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Generational Dynamics World View
*** 22-Nov-20 World View -- Afghan 'peace talks' threatened by terrorist rocket attack on Kabul

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
  • Afghan 'peace talks' threatened by terrorist rocket attack on Kabul
  • Why the Afghan peace agreement must fail
  • Conflicting American values in Vietnam
  • Conflicting American values in Afghanistan
  • When is a war winnable?

****
**** Afghan 'peace talks' threatened by terrorist rocket attack on Kabul
****


[Image: g201121b.jpg]
Taliban fighters relax after lunch (Washington Post)

A terrorist barrage of dozens of rockets were fired into residential
areas of the the heavily fortified Green Zone of Kabul, Afghanistan's
capital city, killing at least eight civilians and wounding dozens
more on Saturday.

The Taliban, which is engaged with the United States in
so-called "peace talks" taking place in Doha, Qatar, has
denied responsibility for the attack.

On the other hand, ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
ISIS is a terrorist group, imported from Syria, in competition
with the Taliban to win the prize as the better terrorists.

This occurs amid the backdrop of negotiations taking plac in Doha,
Qatar, between representatives of Doha and the Taliban. For a long
time, the Taliban refused to allow the Afghan government of president
Ashraf Ghani to send representatives to the negotiations, but they've
generously lifted that restriction in the last few months. However,
as I understand it, the Taliban and Afghan government do not talk to
each other, but only engage in "proximity talks." This hilarious
phrase means that the two groups are in separate rooms, and a
negotiator trots back and forth between the rooms to further the
"talks."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Doha on Saturday, where he
met separately with the Taliban and Afghan government negotiators.
Presumably, Pompeo served as the proximity talk mediator on this
occasion.

According to reports, the talks have not even reached the stage
for producing a timeline. The original claim was that the Taliban
would end its terrorist violence, but, as I understand it, the
current demand is that the Taliban "tone down" the violence. (Believe
it or not, that's the phrase used by an analyst on tv.)

So the peace talks are a huge joke, and have never been anything
but a huge joke. But the do have one purpose: The provide political
cover for the Trump administration to withdraw American troops
from Afghanistan, which was a campaign promise made by Donald Trump.
Trump had claimed that he would get all American troops out of
Afghanistan by the end of 2020.

He didn't accomplish that, but he did go ahead with announcement that
shocked a lot of people. First, on November 9, he fired his Defense
Secretary Mike Esper, apparently because Esper opposed removing any
troops from Afghanistan. Trump replaced Esper with an acting Defense
Secretary Christopher Miller, who announced on November 17 that 2,000
troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by mid-January. That would
reduce the troop level from 4,500 to 2,500.

No one seriously believes that the Taliban will adhere to commitments
made in a peace deal once the American troops are all withdrawn. The
Taliban want Afghanistan to be governed by the Taliban, as it was
prior to 9/11/2001, after which US forces declared war on Afghanistan,
a war that's still going on. The Taliban want the war to end and want
American troops gone, so that they can go back to hardline jihadist
policies, such as closing girls' schools, as well as beating, raping
and torturing the Hazaras and other ethnic enemies.

So why did ISIS launch Saturday's terrorist attack? Since ISIS and
the Taliban are enemies, they presumably wish to sabotage the peace
talks, so that the Taliban can't over the whole country. We'll
probably know within a few months.

We may also know within a few months whether the American withdrawal
will destabilize the relationships among other countries in the region
-- China, Pakistan and India. These countries all have an interest in
Afghanistan and have benefited from the American presence, and may now
feel it necessary to fill the vacuum created if the Americans leave.

****
**** Why the Afghan peace agreement must fail
****


In 2007, president George Bush launched a "surge" policy in
the Iraq war which, much to the surprise of many people, actually
worked and won the Iraq war.

So in 2009, president Barack Obama decided that what worked in Iraq
would also work in Afghanistan. As I wrote at the the time, and have
written many times since then, Iraq and Afghanistan are completely
different situations, and a "surge" that worked in Iraq would not work
in Afghanistan. This prediction has, of course, turned out to be
completely correct.

A summary of the reasoning is as follows: Afghanistan's last
generational crisis war was an extremely bloody, horrific civil war,
in 1991-96. The war was a civil war, fought between the Pashtuns in
southern Afghanistan versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras
and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are radicalized
Pashtuns, and when they need to import foreign fighters, then can
import their cousins from the Pashtun tribes in Pakistan.

Indeed, it's much worse than that. The ethnic groups in Afghanistan
are COMPLETELY NON-UNITED and loathe each other. Pashtuns still have
scores to settle with the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks that formed the
Northern Alliance, especially the Shias. These opposing groups have
fresh memories of the atrocities, torture, rape, beatings,
dismemberments, mutilations, and so forth that the other side
performed on their friends, wives and other family members, and they
have no desire to be friends or to work together. They'd rather kill
each other.

Obama's surge policy failed because it had to. Obama never had
any clue what's going on in the world, so his multiple foreign
policy failures aren't surprising. In addition, he appointed
that idiot John Kerry as Secretary of State, who stumbled from
one disaster to another making things worse.

When Trump began running for president, it was clear that he also had
no clue what was going on in the world. I once mocked him for knowing
nothing about other countries except his golf courses. But then he
did something that was completely unexpected and surprising: He hired
Steve Bannon as his principal advisor. This is something I never
dreamed would happen. I had worked off and on with Bannon over a
period of years, and he's an expert on both military history and
Generational Dynamics analysis. Even before taking office, Trump
was educated for a year on foreign affairs by Bannon.

Even after Bannon left the White House, there was still somebody left
who knew what was going on in the world -- John Bolton. Bolton left
the White House last year, and as far as I know, Trump no longer has
anyone who can credibly inform him about what's going on in the world,
beyond the catalog of facts you can find in the CIA World Factbook.

By the way, Joe Biden has been hiding out in his basement for a year,
and apparently knows less than nothing about anything. But he
thinks that it might be a good idea to withdraw American troops
from Afghanistan, though he isn't sure.

****
**** Conflicting American values in Vietnam
****


Working on my forthcoming book on Vietnam has given me plenty of time
to contemplate how American values contradict each other, and how
well-meaning presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon tried to navigate
through the conflicting values and were often forced to make bad
decisions that led to bad outcomes.

After World Wars I and II, a traumatized, exhausted America
feared they would be fighting a third world war, this time
against the Communists. This anxiety increased as Communism seemed
to be on the march everywhere -- behind the Iron Curtain in eastern
Europe, in China, in northern Korea, in northern Vietnam, and
even in the United States in the form of a strong American
Communist Party (CPUSA). It became the highest priority of
American foreign policy to stop Communism before it led to
World War III.

But American values went far beyond that. America was committed to
democracies, and South Vietnam was a young vibrant democracy
which was being invaded by Communist North Vietnam. There was
no way that the leaders who had survived World War II would have
tolerated just standing by and letting the South Vietnamese democracy
die at the hands of the Communists.

But there was another American value that was equally strong.
America had been a British colony and had won its independence
from a colonial power. America valued its independence, and
would not tolerate having another country, even a friendly country,
interfere in its affairs.

South Vietnam was a democracy that had just won its independence
from a colonial power, France. America was interfering in South
Vietnam's affairs to defend it from the Communists, and so
was violating another American value -- not interfering in the
affairs of another democracy.

It was this contradiction in American values that led to
contradictions in American policies that led to issues that
could be exploited by the antiwar activists and American Communists,
using the contradictions to sabotage the American war effort
politically, leading to the final defeat, and the American
betrayal of the people of South Vietnam.

****
**** Conflicting American values in Afghanistan
****


It's worthwhile exploring those conflicting American values in
Vietnam, because exactly the same conflict exists today in
Afghanistan. However, this time the enemy is a vicious Islamist
terror regime, rather than communism.

On the one hand, there is a strong American drive to preserve
the democracy in Afghanistan, and protect it from the Islamist
terror regime.

On the other hand, there is a strong American drive to avoid
interfering in the Afghan government. With the Americans negotiating
in Doha with the Taliban, almost to the exclusion of the official
Afghan government, there are major policy contradictions, as there
have been for the last 19 years.

These contradictions are now in full force, as Americans try to decide
how aggressively to take control in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban,
or to let the Kabul government make its own decisions. After almost
20 years in Afghanistan, Trump has decided that Americans can't stay
there forever, and that it's time to withdraw completely, and let the
Taliban take over if that's what's in the cards.

There's another issue. Many American soldiers fought in Afghanistan,
and many people lost fathers, brothers and sons there. The same is
true of Nato countries. Was all that lost blood and treasure for
nothing? Apparently so.

****
**** When is a war winnable?
****


As I work on my forthcoming book on Vietnam, I've also reached some
conclusions about when a war is winnable or not winnable.

These conclusions are based on examination of the following wars:
Vietnam War, Iraq war, and Afghanistan war. What these three wars
have in common is that they're all guerrilla insurgencies -- internal
rebellions against the government. Why were we able to win the Iraq
war, while losing the Vietnam and Afghanistan war. This analysis does
not apply to wars fought by opposing armies.

The insurgency in Vietnam could not be defeated because it was
impossible to distinguish between the insurgents and ordinary
civilians. The South Vietnamese government adopted a
counter-insurgency strategy that had been successfully used a decade
earlier by the UK in its Malay colony. In that case, the civilians
were indigenous Malays, while the insurgents were ethnic Chinese. The
British were able to segregate the Chinese from the Malay population
for a simple reason: They looked different. They could easily be
distinguished.

The South Vietnamese government adapted this same strategy into
something called "strategic hamlets," where North Vietnamese
insurgents would be segregated from civilians. This worked for a
while, but it had to fail because it was impossible to tell the
difference between an ordinary civilian and a Communist insurgent.

President George Bush's "surge" strategy won the Iraq war because the
insurgents were quite distinguishable from Iraqi civilians. The
insurgent group "al-Qaeda in Iraq" consisted almost entirely of
fighters imported from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Syria. They were not
Iraqis, and the Iraqis hated them. That's why the Iraq war was
winnable. (See "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq" from April, 2007.)

The Afghan insurgency was hopeless from the beginning. Yes, we were
able to quickly defeat the Afghan army after 9/11/2001, but after the
situation turned into an insurgency it could not be won because
ordinary civilians were ethnic Pashtuns, and so were the Taliban.

The Afghan war turned into a guerrilla insurgency about 15 years ago,
and since then it has been unwinnable. This is the justification for
withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan. Sooner or later, we'll
have to lose.

Unfortuately, that conflicts with important American values about
protecting young democracies. This political battle will be fierce.

Sources:


Related Articles:



KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Kabul, Afghanistan, Taliban, Qatar,
Mike Pompeo, Ashraf Ghani,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
George Bush, Iraq, surge, Barack Obama,
Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, John Bolton, Joe Biden,
Vietnam, France, Malay, South Vietnam

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