A New Twist on Population Centric COIN Posted by Michael Cohen

So there has been a lot of back and forth here at DA on word yesterday that the Shimwari, a Pahstun tribe in Afghanistan is making an agreement with the US goverment for $1 million in development funds. Just to summarize, here are the three things that the Shinwari will do:

1) "They've agreed to support the American-backed government."

Clearly that's good news; after all one of the goals of the counter-insurgency effort is to extend the legitimacy of the Kabul government . . . so this sounds good.

2) "Battle insurgents."

Wow, even better. Clearly getting some tribal skin in the game against the Taliban has to be a good thing.

3) "Burn down the home of any Afghan who harbored Taliban guerrillas."

Excuse me?

You know I really wish there was a way to reproduce a spit take on a blog post; because when I read this I nearly shot orange juice out my nose.

While I certainly understand Michael Hanna's point below about the need to occasionally make unsavory deals; it doesn't strike me as a long-term strategy for success or even stability in Afghanistan to be encouraging one tribe to burn down the houses of their neighbors. Second, the $1 million in development assistance is being provided in such a way to purposely circumvent the Afghan government. Again how does this encourage long-term stability in Afghanistan, particularly when you have Shinwari elders saying things like this, "We have absolutely no faith in the Afghan government to do anything for us. We don’t trust them at all." And isn't this a direct contradiction of the earlier assertion that the Shinwari have agreed to support the Karzai government?

Third, if you read the Times story closely, it seems pretty clear that the Shinwaris war on the Taliban has far more to do with commerce (illicit and licit) than it does with any sort of fealty to long-term US goals. So while I guess this might work in the interim; deals like this one feel a bit like a band-aid on a much bigger and more complex set of problems. By supporting the Shinwari in the short-term are we just fostering a host of long-term problems for the Afghan state long after we leave?

Along these lines, Bernard Finel made a smart point the other day:

In our local politics, we fight over every little thing — school locations, bus routes, sidewalks — but somehow we think we can show in Afghanistan, spend billions of dollars, pick winners and losers, and come out smelling like a rose.

Oh and one more thing; isn't burning down houses a war crime? It's sort of strange to me that the immorality of the US joining up with an Afghan tribe that has openly declared it will burn down its rival's house didn't get more attention in this article.

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