I wrote this essay a long time ago. We were in Afghanistan (we still are, the difference is that back then we were actually aware of the fact.) and Obama was president. I pitched it to a number of a prestigious foreign-affairs publications.
Going through some old writings, I came across it and decided to put it up because it is reminiscent of an optimism that reigned during Obama’s first few years in office, when I—among many other naïve folk—considered him more than just a place-holder, when Americans thought that he was capable of actual change.
Transforming Afghanistan Before It Transforms Us
Despite president Obama’s rhetoric about change, his war strategy on Afghanistan has strong echoes of his predecessor’s botched attempts to apply post-conflict reconstruction-style tools to a live conflict with an oxymoronic mix of Wilsonian idealism and unilateral interventionism. Obama excluded “a more dramatic and open-ended escalation” of the war effort in Afghanistan, one that “would commit the U.S. to a nation-building project of up to a decade”; signaling that he will not sacrifice immediate popularity, transcend the conventional logic of a militarized quick-fix over a comprehensive framework, including a plan for socio-economic transformation. The fact that the troop surge—the cornerstone of the strategy—is expected to show results before the 2010 American mid-term election, and the drawdown is due to begin right after the next presidential campaign, underlines the fact that the president is opting for what is politically attractive, choosing short-term pragmatism over a real solution, which may be controversial and take longer. Worst of all, with the strategy’s focus on the military surge in population centers combined with its contradictory premise of withdrawal within eighteen months, and its message that we would not be fighting “an endless war” Obama signaled to the extremists (who are strongest around the border areas) that America is tiring of the war—the first tell-tale sign that we’re bracing ourselves for the impending defeat.
The paradox of “the war on terror” is that we have yet to understand what we are fighting against. Struggle against radical Islam is not a struggle against those who detest our “way of life”, or our “values.” It is a struggle based on seeds of resentment to our policies. Sayyid Qutb’s Ma’alifu al-Tarriq, the manifesto that inspired militant Islam, emphasizes the imperialistic values that were, and continue to be, irreconcilable with Islam. The manifesto is very much a socio-economic thesis, based on the logic of battle of the oppressed against economic exploitation, and a key recruitment tool of jihadists.
That is why failing to address the grievances that are the roots of insurgencies is recipe for failure. Jihad is not a negation of Western values, rather, a struggle against the consequences of inadvertent and, perhaps, unintentional policies that undermine the safety, the dignity, and the wellbeing of the subjugated. Islam is a story of the struggle against tyranny, a narrative of the wars of Mohammed and his disciples against despots. That is why our colossal ignorance of the milieu in which we have intervened, misplaced clear conscious, combined with the uncouth mentality of an invading army provide such superb recruiting tools for the jihadists. Occupying Afghanistan, someone said, was the biggest gift we bestowed on Osama and his thugs. The terrorists were counting on the worthlessness of our tales of “nation building” and “democracy promotion.” We have not disappointed so far.
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Courtesy image by Pixabay
