In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on October 13, 2009

There is a “rule” known as the rule of the excluded third that derives from a particular form of knowledge construction: X either is or is not Y.  This rule is often used in the construction of rhetorical positions that seek to present options in an either / or format.  While this may work in some areas of human endevour, it fails miserably when it comes to anything that is “messy”, such as politics.

I recently read an article by Richard Fontaine and John Nagl called Counterintuitive Counterinsurgency (with a hat tip to the SWJ blog) where this rule was applied with, I believe, disastrous implications.  It shows up, in particular, in one set of linked statements:

As the Obama administration debates whether to stick with the counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan, opponents point to that nation’s flawed presidential election as a reason why this approach cannot work. Counterinsurgency is premised, they argue, on the presence of a legitimate national government that can win allegiance from local populations. Given credible allegations of rampant abuse in Afghanistan’s August election, President Hamid Karzai’s newly illegitimate government cannot play this role. As a result, the United States has little choice but to change strategies.

….

Prospects for such an [successful] outcome in Afghanistan actually look better now than they did in Iraq in early 2007. To begin with, unlike Iraq — where success hinged on persuading a critical mass of the Sunni Arab community to accept the bitter reality of a Shiite-led government — no deep existential issue drives Afghans (primarily Pashtuns) into the arms of the insurgents.

In fact, according to polls and other evidence, the overwhelming majority of Afghans, including Pashtuns, remain hostile to the Taliban’s ideological agenda and unenthusiastic about a return to the medievalism that was inflicted on the country when it was last in power. The inroads the Taliban has made mainly reflect the failures and abuses of the Afghan government at the local level, not transcendent grievances about ethnic or sectarian divides.

For this reason, the national government in Afghanistan almost certainly retains greater legitimacy among the people than did the Iraqi government before things began to turn for the better there.

The key flaw in their argument lies with their multiple application of the rule of the excluded third in one sentence, to whit

The inroads the Taliban has made mainly reflect the failures and abuses of the Afghan government at the local level, not transcendent grievances about ethnic or sectarian divides.

First, they are making an assumption that there is a strict division between the “local level” and the national government in the eyes of the populace.  With this assumption, they neatly change the “poles” of the Yes/No binary from local – national governance, to local governance – ethnic/sectarian divides.  They have, in effect, excluded the national government (and foreign troops) as a source of grievance.

The second operation of the rule of the excluded third is more subtle, and shows up with the use of the term “transcendent”.  Why, I ponder, would ethnic and sectarian divisions be viewed as “transcendent”, while actions by local government officials, appointed by the Karzai government, and NATO troops, sent in by foreign governments, not be viewed as “transcendent”?

Flawed perceptions…

To start with, the application of the term “transcendent”, in the sense it is being used here, is a categorical error as applied to Afghanistan.  In fact, it is an analytical category, especially when applied to ethnicity and sectarian status, that is more applicable to Western conceptualizations than to Afghan conceptualizations.

The reason for this is simple: Afghanistan operates on a segmented lineage system that permeates most of the cultures in the area.  Within this type of a system, “distance” is measured by both blood and fictive kin relations as well as by historical association.  The ethnic divisions in Afghanistan are not transcendent, i.e. outside of the system, they are part of it, held together by history as well as blood.  The same can be said of sectarian divisions, Islam being, after all, a giant fictive kinship network amongst other things.

… lead to flawed conclusions and

Their conclusion that “the national government in Afghanistan almost certainly retains greater legitimacy among the people” is also dangerously flawed, partly by their initial setup – distancing it from the “local” – and by their implied assumption that it is “transcendent” (which follows from that distancing).

It may well be true that the current GoIRA has a “greater” legitimacy than the Iraqi government (pre-surge), but what does that signify?  In Iraq, the US attempted to build a bottom-up system of “democratic” governance – a system that is amenable to local groups achieving political power.  Indeed, the system they cobbled together was at odds with the historical governance patterns of the region going back over 5000 years but, despite that, it could still “work”.

In Afghanistan, on the other hand, the US has attempted to construct a highly centralized system of governance.  Again, this is at odds with the historical forms in the region.  As part of this “experiment”, they decided to disallow the only form of centralizing power that had any legitimacy, the monarchy, and replace it with a presidential pseudo-monarch; one unconstrained by tradition.  The President still appoints local governors but, because he is from one of the smaller tribes, he does not have either the local force or the weight of history / tradition behind him; his “legitimacy” comes from the barrel of NATO guns as well as any hopes of the Afghan people.

flawed strategies

Fontaine and Nagle point towards polls which show a negative impression of the Taliban as evidence of support for the central government and its legitimacy.  This is the final case of the rule of the excluded third operating: if the people oppose the Taliban, they must support the government.  Wrong.

Indeed, this final instance is an illusion that is, possibly, the most deadly one in the entire article.  A COIN campaign, such as the one that has been recommended by GEN McChrystal, relies on the perception by the people that the government is more legitimate than the insurgents (we can argue about logical flaws in that at a latter date).  However, part of that perception requires that local conditions be both “secure” and, at the same time, the blame for problems be affixed to the insurgent movement(s) in the minds of the people.  The first is part of the COIN cannon, while the second is only implied. This second point, however, is the crucial one since all politics is local.

The Taliban have regained influence / control in many areas of Afghanistan because they understand that all politics is local.  They are, at the present, winning the COIN campaign against the central government in large part because they are able to address local questions of security better than the ANA, the ANP and the NATO troops.  A large part of this is that they include “justice” as part of “security” – a lesson that the US learned in Iraq in 2006-07, but appears not to have applied in Afghanistan.

Some concluding thoughts

Strangely enough, given their flawed reasoning, I actually do agree with some of Fontaine and Nagl’s conclusions.  They write that

The Taliban seeks to achieve that goal [winning] by exploiting any gaps it can find between the government and the people. Our task is to see clearly the causes for these gaps and take the steps necessary to close them.

I do agree, but the first step is to see them clearly, and that means not allowing our preconceptions to cloud our vision.  I have gone through GEN McChrystal’s assessment (the redacted version), and it does, in my opinion, have the possibility of “working”.  I believe, however, that if it is going to work, then there needs to be some serious examination of the question of local legitimacy and ways to build it from the bottom up.

This will, necessarily, entail changes in the actual governance structures in Afghanistan – changes the need for which should be obvious to anyone who has been following the post-election fiasco.  “Snout counting”, as author Harry Turtledove once called the democratic process, is not a panacea for a “justice” system that is unpredictable or a daily life that includes spontaneous attacks.

Category: COIN
Tags: Afghanistan