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 101st 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 post appeared in Esprit de Corps magazine, Vol 18.3
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