It’s heartening to hear encouraging news from AfPak, after a year of meandering and malaise: Gen. David Petraeus has hit the ground running.
Since taking command in Afghanistan, he’s begun to review our suicidal rules of engagement; he’s further intensifying special operations (our ace in a very deep hole), and he’s stood up to Afghan President Hamid Karzai — and Washington.
How? By recommending that the grisly Haqqani network be designated a terrorist organization. Shoulda done happened way back when, but better late than never: The Haqqanis are the ugliest butchers affiliated with the Taliban and al Qaeda, responsible for attacks from the Pakistani border to Kabul.
But they’re darlings of the duplicitous Pakistanis, who see the Haqqanis as a useful cat’s paw. And Karzai thinks cutting a deal with the Haqqanis can secure his survival after we march away. In fact, they’ll kill him, as surely as they’ll eventually turn on Pakistan.
So what’s the problem? Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy to the region, appears to be on the Pakistani side, along with other US diplomats.
Let’s hope Petraeus wins this one. His stance shows a new realism about Afghanistan, where brute religion deforms all and insurgency’s been a team sport for millennia.
But the general has a long march ahead. Here are seven “realist’s rules” for success in the midst of this tribal civil war:
Pick your tribes: We want to be friends with everybody. It doesn’t work. Our guys are the old Northern Alliance crowd (who we’ve treated like dirt in order to woo our enemies). If we want Afghans to fight on our side, they need Afghan reasons for fighting.
We dream of a unity government, but the Raj-era Brits figured out that you have to employ tribes against their rivals. Our goodwill won’t overcome ages of hatred. In poor tribal societies, life is a zero-sum game. To win, you back your guys.
Exploit the existing culture: Don’t embark on a costly fool’s errand to change the nature of a tribal society. Leverage what you find. Stop obsessing on what you want long enough to consider what the locals want. If the desires differ significantly, you must change.
Recognize your own limits: It doesn’t help to complain that “counterinsurgency takes a generation” if political circumstances won’t grant you that much time. We should never expect our armed forces to achieve ideal solutions that exist only in academic theories.
Except in existential struggles, such as World War II, we must do cold-blooded cost-benefit analyses: Are the realistic goals we might achieve worth the cost in blood and treasure?
Aid those already on your side, not your enemies: Our attempts to bribe our enemies with wells, make-work and welfare are doomed to failure. Reward your allies with aid projects; let the hostiles envy them — and figure it out on their own.
Unconditional aid to tribesmen who just want your butt gone won’t buy you lasting gratitude (that rarest human sentiment). Your generosity’s read as weakness, not goodness.
Which leads us to:
Your enemies must seek negotiations first: Olive branches are worthless against fanatics convinced they can win. If negotiations are to play a role, it can only be after you’ve pounded the insurgents so ferociously that they seek talks. If you move first, it’s read as desperation. Your enemies will act accordingly.
To negotiate successfully with tribesmen, you must be feared.
Don’t assume that regional allies share your agenda: They don’t. They’re always maneuvering for their own ends — and we generally blunder into letting them use us, at our great expense. Pakistan’s a classic example.
You have to be more cunning than your allies. We never are.
Western-style government doesn’t work in tribal societies: It’s taken us 800 years to develop our still-imperfect English-speaking democracies. Having evolved organically over centuries, our institutions suit us. They are not readily transplantable.
That doesn’t mean tribesmen don’t want more freedom and prosperity. But they’re unlikely to want our forms of freedom, or to embrace the culture that led to our prosperity. We’re us, they’re them. The Western-educated ex-pats we parade as examples of our similarity are freaks.
The Petraeus-Eikenberry-Mattis team that will soon be fully in place is our last hope of salvaging value from Afghanistan. With his reserves of political capital, Petraeus has to be the public apostle of any change in our strategy — and a great deal of change is needed. Let’s hope this is the general’s finest hour.
Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War.”