Ah, one might object, but buying campaign advertising is not the same as engaging in speech. And corporations are not the same as individuals. These are precisely the two principles that Messrs Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas rejected in Citizens United.

For me this brings back two things I thought were obvious until the Citizens United decision. 1) Buying advertising is not identical to practicing free speech and 2) Corporations (and unions) are not individuals. Of course, as Ben pointed out yesterday, the real kicker of the Citizens United decision was the removal of reporting requirements. We are now left with less data about the additional money being spent and where that money is coming from.

I wonder how the most vociferous defenders of the decision would feel if Saudi royals influenced city council elections in Dearborn, Michigan in the hopes of founding a Wahabi grade school? My gut says they would be non-plussed at the notion.

Marc Thiessen, Ideologically Blinded Moron

Marc Thiessen’s propensity for writing ideologically-driven nonsense on the pages of the Washington Post sets him apart, well, not all, from most of the rest of that paper’s columnists. The deficiencies of the WaPo’s Op-Ed page are well known and oft commented upon. Thiessen, though, is particularly objectionable in part for his mindless defense of all things Bush and attack of all things Obama—much in the way the Bush administration approached the Clinton administration to its ultimate determent, see 9/11—and in part for his suborning evil (read: torture).

Among the strange positions he’s taken are an opposition to targeted killing (because it demonstrates Obama is weak on terrorism) and opposition to civilian trials for terrorists (because it demonstrates Obama is weak on terrorism). In his most recent diatribe he writes:

The Ghailani prosecution is hanging by a thread today not because of the interrogation techniques employed against him, but because of the Obama administration's ideological insistence on treating terrorists like common criminals and trying them in federal courts.

There are myriad problems with this statement. One obvious problem is that the Ghailani prosecution is not hanging by a thread—if it were, the government likely would have pursued an interlocutory appeal of the decision that inspired Thiessen’s Op-Ed. Another obvious problem is that the reason for the set back in the Ghailani case has nothing to with the Obama administration—it has everything to do with the Bush administration's program of using overly harsh interrogation methods at secret prisons. The setback, if it is a setback at all, can be place squarely at the feet of the Bush administration, Thiessen’s former employer.

Ultimately, though, the oddest part of Thiessen’s preferred approach—“they can be held indefinitely under the laws of war”—is its implicit elevation of Ghailani, a terrorist, to the status of a soldier. Combatants and civilians directly participating in hostilities are detainable—not indefinitely, but until the end of hostilities—under the law of armed conflict. This is not meant to punish the combatants but to remove them from the battlefield and return them, unharmed and unpunished, once the war has ceased. Terrorists, on the other hand, are criminals: they have not killed other combatants (legitimate targets); they have not targeted infrastructure of military import and utility; they have not abided by the laws or customs of war. No, they have killed untargetable civilians, attacked civilian infrastructure: they have committed murder. They ought to be treated as criminals—and soldiers, including our soldiers, deserve better than Thiessen’s implicit moral equivalence with terrorists.

Finally, from a pragmatic perspective, civilian trials have proved eminently more effective than CSRTs or Military Commissions in dealing with terrorists. Since 9/11, upwards of 300 terrorists have been successfully prosecuted and convicted in civilian courts, garnering something like a 90% conviction rate. In contrast, 70% of detainees at GTMO who have challenged their detention through habeas corpus proceedings have won.

That Town Hall Analogy

A few months ago, while discussing the impact of Citizen's United, I used an analogy (that I stole from a colleague) centered on Norman Rockwell's famous Four Freedoms series. Specifically: imagine a New England town hall meeting. Now, instead of the banker waiting for the mechanic to finish speaking before the banker gets to speak, imagine the room filled--every seat filled--with someone wearing the same colored t-shirt, sponsored by Corporation X, to repeat X's talking points. Now imagine that when you walk up to the town hall meeting, every seat has already been filled by people paid by X and there's a line out the door of people paid by X. That's the potential impact of Citizen's United: the drowning out of all other points of view in a race.

Here's one exhibit: 60 Plus has spent 83 percent as much as Kapanke has spent on his entire campaign.

The Governator in his Closing Scenes

I've often considered the political existence of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but haven't dedicated the time to come to any conclusions. The Economist does that for me, and I think it's a nice little "history at present" roundup.

Time will tell what, if any, impact the Governator actually had. I can't help feeling that in many policies, Gov. Schwarzenegger advanced sensible, well-reasoned policies but failed to get the buy-in from the roustabouts on either end of the spectrum. Pity that. His story also makes me consider President Obama, promises of post-partisanship, and the inability to govern from the center.

The Economist piece closes on a back-handedly encouraging note, "Seven years ago Californians were furious enough to elect him but not to follow through. Now more of them realise what a mess their state is in."

Will we be saying the same thing about the United States in 2016? Will the Brits learn to use a "z" instead of that bastard "s"? Time will tell, but odds are greater on the former.

The Global Fund: Austerity and Aid

International development and aid work is not something we talk about a lot on this blog, despite the editors personal connections to some great friends doing great things all over the world. (Example) But I thought it would be worthwhile to consider how the global financial crisis and the calls for austerity, particularly in Western Europe, is impacting aid work.

The Global Fund, a major multilateral aid group working intently on health issues, fell $1.3 billion from its targeted pledge of the $13 billion they needed just to meet existing commitments. They received pledges for $11.7 billion, but had hoped to increase donations to $20 billion. According to The Economist, "this would have allowed [The Global Fund],...to triple the number of antiretroviral treatments for HIV from 2.5m at the end of 2009 to 7.5m."

The article pointed to a couple bright spots, including a commitment from the US to donate $4 billion over 3 years (if I'm reading the article correctly). This gives The Global Fund a longer timeline.

But a separate article at Baobob mentions something else that has larger geopolitical implications, namely the emergence of China as an aid donor to the African continent. While Chinese donations have been more about industrial development, rather than health-related projects, it shouldn't be lost on anyone how this could lead to a degree of patronage on the continent.

What does it all mean? I think it means as the Western world is constrained by demands of austerity two things are going to happen in Africa:

1) Essential health aid isn't going to be coming.

2) China's continued patronage and rising prestige with particular governments could give rise to the kind of client-state relationships that defined the Cold War and hobbled Africa's "post-colonial" development.

Of course altruism and a commitment to humanity should be enough of a reason for Western governments to continue pledging aid, but if it isn't (and oft times it isn't), perhaps we should consider the strategic reasons.