Meet the Afghan Army

[EmeraldCityGrl]

Meet the Afghan Army
Is it a figment of Washington’s imagination?
by Ann Jones

The big Afghanistan debate in Washington is not over whether more troops are needed, but just who they should be: Americans or Afghans – Us or Them. Having just spent time in Afghanistan seeing how things stand, I wouldn’t bet on Them.

Frankly, I wouldn’t bet on Us either. In eight years, American troops have worn out their welcome. Their very presence now incites opposition, but that’s another story. It’s Them – the Afghans – I want to talk about.

Afghans are Afghans. They have their own history, their own culture, their own habitual ways of thinking and behaving, all complicated by a modern experience of decades of war, displacement, abject poverty, and incessant meddling by foreign governments near and far – of which the United States has been the most powerful and persistent. Afghans do not think or act like Americans. Yet Americans in power refuse to grasp that inconvenient point.

In the heat of this summer, I went out to the training fields near Kabul where Afghan army recruits are put through their paces, and it was quickly evident just what’s getting lost in translation. Our trainers, soldiers from the Illinois National Guard, were masterful. Professional and highly skilled, they were dedicated to carrying out their mission – and doing the job well. They were also big, strong, camouflaged, combat-booted, supersized American men, their bodies swollen by flack jackets and lashed with knives, handguns, and god only knows what else. Any American could be proud of their commitment to tough duty.

The Afghans were puny by comparison: Hundreds of little Davids to the overstuffed

continued...http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2009/09/20/us-or-them-in-afghanistan/

[elocs]

1. Unless the Afghans want their own country worse than the Taliban wants to take it from them,

they will lose. I don't know any way around that.

If Afghans cannot prevail against the Taliban with our backing and our support, arming them but not fighting for them or being their country's security force, then they will never have their own country.

[bertman]

2. Funny how those little "Davids" manage to survive with little in the way of supplies or

modern accoutrements while negotiating the Vietnames, I mean Afghan terrain, and STILL inflict heavy casualties on our troops with their SuperWarrior gear.

This story is just one more reminder of the similarities of this war and the one America fought 40 years ago.

Recommend.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

3. The ending paragraph offers an alternative strategy.

"One small warning: Don’t take the insecurity of the Afghan security forces as an argument for sending yet more American troops to Afghanistan. Aggressive Americans (now numbering 68,000) are likely to be even less successful than reluctant Afghan forces. Afghans want peace, but the kharaji (foreign) troops (100,000, if you include U.S. allies in NATO) bring death and destruction wherever they go. Think instead about what you might have won – and could still win – had you spent all those military billions on food. Or maybe agriculture. Or health care. Or a civilian job corps. Is it too late for that now?"

Would that approach not provide Afghanis something tangible to fight for and preserve?

[nosmokes]

4. This is really a MUST READ article. thanks for posting.

If Iraq is a quagmire, and a good argument that it is can certainly be made, then Afghanistan is a deeper quagmire filled with molasses and excrement.