America Picks and Chooses Among Extra-Legal Entities Destabilizing the World
I wanted to add to what David Dayen had to say about these two stories.
Last week, the WaPo quoted at least two military figures stating, as fact, that the Taliban was a bigger threat to the US mission in Afghanistan than corruption. Based on that judgment, the WaPo suggests “military officials” are now pursuing a policy of tolerating some corruption among Afghan allies.
Military officials in the region have concluded that the Taliban’s insurgency is the most pressing threat to stability in some areas and that a sweeping effort to drive out corruption could create chaos and a governance vacuum that the Taliban could exploit.
“There are areas where you need strong leadership, and some of those leaders are not entirely pure,” said a senior defense official. “But they can help us be more effective in going after the primary threat, which is the Taliban.”
[snip]
Kandahar is not just a Taliban problem; it is a mafia, criminal syndicate problem,” the senior defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “That is why it is so complicated. But clearly the most pressing threat is the Taliban.”
Now, the WaPo headline suggests this is definitely the plan, but the story itself admits that it is unclear whether everyone in the Obama Administration agrees with the plan.
It was not immediately clear whether the White House, the State Department and law enforcement agencies share the military’s views, which come at a critical time for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Indeed, the WaPo piece anonymously quotes an adviser (apparently, but not certainly, civilian) advocating for a crackdown on corruption. And it acknowledges that earlier this year some diplomats and military leaders called to arrest Ahmed Wali Karzai, but Stanley McChrystal scuttled the effort.
So it seems this initiative may come from the DOD side, and if this represents Administration (as opposed to DOD) policy, then clearly not everyone has bought off on it. Which makes it worth cataloging those in the story who might qualify as the “senior defense official” endorsing this new policy. The story quotes the following:
- Robert Gates, introduced in an apparent non-sequitur between two quotes from the “senior defense official,” visiting two Army units fighting around Kandahar
- David Petraeus talking about efforts to stem the US contract funds that fuel corruption
- Lieutenant General David Rodriguez, hailing efforts to set up councils of elders who can decide how to spend reconstruction funds
(Stephen Biddle, of the Council on Foreign Relations, is also quoted supporting this policy.)
Assuming the WaPo is following accepted practice about anonymous quotations, I’d bet a few pennies that the “senior defense official” declaring that the Taliban is a bigger threat than corruption or drugs is Robert Gates.
If so, it would mean cabinet member Robert Gates is pushing a strategy that acknowledges the danger of the criminal syndicates in Afghanistan, yet continues with the working assumption that the “primary … most pressing” threat is the Taliban.
The Taliban, mind you, not al Qaeda.
Now, as I repeat endlessly, the AUMF authorizing the Afghan war authorizes a fight only against those who,
planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
So presumably top Taliban leaders (those who harbored al Qaeda), but not the lower grunts among the Taliban. And the continuing justification for our fight in Afghanistan is to prevent al Qaeda from regaining a haven in Afghanistan (presumably like the ones it has in Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia, where were are nominally not at war).
But this senior military official standing in the immediate vicinity of Robert Gates says that the Taliban–the entire Taliban–is the primary threat, presumably meaning the biggest threat of al Qaeda regaining a haven to operate in Afghanistan, and not the people taking our reconstruction dollars and depositing them in Dubai banks.
Meanwhile, the NYT challenges the assumption that the Taliban are the biggest danger.
What if government corruption is more dangerous than the Taliban?
[snip]
In interviews [after a McChrystal-attended Karzai speech to 400 trial leaders in June], one after the other told stories that were both disheartening and remarkably similar. None of the men (they were all men) harbored any love for the Taliban. But they had even less love for their Afghan leaders.
The NYT goes on to explain that the US knows who the members of the criminal syndicates are–the ones shipping money to UAE and largely running the country–but they don’t want to crack down on them out of fear of creating a vacuum of leadership the Taliban might exploit.
The real difficulty, American commanders say, is that taking down the biggest Amfghan politicians could open a vacuum of authority. And that could create instability that the Taliban could take advantage of.
American officers have every right to worry about stability. But the trouble with this argument is that, increasingly, there is less and less stability to keep. And, if Afghans like Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Hakimi are to be believed, it’s the corruption itself that is the instability’s root cause.
There’s a lot to be said about what appears to be just the latest in an intra-Administration squabble on the right policy moving forward.
But it seems the entire debate is taking place at far too concrete a level, with the simple calculation that the Taliban (not al Qaeda) are our designated enemy, and therefore we just have to focus our efforts on doing everything–including coddling corrupt officials–to defeat the Taliban.
That all seems to be divorced from the point: preventing Afghanistan from becoming a haven for al Qaeda again. Nothing more and nothing less.
Increasingly, our counterterrorism approach embraces the use of extra-legal means to combat terrorism: illegal drone strikes by CIA officers acting as (potentially) illegal combatants, the criminalization of war if done by our opponents, and the coddling of groups that–like terrorists–are extra-legal transnational organizations. All these transnational extra-legal organizations–and probably our embraced of extra-legal tactics, as well–destabilize the world and in places like Afghanistan (or Yemen or Somalia) they lead to failed nations that are precisely the kind of places that anti-American forces mobilizing the ideology of Islamic extremism take haven.
But aside from their opposition to the US and their even greater suppression of women, what separates the criminal syndicates from the Taliban aside from our support and our money?
At some point, the US needs to take a step back and consider the way all types of extra-legal multinational organizations–terrorist organizations, criminal syndicates/drug cartels, even some multinational companies–serve to destabilize nation-states and communities and thereby to exacerbate our vulnerability to all of them.
But right now, DOD seems to be doubling down on the more western-friendly version of extra-legal entity as a key to trying to defeat another extra-legal entity.
Great post – good for you, David and NYT to tackle the harder issues.
One rather large problem with going after corruption is that so much of it is tied to US interests and even to things that the US thinks is OK – bc it views Afghanistan as a proxy state.
Most countries would view having foreign intel services paying off members of of their government as, at best, corruption – at worse, something that has a death penalty attached in most nations. But the US freely and fondly talks about how much the CIA is paying off elected and appointed Afghan officials. Tack on all the US contractor interests and we end up with a big chunk of the “corruption” walking back to the US that is there to “help them” stabilize.
Not only that, but our corruption payments are going to insuring things like US ability to stage attacks into Pakistan and engage in drone strikes against civilians and keeping an internationally illegal prison site like Bagram going, etc – things that aren’t in Afghanistan’s best interests for insuring stability. There’s no transparency on either the Obama or Karzai end for how US $$$ and influence are being exerted or how US contractor-proxies are exerting their influences either. So many $$ going towards the Afghan “effort” and yet, how many for stabilizing features like roads and education and medical facilities, vs. for payoffs to insure free operation of assassination squads and the like?
I think there’s a coherence problem here. The intelligence-gathering functions of our Intelligence system are often not functionally separate from operational functions, and it is the operational functions of a myriad government agencies (DOD, JSOC, CIA, State Dept, etc.) that are too much doing their own things. So the whole doesn’t add up.
And then factor in all the thousands of contractors, each one of which has divided loyalties and agendae, and you have a hydra-headed monster.
Obama has a manager’s nightmare on his hands, and I don’t think he knows how to deal with it.
Bob in AZ
OT
There’s more than one problem, beyond prolonging a war which has shifted its objectives every six months or so. This latest turn – “we’re in an anti-Mafia offensive here” – would be risible if it weren’t so serious. Ask the Sicilian police, prosecutors and investigating magistrates about fighting the Mafia. Or anyone who’s crossed paths with the Russian Mafia. But, to be sure, this newest gambit makews for the potential of another five or ten years of warrin’.
Of course, ignoring the language of the AUMF to support this gambit – turning on someone other than the Taliban – so as to keep the warrin’ goin’ on masks the greater, underlying semantic problem. The quoted AUMF language
does not include those who have joined the organization since, say, September 11, 2001. In other words, the AUMF was limited by its own terms to hunting down and “bringing to justice” (define that how you will) those who were part of al Qaeda (the doers) and/or the Taliban (the harborers) on or before September 11, 2001. All those guys who joined up (voluntarily or not) after September 11, 2001 are not within the coverage of the AUMF. Thus, the only coherent conclusions which can be drawn from this state of affairs are twofold:
The wonder of it all is that the semanticists here (and, for that matter, those bringing the ACLU suit against extrajudicially killing US citizens for joining AQ a year or two ago in Yemen) haven’t thought about or raised this point, yet.
Yet another hazard of eternal war … you accomplish the mission without knowing you did yet still have warrin’ to war on.
Ah, but it does include “or harbored such organizations,” and the Taliban definitely “harbored” Al Qaeda in 2001, and do so today.
The problem is that the more we expand the scope of the “enemy,” the more we expand the number of people we are opposing. The Taliban are not a united, monolithic force; they are an agglomeration of semi-autonomous units, and it would be foolish to make all of them our enemy.
What is needed is a clearer policy of how to deal with failed states, which become the locus for any gang of hoodlums to train for their lawless activities.
We need to do better at real nation-building: not at the point of a gun, as a policy by an imperial administration advancing it’s strategic interests around the world (what presently passes for “nation-building”), but in response to requests by troubled governments of the world for assistance in the basic mechanics of governance, consistent with our values. This program should be run out of the State Dept, not DOD.
Bob in AZ
You point is fair about the Taliban having harbored AQ prior to 9/11/01, but the problem is that we (or our proxies) have killed, captured or incapacitated so many of the Taliban that today’s Taliban – the one we’re fighting (sorta) – is not the same Taliban. And, for that matter, parsing the AUMF indicates we’re supposed to be going after the persons who were in those organizations pre-9/11/01.
But the gist of my comment – that the repeated deaths of AQ#3 or Taliban #4 over the past 9 years have so hollowed out those organizations that we can consider mission accomplished, at least as soon as bin Laden is captured or declared dead.
So, if the war is to continue (having a war has always been the purpose of having this war) we need a new enemy – the Mafia fills that bill well – and one who is sufficiently evil and elusive to justify many more years of fighting.
This is almost an easy call.
Corruption and drugs existed in great quantities before we got there. Therefore, it stands to reason that those items are something the Afghan are used to don’t much care about.
We care about them, yes. They shouldn’t exist, yes.
It’s kind of like you see a tornado is coming and you notice your bedroom is not as neat as it ought to be. You don’t stop and clean up your room. You handle preparations for the tornado, wait til it passes and THEN clean your room.
IN this case, the Taliban is the tornado and the corruption and drugs are the messy house you live in.
Um. No.
Drugs DIDN’T exist on 9/11, but the Taliban did. The latter had reasonably successfully shut down production of the latter.
come on, I know you are more aware.
Drugs have been a big crop for Afghanistan for decades.
“By 2000 Afghanistan was the source of 70% of all of the illicit opium produced in the world. Following a decline in 2001…”
I’m talking LONG term conditions. And drugs and corruption have been around Afghanistan FAR longer than the Taliban.
So, the Taliban fighting the Afghan government and us is the MOST immediate problem.
Drugs and corruption need to be fixed, but they are a red herring at the moment.
The quickest way to fail would be to go off and try to solve drug and corruption problems and take resources and attention away from the Taliban. But, then again, that might be WHY someone is suggesting it.
Um, there’s a fairly close tie between drugs and the ruined economy courtesy of those folks who funded the anti-soviet folks.
There is zero way you can separate the outside involvement from any of these three things. To suggest otherwise is hocus pocus.
A little more, this from the World Bank:
“There is evidence that the Taliban ban carried the seeds of its own lack of sustainability,
due to a many-fold increase in the burden of opium-related debt (locking
many households into dependence on future opium poppy cultivation), forcing asset sales to
make ends meet, etc. It also appears that the opium ban weakened the Taliban politically.”
Drugs were a HUGE industry prior to 9/11 and prior the Taliban. The ban didn’t really work and started cracking in 2001 before 9/11. So, you might say that even the Taliban with beheadings, etc. couldn’t control it. What makes us think we are going to control it?
It’s a red herring.
If we can’t control it, then we can’t establish the conditions necessary to make sure it won’t be a haven for al Qaeda. That’s the ENTIRE POINT of this post.
If, as you say, we’re helpless, then we have no business trying.
No, I’m saying you don’t start cleaning the attic when your house is on fire. Put out the fire, THEN clean out the attic.
No matter how much the attic needs cleaning.
Sure, long term success will require handling both drugs and corruption, but you won’t get to it if you don’t put out the fire.
I understand what you’re saying.
But your argument supports my point: that we’re helpless against these entities that are–except insofar as whether we’re funding them or not–fairly indistinguishable wrt the way they destabilize Afghanistan (and therefore foster al Qaeda).
Your argument is basically, “Look, here’s a new fire, just like the older fires, one that arose because the old fires had made the place so dangerous. Let’s pick and choose the fire that requires the least self-reflection from us!”
You seem to be assuming that the crap in the attic has nothing to do with the fire. What if it was the cause of it?
The idea of the US advocating an end to corruption in another country is like the US advocating human rights in another country.
hahahahhahahahhahahahhahaha
Just to throw a tin foil hat into the ring, Stephen Biddle, the man from CFR, is a descendant of Nicholas Biddle one of the oligarch class who fought with Andrew Jackson over the Second Bank of the US.
“They” have their little fingers in everything and have had for a long, long time.
The USA is interested in the government in Afghanistan to the extent that it become a reliable partner in providing security for oil and natural gas pipelines controled by our multi-national corporations.
Unless we can help someone gain control of the country, we won’t have a partner and we’ll have to stay around and do the job, and pretty soon that means permanent bases, and you see where it goes.
We’re not busy looking for the good guys so we can make a fair deal, we’re looking for the ‘right’ guys, so we can make ‘our’ deal.
At some point I wouldn’t be surprised to see OBL, and Erik Prince’s signatures on the agreement.
Leave aside the fact that making the “Taliban” our enemy that must be defeated locks us into eternal imperial war for a moment. The debate about whether we should fight corruption more or fight the Taliban more is simply idiotic.
We are the corruption. Period. And I’m not even talking about talking the horde of loot the US is funneling to “contractors.” It’s tough to find a more despicably corrupt act than taking money from a foreign government to do its bidding when you are a public official. In the US, that’s called “espionage” (can you say Aldrich Ames), or “treason.”
Yet, we have fundamentally corrupted many of the leading figures in the “Afghan” government, by paying them for intelligence i.e. to betray their country to a foreign power. After they’ve sold themselves to an invading army, the billions are just a matter of quibbling over the number of pieces of silver.
h/t Scott Horton at Harpers for pointing this out.
A) everything you assert is pure speculation regarding sources.
B) much as we may hate them, the Taliban were not the original targets in Afghanistan. Al-queda were the targets and they are now reduced to insignificance there. Thus, our continued presence there is purely economical, it benefits only the defense industry. This is a pointless exercise.
A) Is an incorrect statement; unsure why you have asserted it, but incorrect nevertheless as the post clearly proves.
B) Well, B is a false statement too, as the Taliban and their leadership were direct targets because of their aid, shelter and adoption of al-Qaida at the time.
Don’t feed the trolls….
(my bold)
How many of these organizations are funding elections here and globally? So, is the policy really over the fears of creating a vacuum? Sounds like a hollow policy statement.
There are vacuums and there are vacuums.
With the Administration and commanders giving “that” policy explanation, we are dreadfully vulnerable now; thus, we may conclude our country is currently in a vacuum of corruption.
Yep, that goes for our country. Our instability is due to the industrial military complex and they benefit from a policy of “fear of creating a vacuum.”
The flood of CIA and DOD money has fueled a boom in a practice that was banned by both Afghanistan’s former communist government and also the Taliban. Bachabaze means “playing with boys” Afghanistan’s nouveau rich show off their wealth by amassing harems of young boys who dance dressed as women and then perform sexual acts with their adult male patrons.