A New Look At The Afghan-Pakistan Problem

[tomahawk6]

The article below puts the problem we face in Afghanistan and Pakistan in a different light. The Pashtuns span both countries similar to the way the Kurds span a number of nations. Arbitrary borders have split up ethnic groups which are causing problems today. Not sure what the solution is but I think we need to go after the radicals and try to coopt the rest. A tall order to be sure.

http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1159725516.shtml

 

[3rd Herd]

Tom,
I think the blame for the boundaries rests with our colonial ancestors who carved up the world by following a compass bearing and ignoring established tribal ethnic boundaries. If you look in an atlas of Africa you will see some very straight international boarder lines. Off the top of my head these areas have seen a high amount of strife since the post war colonial disintegration.

 

[Infanteer]

Too true - I read somewhere that cartographic lines in West Africa tend to go North-South while tribal lines went East-West.  What's the solution?  Dramatic redrawing of the atlas?  There is an interesting article by Lutwaak that postulates that allowing 3 years of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans helped "stablize" the ethnic lines; a sad but maybe true thesis?

If only we would have listened to T.E. Lawrence, who had his own idea on what a stable, independent Mid-East would look like....

 

[tomahawk6]

In the case of Lawrence's map of the middle east, the isue isnt arab vs whatever, its religious sects that are the problem. Sunni vs Shia. Historically its been arab vs Iran/Persia. The Iranians are busy trying to thwart democracy in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Iranian volunteers have been captured fighting for the taliban. For Iran democracy is a bigger threat than the sunni "heretics" they support in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.....

 

[3rd Herd]

In addition to the marching the compass bearing there was "more significant, perhaps, was the competitive outward orientation of transport networks that did not link African territories to one another but rather tied each to a port within its own colonial domain and ultimately to trade with its European metropole."

source: Austen, Ralph A. Mapping Africa: Problems of Regional Definition and Colonial/National Boundaries
            http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777122619/

 

[geo]

In the case of Lawrence's map of the middle east, the isue isnt arab vs whatever, its religious sects that are the problem. Sunni vs Shia. Historically its been arab vs Iran/Persia. The Iranians are busy trying to thwart democracy in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Iranian volunteers have been captured fighting for the taliban. For Iran democracy is a bigger threat than the sunni "heretics" they support in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.....

T6...
also consider that the heretics can kill themselves off and it's no skin of the Iranian's noses - deniability... Perfect

 

[Journeyman]

There is an interesting article by Lutwaak that postulates that allowing 3 years of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans helped "stablize" the ethnic lines; a sad but maybe true thesis?

Edward Luttwak has argued that peace is more likely if we let the combatants duke it out enough for them to appreciate a peaceful settlement. One version is available [should be available, but I'm a paid member] at the Foreign Affairs website: Luttwak, "Give War a Chance"

I don't know if you've read Ralph Peters' June 2006 article in Armed Forces Journal, "Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look.", but he points a route to Middle-Eastern/Central Asian peace based on realigning borders with populations. It sounds logical, but it would obviously cause some heartache if implemented. He says that the alternative is several decades (centuries?) of bloodshed until the balance is inevitably reached.

 

[Kirkhill]

It sounds logical,

And there you have the logical fallacy in the argument.  Logic has got nothing to do with any of this.

but it would obviously cause some heartache if implemented. He says that the alternative is several decades (centuries?) of bloodshed until the balance is inevitably reached.

Decades/Centuries of heartache and blood, with blood borders at the end, sounds a more reasonable appreciation - based on past performance.

 

[geo]

Journeyman....
talk to Pakistan & India about redrawing the borders of Kashmir.

Do you have any friends who are / were Armenians?
How about Kurds?

you want heartaches, they have heartaches.

 

[Journeyman]

No argument from me. I'm just saying he's laid out a logical (yep, that word again) realignment of borders...then said that the likely outcome is many generations of killing to get the borders where they "should" be, in his opinion.

Peters gets bashed pretty regularly, from several different quarters, for his views. From the AFJ article in particular, several people jumped on the line, "Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works." I doubt if they read the whole article. But it's his willingness to state such things that makes his writing refreshingly honest, with no academic waffle-words or political correctness.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

. Iranian volunteers have been captured fighting for the taliban. For Iran democracy is a bigger threat than the sunni "heretics" they support in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.....

Ok it was my understanding that Iran has given tacit support for the removal of the Taliban as they were sworn enemies of the Shites and this removed a threat to their border. Now I could see them funding groups to make life for the US miserable, but I would be surprised to see Shites working hand in hand with hard-core Sunni's.

 

[George Wallace]

........., but I would be surprised to see Shites working hand in hand with hard-core Sunni's.

It would depend on who they consider the greater enemy or threat at the time. 

 

[geo]

Ok it was my understanding that Iran has given tacit support for the removal of the Taliban as they were sworn enemies of the Shites and this removed a threat to their border. Now I could see them funding groups to make life for the US miserable, but I would be surprised to see Shites working hand in hand with hard-core Sunni's.

Clin,
What Tehran says and what they do is 2 different things

 

[DSB]

It was my understanding that Iran was allied/funding the norther alliance, and were apposed to Taliban rule.

Ethnic cleaning needs to be total and complete to work.  Otherwise conflict will continue to spiral in one way or another.

DSB

 

[geo]

While Islamabad claims to be against the Taliban - then have made peace with the tribes in the northern territories..... freeing up jahadists to occupy themselves (and hopefuly die) in Afghanistan...........

While Tehran was against the Taliban.... that does not mean they are cozy with the Afghan gov't that is friendly with the west (and most particularly the great satan (aka US))

 

[Kirkhill]

Would it not serve Iran's interests just to keep the pot boiling by supporting whoever will keep the area destabilized thus weakening their neighbours and at the same time weakening and discrediting (in their view) the West?

I think that Iran is doing what Churchill did with Uncle Joe Stalin.  He had no love for communism.  The longer that he could keep Russians and Germans killing each other then the fewer British lives he would have to risk.  At the end of the war he then got into a three way tussle with the Russians and the US about having the Americans or the Germans confront the Russians in the post war world.

I am still wondering what happened to all those aircraft that Saddam flew to Iran in 1991 when the US countered his move into Kuwait.  I don't think much over there is as it seems.  There is always a deal to be made.

 

[Centurian1985]

If only we would have listened to T.E. Lawrence, who had his own idea on what a stable, independent Mid-East would look like.... 

Interesting map!  Could you provide a link to where that came from? I tried a net search and couldnt find it.

 

[3rd Herd]

Interesting map!  Could you provide a link to where that came from? I tried a net search and couldnt find it.

try:T.E. Lawrence's Middle East Vision
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4967572

 

[dglad]

This past weekend, I attended a talk by Nelofer Pazira, an Afghan-Canadian who was the star of "Khandahar" and is a journalist and writer.  I won't go into all the details, as she clearly has her own views and agenda to further, but she did make some interesting points:

• among the many competing interests in south-central Asia is a nationalistic desire among the Pashtun people to form a greater Pashtunistan, independent from both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Somewhat reminiscent of the Kurds in Iraq, no?
  
• she believes that the "Taliban" actually consists of 3 fairly distinct factions--the hard-core, ideologically motivated zealots, who are raised on a diet of intolerance and sectarian dogma, mainly in the some 2500 madrassahs in Pakistan; a second group, composed of predominantly ex-mujahadeen and criminal elements who are primarily interested in a power-and-profit agenda; and the largest group, composed of ordinary Afghans, mainly farmers, who see the other two groups as the least of current evils and support them as along as it maximizes their own chances of simple survival.  Obviously, the "swing" group is the third one; if they can be "wedged" away from the other two, the "Taliban" as a movement will be seriously undermined.  Interestingly, the second group is probably also subject to changing their ways, simply because mercenaries blow with the wind anyway.  The challenge, of course, is in the "how" of this.
  
• she contends that Iran is actually opposed to the Taliban (hard-core Shiites don't really like supporting hard-core Sunnis), but are probably opposed to the US and "the West" more.  That said, her belief is that Iranian support for the Taliban is, at best, sporadic; she feels that in Iran, a largely progressive and reasonably well-educated population is stuck under the repressive rule of a despotic theocracy.
  
• Pakistan, on the other hand, is a different story.  She states that in that country, a large, generally under-educated and impoverished population is under the shakey control of a small group of pragmatic militarists who are really only interested in keeping that control.  She believes that Pakistan is the true disaster waiting to happen in the region, especially given that they have nuclear weapons.
  

All in all, an interesting talk.  As I said, I left out some of her own ideological stuff...it was interesting, too, but doesn't necessarily add much to the discussion.

 

[a_majoor]

As Robert Kaplan noted in "Balken Ghosts", all these factions want is a "return to their historical boundaries". The problem is the "historical boundaries" happen to coincide with the greatest expansion of that group's power and influence.

Ralph Peters, although a very astute writer, also misses (or is perhaps not emphasizing) the point that boundaries are not static, but change through time as demographics and even climate change. China's western boundary has changed over the millennia to follow the ebb and flow of arable land. In cold, dry periods, the Steppe expands to the east and the nomads become dominant, Han farmers are forced out and the Imperial government can no longer hold the region. During warmer, wetter periods, the Steppe moves west, the Han farmers can occupy "new" farm land (and the nomads no longer have forage for their herds and horses), and Imperial rule can be asserted over the territories again.

We have difficulty grasping these concepts because in our experience "Nation States" are virtually permanent features on the landscape. (Historians and educated people know this is not true, but even the USSR or Yugoslavia lasted over 70 years, enough to be part of the landscape for several generations). All our institutions revolve around the explicit or implicit existence of Nation States, which is another difficulty when dealing with entities like the Kurds or Pashtun people. NGO's and non state actors like the ISI fall into similar institutional and mental "blind spots". We may have to study the Middle Ages in Europe to understand the new landscape of sub and trans national entities with "state" powers.