A World at Risk of Winning the Urban Battle, Losing the Rural War, Abandoning the Regional Solution
By John Godges
John Godges is a RAND communications analyst and editor-in-chief of RAND Review.
About a year ago, Seth Jones was riding in a military convoy as it rumbled toward the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. He was heartened by how much better things seemed around him in comparison with his previous trips to the city.“There were lots of foreign cars. There were computer shops and ATM machines. There were girls shuffling to school on the sidewalks of the city. It had noticeably changed in a positive way. Just driving through the center of the city left a striking impression. It was awash in modern amenities.”
But then he heard a thunderous blast from behind. He turned and saw a fireball belching brown smoke. “It was one of the cars behind us. We were three or four cars in front. We kept going. It wasn’t clear who hit it. It was nerve-wracking.”
It was the largest suicide attack ever in Kabul to date. Just 50 yards from the landmark Massood Square that borders the main gate of the U.S. Embassy, the driver of a Toyota Surf sport utility vehicle had rammed his bomb-laden cargo into a U.S. Army Humvee on that sunlit day of September 8, 2006, killing 16 people, including two U.S. Army reservists, and wounding 29 others. The vast majority of those killed or wounded were Afghan civilians.
At the time, most of the fighting in Afghanistan was confined to the eastern and southern provinces. But the suicide attack compelled Jones to reconsider the nation’s progress.
“The major cities, including the capital, were now targets,” he said. “There was a level of vulnerability I’d not felt before.” In many rural areas, “you knew it would be violent. But Kabul had been relatively safe. The key realization was that security, even in the capital, could not be taken for granted. Had that suicide bomber gone a little earlier, I’d be done.”
Clash of Images
Afghanistan confounds the visitor with images that could either augur better days or portend disaster, according to Jones, 34, a RAND political scientist and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the Naval Postgraduate School. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he has analyzed the state of the insurgency and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. He has traveled to nearly all areas of the country since 2004, meeting with villagers, city residents, police officers, local army units, intelligence officials, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, President Karzai’s national security council, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, and U.S., Canadian, and British military commanders.
“The U.S., NATO, and the Afghan government are losing. Not in Kandahar City or Kabul. The cities are held by the military forces. But there is deep penetration by the Taliban in rural areas.” |
“Most people who go to Afghanistan just don’t get out,” he said. “They travel in military convoys and hide in embassies.” He has made a conscious effort to talk to the locals and to blend in by growing his beard, wearing the shalwar kameez (the traditional male dress of knee-length shirt with baggy pants), and traveling with Afghans.
Since 2004, the prevailing trends in the capital have been encouraging, he said. “Kabul is modernizing in ways that it hadn’t been before. The security situation has declined there over the last year or two, but it’s entirely different than when I first visited.” Commerce flows. People go online. Children of both sexes attend school. Many women show their faces and have taken off their burqas, the outer garment worn by some women in Afghanistan that covers the entire head and body.
“Counter to that [view of progress] is flying over what used to be barren or wheat fields now awash in the beautiful reddish, maroon, and yellow colors of poppy, especially in spring before the harvest.” Poppy is the source of the global heroin trade, of revenue for the resurgent Taliban, and of corruption among warlords and even Afghan government officials. “The increase in cultivation and production of poppy is astounding,” said Jones (see Figure 1).
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SOURCES: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2007 World Drug Report, 2007, p. 196. As of press time: www.unodc.org. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007: Executive Summary, 2007, p. 3. As of press time: www.unodc.org. |
The most telling signs about the country are often the hardest ones to spot. “People who don’t travel outside urban areas wouldn’t see them. You see the battles going on in the rural areas, especially in the south and east, over the hearts and minds of the population.”
Home to 75 percent of the population, the rural areas are where the Taliban and al Qaeda wage their information campaigns. They tack threatening leaflets on doors, store weapons caches just outside the villages, and publicly hang tribal leaders who cooperate with the government. The cowed locals find it “acceptable” to let insurgents operate nearby. “The population in the rural areas end up giving up, and that’s most of the country,” said Jones.
“Russia controlled the cities, not the rural areas,” he recalled. “They lost. That is the challenge that faces the U.S., NATO, and the Afghan government today. It’s the fight over the hearts and minds in rural areas. The U.S., NATO, and the Afghan government are losing. Not in Kandahar City or Kabul. The cities are held by the military forces. But there is deep penetration by the Taliban in rural areas. Not many people see that.”
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