Rabbani and the Afghan High Peace Council

Sapping Insurgent Strength in Afghanistan

By:  Vincent J. Curtis

Date:  14 Dec 2010

Dateline: Kabul, Afghanistan

The view from inside Afghanistan of the insurgency is considerably different from image portrayed by the main stream media.  From the outside, you hear experts talk of the “Haqqanni network,” of Islamic fanaticism driving a political struggle against the Karzai regime, and of a country swarming with insurgents.

From the inside, you never hear of a political struggle.  You learn that the number of hard-core insurgents is surprisingly small.  And you never hear of differentiated insurgents like the “Haqqanni network.”  Inside Afghanistan there are just a few hard-core Taliban who throw their weight around, and some enablers.

In Paktika province, where I was embedded with Task Force Currahee of the 101^st Airborne Division, the highest estimates for Taliban was 500.  Paktika, with a population of about 400,000, borders on the Pakistani provinces of North and South Waziristan, which are major centers of Taliban activity within Pakistan.  The results of a band of 500 taking over the governance of 400,000 would be farcical.  The Taliban here are very effective at intimidation, but they could never govern.

In a poor country where unemployment is high, you can make your insurgency seem much bigger than it is with a little bit of money.  In Afghan society, marriage gives a man a certain status.  A young Afghani man can only enjoy female companionship in marriage, and young men cannot get married in Afghanistan without money.  A young man in the village is “ready to do a lot” to earn the money necessary to get married.  Here, a young man can earn five dollars a day shooting at somebody or planting an IED.

According to Major Eric Chamberland, young men are also, in effect, press-ganged by the Taliban into joining their band.  The culture of Pastunwali, the code of honour of Pashtun men, can easily trigger a requirement for revenge, and the Taliban provide a means of satiating the need for revenge.

The result is that a significant portion of the low and mid-level operatives of the Taliban insurgency are not strongly motivated by a political cause and are susceptible to reconciliation with their old community.  The community against which they took up arms needs to forgive these men, however, before they can be accepted back.

“Asking people to throw down their weapons in this country is a crazy idea.  You have to go with the culture,” says Cumberland.

A long time Afghan political figure, the president of Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996, and presently the leader of the largest political block in opposition to President Karzai is Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani.  He proposed at the High Peace Council of Afghanistan the establishment of a program of Resettlement and Reintegration through which these low and mid-level fighters who were not international terrorists, criminals, or narco-traffickers could make peace with their community.

Reintegration is “based on the community and an interaction with the elders and people of the village,” says Cumberland.

Such a program is in keeping with the COIN strategy of ISAF commander General Petraeus, and he directed that ISAF assist with the program.  The ISAF program of assistance is overseen by a Canadian officer, Major Eric Chamberland and his deputy, Gary Younger, a civilian employee of the US Department of Defense.

Chamberland, 38, is a direct entry officer with eighteen years experience in the Regular Force.  He began as an armoured officer, spending the first six years of his career with the Lord Strathcona Horse (Royal Canadians) and the last twelve with Public Affairs.  He is assigned to Strategic Communications of ISAF HQ, having begun his tour on 8 July 2010 and finishing in July 2011.

Younger, 51, is a Public Affairs Officer with ISAF, having over twenty years experience in Public Affairs in the US DoD.  He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism, and says he joined the DoD because he “wanted to make a difference.”  He claims, with a grin and without a trace of modesty, that he got his present assignment though “good looks and charm.”

The resettlement and reintegration program supported by ISAF is a new program, having been in existence as of Dec 2010 for only four months.  According to Chamberland and Younger, the number of reintegration events “number in the low hundreds.”  The main reason given for reintegration is that the men are “tired of fighting, tired of running.” “It’s time to make a decision about the future.”

“They’ve seen the action of military forces against them, and they are saving their skin,” says Younger.  “Every night, you don’t know where you’re going to sleep.  You never know when someone will appear in the door, “ making reference to the precision night raids undertaken by Special Forces.

“It is known that guys disappear in the middle of the night.  They either die or go into jail.”

Making known that there is a program by which a fighter can make peaceful settlement explains why public affairs people are involved in the project.  In the larger centers, broadcast media and local journalists are used as disseminators of information.  In smaller centers and in the countryside, Shuras with local elders are a means of making known the program.  And the Afghan Ministry of Religious Affairs informs mullahs and imams so that the program can become a topic of discussion at Friday prayers.

Since money is a motivator for helping the Taliban, a paying job is a way of promoting reconciliation on the part of the fighter, and where the reconciliation program is doing well the ISAF plan is to make more development aid forthcoming.  There is a benefit to the community also for having its young men come back.  “You pony up some dollars, and build capacity,” says Younger.

“You’re never going to win hearts and minds here,” says Younger, “You forge a link.”

Given that western forces are going to withdraw by 2014, will there be enough time for the program to work, I ask.  “I think so,” answered Chamberland.  “We’re trying to create a ‘bubble of security’ and we are seeing good signs,” he says mentioning Kabul itself and Mazar-e-Sharif, a major city in the north of Afghanistan, and “eventually Kandahar and Marjah.”  In smaller areas, “You bring in forty people and you create a sense of security.  You bring peace.”

A program that is run primarily by Afghans aimed at sapping the insurgency by providing the followers an equal financial incentive as well as the benefits of peace fits in to Patraeus’ COIN strategy.  It can tamp down the violence so long as the carrot and sticks of ISAF are more powerful incentives than what the Taliban can provide.  The question will be what happens after 2014 when the western forces leave and the Karzai regime has to shift for itself.

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 A version of this dispatch was published in Esprit de Corps magazine.

Yesterday, the Taliban assassinated the respected former President.  The Taliban may have made a strategic blunder in doing so as they boasted in reports that they deliberately befriended Rabbani in order to kill him.  This ought to put everyone on notice that Taliban overtures to peace and reconciliation are not to be trusted.  Anyone associated with the current Afghan regime should therefore be fortified with the courage of desperation knowing that if they fail to work together to turn back the Taliban then their horrible fate is sealed.  By announcing in such a manner that they intend to go for broke, the Taliban hardened resistance against them.

The mainstream media reports described Rabbani's death as "a blow to the peace process."  Well, it certainly was; but not in the foolish sense in which that sentiment was offered.

Pope Benedict XVI and the War on Terrorism

The war on terrorism can be understood as one facet of the war between radical Islamism and the rest of the world.

Just as his predecessor Pope John Paul II fought and eventually defeated communism in Europe through his writings and spiritual leadership, so Pope Benedict XVI has taken on the struggle against the Islamization of Europe.  Like his predecessor, he employs writing and his intellectual and spiritual leadership as head of the Roman Catholic faith as his weapons.

Benedict maintains that the character of modern Europe was developed in a Christian tradition, and retains that character despite Europe having largely fallen away from the practice of faith.  Benedict does not directly call Europeans to return to practicing Christianity, but rather he appeals to their sense of cultural survival in the face of rising Muslim immigration to Europe and the population growth of Islamic communities already settled in Europe.  With the advance of the Islamic community as a whole, radical Islamism seems to follow.

Two articles below capture the thrust of Benedict’s effort.  The first is to place religion on the same intellectual basis as science is, and to argue that the nature of God is the logos, that is the word and reason.  This fact of logos is what makes God comprehensible, however imperfectly, to man.

Islam, Benedict argues, rejects Hellenic reasoning; that is it does not accept the Law of Non-Contradiction.  Islam believes that Allah is transcendent, meaning that Allah is capable of contradicting himself and is entirely incomprehensible to man.  In his Regensburg speech, Benedict subtly invites the leading lights of Islam to debate religious matters on the basis of reason.  This they cannot do for they would run into the Law of Non-Contradiction, which they must reject or be destroyed by it.

The pieces following are an analysis of a book written before he became Pope, and of his Regensburg speech.

Values in a Time of Upheaval

A Review of the Book

Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
Published by: Crossroad Publishing, New York, 2005.
ISBN 10: 0-8245-2372-3
Hardcover, 172 pages
$19.95

Reviewed by: Vincent J. Curtis   

23 November 2006

Before he was elevated Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was a university professor and world-class theologian, and for over twenty years under Pope John Paul II the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  He continued to write learned papers and deliver lectures in philosophical theology even as his responsibilities within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church grew.  The book Values in a Time of Upheaval is a collection of his essays and lectures that he wrote and delivered between 2001 and 2005.  No one who was familiar with the contents of this book would have been surprised either with the tone or the content of Pope Benedict XVI’s now famous lecture at the University of Regensburg.

Values is divided into three parts.  The first part is entitled What Rules Should Guide Our Conduct: Politics and Morality.  The second section is called Responsibility for Peace.  The last is concerned with the question What is Europe: Foundations and Perspectives.

If one can read the work of Christopher Hitchens for delight, one absorb the writing of Joseph Ratzinger for profit.  Values is a thoughtful read, and one or two essays at a time of the ten in the book is an adequate pace at which to take in his thinking.

Unlike Hitchens, who writes on religion from the perspective of a committed atheist, Ratzinger writes from the perspective of a person who believes in God and who is open to religion, but is not committed to either proposition on the basis of faith alone.  So pure is his intellectualism that the Pope does not write learned papers on philosophical theology from the perspective of a committed Catholic.  Such an openness to doubt makes Ratzinger’s analysis and conclusions that much more respectable.  One can disagree with his analysis and conclusions, but one cannot dismiss them out of hand as the work of a committed Catholic.

The two most important themes in this book and in the Regensburg address are the diminishing role of reason in the world and the Christian nature of Europe.  The work of Aristotle established that what sets man apart from all other animals is his capacity for reason.  Man is most distinctively man when he employs his faculty of reason.  Ratzinger makes the contrary point that man is diminished as the sphere of reason is diminished.  Religion too, he argues, is subject to reason, and is not and should not be merely an expression of belief or emotion.

 

This leads to his famous point that God is logos, a Greek word meaning both ‘word’ and ‘reason’ and from which the English word logic is derived.  The existence of science shows that the universe is governed by a logos, and if the nature of God is logos then man is able to understand God, as well as the universe, through his faculty of reason.  Conversely, an all-powerful God whose nature was not logos could not be understood at all by man.

The point on the nature of God has a broad and far-reaching application to the conflict between Islam and the West, and was the alleged basis of the rioting that followed the Regensburg lecture.

Of direct and immediate concern is the last section on the identity of Europe, and the prospective role of Turkey in the European Union.

Ratzinger makes the point that the identity of modern Europe is fundamentally Christian.  Modern Europe began after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and following the mass migration of peoples into Europe and the spread of Christianity.  The successes of militant Islam beginning in the Seventh century confined Christendom largely to the geographical area now known as Europe, until the discovery of America.  Today, most Europeans would claim to be humanists, not Christian, yet the humanism of Europe grew upon Christian roots, Ratzinger argues.  Today, Europe is as much a consciousness as it is a loosely defined geographical reference.  And Europe has a mission in the world, a service to which the rest of the world is entitled, Ratzinger believes.

That mission and service is in giving witness to human dignity and human rights, and in upholding monogamous marriage as the basic structure of the relationship between a man and a woman and as the cell for the construction of civic society, Ratzinger says.  Out of these propositions can be founded a non-religious basis for supporting conclusions reached by the Catholic Church on abortion, cloning, artificial insemination, organ donation, cohabitation, divorce, and homosexual partnerships.

Islam is fundamentally at odds with Christianity, and with the humanism that has Christianity as its root, Ratzinger believes.  A Muslim community is not an absorbable minority in a tolerant and pluralistic European society.  Thus it is dangerous to Europe and to the mission Europe has in the world for it to take in large numbers of Muslims, and by extension to admit Turkey to the European Union, with its few restrictions on travel and immigration.  Ratzinger is by no means a social Darwinist, nor can he be given his belief in the “mission of Europe”.

After the Regensburg lecture, it is apparent that Values contains the main themes of Benedict’s papacy.  These themes will have a force in the near future because they are not couched as strictly matters of Christian faith, but resonate with a reason all on their own, and because they are relevant to political matters today.

Committed atheists who delight in their intellectualism, like Christopher Hitchens, should welcome debate with a Pope who is prepared to meet them on their own ground and engage them with their choice of weapons.  They will find scorn alone to be unavailing and insufficient.

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It was no blunder

Analysis of the lecture by Pope Benedict XVI

Vincent J. Curtis     

22 September 2006

Journalists the world over ought to take a bow over the violence in the Muslim world that was sparked by their reporting, or misreporting, of the Pope Benedict’s address at the University of Regensburg.  Oh sure, Benedict was making his points.  But if violence is the appropriate response to a papal observation, then scientists and philosophers in the western world have more cause to burn down churches than Muslims do.

The subject of Benedict’s lecture was the reduction of the realm to which reason is acceptably applied.  He believes that man is diminished by denying that reason can be applied to matters of faith, and argues that a theology grounded in biblical faith can make important contributions to the debates of our times.

It would be a mistake to believe that the lecture was some kind of blunder, that had the Pope known that Muslims around the world would riot over his words he would not have said them.  This was not a lecture that would have been better prepared by a politically attuned committee of priestly speech writers.  Given his previous career as a theological philosopher, Benedict delivered the world a statement that could be the intended theme of his papacy.

The irrational and disproportionate response by Muslims around the world to his words confirms his essential point, that man is diminished by failing to act with reason.  And journalists need to learn that the method of the sound bite and the ‘gotcha’ quote is not an appropriate way of covering a papal address.  It is not the Pope who is wet behind the ears; it is journalists who have to raise their intellectual game.

Benedict expressed regret at the outrageous violence his words sparked, but he has not withdrawn what he said.

Benedict spoke at length about the incorporation of Hellenic reasoning and philosophical tradition into the Christian faith very early in the Church’s beginning.  He hints that this was no accident, for God himself is logos.  The Greek word logos means ‘word’ or ‘reason’, and from it comes the English word ‘logic.’  The first sentence of the Gospel of John reads, “In the beginning was the logos,” which is translated into English as the “Word.”  John continues, “and the logos is God.”

From its earliest days the Church employed reason to resolve theological disputes and to better understand the meaning of the beliefs it holds.  Benedict argues that it is only because the nature of God is logos that man is able to understand God, however imperfectly, and follow his will.

By extension, a God that were transcendent would be capable of self-contradiction and would therefore be incapable of being understood by man.  Faith would be reduced to fatalism.

When Benedict spoke of the de-Hellenization of faith, he means that reason is wrongly being taken out of faith as it is wrongly being taken out of a related matter of thought, ethics.  The impulse behind this de-Hellenization comes from false expectations that originated out the development of science, from the false belief that the Hellenic character of the exposition of the faith reflects a cultural bias, and the false belief of Protestant reformers that Christian faith was totally conditioned by philosophy, and the Word was being presented merely as one element in an overarching philosophical system.  Benedict argues that Man is diminished by a reduction in the scope of reason, especially in matters of faith.

What Benedict is talking about – the denial that there can be rational truth in faith - is reflected in similar denials about truth in ethics and philosophy.  Mortimer J. Adler, in his book The Four Conditions of Philosophy, fought a similar battle to the one Benedict is fighting in his lecture.  Rational truth does exist in ethics and philosophy, Adler showed, and Benedict argues that rational truth must in faith also, for God is logos.

Benedict’s point to the Muslims is this.  A belief that God is transcendent is untenable.  Only by reason is man capable of understanding God.  That man is capable of reason is because God wants us to understand him, and reason is God’s nature.  Violence is contrary to reason, and therefore of God’s nature, especially in matters of faith.  For there to be dialog instead of violence in the world, it has to be accepted that God acts with  logos.

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The Contradictions of Obamanomics

Vincent J. Curtis

February 23, 2009

As the U.S. Congress prepares to receive President Obama's speech on jobs creation this Thursday, September 8th, 2011, it would be useful to remind ourselves of went on previously.  The posting below was written on Feb 23, 2009, as the $873 billion "stimulus" package was being debated.  It's fearless forecast, given at the close, was amply born out in the ensuing 18 months.

As the Obama Administration sucks and blows its way through the economic crisis, it is useful to note for future reference the various principles it simultaneously affirms and denies.

The Obama Administration holds that high levels of deficit spending is necessary to lift the US economy out of a recession, and the porkulus package of $790 Billion, spent over the next two years, is the means by which that lifting will be done.  The principle here affirmed is that tax cuts and large deficit spending by government generates more economic output than put in.

The Obama Administration also promises to cut the deficit in half by the end of the term by a combination of spending reductions and tax increases.  Thus the measures that lift the economy out of a recession will be more than reversed in order to stop the harm of excessive accumulation of debt.  By the end of the term, the economy will be back where it started but with the government having accumulated the debt assumed in the process of temporarily lifting the economy out of recession.

The reasons are these: If deficit spending creates economic activity by a multiple of the input, eliminating deficit spending destroys economic activity by a multiple of the reduction.

If cutting taxes increases economic activity to the point where the loss in revenue is regained, then raising taxes reduces economic activity such that no increase in revenue occurs.

The completion of the spending program conceived of in the porkulus package will of itself nearly cut the deficit to half of what it is, so the goal of cutting the deficit in half is nothing more than returning to the deficit that currently is.

The principle of cutting taxes to stimulate the economy is based on the belief that the rich, who have surplus income to invest, will make capital investments because they get to keep what they regard as a fair share of the return.  The benefit the lower income earners 

obtain from capital investment by the rich is called "trickle down economics."  

Observe that the Obama Administration believes in "trickle down economics" to the extent that it actually happens, but object to it on the grounds of justice and fairness.  Hence, raising taxes on the rich is seen as a way of raising revenue and achieving a measure of justice at the same time.  However, because raising taxes on the rich reduces the amount of capital invested, those of lower income who would have benefited from investment lose those benefits.

Cutting taxes now with the promise of raising taxes in the future is the worst kind of strategy because no one will invest now if he believes he will be denied what he regards as a fair share of the return by a capricious government.  Thus the gain in economic activity hoped for by tax cuts will not be achieved in the first place.  The government can't seize the crop if the farmer doesn't sow it in the first place, because he believes the government is going to seize the fruit of his labor.  Withal, the Obama Administration accepts the principle of operation of "trickle down economics" as a fact of economics even if it regards it as unjust.

The best action the Obama Administration can undertake based on the principles they accept is the one advocated by Republicans, who are regarded as heartless realists on matters of economics.  That program 

is by and large to do nothing, and let nature take its course.  

Modest tax cuts are in order, as is a measured amount of spending on capital projects like infrastructure, where government spending is not at present completing with the private sector for labor.  But by all means the government has to restore order to the financial system, since is it is uncertainty here that is causing investors to stand aside and leave their money in treasury bills, gold, and commodities.

The conclusion is that by the end of the next economic cycle, the US government will be deeper in debt and no further ahead economically if the Obama Administration follows through on its contradictory policies.

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The above posting, though submitted, was not previousl published.

Reflections on the North East Gate of Gitmo

Obama and US Foreign Policy

Vincent J. Curtis                                                                             


 5 November 2008

            Throughout the election campaign, President-elect Obama claimed that he could make the world love America again.  All it will take is his charm, his personality, his rhetoric, his policies, and his inspirational leadership in the White House and America will be admired again by the world, unless you happen to be one of America’s partners in NAFTA.

From Ahmadinejad of Iran, to Kim Jong Il of North Korea, to Chavez of Venezuela, he said he can soften the hard hearts of dictators, despots, and tyrants as President Bush and other conservative Republicans cannot.  To the democratically elected president of Columbia, Uribe, however, he maintains a hardened heart.

As senator, Obama gave a remarkable speech in February in which he said, in effect, that the world would be a safer place if America stopped developing and deploying new weapons, and he became president.

            A tour of the north-east gate of Naval Station Guantanamo, and a little reflection, will quickly disabuse a thoughtful person of such possibilities.

            The north-east gate of Gitmo is the only land connection between the naval station and the socialist paradise of Cuba.  It is the final check point of the cold war.  Here you will see the watch towers, the armed guards, the wire, and the defenses.  Tension at this control point remains high.

            American forces on Gitmo pose no military threat to the Cuban regime, and the Cuban leadership is undoubtedly aware of this.   At the same time, it would be suicidal for the Cuban regime to attack Gitmo.  So why does Cuba still maintain a threatening posture?

            Anybody who understands the costs of military activity knows how expensive it is for the Cuban regime to keep tensions high.  The poor Cuban taxpayer and the straitened Cuban economy are forking over a lot of money for the regime to keep up the pressure; money that could be well spent improving the general welfare of the Cuban people.  Yet the Cuban regime persists, decade after decade, and president after president, Republican or Democrat.  Why?

            The answer is that the Castro regime needs justification to keep the Cuban people repressed.  While Fidel Castro may seem to be popular, he and his brother Raul, being tyrants, cannot trust anyone very much.  The Castro regime has to keep the Cuban people looking over their shoulders so that they won’t conspire and combine against it.  A near state of war against America provides justification for the activities of the secret police and for the sacrifices in money and freedom the Cuban people have made, apparently to defend themselves and their revolution, but really to protect Castro’s life and position as head of the Cuban state.

            But Cuba is a specific example of a general phenomenon.  The internal dynamics of tyrannies and despotisms make it necessary that a state of tension be maintained between these states and their neighbors; and between these states and the United States, since the hyperpower is the most convenient scapegoat in the world.  Maintaining a state of tension with foreign countries serves to protect the tyrant or the despot at home.  Tension abroad justifies intrusive security at home.

            Natan Sharansky, former Russian dissident and a former minister in the Israeli government, devoted his book The Case for Democracy to analysis of this phenomenon.  It was this book that encouraged President Bush to attempt to democratize Iraq after the war of 2003.

The situation at Gitmo with Cuba, it turns out, is but a specific example of the general case.  If the demon power wasn’t the United States, it would be Great Britain, or Israel.  Tyrants and despots need to maintain a tension at home akin to a war footing to protect their own lives, and in Cuba tension with the United States justifies the pressure at home.

            Since the tyrant and the despot fear a reduction in tension with the United States, the likelihood that a new personality in the White House will cause them to change their rhetoric or their policies against America is nil.  They fear for their own lives too much.

            The personality in the White House has little to do with whether America is liked or not by the rest of the world.  No president in recent years was more affable and more liberally forthcoming on the international arena than the Democrat centralist Bill Clinton.  Yet his liberality saw the rise of al-Qaeda, with all its acts of terrorism against America before 9/11.  His charm failed to create a Palestinian state; and his affability failed to stem the rise of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.  The French regime of Jacques Chirac remained unmoved by the centrality of his politics, also for domestic reasons.

If personalities as widely different as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush cannot make the Syrians, the North Koreans and the Iranians love America, whose can?

            It is understandable that Americans want to be liked in the world, and to a certain extent they expect to be.  Yet widely, they are not.  The internal dynamics of many foreign states cannot permit their regimes to have good relations with the United States; in fact it is necessary to the survival of the regime that bad relations exist between the tyrant’s country and America.

            For that reason, no candidate with an ounce of understanding of the ways of the world can responsibly say that with his (or her) charming personality in the White House American relations with the rest of the world will be changed for the better.  America is not the only country in the world with domestic interests.  The proof of this will come when the Castro regime falls utterly, and a new regime takes its place.

The next Cuban regime will have to justify its existence by rapidly improving the economy of Cuba, as Raul Castro is already trying to do.  For that, better relations with America will be needed.  So no matter how crusty the American president happens to be, relations between Cuba and America will improve and tensions here will relax.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a free lance writer, and has written on military affairs for many years.  He toured the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January, 2008.

2011 update:  This piece was based on a piece written in February, 2008, entitled: "Reflections on the North East Gate."  Neither that piece nor this adaptation above, though offered, were ever published.  However, the recent troubles beginning to be reported in Cuba make posting of these thoughts worthwhile.