Road Map Rising

From melancholy to the Middle East...not so distant a voyage considering the roots of the word melancholy, literally meaning 'black bile'. The Middle East, coveted land of black bile and broken dreams; that wicked and mysterious gateway to the "East". The Annapolis summit on Mid-East Peace began yesterday with all the usual fanfare, the obligatory Joint Statement, high-flung speeches re-hashed from older yet equally high-flung speeches, the subtle accusations and counter-accusations. Nothing new really, except for two passing remarks, one in President's Bush's closing speech, in which he states:

“The time is right [to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process] because the battle is under way for the future of the Middle East. And we must not cede victory to the extremists, with their violent actions and contempt for human life,” Bush said.

The time is right indeed...nearly 5 years after the publication of Bush's silver-bullet Road Map (the quintessential in high-flinging) and already more than 2 years behind the document's original 2005 deadline for a final status agreement.

Dates, naturally, can change.

What hasn't changed is the document itself - still a nebulous collection of wishful thoughts and amorphous visions. But that's besides the point. What's striking to me in Bush's statement is the phrase "for the future of the Middle East." Which version of the future is he talking about here? Is it the future Palestinians and Israelis want or is it the very specific future imagined by Corporate America? Is it the aspirations of Jews and Muslims or the ambition of free market capitalism? Yes, "we must not cede victory to the extremists", all of them: capitalists, economic imperialists and Islamists. The whole stinkin' lot. But I don't think this is what Bush meant.

If the Joint Statement, is any indication, the U.S. apparently plans on a long and, ultimately, prosperous 'engagement' with the Middle East. In its closing paragraph it states:

The parties further commit to continue the implementation of the ongoing obligations of the road map until they reach a peace treaty. The United States will monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map. Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States.

The emphases are mine. So, it is the U.S. that will decide who is holding up their end of the bargain or not. America will decide if the time is ripe for future treaties. In other words, the Bush administration will control the entire process, and, from its past performance I think its accurate to say that the neo-cons will try to engineer a beneficial result for U.S. interests. Oddly, in the Road Map document, nowhere does it state that the U.S. will have this sort of power. Everywhere in the text, references are made to the "Quartet" (U.S., European Union, U.N. and Russia) as the final arbiter of the negotiation process. That in itself is troublesome but to now shift the responsibility fully to the U.S. is downright dirty. Why not instead appoint a neutral third party to monitor and decide on the progress toward reaching the benchmarks outlined in the Road Map?

The U.S. has lost all credibility in the eyes of the Palestinian people while more and more Israelis are also starting to question whether or not America has their interests in mind. It's time for the neo-cons to step aside, melt into the background, and, ultimately, show some humility.

Afghanistan - Missing Voices

Trying to see Afghan society with new eyes, with what I consider to be sight unencumbered by filters. In this case, the filter I've discarded is the one that tries to reduce identities to an essential, Platonic core. Pashtuns are such a way, Tajiks are inclined to such and such, Hazaras and Turkomens...these facile categories confuse rather than clarify; they muddy the picture.

Not to say these ethnic groups don't exist in Afghanistan, they certainly do and there is something to be said about the tensions between them. Those tensions, I think now, are a product of the categories themselves, a by-product of syllogistic reductionism that leaves us with an easy-to-use lexicon for the discussion of Afghans but at the expense of the reality of Afghanistan itself. The problem is that by framing the discussion this way, by capturing and controlling the language, we create the images, we set the boundaries and we set the cycle of conflict in motion.

Ironically, during the Russian occupation, it was the exact opposite situation: Lenin's socialism tried to eliminate all difference; it was an all-encompassing reductionism, the reducing of distinct cultures into a homogeneous whole. That failed. The modern, liberal-inspired reduction of Afghan society into distinct ethnic groups which are then subvidived into tribes and clans will also fail. Both approaches to Afghanistan anchor themselves in the extremes and inevitably lead to policies that do nothing to address the actual needs of Afghans. U.S. and Pakistani policy, for example, manipulates tribal and clan distinctions in a hopeless effort to achieve some sort of strategic advantage, a strategic peace that will be beneficial to them.

Unfortunately, some powerful Afghans have bought into this reductionist strategy (and it is a strategy, conscious or not), whereby guarding their own interests means playing to the interest of one group or another. Karzai himself is playing the game. Rather than appeal to the multiple identities that exist in every Afghan, he appeals at times to ethnic identity, at another to national identity at still another to tribal and clan identities, depending on his strategic needs. In the end, he ends up looking like a player. Afghans pick up on this and that's why so many mistrust the central government.

The Taliban, on the other hand, like the Russians, tried to reduce Afghan identity to a singularity, one based on their image of the pious Muslim. All Afghans are Muslims, therefore all Afghan women must where the burqa, all men must have beards long enough to clench in a fist and dress in the traditional shalwar kameez. Other identities rebelled against this idea and formed the Northern Alliance, in part to protect their identities but also to inflict upon Afghanistan those same identities. That is what is happening now, now that the Northern Alliance is in power.

Many Pashtuns, as a result, are not happy. What they see is a government whose central mission is to wipe their way of life out of existence, especially in the south and east where Pashtun identity is the most crystallized. But the fact remains that in these regions there are people who speak for Pashtuns, not the Jihadist Taliban whose inspiration is the apocalyptic vision of the End of Days, but the Pashtun leaders (who also call themselves Taliban - students of Islam) who are genuinely protecting the Pashtun way of life. This way of life is also a part of Afghanistan, regardless of how much some in the current government and others in the world community may despise that identity. Engaging them, bringing them into the political fold will finally give the Pashtuns a voice in government, a voice that is, at the present time, conspicuously absent.

I'll end this post with a few pics:

Stolen histories and a couple pics

An opinion piece on Afghanistan I wrote a couple of weeks ago:

If timing is a measure of wisdom, then Canada’s Senators can finally start calling themselves the wise old men of the political establishment. Their report on Afghanistan, released on February 12 essentially berating some NATO members in Afghanistan for their cowardice, has one thing going for it: it came out just when its message was most likely to be heard – only weeks before a spring offensive, which Taliban leaders have described as an all-or-nothing battle for the south, and at a time when the U.S. and Britain, both floundering in Iraq, are shuffling their attention back to the little war they conveniently forgot.

Britain, abandoning its mess in Mesopotamia, is re-directing its troops to beleaguered Helmand province, a 1400-strong contingent that, according to its military commanders, will support operations in the entire south, including Kandahar, where Canadians are based. There is also talk in Washington of a troop surge in Afghanistan as President George W. Bush, in the twilight of his presidency, feverishly hunts for a military success that will afford him some meaningful legacy. For its part, Canada is pumping in more cash, $200 million dollars more for reconstruction, on top of the $1 billion promised over the next 10 years.

That all makes Canada’s Senators look like straight-A students, an illusion bolstered by the fact that much of the information coming out of Afghanistan, the same information used by the Senators to compile their report, is hopelessly skewed by a Western perspective that views Afghan society with condescension.

Last week, French diplomats, annoyed by the accusation that their troops are idling away their Afghan deployment in the relatively peaceful north, called the Senators’ bluff. In the process, they also exposed the damage the senate report has the potential to cause, not only by weakening the unity of NATO but also by strengthening the Taliban’s own propaganda machine which feeds off and exploits the perceptions of Afghanistan’s Pashtuns, the ethnic group most affected by the war and to which the Taliban themselves belong.

Those perceptions are shaped by the symbols housed in messages, or as one of Canada’s greatest thinkers of the 20th century once said, in the medium which is the message. That shining pearl of actual wisdom applies to more than just the media; Canada’s Senators could learn a lesson or two from Marshall McLuhan’s signature quote. Their report sent a very specific message; and it was not a good one. To the Afghans, who know better than anyone else that the Taliban will never be defeated militarily, it said: NATO is here to fight, that’s its purpose. To Canadians it said: the war is what’s important. Both messages are wrong. More than wrong, they bypass the difficult questions Canadians need to be asking.

Those questions are deceivingly straightforward: What does Afghanistan need? Would more troops in the south help bring peace?

The war in Afghanistan, as any military expert will tell you, is not about troop levels; thinking in those terms is a little old-school (which is, fittingly, what the Senate itself represents in Canadian politics). This war is not a conventional fight where every man and woman on the battlefield represents an asset. “Fighting in Afghanistan is not only about having more men on the ground…” a senior French diplomat correctly pointed out in response to the Senate report. In many cases, too many troops can be a liability, providing robust targets for Taliban insurgents carrying out suicide attacks and setting roadside bombs. No, more troops will not help the situation. Just the opposite, in fact: in a head-to-head fight, Canada’s current combat deployment in Kandahar alone, all well-trained soldiers armed to the teeth, could take on the ragtag band of farmers-cum-fighters called the Taliban. More combat troops would make little difference. More special forces perhaps, definitely more specialized soldiers with experience fighting a guerrilla insurgency. This is where some NATO members could play a significant role - Turkey, for example, the second-largest member of NATO with a long history of fighting a grassroots insurgency in, like Afghanistan, a mountainous region of its own. But Turkey’s NATO contingent is currently holed up in Kabul, running development projects in a region super-saturated with development projects.

But even then, even if Turkey decides to deploy south, that would not solve the Afghan puzzle. There is no skeleton key to open the door to peace in Afghanistan, or any other indigenous uprising, a lesson Turkey has learned in its own fight against Kurdish separatists (that war is still waging, more than 15 years after it started). What’s needed instead is a complete re-think of what peace will look like in a nation whose shattered identity is scattered over its remote mountain terrain like razor-sharp shards of glass. Canada could play the lead in that perceptual revolution.

Pumping more money into an economy already addicted to aid will not spur that revolution. The additional $200 million promised by Canada, injected into a society rife with corruption and graft, will only fatten the beast even more. Here is how the Harper government intends to spend that extra cash, and why its plans are so misguided:

• $120 million for governance and development

Money will not solve Afghanistan’s governance problems when the institutions that money is intended to support are foreign and alien to the Afghan people. The net result is a system of nepotism that has only served to divide Afghans rather than unite them. In development terms, that means contracts are often awarded to companies with connections in government, concentrating wealth and angering the masses of poor Afghans who have yet to see any benefits from the aid money pouring into their country.

• $30 million for anti-narcotics

Read this as more money for the disastrous U.S.-led poppy eradication program. During the course of that program, opium output has reached record levels, providing much needed funding to the Taliban while simultaneously angering poor Afghan farmers who now face a War on Drugs in the midst of a war in the conventional sense. That is an acidic mix which has pushed many farmers into the arms of the Taliban. Money and fighters, that is what the eradication program has given the Taliban insurgency, and that is what Canadian taxpayers’ money will fund. An alternative, proposed by the Senlis Council, a think tank based in Europe, which would convert some of Afghanistan’s opium crop into a legitimate industry for medicinal use has received little attention, in large part because of aggressive U.S. opposition. Canada’s money would be better spent exploring this option.

• $20 million for policing

Again, it’s not money that is the problem with Afghanistan’s woefully inadequate police force, it’s the methodology used to recruit, train, and deploy police units on to Afghanistan’s divided streets. A recent move to recruit men from local populations into an auxiliary force to police communities is a step in the right direction but more needs to be done to ensure these units serve the interests of the whole community and not individual clan groups. This will require innovative thinking about what an Afghan police force should look like and not simply the application of a Western-inspired policing template.

• $20 million for de-mining

This is a worthy cause in a nation studded with landmines. More money should be allocated here, especially considering Canada’s leading role in eliminating landmines worldwide.

• $10 million for road construction

A feel-good program which NATO constantly references in its ‘Afghan success stories.’ But the reality is, especially in southern provinces like Kandahar, new roads are perceived by the local population as serving the military needs of the occupying forces (eerily similar to what happened during the Russian occupation when Soviet-built roads were targeted by mujahideen because they represented a military advantage to the occupiers). This is not a mistaken point-of-view: in southern Afghanistan, as soon as a new road is laid down, it is crawling with NATO armoured vehicles. Until roads offer a tangible advantage to the average Afghan villager, they will continue to be perceived as serving the strategic needs of foreign forces. That advantage is intimately bound to the reason why humans began building roads in the first place – for trade. Afghanistan’s south has no trade to justify road construction. In a sense, building them is a slap in the face of Afghans, as if to say, “We will build them and our armies will come.”

What’s missing in all of these initiatives is a genuine regard for who Afghans are and what they want. When the Senate report refers to Afghan society as “medieval” it falls into the same trap countless invaders of this virulently independent region have fallen into. To see Afghanistan through the prism of one’s own history is to sweep away the rich history of Afghanistan itself, ironically something the Taliban, when it was in power, tried to do. Democracy, for example, has as much, if not more of a history in Afghanistan than Canada, albeit not the type of democracy most Canadians would recognize. But fundamentally, the Pashtun tribal culture’s governance by consensus, through councils of elders, is a version of democracy that deserves its own development. It’s rather myopic to call on something as relative and contrived as the 21st-century as a measure of a nation’s modernity. The fact is, the 21st-century means something very different to most people in the world than the implied Age of Enlightenment to which the Senate report alludes. In those terms, most of the world is still medieval.

Unfortunately, tribalism has undermined Afghanistan’s democratic development, as has foreign manipulation of the country’s tribal structures. Pakistan and the U.S. especially have taken advantage of clan rivalries to achieve their own strategic needs. They continue to do so. Canada should stand up and say this is wrong. It undermines NATO’s efforts and further fractures a country beset by fault lines. Furthermore, the current government in Kabul reflects the deep ethnic fissures that have divided Afghan society since the civil war of the 1990’s. The trauma of that dark decade will not be easily forgotten and having a ruling elite that excludes Pashtuns is a reminder to the people of Afghanistan that the era of sectarian strife is not over. Canada should pressure Afghan authorities to form a more ethnically diverse government, one that doesn’t include men who are accused of war crimes and who are aligned with sectarian factions accused of crimes against humanity during the civil war.

Then, perhaps, Afghanistan’s healing can begin. Canada can play a major role in that healing process, not by spouting ultimatums and pouring more money into what has so far been a poorly directed project, but by genuinely working toward a future that will be Afghan in its nature and not an imported vision. This is what the majority of Afghans want, and ultimately what some Afghans are still fighting for. This is the message we should be sending.

In Orientalism, one of Edward Said's central arguments revolves around the idea of appropriated identities. Oriental identity, he argues, has been shaped by foreign, mostly European, symbols for centuries. Oriental history, if I can bring this into my own logical framework, has become the almost exclusive domain of western institutions (of the academic Orientalist, or the Middle Eastern policy specialist, or the Occidental writer and artist). Those symbols claim to represent the Oriental mind, its motivations, its inner workings and its outer expressions. To say this is egotistical misses the point. That it evolves out of a power dynamic or, as Said says, an "ethos of domination" is beyond doubt. But what's most important in this perspective is the recognition that the way we in the west see the east is through the prism of these appropriated histories, these facile symbols consciously or unconsciously designed to make the Oriental fit into an acceptable mould of "Otherness."

This, I believe, is the root of the problem in NATO's Afghanistan project, as well as Iraq. This is not to say the power brokers in the West haven't learned from past mistakes. They no longer talk about "civilizing" backward people, or ruling for the benefit of the ruled. This sort of colonial phraseology doesn't cut it these days. But the sad fact is that the philology of domination still infects the English language into this the 21st century. Terms like "modernizing" and "institutional development" remain firmly rooted in the history of appropriation. When the U.S. promises to strengthen Iraq's institutions so that a stable democracy can flourish, it is still using the lexicon of domination: whose institutions are these really? Whose democracy? Is the vision of the Iraqi future the U.S. promotes a genuinely Iraqi future or just another in a long line of futures projected from the West on to the East? In other words, do these futures evolve out of an eastern or western history?

The same questions can be applied to Afghanistan. They key point here is that Iraqis and Afghans are not ignorant people; they know when their histories are being colonized. And they will fight that colonization. That is only natural.

On a lighter note, a couple of pics of me and my girlfriend at Araf last night: