A LETTER FROM SOMEONE WHO KNOWS AFGHANISTAN WELL
(posted by permission of the author)
Dear Bill,
Close to two years' worth of observation in the Persian Gulf 'til the onset of the Iranian revolution (Oct. 1977 to July 1979). Going to the Middle East was my main reason for joining the Navy. During the time I was kicked out of Area Studies my sophomore year at CCHS to do independent study, I concluded that the Gulf more than any other region was the key to understanding the world at large (this was a couple years before the first oil crisis). Since I only chipped paint and stood watch over the ocean, I wasn't much of a security risk, so I could visit Soviet ships, talk with PLO people, visit Israel, etc. without creating too much of stir. A decade later I spent 5 years in graduate school (1990-1995) contemplating Afghanistan and adjacent mountain environs, and even was asked by my UC Davis professor to do a tiny bit of outsourcing for the CIA while I was working on my thesis at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
The Navy enlistment was my way of stepping beyond the filter that exists between the US and the world at large. As a consequence, the recent events in New York and Washington do not surprise me in the least. My experiences overseas, and particularly the huge discrepancy between the US media's portrayal of the Middle East and the realities obvious to all who have been there, have also framed my suspicious attitude towards the perchlorate problem. I think many, if not most of my acquaintances here in Rancho Cordova suspect I am insane in regards to the water contamination problems here, but that's only because they have never ventured out of America's mass media cocoon. They choose to dismiss the obvious, well-documented realities about what happened to this community 36 years ago. So:
Violence is a way of life in rural Afghanistan -- it's the last great bastion of unadulterated pastoral nomadism. Many of its inhabitants are descended from refugees from the Czar's draft of nomads for military service in 1915. With the Soviet invasion, subsequent influx of huge amounts of weaponry, and aftermath of civil wars, Afghanistan has been mayhem on steroids for two decades. When you think Afghan, think Klingon.
Bin Laden started his "Heart of Darkness" adventure in war-torn Afghanistan when he was 19, and he found his pastoral nomadic cultural roots there. For a cinematic vignette of all of the cliches about the pastoral nomadic way of life, head down to Blockbuster video and review "Lawrence of Arabia." Like Hitler, Bin Laden's early experiences in Afghanistan have left him addicted to war. Like Pol Pot or Castro, Bin Laden's privileged background has given him an excellent perspective as to how society at large works, which gives him a potential to wreck havoc as he works to other-actualize (as opposed to self-actualize) his ideas.
The Reagan administration froze my professor, Nigel Allan, out of the CIA and labeled him a security risk because he argued that shipping all those arms to Afghanistan would turn the place into Hell. Like Lawrence, he had "gone native" as far as the intelligence brass was concerned. Nigel's position was that we should have let the Russians take Afghanistan, that the Russkis would have bankrupted themselves trying to secularize the place after a decade or so without us supplying much weaponry to the resistance. Now one of Ronnie Reagan's best and brightest "freedom fighters" has deconstructed the World Trade Center and bombed the Pentagon, which must give Nigel some grim satisfaction.
* * *
Very few people with a heritage from Afghanistan are true Afghans in the strict sense -- it's a subtribe of Pukhtoon speakers , if I remember right. ... According to Nigel, there really isn't a state of Afghanistan -- Afghanistan is just a no-man's land for the Great Powers, an opium-growing reservation for the nomads and mountain farmers. The Soviet Union was destroyed by its effort to turn Afghanistan into a real state. The Hindu Kush and Manhattan are truly the antipodes of the world system, so it really isn't very surprising that this conflict has arisen.
* * *
My anxiety level has gone down considerably since I have seen Powell and Rumsfeld urge the TV audience to be patient, that sorting this out and getting those responsible is going to take some time. My bet is the words of support from Pakistan are just that -- words. I suspect the Pashto in Karachi would tear the place apart if there was any obvious anti-Bin Laden military force transiting through there on the way to Kandahar. If the Pakistanis have remote desert bases in Baluchistan that can be cordoned off and adequately supplied from the air, then that might be a possibility. With Pakistan's legitimate help this my not take very long, but without real enthusiasm on the part of the Pakistanis it may take some considerable time to work other angles (e.g. via the Russians, Uzbeks, and Tajiks on the other end of the Hindu Kush).
From a social science perspective it will be very interesting to see how long it takes to get Bin Laden -- it really is a War of the Worlds. If there is no upheaval in the Middle East, my bet is that it will take less time than Bin Laden thinks before he is forced to make his last stand. But if Saudi Arabia bursts into flames in a civil war, all bets are off. For me this really is a justifiable war, not so much because of the oil but because Bin Laden and his followers would have no qualms whatsoever about using a nuke, which makes them a little different from you or I.
-- LLL
(The following arrived a day later)
As emotionally unsatisfying as it may sound, this conflict may at first appear more like a chess game than a war. If we can enlist effective support from the Pashto-speaking portions of Pakistan, then Bin Laden's last stand may come much quicker than he has calculated. But I presume the Pashto portion of Karachi would go berserk if that port was used as a staging area for an anti-Bin Laden military expediton. Perhaps there are some isolated desert bases in Baluchistan near the Pakistani-Afghanborder that can be cordoned off. If Pakistan can't be brought in line, then Russia, the Central Asian Republics, and the Tajiks may be the bestroute. That means becoming embroiled in a major way in the tribal civil war, but ultimately it may be the best way. An early indicator of how tough things will be is the status of the Christian missionaries held by the Taliban-- if they are released, Bin Laden may have less Pashto support than I think he has.
The report [of the death of the head of the Northern Alliance -- the chief opponent of the Taliban] indicates things are going to be very, very tough in Afghanistan. The Tajik leader Masood was as indispensable to the resistance to Taliban as Bin Laden is indispensible to his organization. The US should not castigate itself for being caught by a surprise attack when Bin Laden managed to get Masood as well. Nobody in the world could be more security conscious than Ahmad Shah Masood. The successful hit on Masood was probably one of the go-ahead signs for the kamikazee attacks on New York and Washington.
I can't help but suspect similar events have occurred or are about to occur in Saudi Arabia. The linkages between Afghanistan and the Gulf are much greater than most Americans realize: the desert region that lies between Taliban's base at Pashto-speaking Kandahar and the sea is Baluchistan, and the Baluch have for decades been very prominent amongst truckers in the Arabian peninsula. In exchange for facilitating a coup within the Saudi family in 1964, Osama Bin Laden's father was given a monopoly on all construction projects in the kingdom. Thus the Bin Ladens have strong, long-standing family relationships with thousands upon thousands of contract workers from all over the Moslem world.
I firmly believe 5000 plus Americans just died not because of the delusions of an isolated cell of terrorists, but because there is a serious effort afoot to establish a new pan-Islamic, multi-ethnic polity along the lines of the medieval Caliphate via a revolution in Saudi Arabia. Our enemies are counting on us to launch out into the Middle East, missiles blazing, just as the hijackers counted on the captain of the plane to leave the cockpit after they stabbed the stewardess. While it is contrary to human nature, as a nation it is imperative that we figuratively stay inside the cockpit until we have a chance to formulate an effective counterattack that won't blow up in our face.
Let me also remind you that Bin Laden no doubt has factional support within the Pakistani military and intelligence communities, especially amongst the Pashto, and that Pakistan is a nuclear power. The current situation does have the potential to be a crisis of the first order.
-- LLL