Comments on: My uphill battle against the Afghanistan intervention

By: tariqahsan

tariqahsan — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 20:30:28 +0000

Rory needs to write in some detail about his preferred alternative to direct occupation in Afghanistan, “light long-term footprint.” In the past he has talked about “containment.”

Could the US relationship based on complex cooperation and use of force with Muqtada Sadr’s militia be a template for the alternative. But the latter, unlike the Taliban are not in the vanguard of the resistance to the US in Iraq, and are secondary to more senior ayatollahs in the social and religious hierarchy.

By: Vicgmus

Vicgmus — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:05:33 +0000

There is an old Sufi saying, ” The last thing for a man to achieve is empathy with others.” Meaning the actual ability to see and experience through their eyes and heart.

Having read Rory’s books, and lived in the Middle East, he’s quite right. If you are encased in the organizational -think of your Western received viewpoint, you cannot see or feel out of that box to understand what people, especially as different as Afghans, experience as important. Dangerous. Helpful.

One of the only things that unites the sqaubbling clans of Afghanistan, is an external threat. And that’s what they alwasy perceive outside intervention as. Rory’s right, but shoving in more troops, we are perceived as more of a threat REGARDLESS OF WHAT WE THINK WE ARE DOING< OR EVEN OUR BEST INTENTIONS.

So we recruit 10 Taliban with each soldier we send in. They can do the math, -some of Bin Laden’s people said his aim was to get us entangled in Afghanistan. They beat the Russians, who were more ruthless than us.
He said, reportedly.

this is NOT Bosnia, or Serbia, or even Iraq. THe small footprint idea Rory talks about took out Bin Laden.

Ask Alexander, and Gorbachev, and of course, Lord Eliphistone. If we want to make it all “better”, we could start by recognizing how we are making it worse.

By: jaylemeux

jaylemeux — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 22:42:10 +0000

The question of why one can’t convince internationals in Kabul that our mission is doomed to failure seems easy enough to me: We can’t lose because we “have to” succeed. Our national pride (speaking as an American) depends on victory, therefore the notion that the mission might be impossible is itself impossible. The only acceptable answer is to keep losing until we win.

By: Gudrun

Gudrun — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 21:22:27 +0000

My comment is in the form of a question for Rory Stewart: What exactly does your term “light long-term footprint” imply? Does it simply refer to a reduction in numbers of soldiers?

By: RBScott

RBScott — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:59:47 +0000

What is not and has not been working with the elements of rural development and narcotics in at least Helmand is of our own making…spending too much money too fast on mostly the wrong things, wrong in the eyes of the farmers who make up most of the people. Off and on inconsistent, unreliable projects involving frequently corrupt people, like the police that have fielded the eradication program, taking bribes not to destroy selected fields.A program that eradicates opium poppy just before harvest time when the crop has its highest value to farmers and sharecroppers, insuring pay-offs, when it can be eradicated just after planting when the farmers can plant replacement crops. I helped start up 4 reconstruction projects between 1998-2005 and began documenting our consistent failures. see: http://www.scottshelmandvalleyarchives.o rg