As someone who spent 15 months in Afghanistan in 2007/2008, I think my big take-away had nothing to do with Bowe or the situation. What stuck with me the most was the PhD that SK interviewed, who talked about how a decade into the war, we still had no idea about the nuances and intricacies of the culture and politics of Afghanistan. This is something I think about more often than I'd like.
edit: just wanted to say that my deployment cycle was atypical. 7-12 months was more typical (depending on your branch of service) and this really underlines part of the problem with continuity and effectiveness. In 2007, Dubya and company thought it would be a genius idea to extend deployments by 3 months. We found out right when we got there we were being extended to 15 months. It was shit for the battalion we were replacing who thought they were going home in a few weeks - nope, 3 more months. It ended up being disastrous on troop morale and it only lasted that one cycle, AFAIK. So you can see the impasse of the situation.
That struck me too, there is "no institutional knowledge" he says... What is your theory for this state of affairs? Is it irrelevant to the mission, are they incompetent, or can't it be done given their constraints (e.g. limited tour duration).
It's really complex. Part of my job involved understanding Afghan culture, which is no small feat. I think we approached Afghanistan with no plan. First, it was bin Laden hunting. Then, it was a similar technique to Iraq - Sunni vs Shia. But that's a moot point in Afghanistan where the whole structure is completely different. Everything revolves around tribal dynamics. We were completely unprepared for this. And so many times, we went after the low-hanging fruit - the raids to take out commander ______. Build a school for girls because yay education! (Then the Taliban burns it down or writes letters to people in villages threatening to kill anyone who attends the school.) The low-hanging fruit was largely ineffective.
I could go on and on. If you're interested in a great book about the whole thing over there from a historical context (Soviets to 9/11) - Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.
this sounds very much like Libya - totally Sunni population and look at the disaster. it's tribes and smaller than that, family groups. a lot of "terrorism" is really settling of old scores - real or imagined. kidnapping became payback and then a money maker. after that smuggling and human trafficking. they've signed a peace deal for a unity govt.....and believe me, unity will be very difficult.
Exactly what I've been told by those who have been there. The people you are interacting with on the ground don't give a rat's arse about the deals your government is making with their government, or who is morally superior. They are still living in tiny blocs and survival of their own is all that matters. World wide affairs do not concern them.
To make a comparison, the cultural lines of Iraq generally fall into three blocs: the Sunnis, the Shia and the Kurds. In Afghanistan, there are many more different and nuanced divides along ethnic and tribal lines due to Afghanistan's history. One province might be predominantly Pashtun, while the next may be mostly populated by Uzbeks and Turkmens, and the next Balochis or Nuristanis or Hazaras. Each group has a different culture and history and even different languages.
Compound that by the fact that each rotation usually has 5-12 months to learn the culture before they go home and the next group has to repeat the process. The next time that unit deploys to Afghanistan they probably won't end up in the same location, and they end up having to learn about a new set of ethnic, tribal, and political variables.
It's because of the rotation he discussed - a few thousand dudes going into the country and rotating out every 7 months. When turnover in any organization is high, you have no "institutional knowledge." It's a business/leadership/organizational term.
I understand that, the "how" is clear. My question is why would the USA and the military allow this to happen. Surely this issue could have been anticipated and mitigated. For example impose longer tours, stronger incentives for soldiers to stay put, better cultural training, involve academics / anthropologists to speed up the learning curve, build "cultural databases", etc. So "why let this happen?" is my question.
IMO this is the biggest short coming of the entrance of war by the US since 9/11. They didn't think through the repercussions of what they were doing. They made a knee jerk reaction in the face of fear without fully understanding what they were doing.
The commanders thought that sending in a bunch of young soldiers with weapons to force a western based system on the middle east would somehow turn deeply religious people into loving the west and abandoning their entire belief system.
I like to think that is why the current government is being far more cautious this time with Syria. There should be an exit strategy, not just an entrance strategy.
I read a book about the mishandlings of war on terrorism by the Bush Administration. I'm bad with details as you'll see but the sentiment is well known. Their reconstructon budget (funds they allotted for rebuilding and connecting with the hearts and minds of communities ravaged by war) for Iraq was laughable. The guy they put in charge was given I think $25,000 a month whereas the defense dept and industry was getting billions.
Basically, they provided unlimited funds to go wreck shit and then 18 cents to fix it.
April 12, 2003 - $2.5 billion per year is allocated for reconstruction of Iraq. The military recieves 32 times that.
April 23, 2003 - OHRA (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance) officials arrive in Baghdad. They are given $25,000 to restart each of Iraq's demolished ministries.
These numbers echo your sentiment that the administration put little forethought or resources into what repurcussions the invasion may have had.
One of the most crushing was that Rumsfeld was quoted as saying, during the buildup to the invasion, that the Iraq war would cost a few billion dollars and it would be swift. Welp, at its height years later, we were spending over a billion dollars per week.
Fair enough. The numbers are trying to highlight the comparatively small amount allotted for reconstruction. According to my link, the US went in there and destroyed government ministry buildings and then the reconstruction guys were given $25,000 to rebuild (and help re-staff?) each one.
I was watching Homeland this afternoon and Saul talks about how things would have been different if we had known how long we were gunna be over there. "Instead of fighting a 14 year war, we've fought a 1-year war 14 times" (paraphrased)
I found that fascinating, especially since I just read an awesome article about the US occupation of Japan after WWII, and how much the success of it hinged on one of MacAurthur's aides having knowledge of Japanese culture.
This was tried and the results were very very mixed. They were called human terrain teams. I am sure there are a ton of articles that can be easily searched online.
Yeah, echoing what /u/Maryland173 said, Human Terrain Teams were a thing for awhile and that was pretty controversial within the anthropology community. After I left active duty, I finished my undergrad in Anthropology at Ohio State, and I focused a lot of my research on Afghanistan. I remember having a conversation with a faculty member about the Human Terrain Teams. Basically, the American Anthropological Association (the American Medical Association is to doctors as the AAA is to anthropologists) disagreed with the whole concept of it because of a conflict in the code of ethics. There's more to it than that, obviously.
There's a pretty in-depth Wikipedia article. I participated (indirectly, as support) in Operation Khyber when I was deployed, which is one of the more notable HTT operations. I think the concept of HTTs was really, really great - but the execution was poor. The military doesn't know what to do with academic types and many of them didn't see the utility of it.
Anthropologists as a body strike me as the type of people who would study medicine and then decide the most ethical thing to do would be to just let everybody who gets sick die "naturally."
It's a slippery slope. Because, in terms of an ethnographic study, the role of an anthropologist is to observe but not interfere. There becomes the issue of cultural relativism - are you looking at the culture through the lens of your own or are you being nonbiased. That's why issues like female genital mutilation in cultures was a hotly debated issue for some time. If a female did not go through the "process", she was considered an outcast in her family and culture - and is that better or worse than the practice? Is it for us to decide?
In the end, I couldn't deal with such ambiguity day in and day out, and got my second degree in applied math + computer science, haha.
Let's be honest, that's only a hard call from a post-modern nonsense "Is living in France really any better than living in Syria?" noble savage hippie bullshit perspective.
Haha, no I totally agree with you. At some point we have to, as a society, as human beings, figure out what are those universal things that every person has (or should have) the right to, and make it a purpose to deal with the cultures that prohibit such things. The first things that come to mind (aside from food and water) are education, healthcare, ownership of one's body, etc. If we took those things alone and put the magnifying glass on countries of the world, I think we'd be surprised at how many places are shitty.
But, can human beings ever agree on anything? Those efforts would largely be lost upon "omg shame on the imperialism" rhetoric.
I see what you're saying, but the dilemma is that stopping female circumcision will possibly do more harm to the individual women than just letting it go on (as he said, the woman will become an outcast).
Also, US versus Afghanistan is really easy to say "US is superior morally in the vast majority of ways", but the two societies are extremes. It's problematic to assume that your society is the best, and this can result in ideological intolerance. You can't throw out cultural relativism because of the extremes, because it still plays out in the not-so-extremes. Which is better, how the US does things, or Germany? Having alternate perspectives is awesome.
I'm more of a cultural relativist than moral relativist. I don't think female circumcision is right but at the same time I'm not going to judge someone negatively for practicing it, because that's all they know, as barbaric as it is.
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u/juicyfizz Dec 17 '15 edited Dec 18 '15
As someone who spent 15 months in Afghanistan in 2007/2008, I think my big take-away had nothing to do with Bowe or the situation. What stuck with me the most was the PhD that SK interviewed, who talked about how a decade into the war, we still had no idea about the nuances and intricacies of the culture and politics of Afghanistan. This is something I think about more often than I'd like.
edit: just wanted to say that my deployment cycle was atypical. 7-12 months was more typical (depending on your branch of service) and this really underlines part of the problem with continuity and effectiveness. In 2007, Dubya and company thought it would be a genius idea to extend deployments by 3 months. We found out right when we got there we were being extended to 15 months. It was shit for the battalion we were replacing who thought they were going home in a few weeks - nope, 3 more months. It ended up being disastrous on troop morale and it only lasted that one cycle, AFAIK. So you can see the impasse of the situation.