Afghanistan-A Bleak Future As The Past Repeats Itself
Jack Devine Former CIA Deputy Director of Operations and Chief of the CIA Afghan Task Force (1986-87) and Whitney Kassel former Foreign Affairs Specialist for Counter-terrorism Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and who has also worked in Pakistan and Afghanistan, have just published probably the best analysis you will get anywhere about where Afghanistan is heading.
The article is entitled 'Afghanistan:Withdrawal Issues'.
So as not to ruin their hard work and complex analysis, which, in my opinion, is spot on, I will just add several observations they have allured to in this article.
(What I say below about the direction of U.S.-Saudi-Pakistan foreign policy are entirely subjective and in no way do I ascribe them to the article 'Afghanistan,Withdrawal Issues'. I draw on this article to speculate the motives of allowing Salafists,Wahhabists, Jihadi extremists and other fanatics, all affiliated to Saudi Arabia, to run riot in the Arab Muslim world destroying progressive secular Muslim societies in the supposed name of Islam.)
President Hamid Karzai is already a spent force. He has (already) been 'discounted' as the civil war between the non-Pashtun security apparatus and the (Sunni) Pashtun-Taliban (Salafist)-Al Qaeda (Salafist/Wahhabist Jihadi fanatics) alliance will intensify as U.S. withdrawal draws closer. The victor will of course be the Pakistani-backed Taliban-hence Pakistan. So the emphasis must be in forging yet another alliance with a dubious ally. Perhaps I should now refer to the Saudi-U.S.-Pakistan axis as that which I consider similar to the failed Munich Agreement between Chamberlain and Hitler and Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
This axis cannot succeed for several reasons:
An assumption has already been made that Saudi Arabia can 'export' it's religious ideology to control the Muslim world, on our behalf. To put it plainly, the Middle-East Muslim world becomes a rigid totalitarian Caliphate 'block' where the ignorant,tribal,uneducated and superstitious are ruled in fear of the Imams-and they all 'report' to Jeddah. The argument is that the Muslim world is so diverse, so undemocratic (indeed nobody is really interested in Western democracy only their own tribal and ethnic group democracy) so steeped in religion and tribalism that someone has to take control and bring a sense of order and discipline into a chaotic environment. At a time where the Muslim world yearns for leadership and direction Saudi Arabia is the only model which can provide both religious and social cohesion to so diverse a region.
I totally disagree with this analysis. It's totally insane and the product of too much comparative analysis
and insight based on mirror-like comparisons with the psychology and technologies of societal control in Greek-based democratic societies (i.e. Western societies.) Historians can no doubt demonstrate how totalitarianism can 'work' for hundreds if not thousands of years-offsetting 'popular' representation so that it need only evolve over centuries rather than decades.
Such developments, if they come to pass, will also 'encourage' Christian societies to likewise prepare 'for battle' with (perceived) 'fanatical' Islam-as our own citizens are as equally ill-informed as their uneducated counterparts in the Middle-East Muslim world.
I do not believe that Saudi Arabia will be able to contain the forces of religious ignorance which it will unleash in it's 'quest' to Islamize or Caliphanize the Arab Muslim world.
The essence of the Devine-Kassel argument,cutting a deal with Pakistan, is not in doubt.
What I question is the willingness of Pakistan to bring,for example (and I quote the article) the Haqqani Network to task simply by throwing money at Pakistan's military apparatus and offering a few deals on trade and investment. Nobody doubts the Government of Pakistan has a terrible dilemma with so volatile borders at Kashmir, India and Afghanistan. But many of their problems are of their own making - furthering terrorism in India to gain leverage in Kashmir, destabilizing (or at least weakening) Afghanistan to rule this region by proxy.
While I disagree with the conclusions, the article itself shows that there are at least elements of commonsense providing decision makers with material for debate.
As to whether Senators and Representatives take any heed-or indeed argue the issues point by point to avoid yet another failed state - only time will reveal. (For my part, I doubt if many but a handful of the literate and semi-literate will even bother to read the article.)
Patrick Emek
September 24th 2013
Critique of article entitled 'Afghanistan:Withdrawal Issues',by
Jack Devine and Whitney Kassel, from the Fall Issue of World Policy Journal: 'Secrecy + Security', published by The World Policy Institute.
http://www.worldpolicy.org/
Jack Devine Former CIA Deputy Director of Operations and Chief of the CIA Afghan Task Force (1986-87) and Whitney Kassel former Foreign Affairs Specialist for Counter-terrorism Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and who has also worked in Pakistan and Afghanistan, have just published probably the best analysis you will get anywhere about where Afghanistan is heading.
The article is entitled 'Afghanistan:Withdrawal Issues'.
So as not to ruin their hard work and complex analysis, which, in my opinion, is spot on, I will just add several observations they have allured to in this article.
(What I say below about the direction of U.S.-Saudi-Pakistan foreign policy are entirely subjective and in no way do I ascribe them to the article 'Afghanistan,Withdrawal Issues'. I draw on this article to speculate the motives of allowing Salafists,Wahhabists, Jihadi extremists and other fanatics, all affiliated to Saudi Arabia, to run riot in the Arab Muslim world destroying progressive secular Muslim societies in the supposed name of Islam.)
President Hamid Karzai is already a spent force. He has (already) been 'discounted' as the civil war between the non-Pashtun security apparatus and the (Sunni) Pashtun-Taliban (Salafist)-Al Qaeda (Salafist/Wahhabist Jihadi fanatics) alliance will intensify as U.S. withdrawal draws closer. The victor will of course be the Pakistani-backed Taliban-hence Pakistan. So the emphasis must be in forging yet another alliance with a dubious ally. Perhaps I should now refer to the Saudi-U.S.-Pakistan axis as that which I consider similar to the failed Munich Agreement between Chamberlain and Hitler and Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
This axis cannot succeed for several reasons:
An assumption has already been made that Saudi Arabia can 'export' it's religious ideology to control the Muslim world, on our behalf. To put it plainly, the Middle-East Muslim world becomes a rigid totalitarian Caliphate 'block' where the ignorant,tribal,uneducated and superstitious are ruled in fear of the Imams-and they all 'report' to Jeddah. The argument is that the Muslim world is so diverse, so undemocratic (indeed nobody is really interested in Western democracy only their own tribal and ethnic group democracy) so steeped in religion and tribalism that someone has to take control and bring a sense of order and discipline into a chaotic environment. At a time where the Muslim world yearns for leadership and direction Saudi Arabia is the only model which can provide both religious and social cohesion to so diverse a region.
I totally disagree with this analysis. It's totally insane and the product of too much comparative analysis
and insight based on mirror-like comparisons with the psychology and technologies of societal control in Greek-based democratic societies (i.e. Western societies.) Historians can no doubt demonstrate how totalitarianism can 'work' for hundreds if not thousands of years-offsetting 'popular' representation so that it need only evolve over centuries rather than decades.
Such developments, if they come to pass, will also 'encourage' Christian societies to likewise prepare 'for battle' with (perceived) 'fanatical' Islam-as our own citizens are as equally ill-informed as their uneducated counterparts in the Middle-East Muslim world.
I do not believe that Saudi Arabia will be able to contain the forces of religious ignorance which it will unleash in it's 'quest' to Islamize or Caliphanize the Arab Muslim world.
The essence of the Devine-Kassel argument,cutting a deal with Pakistan, is not in doubt.
What I question is the willingness of Pakistan to bring,for example (and I quote the article) the Haqqani Network to task simply by throwing money at Pakistan's military apparatus and offering a few deals on trade and investment. Nobody doubts the Government of Pakistan has a terrible dilemma with so volatile borders at Kashmir, India and Afghanistan. But many of their problems are of their own making - furthering terrorism in India to gain leverage in Kashmir, destabilizing (or at least weakening) Afghanistan to rule this region by proxy.
While I disagree with the conclusions, the article itself shows that there are at least elements of commonsense providing decision makers with material for debate.
As to whether Senators and Representatives take any heed-or indeed argue the issues point by point to avoid yet another failed state - only time will reveal. (For my part, I doubt if many but a handful of the literate and semi-literate will even bother to read the article.)
Patrick Emek
September 24th 2013
Critique of article entitled 'Afghanistan:Withdrawal Issues',by
Jack Devine and Whitney Kassel, from the Fall Issue of World Policy Journal: 'Secrecy + Security', published by The World Policy Institute.
http://www.worldpolicy.org/
