Proof of P.J.

I spent about three hours with a military intelligence officer last night. I shouldn’t say what he does or who he is, but he was extremely candid about how the war is being fought and our chances of success. Let’s call him Bob.

Bob says that this war is not really being fought against Afghani’s as a group, but rather against a sect of Pashtuns, one of a few dominant cultural groups in the country. He says that U.S. forces are having some success in this, but that the fight has to be waged “valley by valley.” Put this way, it seems feasible that this place could be brought to some kind stability but, “We need more troops,” Bob says. “A lot more.”

Adding to this headache is the nature of rural Afghanistan. The residents of these valleys treat their area as a nation in and of itself, almost like city-states. They are violently xenophobic and can tell an outsider from a mile away. The leaders—such as they are—of these valleys, are resistant to infrastructure, like roads and electricity, because these things can only serve to weaken their power. Bob told me that when he first got to Afghanistan, some Afghanis in the mountains were under the impression that U.S. forces were Russians. They didn’t know that the Russians had been gone for thirty years, and had no way of finding out.

Bob didn’t give the U.S. initiative of building a Kabul-based federalist state much chance of success. He says the attitude of many in the villages is, “What has Kabul done for me?” Instead, Bob advocated a three state solution, not all that different than Joe Biden proposed for Iraq. Of course this isn’t going to happen, I’m just telling you what he told me.

The brightest spot in our conversation was the efficacy of U.S. soft power in the region. “Hollywood has a lot more power here than they know,” he says. He also pointed to the stability of the area surrounding Bagram. The base employs hundreds, possibly over a thousand locals from surrounding villages for all kinds of jobs. These people and their families don’t want to kill the golden goose. Bob says that by providing jobs for folks from surrounding villages, the U.S. has essentially bought both goodwill and safety for their effort in this area.

On the other hand, Bob also says, “There’s an old saying. You can’t buy and Afghani, but you sure can rent one.”