There is a big debate going on about our involvement in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, there are a lot of issues that don’t seem to be part of the conversation.

The most populace tribe in Afghanistan is the Pashtun. They comprise about 40% of the population and inhabit the Northeast part of the country. The Western part of Pakistan is also Pastun. Part of what we are dealing with is the fact that the Pastun don’t respect the border with Pakistan. It was drawn down the ridgeline by Durand in 1890 and represents the truce line in a war between the British and the Afghanis.

The Tajiks are the next most populace tribe and comprise about 25% of the population. They inhabit the Northwest part of Afghanistan and also have their own country to the north, Tajikistan.

The Pastuns have ruled the country for centuries but were ousted from power when the US drove out the Taliban in 2002. In order to accomplish this, the US aligned itself with Tajik warlords in the Northern Alliance. The rise of the Tajiks to power in the central government does not sit well with the Pastuns. They do not trust the government partly because it is dominated by Tajiks.

Then there is the matter of corruption. The Afghan government is corrupt from Karzai down to villiage policemen. The Afghani people are upset and angry about this. They don’t see the US exerting much effort to clean up the corruption.

There is a lot of talk about building up the Afghan army in order to stabalize the country and allow us to withdraw. The Afghan army is a joke. Afghanis can make more money working for the Taliban than they can in the Afghan army. Soldiers in the army regularly desert taking weapons, equipment and supplies with them. Many of them cannot read or write. Unfortunately for us, the Pastuns will reject Tajik soldiers in Pastun lands and the Pastuns will be disinclined to join the army because they see it as being aligned with the US occupiers. 

Obviously, we cannot stabalize Afghanistan unless Pakistan cooperates. We have been able to throw our weight around in Iraq and Afghanistan because of their small populations; about 25 million for Iraq and about 15 million for Afghanistan. But we still have not been able to completely dominate and stabilze either. Pakistan is another matter entirely. They have a population of about 220 million or about 2/3 the size of the US population.  If 1% of Pakistanis are violent and hostile to the US, that is 2.2 million potential enemies.

Pakistan becoming increasingly upset by what they see as the interference of the US in their affairs. The recently announced Pakistan aid package of 1.5 billion for each of the next 5 years comes with some big strings attached. One of the most problematical is our attempt to regulate how they promote officers in the army. The US army is contolled by the civilian government and not influential in civilian affairs. Unlike our army, the Pakistani army is very powerful in their civil society. The upper echelons of the army live in their own subdivisions, the army has extensive investments in business and land and the army has ruled Pakistan on and off since its founding. Any arrangements we make with Pakistan will have to have the approval of the Pakistani army.

When Pakistan was founded, the British drew a line down the middle of the Punjab tribal lands. The Muslim Punjabis moved west and the Hindu Punjabis move east when Pakistan was split off from India. The Pakistani army has used angry Muslim Punjabis for their proxies in causing border clashes with India. They have poured money and weapons into Pakistani Punjabi terrorist groups. Now some of the Punjabi terrorists are working with the Taliban.

In the south of Pakistan, the Baluchi territories are the site of more ethnic strife and suppression. The Baluchis would like to be independent. Now the Taliban are commanding their fight from the southern city of Quetta which is in Baluchistan. So there is a coalition of Pashtun Taliban, Baluchi revolutionaries and Punjabi terrorists carrying out attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the army is divided with respect to who they are willing to fight and who they support. The Pakistani people are scared of India, upset with their government, pushed around by their army, worried about terrorists and mad at the US.

We cannot win in Afghanistan because we cannot deal with the problem of Pakistan and we can’t break even. If we withdraw from Afghanistan, there will be bloodshed and suffering. If we stay, there will be bloodshed and corruption. Sort of like that old story about riding a tiger. Can’t stay on and can’t get off. We are addicted to television and movies where problems are solved in an hour or two. There is no happy ending here. We seem to be faced with trying to select the lesser of more than two evils. If we can even figure out what that is.

Did you ever wonder why it was that there was so much over confidence out there? Look at the Iraq war, the financial collapse, etc. And the incompetence of organizations as lampooned in Dilbert is not that far from the truth. We all have stories of the problems of dealing with bureaucrats.

Some time back I read that the most realistic people were the pessimists. The optimists were happier but were less realistic than their confidence in their abilities and situation would suggest. 

Then I read about some research that suggested that people will forgive a leader who is wrong some of the time if only that leader is really confident. Apparently people prefer confidence to competence.

It turns out that groups with confident leaders do better than groups whose leaders are not as confident. So even with incompetence in leadership, those groups prosper.

The Peter’s Principle states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Now it has been found that the more you pay someone, the less competently they perform. This would explain Ken Lay who was “unaware of what his subordinates were doing” even with the huge salary that he was drawing.

So, it would seem that though our over-confident leaders may be overpaid and incompetent,  we will still follow them.