compelling, persuasive and helpful: sarah chayes

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I don't know if it's PBS that's functioning strangely tonight or my browser, but it is honestly doable to get the video up at this link, and I recommend it. She just about bowls Moyers right over and it's hard to fight with her positions. She confirms our worst fears about Karzai, and the "democracy" we've got going in Afghanistan. Aside from the blaring bit about them having something to do with 9/11, it's impeccably delivered tough love, and Obummer's going to hear it loud and clear. Already has. All those drumbeats for war with Pakistan?

They're not saber-rattling. We're going in.

Or. Well. Heck. Just download it and listen to the whole program... jam-packed with information you need to know. The second part is the governor of New York describing quite refreshingly candidly the awful immediate future in his state. The third part will take the enamel off your teeth about contractors ripping off the government for military housing. There are possibly five people left in America who are not in the business of corruption. So, maybe y'oughta kick back and get yer teeth rattled out here. It'll be a great prelude to reading Sarah Chayes' guest blog at Bill Moyers Journal....

The part she didn't get to discuss in the interview:

It has been startling to witness the parade of international policy-makers, not to mention members of the Afghan government, now opining that way out of that country's gut-wrenching situation is to cut a deal with those who are victimizing its population. For, make no mistake, no matter how this prospect may be packaged, "reconciliation" with Taliban, at the level at which exploration is now underway, will involve some kind of power-sharing.

The proponents of this approach rest their case on a couple of fallacies. One is that "no insurgency has ever been defeated without negotiation" -- one of those assertions that takes on the force of truth by dint of repetition. It ignores all the diversity in texture and outcomes of insurrections down the years. Not to mention the question of whether what is happening in Afghanistan can really be called an insurgency.

This is not just a matter of semantics. The second fallacy, which I have heard perpetuated even by some Kabul-based Afghans, is that the Pashtuns in the Afghan south generally favor the Taliban. I live in Kandahar, the former heartland of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. I have lived there since the week he was chased out. I can attest that the support for the Karzai regime and its international backers at that time, and for the next several years, was unanimous. Kandaharis suffered the worst punishment at the hands of the draconian Taliban regime, and were delighted by its demise, and filled with hope for the new chapter in their nation's history that opened in December 2001.

Two things have happened since then. One is that the Pakistani military intelligence agency has been diligently reconstituting the Taliban which it first created in 1994. The injection of this newly reconstituted Taliban back into Afghanistan represents something closer to an invasion by proxy than it does an insurgency. And secondly, Afghans, including Pashtuns in the south, have been bitterly disappointed by the behavior of the Karzai government. The word "corruption" does not do justice to the scale of the phenomenon.

It is the people's objection to their treatment at the hands of government officials that explains the headway the Taliban "invasion" has made. In some cases, Afghans are making a calculated judgment: the Taliban are threatening all those who collaborate with the Afghan government, and the Afghan government is abusing the people. So why take the risk that allegiance to Kabul entails? In other cases, the Taliban are actually providing services in a more respectful and equitable fashion than the government. In other cases, people are turning to the Taliban simply out of a sense of outrage, as a kind of protest vote. None of these adds up to a groundswell of ideological support for the Taliban movement or an active desire for its return to power. More like acts of desperation by a population that has no means of recourse.

We, the international community -- led by the United States -- have never called to account any of the Afghan officials we ushered into power back in 2001, and have backed with our money, our weaponry, and our moral support, ever since.

Why, after seven years of effort, are we thinking about inflicting the Taliban, again, on the long-suffering Afghan people? Why does that seem like a solution to this problem?

Why is it so hard to imagine that Afghans, like most of us, wish to be governed by a respectful, educated cadre of people who are open to suggestions and to whom ordinary people have access for the redress of grievances?

Why has it come as such a surprise that when we empowered known and previously repudiated criminals, providing them an unfettered and unchallenged grip on power and public resources, Afghans became disaffected? Why is that disaffection seen as a sign of the Afghans' inveterate tribalism and resistance to government of any kind, rather than as a sign of their attachment to basic democratic principles?

Clear enough for you?