Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 

By Michael Daxner

Between 2003 and 2007, I visited Afghanistan 10 times in my capacity as an advisor to the Afghan Minister of Higher Education, and as an independent academic researcher examining relations between the NATO-led intervention forces and local people. Each visit provided plenty of opportunities to witness a stagnant state-building process that never failed to fall below expectations. The same was true of my most recent visit, a 10-day research trip that ended in March. I can report that the situation in Afghanistan has not improved since the end of 2009, when President Obama announced a timetable for the withdrawal of Western military forces, to commence in July 2011 and be completed in 2014. Indeed, in many ways, things have gotten worse.

As a social scientist with a great deal of empathy for the Afghan people, I have always supported the military intervention of 2001 and the broader missions of NATO and the United Nations—though not in an uncritical manner. Through my work, I have tried to support the restoration of higher education and the reconstruction of civil society in a country that has not known peace for more than 30 years. Yet those primarily responsible for the intervention after 2001 seem to have lost interest in the country and its future. They do not want to learn from their own mistakes and failures, and seem unable or willing to play a constructive, non-hegemonic role in the wider Central Asian region.

For years, Afghanistan has been a kind of imaginary terrain for geopolitical projections. This was the place where the al-Qaida attacks of September 11, 2001, had been planned and set in motion. Hence, the initial intervention was focused on stripping the terrorists from their sanctuaries and safe havens. But little by little, nation-building came to define the mission. A massively ambitious effort to reconstruct a tortured and war-torn country gradually replaced a war of retribution.

The killing of Osama bin Laden in May served as a jarring reminder of just how far the war in Afghanistan has moved beyond its initial goals. One can only wonder how different the war might have been had bin Laden been killed or captured back in 2001, before he managed to slip across the border into Pakistan, where he apparently spent the last decade. His death has sparked a crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations, and has led to a debate in American policymaking circles about whether an even more rapid pull-out from Afghanistan might be justifiable—or at least more politically palatable.

But whatever effect bin Laden’s death proves to have on these considerations, the fact remains that the Afghan Taliban have become largely independent of al-Qaida in recent years. In this respect, bin Laden’s passing hardly changes the reality on the ground in Afghanistan. The “Golden Hour”—the period between 2001, when the Taliban was initially ousted, and 2005, when the major American military buildup began—is a distant memory. The once-defeated Taliban have recovered. The Afghan people have become numb to the endless flow of empty promises to help them, sustainably, into a better future. Since 2005, suicide attacks, an increasingly well organized insurgency, and an accelerating pace of violence have buffeted a society that has never been terribly well governed. The state’s institutions remain weak. And external powers struggle with questions at home about the legitimacy of a seemingly futile peacekeeping and counterterrorism operation.

Still, for the first time in at least five years, I have the sense that there is a genuine movement among Afghans toward taking the initiative and reclaiming a role in determining their country’s future. This is a crucial development, one that leaves me with a grim kind of optimism. At this point, there is really no way to “win” the war in Afghanistan, because it has become impossible to say who is fighting against which enemy and to what end. But it might be possible to achieve a “cold peace” with a minimum of exit costs and a low toll in lives and budgets. Even that best-case scenario would be far from perfect. The NATO alliance, led by the United States, would pull out of the country, leaving the Afghan state responsible for governing at a “good enough” level of competence and transparency. NATO or the United States would maintain a few military bases and increase development aid, but leave almost wholly unsolved most of the problems facing the country and the wider region. In short, it would be a mess—but less than a total disaster.

HOPES BETRAYED

In 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, at the time the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, presented a credible and sensible strategy to Defense Secretary Robert Gates—a shift from body counts and terrorist-chasing toward the protection of civilians and the reintegration of insurgents. McChrystal also supported the concept of partnering more effectively with Afghan forces and including them in most military activities. Between the lines, this approach tried to correct previous mistakes, while moving in tandem with President Obama’s promised approach to end the war, accompanied by a date for beginning a pull-out of forces.

This counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy was the first plan to raise hopes for eventual success. In many ways, however, COIN contained the seeds of its own failure—too many conditions for implementing the concept, too many unrealistic time lines, too much optimism about the likely efficacy of military operations, like a troop surge in Afghanistan’s southern regions. But hopes were especially dashed when Obama announced that the United States would begin withdrawing its forces in July 2011. The timetable became public at the same time that the war’s political aims were reduced to the achievable minimum—an outcome that arguably would not justify the continuation of any intervention at all, much less the increase in troop levels Obama was proposing.

It also must be noted that the withdrawal timetable was motivated in part by domestic political considerations—not only in the United States, but also in other alliance members, including the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada. Regardless of the motivations for the timetable, with withdrawal dates set ahead of time, the COIN strategy was not given enough time to prove its effectiveness. The ramifications of this choice went well beyond the military effort. On the civilian side, human rights, education, women’s emancipation, and democratic-governance initiatives were all de-prioritized, as the hand-over of responsibility by 2014 became the absolute priority for the alliance.

Those who defend the curious combination of a COIN strategy with an announced timetable for withdrawal frequently point to what they consider signs of progress in Afghanistan. A constitution has been written; separation of powers has been established. A number of elections—which everyone acknowledges were stolen—have secured a government that does not fear rapid regime change. Economic growth is robust from the perspective of GDP, even though the distribution of wealth and assets remains grossly uneven. There has been sufficient military success to suspend disbelief, so to speak, when it comes to the COIN strategy. And finally, major donor states have funded civilian reconstruction efforts, many of which have proven more effective and sustainable than past efforts—for example, electricity and water delivery have been improved significantly in cities like Kabul and Herat.

But the main goal of COIN is the protection of civilian populations. With that aim in mind, the interveners have tried to build up Afghanistan’s army, police, and intelligence services—together known as the Afghan National Security Forces. This policy has been only marginally successful. In many ways, it has been undercut by U.S. Special Forces operations that are not coordinated with the NATO command structure at all. For many years, Special Forces have tried to gain the support of locals for their combat missions, often to the disadvantage of Afghan forces who seem far less credible, by comparison. At the same time, insurgents have become increasingly adept at using official uniforms to access and attack sensitive sites.

The result has been a weakening of the entire COIN concept, which, in turn, has been watered down by General David Petraeus, who adopted a more traditional strategy after taking over for McChrystal in July 2010—including a heavier reliance on air strikes, which always carry the risk of collateral damage. Many windows initially opened by COIN have now closed. The result is a lack of true stability and security. Insurgents still operate, poverty festers, and there is nothing resembling genuine rule of law. In other words, liberal-democratic nation building, as defined by outsiders (mainly Americans) or even the leadership in Kabul, has failed. In its place, however, are movements and dynamics that may ultimately create a different kind of society, with new, indigenous forms of authority and governance. Afghanistan—a fragmented, unruly country—is in search of its own authentic social structure.

STRATIFICATION

A few simultaneous developments have made contemporary Afghan society incomparable to the one found by the interveners in 2001. In some ways, the country is consolidating, and becoming more “normal.” Yet each positive sign seems to have a flip-side. Many new roads have made communication and mobility easier—but, in many places, road-blocks by insurgents and corrupt police still hinder free circulation or goods and services. In the shops there are more goods than ever, but most of them are imported.

Still, in some rural areas, especially in the northeast, many people have become quite content with their increased wealth. They can buy more than before, and they profit from a complex mixture of legal business with an opium-based economy. The status quo seems acceptable to this subset of the population, which is not a majority but is nonetheless substantial in size. What’s not clear, however, is the precise source of the relative security that has allowed them to prosper, or its durability.

Meanwhile, cities like Kabul, Herat, Kandahar, and Mazar-i-Sharif have experienced massive population growth. Kabul alone has grown from around 500,000 residents in 2000 to about 2.8 million today. This demographic change has introduced a phenomenon hitherto unknown in Afghanistan—commuting, with all its attendant problems. As new neighborhoods emerge, those lucky enough to find employment are finding it difficult to get to work, due to the lack of public transportation.

Urbanization, together with a mature labor market in the population centers, has accelerated the stratification of Afghan society. Employment has been bolstered, with thousands of jobs created by international agencies, both civilian and military. This is one segment of the new middle class. Another segment includes enterprises involved with trade or services. (The manufacturing sector is still stagnant.) This new middle class makes one preeminent demand of the state—enforcement of the rule of law. They want their property protected and want to see some return for the taxes they pay— especially since they believe, quite plausibly, that they are the only ones who pay taxes.

Many Afghan cities now feature an even more conspicuous sign of increasing stratification—the blue-and mirror-glass palaces of shopping malls, banks and residences of the new upper class. This is new money, mainly the product of illegal businesses, drug and arms trafficking, extortion and other organized crime. The widely held perception is that these Afghans do not pay taxes. There is an upper stratum in society where the profound ties between government, crime and business are neither transparent nor easily untangled. The demands these new elite make on the state are simple—don’t interfere in our activities, protect our property and guarantee our privileges.

Finally, there is the vast social and economic bottom. Most Afghans are still very poor. The poverty line is set at an income of $1.25 a day, and 70 percent fall below it. The demands of the poor majority, especially in rural areas, are directed at maintaining a viable welfare system. Thus, their allegiance is offered to those who deliver basic services, especially security—including, sometimes, the Taliban.

The income gap is only part of the picture, though. The most inequitable form of economic disparity is the potential to acquire capital and the ability to invest. Even if a certain, modest wealth can be safeguarded for the middle class, the major accumulation of money and power is reserved for the top—a state of affairs that fuels, and is fueled by, organized crime and corruption. While corruption for a certain period after 2001 was more directly economic, it is now shifting toward politics. Wealthy Afghans who hold high official positions—chairpersons of Parliament committees, ministers, governors—can purchase the allegiance of underlings by giving them seats in Parliament or other important positions, in exchange for carrying out the dirty work of bribery, graft, and extortion. The use a high office to further illegal activities has become a fixture of contemporary Afghanistan, and only adds to the frustration of its people.

OBSTACLES TO OPPOSITION

The combination of economic stratification and widespread corruption has created fertile grounds for unrest. Recent events in North Africa and the Middle East have had a major impact on politics in Afghanistan, leading a number of disparate opposition groups to consider whether they might be able to form alliances in pursuit of the common goal of pushing for democratic reform. As the “Arab Spring” was just beginning, I spoke with Abdullah Abdullah, the former Minster of Foreign Affairs, who lost to President Karzai in the dubiously administered 2009 presidential election. “The opposition is carefully observing the movements in Egypt and elsewhere,” he told me.

Karzai is increasingly out of touch with the people, and now tends to rely on “strong-men” figures to rule over government institutions. Of course, Afghans know that President Karzai is not Hosni Mubarak, and that the Karzai government is far from wielding a strong, rigid state bureaucracy and security force. Still, Afghanistan’s opposition is quick to point out that neither Karzai nor any other national leader should be given the chance to become a Mubarak, in the sense of control or entitlement.

The creation of a coherent, reform-minded opposition movement, as opposed to simply opposition parties, might take a rather long time—indeed, it may prove to be a generational challenge. Its chances might rely, ultimately, on education as much as on economic growth. There has been a good deal of progress on education. Elementary school enrollment has increased from 1.2 million students in 2002 to more than six million in 2010. Girls’ access to education has improved substantially, and the desire of parents all over Afghanistan to educate their daughters has even forced the Taliban to compromise on this issue, in some cases accepting the rights of girls to attend school. But illiteracy is still very high—70 percent in rural areas, 23 percent overall. In 2003, only 34,000 Afghans were enrolled in university. That number has increased to 100,000 today—a figure that is still staggeringly low.

High rates of illiteracy and a lack of access to higher education not only stunt economic development, but also pose a security risk, by increasing the susceptibility of young people to extremism. How easily young people’s emotions can be inflamed was made violently clear in April, during protests against Florida pastor Terry Jones’s burning of the Quran. The riots led to the deaths of three staffers and four security guards at a U.N. compound in Mazar-i-Sharif.

The crisis in education is triply compounded. There is a shortage of qualified teachers, so qualified students do not turn out in sufficient numbers—which means a weakening of the professional middle class that is urgently needed for political progress. At the same time, the arrival of education for girls has meant a corresponding loss of social status for the once-privileged male students. This, in turn, feeds a reactionary backlash that can lead to radicalization—yet another opportunity for political and social unrest. Finally, almost no higher education reaches the vast mass of Afghan people who live outside the big cities, a factor that contributes to the socio-economic disparities that have developed into major hurdles to building civil society.

IDENTITY POLITICS

We are used to understanding societies through the lens of a state that holds a monopoly on violence and governance and that distributes public wealth—with varying degrees of fairness—through the maintenance of rule of law, welfare, and security. But this kind of link between society and the state is actually an exception in history and geography. The Afghan state—governing a fractious place, where religious, tribal, ethnic and political lines are constantly crisscrossing—is in fact more typical, in a historical sense, having simply managed to keep its borders stable over a long period of time, but never too deeply impacting the structure of the society it nominally ruled. “Even if we have a state now, we are not a nation,” one prominent opposition politician told me. “We don’t have anything that would unite us in identity.”

For at least 90 years, Afghanistan has been a recognized state, enjoying titular sovereignty. Afghans identify as Afghans, but family, clan, tribe, and local allegiances are often much stronger than any sense of shared nationality. As a result, governance has historically been a matter of ethnic solidarities, tribal sub-structures, local codes of honor and prestige, and traditional customs of correcting deviations from established patterns. Today, Afghans are directly and indirectly affected by a war-induced partial modernization that has helped erode those traditional patterns and produced an almost revolutionary change in some segments of everyday life—communication by mobile phone, mobility in mountainous regions now paved with thousands of miles of military roads. Like prosperity and increased political freedom, however, these kinds of changes have not been equitably distributed, often because they have been far more thoroughly embraced in urban areas. Indeed, the Taliban recognizes a profound desire in rural communities to restore traditional lifestyles, values and practices, and plays off that desire to win sympathy—even though, of course, the Taliban do not propagate tribal traditions, but rather a distinctly modern form of radical Islamism.

The intervention of Western forces has produced a very tight if uneven interaction between interveners (military and civilian) and the local population, which is likely to produce new social structures and a new culture, a hybrid of local and foreign elements. Indeed, there are several layers of conflict in Afghanistan, some stemming from the long war, others an outgrowth of the relations between interveners and intervened, and some emerging from the preparation for the hand-over of responsibility in a few years. This manifests itself in a host of rather different patterns of local governance. But ethnic, religious, and socio-geographical variables make some forms of “statehood from below” possible. In some districts, shuras (municipal assemblies) emerge and become functional, despite the fact that they are not included in the constitution. The role of these shuras can be supportive to local governance. But where the cohesive power of local groups is insufficient, basic democracy will not emerge. Instead, other actors, including drug barons and corrupt officials, will fill the vacuum, sometimes forming alliances with violent forces like the Taliban or local warlords.

This hardly sounds like a recipe for peace and stability. But these interactions and alliances between seemingly diametrically opposed forces are at the root of my grim optimism. They signal that Afghan society has not yet reached a level of dogmatic petrifaction—the necessary condition for an authoritarian regime, such as the Taliban, to return to power. Afghans continue to alter their self-perceptions—a good sign indeed. Most members of the country’s nascent civil society do not see the present situation as acceptable, but are not sure about what they’d prefer. And experience suggests that fluid societies have a better chance to attain democracy than rigid ones, particularly if their form of statehood has not yet gelled.

WHO’S IN CHARGE?

Even if the search for a national identity is successful, will statehood be strong and credible enough that good governance might be possible? If the political elites decide this is truly their goal, only total reform—if not a revolution—can end the collusion between the criminal class and ruling politicians. If the political elites choose not to support that outcome, the result might be street protests, which could turn violent should Taliban insurgents fill the role played by various non-violent opposition movements during the current upheavals across North Africa and the Middle East.

One element of reform that seems unavoidable is rewriting the constitution. It has become quite clear that Afghanistan will never become the democratic, centralized state envisioned by that document, which was ratified in 2004. It might be better to establish decentralized, even federalist structures, where the unity of all formal institutions, especially in civil law, is binding on none of the major players.

Who ultimately attains authority will depend on who delivers the goods at an acceptable price. The provision of security, welfare, education, and justice relies not only on individuals willing and able to provide them. It also relies on communication, rules, money, as well as a bed- rock of credibility and trust. The state may strengthen its position if non-corrupt lines of delivery and protection reach the bottom of society and people gain advantage by compliance with the state’s rules. But in many cases, local rule and justice may be provided, if temporarily, by insurgents, strongmen, or traditional local leaders. In some provinces, strong governors already rule without any recognition of a central authority. They respect neither democracy nor statehood, but their methods of governing can be quite transparent and the people they govern generally know what they can expect. Federalism alone will not solve the problem of such mezzanine-rulers, but it should be addressed.

Ethnic conflicts are also on the rise. There is debate about whether these conflicts predate the 2001 intervention in a meaningful sense, or whether they’ve been fueled primarily by the intervention itself. Whatever their roots, these conflicts have led some to suggest a partition of the state along ethnic lines. Such a scenario, however, is unlikely to lead to a stable outcome.

Perhaps the most pressing question is not necessarily what to do, but to whom recommendations should even be addressed. Most Western leaders agree that the president of Afghanistan and the leading elites are not to be trusted. Moreover, there is no established opposition that could negotiate a reform of the system and the regime, and no real grassroots movement exists that could be expected to take on the people’s cause. Some argue that the Taliban will ultimately have to be integrated into the state as part of a negotiated end to the violence. That is an unrealistic plan, even if the Western powers and the Karzai government were willing to make significant compromises on fundamental human rights and civil liberties—which itself would be a form of defeat. A significant segment of the Taliban has no interest in joining a secular government, and would refuse to stop fighting until a wholly Islamist regime were firmly in power.

All that seems certain is that Afghanistan will not remain a de facto protectorate of international powers, led by the United States. The danger is that the Afghans will come to feel they are being let down yet again, the same accusation they leveled at the West after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. That could actually be the best-case scenario. The worst case would be a civil war, or many violent conflicts that end in another rogue state, with the West, and some neighbors, again held responsible.

A DOSE OF REALISM

In order to understand Afghanistan’s problems, it is wise to look backwards. The country was little more than a token player in the Cold War until the Soviets invaded. At that point, it quickly became unimaginable for the West not to support the insurgents against the Soviet occupiers. The end of the Cold War coincided with (and perhaps was accelerated by) the Soviet adventure, but at that point the West promptly lost all interest in a nation of only minor strategic importance. The terrible internal struggles, the fall of the mujahedeen and the rise of the Taliban took place against the backdrop of broader geopolitical interests—the development of Turkmenistan’s oil and gas reserves, the construction of a pipeline to carry these resources to Pakistan, and the ongoing struggle between Iran and the United States and its regional allies.

Operation Enduring Freedom and the broader NATO intervention were made palatable to American voters only by framing them as the first steps in a “war on terror.” Yet there was a fundamental problem with the Afghan theater of this “war.” By December 2001, the Taliban was routed, and the core al-Qaida forces had slipped into Pakistan after a final stand at Tora Bora. At that point, there was quite simply no “enemy.” Still, the United States could not simply declare victory at that point and withdraw, partially because its chief targets—Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar—had escaped. More importantly, the Americans came to believe they now had to consolidate their gains—they were now committed to Afghanistan, perhaps more so than American policymakers were able to foresee when they first invaded. When this became clear, the American mission began to resemble more closely the NATO mission of creating an Afghanistan that would be democratic and modern—a real “state.” But as stabilization gradually took over as the policy priority, it was accompanied by increasingly intense fighting.

The recent shift of strategy and policy toward a hand-over of responsibility in 2014 is not too far away from the practical perspective of most insurgents. The West will be leaving, in any event. Perhaps not all development aid and military advisors will decamp immediately, but the importance of Afghanistan on the international agenda will certainly shrink.

As this process plays out, noble visions of a fully developed democracy based on human rights and international conventions will likely give way to compromise with the insurgents, which will mean, inevitably, less of the good governance that makes a true democracy sustainable. The best solution for any negotiators in such a process would be prosperity without too much democracy, and without too many firm guarantees of human rights. This may be difficult for many in the West to swallow, especially after so many years and so many lives lost in pursuit of a more glorious outcome. But it would be a form or realpolitik in an effort that has long needed a strong dose of realism.

There are also problems, however, with such a lose-lose consensus. The country’s youth—half the nation is younger than 25—will not accept such a solution against their interests, especially having witnessed, even if only from afar, the accomplishments of their peers in Egypt and Tunisia. Still, the war must eventually end. Such a process would seem to mandate a strong democratic movement that is not content with meager economic progress and a marginal increase in security. But the present state is unlikely to allow such a movement to emerge.

It’s unlikely that discussions of these dilemmas are being conducted in the remote combat outposts manned by American soldiers. But as long as the troops are given no opportunity to understand why they are fighting and little insight into the nature of the enemy—who is on the verge of becoming a potential partner in the near future—they cannot understand their mission. In other words, the strategies and policies ordered by Western military commanders are difficult to accept when seen through the prism of cruel, dirty warfare. As an integral part of the doctrine of counterinsurgency, even the most exposed and remote combat units must communicate with local villagers. How do Western soldiers understand the feelings of these villagers toward their mission, and how do these same villagers feel about the Taliban and other insurgents? There is certainly a range of local opinion concerning insurgents. But there is no such clear picture of the enemy as opposite to a clearly defined “we.” Inevitably, short-lived agreements on a local level—especially between Western military forces and village elders—can lead to disappointment. And such disappointment on a large scale is one of the most dangerous effects of foreign intervention. It may be mutual and can be based on betrayal, disloyalty, ineffectiveness, or simply chance. But the impact of intense disappointment can overwhelm the benefit of any single gift or the delivery on a promise.

When we speak of Afghanistan, we often reduce it to a caricature—an alien nation, far away. We know that our young soldiers die there, that women are oppressed, that literacy is low and corruption high. Those who seek more information must learn about formerly obscure tribes, sects and clans. It is very difficult and often tiresome to explain that Afghan society, on a local level, is not that far from what we experience in our own neighborhoods, and that we must understand and appreciate differences and similarities of Afghanistan’s social order, culture and politics. These internal conflicts can only be dealt with when all the actors, even the most antagonistic, accept the same rules. Only in this fashion can we hope for a unified state of Afghanistan. Not every local community is based on outlaw practices. But a drug economy, corruption, and old feudal distinctions play a key role in many of Afghanistan’s multiplicity of societies. The state may seek to be the moral and institutional super-ego that dominates, via its monopoly of force, a “second society” characterized by a criminal core, but eminently functional through its own informal institutions, traditions, rituals and methods of conflict resolution. In Afghanistan, however, the emerging state has neither managed to find the time nor the capacity to prove its credibility.

Still, the state and the smaller communities that make up Afghan society still depend on each other—they are symbiotic, related, and in many cases could prove to be capable of ordering the people’s affairs. This, perhaps, is the best case scenario for an effective, long-term solution to the calamity that is Afghanistan today.

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Michael Daxner is a professor of sociology and the president emeritus of the University of Oldenburg, in Germany. He served as a member of the United Nations mission in Kosovo and worked with the U.N. in Afghanistan.

[Photo courtesy of Lance Cpl. James W. Clark]