Nation Building

There's been quite a bit of discussion about President Obama's announcement that we plan to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan, whether it's a good idea, the role the military should play in voicing dissent, whether removing troops will prevent the development of a stable Afghanistan, etc.  All of this is somewhat besides the point.  The time to effectively shape an Afghan nation passed during the Bush administration, smothered in its crib by the decision to continue to foster tribalism, warlordism, and corruption.  Even if we left a stable state, it would be destroyed by Pakistani policy in short order, inasmuch as given the geographic and cultural impediments to a centralized government, a sanctuary within another sovereign nation for violent, anti-state actors renders the survival of an Afghan nation impossible.  


The critical failure, and a common one in the recent history of our foreign policy, is the failure to understand nation-building as a holistic process.  The assumption of Western powers is that a nation is a sum of legally defined government structures, codified law, property rights, infrastructure, and economy.  What is forgotten is that there are social structures that must be developed to allow these physical and legal structures to function as intended.  As it currently stands, Afghans have no concept of an Afghan state.  They have very visceral concepts of tribal organizations, family ties, regional politics, and their local existence.  Our efforts to build Afghanistan have done nothing to broaden their horizons.  


There is no reason for a Tajik or Hazara or any of the other groups in the Northern Alliance to assume that their government as a whole has a vested interest in them as Afghans.  Rather, Pashtun politicians have formed patronage networks benefitting other Pashtuns, Tajiks have formed patronage networks benefitting Tajiks, Hazara politicians have patronage networks benefitting Hazaras.  This is not a state.  Aid money is quickly lost to the corruption inherent in these patronage networks:  our billions in aid is more than adequate to build roads to facilitate commerce and unify the country.  Where are the roads?  Aid money was more than adequate to materially improve the lives of every single Afghan.  Where are the material improvements?  


Nowhere.  The corporeal manifestations of a state have been stolen by tribal interests to the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.  The abstract manifestations of the state have been paid lip service with no serious attempt to make them meaningful and real.  Of course, many of these things are dependent on a stable security environment, which means that the time to develop them, to plant the seeds of a national conscience instead of fractured local interests was 2001-2006.  What help did the United States offer this effort then?  


We are currently paying for our past transgressions, which narrowed the future of Afghanistan to different shades of bad outcomes.  The brunt of the cost, however, will be paid by the Afghan people when Afghanistan descends into stasis, civil war, and sectarian violence, with the elite few enriching themselves at the expense of the many.  


The only effect of Obama's aggressive troop withdrawal will be to hasten the inevitable chaos and violence.  The nature of Afghanistan's future was however already decided.