Understanding Afghanistan to Avoid Another Vietnam

What is happening in Afghanistan? A few weeks ago, some Afghan civilians found a few charred Qurans in garbage cans. This resulted in a mass revolt that is still going strong. The revolt targets not simply the infidel, but the U.S. people, in general, and their soldiers, in particular. Just like so many years ago, when the United States turned Afghanistan into a barrier against the Soviet Union, they are once again using it as a barrier — this time against the epidemic of Islamic terrorism. However, the Americans have come to the too-late understanding that tribal fundamentalism is not so much an off-shoot of Islam as it is an armed mass political structure that arises when middle classes are formed and begin attempting to entrench themselves locally in order to create an economic power — not a provisional one, but a fundamentalist one. In fact, one that forbids any other power and that can only be regulated by local leaders.

The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq has changed because those dynamics have been understood. The enemy should no longer be destroyed; instead, we should deal with those who perform borderline roles, whether they are the Taliban in Afghanistan or Iraq’s Shiite president, Nouri al-Maliki. That is, as long as the lack of communication between cultures can be overcome and as long as the heart of the new social and economic framework, shaped during the course of 20 years of war, can be reached. But this strategy is up against a wall as high as a skyscraper. Technology has been used to overcome it, substituting drones and the war machines created by modern-day Leonardo Da Vincis for living soldiers. But the effect has been completely contrary: technology is never precise enough to spare civilians from acts of war and, as a result, the hatred only grows and begins taking on an ontological dimension. For local populations, the West is responsible for the destruction of life and community.

A similar drama had already unfolded in the Vietnamese theater of war. Marines shot farmers who they believed to be Vietcong. The South Vietnamese, who were fighting alongside the U.S. troops, gradually saw increasing numbers of deserters. Even there, the real tragedy was a lack of cultural communication. Wars are won on the ground and can only be won on the ground. Military personnel — who are the ones that actually carry out wars — are always the last ones to want it, while politicians — who never actually carry out wars on the ground — are always the first ones to want it. Combat must occur on the ground, which is also where a strategy of alliances destined to break up and weaken the enemy must take place. This is precisely what the U.S., and indeed all Western soldiers, were unable to do.

Islam is not a terrorist religion: on the contrary! But it can become a formidable ideological glue that leads entire communities and generations to battle and death. In Iraq and Afghanistan, in spite of the fratricidal divisions that traverse it, Islam will always give a sense of identity to millions of people. Just as Walter Benjamin understood, Protestantism is not the essence of capitalism. Rather, Protestantism has become a capitalist religion; capitalism was — and is — a formidable amalgam of symbols, faiths and practices. It is the same for Islamic societies. To have believed that its denseness could be cracked with a tactic consisting of waging war and occupying the terrain, thus separating communities and populations from one another and creating a space for cultural infiltration, has proven more and more disastrous. The loss of human life in these wars is already enormous. Just like in Vietnam. Robert McNamara’s memoires are shocking when reread today. The technology of great western capitalism and its consumerist religion had no effect on the local population. Its only demonstrable effect was the great grief that overcame the U.S. through its desperate veterans, a tragedy about which too little is known.

It is very likely that Afghanistan will be a new terrible tragedy. Iraq still has a chance of not collapsing into a fratricidal war between Shiites and Sunnis, a war which would overwhelm every major western military force and proclaim their ultimate failure. It’s a good thing that the debate remains determinedly and courageously open in the U.S. But the West is one and one alone. We, too, should do our part culturally, not just militarily.