Strategy Page’s assessment of the situation in the ‘Stan now that the Obama Administration is declaring victory and pulling out.
The Pustuns (AKA Pushtos or Pathans) are the perpetual trouble makers in Afghanistan . The anti-government forces, the Taliban and the drug gangs, are made up completely of Pushtuns. They are the largest ethnic group at about 40 per cent of the Afghan population and as such have been able to beat up and dominate the other groups for centuries, much like the Apache and Comanche consistently beat up on their neighboring tribes in the American Southwest 150 to 250 years ago. Thus if the Pushtuns could be “pacified” Afghanistan would become a much more peaceful country. Of course, any such pacification would involve killing off huge numbers of Pushtuns through relentless and unceasing military offensives, as well as isolating and threatening the survivors with starvation, in order to compel their unconditional surrender and future submission to national government authority. That would be a very Un-PC thing to do, and as such is completely out of the question for the USA and its NATO allies. Thus the other Afghan ethnicities will have to solve the Pushtun question on their own, perhaps with a little help from their friends, the USA, or even from Russia.
“Meanwhile outgoing Afghan president Karzai and many Pushtuns want all foreign troops gone by 2015 so the Pushtuns would have a better chance of reestablishing their dominance over all of Afghanistan. The non-Pushtun majority opposes that and wants some of the Americans and other foreign troops to remain. Thus Afghanistan is headed for another civil war and the non-Pushtuns see the United States as an ally to help them win it.”
An issue confronting Afghanistan that Strategy Page doesn’t mention in this article is that Afghanistan cannot feed its current population of 25 million people without a lot of foreign aid. At best the ‘Stan’s domestic agriculture could only feed a population of 4 to 5 million. Thus if Afghanistan loses its foreign aid or if the various NGO’s -Non-governmental organizations- ( i.e. UN bureaucratese for the western charities that provide food and medical care to the people) are unable to distribute said foreign aid due to widespread violence, then the country will face a famine that will make the loss of life in any civil war much worse. Especially if the conflict drags on without decision for a long time.
By Epictetus
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