Crony Capitalism

We. Shall. Overspend.

OWS and Hezbollah have less in common than you think

Say what you will about the Occupy Wallstreet protesters, but when you do, be sure to project rhythmically and stop every few syllables to allow for a minionish echo, as is their customary way of interacting with the 75% of Americans who do not support the 99%. “We. (We). Are. (Are). The 99% (The 99%).” You might rebut with a chant about how the 20% of US households are making the 75% of their money from the federal government. But here at Occupy McPherson Square in DC – home to the nation’s highest percentage of 25-34 year-olds making more than $100,000 a year – the 99 percenters (38% of whom are 25-34) would counter with some give-us-government-money-when?-now!-why?-because! chant, destroying $400,000 worth of stimulus landscaping in the process and  reminding you why 100% of the 99% generation’s children will be born into debt, the precise amount of which cannot be quantified in an echo chant due to its having increased by $400,000 in the time it takes to repeat it.

Of course, everyone likes a good revolution.  Perhaps that’s why a stroll through Occupy McPherson leaves one feeling so defrauded, wondering why all the proverbial ragamuffins-of-the-nation have set their sights on so slight a target this time.  “Yeah ok,” a percentage of the 99 percenters will concede, “there are some things more corrupt and reprehensible than the bagger 1% -- such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms deciding that a great way to improve a gun-tracing scheme that gives guns to Mexican druglords is to scrap the ‘tracing’ requirement.”  Then again, perhaps OWS pundit Mark Ames (the Matt “wallstreet-is-a-vampire-squid-on-the-face-of-humanity” Taibbi bash-brother) put it all in its proper context with his recent article entitled, “Historical graph shows perfect correlation between austerity programs and mass violence.”

Indeed, supposing the reason the ATF agents were making their own gun-tracing beacons from personal Radio Shack purchases was because the ATF was too austerely penny-pinched to fork it over itself, Ames has a point regarding the mass violence in Mexico. But the tears of the Italian Welfare Minister earlier this month suggest that Mexicans can find solidarity with an Italian people confronting the horrors of raising the female minimum pension age to 66…by 2018. “We had to… and it cost us a lot psychologically… ask for a…” We are all 66 year-old pensioning doñas now.

One Occupy Portland woman was so pyshologically accosted, for example, that she resorted to placing her 4 year-old daughter on train tracks. “I don’t think that any person driving a train is going to plow through a bunch of peaceful people with children,” she assured the 1%. Yet a contrarian might note that she failed to consider the contingency of it being an Amtrak train, in which case a mother might reevaluate betting her child’s life on the conductor’s mile-out stopping competence, even if that mother already sold the child’s life out in favor of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-funded Amtrak pensions.

But more than a protest against the cold borscht of austerity, mock-heroic evidence suggests the Occupiers might be fighting against occupation itself: Israeli occupation, that is. Ames’ friend Max Blumenthal wrote earlier this month in a pro-Hezbollah paper of the “Israelification of America’s security apparatus,” claiming that the pepper-spraying police of UC Berkley had been trained in their dark arts by an Israeli-Bahraini assassination squad. When Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg pointed out that Blumenthal misquoted his key source, Blumenthal noted that the retort by “Ex-detension camp guard Cpl. Goldberg” (he served in the IDF) was something reminiscient of “Putin’s Russia.”

As the take-your-kid to OWS echo chant went last week: “Not every police officer. Is bad. Just like. In school. Not every student. Is bad. But. One person. Can ruin it.” Or, just one extrajudicial international police strike force.  In footage reminiscient of  a “Nasha Youth meets brain-washed Hezbollah toddlers in camoflage pull-ups” rally, the teaching moment escalated into the placing of the kids’ finger-painted hearts on police property. The Israelified police responded with the covert Yehudakhat rip-down technique, resulting in lots of kids crying like an Italian Welfare Minister.

 It would be interesting to know how the Hezbollahs – who, as Lebanese journalists can attest, know a little about extra-judicial hits – interpreted the contrived desperation of Blumenthal’s article. Perhaps in the way one reads a Wikipedia please-look-at-me “personal appeal.” For even Hezbollah, basking in the glory of announcing the capture of nine CIA agents this month, felt fit to advertise as one of its top ensuing findings a tea-partyish indightment of the excesses of an overstretched federal bureaucracy. In a brooding animation video set to shrill music, a narrator reveals: “The CIA’s financial system with agents is corrupt…The officer requests the agents’ signature on a receipt that confirms the agent received the money. However what that agent receives is less than the number inked on the receipt.”

Silly Hezbollahs. This is post-America America: we signed up for signing for more than we receive (unless of course you were lucky enough to get in on, say, the $98 billion in erroneous Medicare payments in 2009). OWS sees a higher calling: “What do we want? No, really, like, what do we want, because this is getting lame and my tent is like, caked in waxy mold.” 

Unfortunately, nothing about government largesse fits the name "1 percent." Until OWS gets that, This. Is. What. Fatuousness. Looks. Like.

Mexican Standoff: Labor Union Style

Another unfortunate industry icon has recently fallen into bankruptcy. AMR Corporation, parent of American Airlines, has sought shelter under Chapter 11 provisions. There are two primary reasons behind what’s troubling AA’s performance: labor and energy costs are too high.

Bankruptcy for the Company is the latest development in an ongoing struggle between the airline and its labor union to agree on adequate cost structure. It’s a familiar story: labor unions demand higher wages and more benefits, margins get compressed, profits wither, investors balk, and down goes the whole firm.

The labor unions kept their prices so high it drove costs out of control. As airline usage curtailed over the past decade (thanks DHS, keep up the good fondling… or work, or uhhh, never mind) major air carriers were forced to find ways to cut costs and preserve profitability.

In this particular case, AA management swallowed a poison pill: declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy, take the lumps, but in the end, hopefully able to negotiate new labor contracts. So instead of having “fair wages”, potential layoffs may likely mean “no wages” for the many members of the labor union. A reasonable person might ask: “why would the labor union ask for wages so high that it would force their employer—the source of said wages—into bankruptcy?” Seems counterproductive, right? Wrong. Perennial cash cow for left-wing politicians, labor unions have a lot less to lose by forcing Chapter 11 than one might think.


This Mexican standoff between corporations and labor unions has played out before (most notably in GM). It’s not a pretty picture. GM’s bondholders, contractual obligations ignored and violated, were forced to eat pennies on the dollar for what they were owed. But the labor union made out much better, shielded and defended by friends in politically influential administrative jobs.

And to all my 99% friends out there, don’t think this is a sweet deal for the 1%. Exiting CEO Gerard Aprey has no golden parachute. In fact, he has no severance. And with AMR shares trading down 95.49%, his stock is negligible at best. That’s the length the 1% guys are willing to go to get costs under control, and get the job done. If we spread his success and everyone gets their fair share, what’s OWS’s fair share of his failure? I digress.

To further exacerbate AA’s problems, fuel prices ate away at margins. Thanks to the Obama Administration and its respective Dept. of Energy for that one: stifled drilling, grossly inadequate refining capacity, threats of taxes, and burdensome regulations have driven energy costs to unmanageable prices. And this is one problem Obama’s DOE can’t solve by handing out corporate welfare to industries building fancy electric powered vehicles. With the current problems GM is facing with the Volt, I think we’re a few decades away from electric powered airliners.

On one hand, we have a President and Administration that passes favors to labor unions in return for campaign contributions. On the other, we have a DOE that stifled growth in domestic cheap energy to satiate the bloodlust of the enviro-jihad. It’s becoming more and more remarkable that airliners are able to survive much less thrive.

Breaking news: Holy Victory! (Source: Taliban in talks with Allah regarding transitional government)

Frustratingly vague grad school admissions question: Write a letter to the editor about a fictional/real, past/future news story.

My answer:

Dear Editor of Al Emarah (official newspaper of the Afghan Taliban),

Reporter Zabiullah Mujahid’s 15 September 2015 lead story, “Holy Victory! Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan takes Kabul” serves as a grim reminder of both the failure of the International Security Assistance Force’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and the importance of standing in solidarity with those who fight Islamist fundamentalism.

While US officials (or the “imperial mouthpieces,” in Mujahid’s words) claim that no one could have predicted this “sudden and ruthless coup d’état,” Mujahid’s prescient timeline of events shows that this outcome was both predictable and preventable. He cites as "key lead-up events" the U.S.’ neutral reaction to the Pakistani ISI’s December 2012 coup d’état, the 2013 bursting of the “Aid Bubble” and the ensuing “Poppy Massacre of May 2013” (when Afghan National Security Forces shot down 130 Helmand farmers protesting the burning of their fields), and the migration panic of mid-2014 in the face of the impending withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. While Mujahid attributes these events to “the Muslim people’s dissatisfaction with the oppression of the foreigners,” they were in fact the predictable result of a U.S. counterinsurgency strategy that put so-called “realism,” faith in bloated aid spending, and domestic political calculations ahead of a population-centric approach. Indeed, the lynching of President Amrullah Saleh earlier this week and yesterday’s official power handover serve as a warning to any future U.S. patrons of the limits of committed U.S. will.

But Mujahid’s story should also serve as a warning to Americans. Mujahid notes that Pakistan was quick to officially recognize its “Islamic brother,” and Iran’s President indicated an eagerness to meet with the new administration. These neighbors have already proved they are not content with limiting the depravities of Shariah law to their own people (in 2013 an Iranian assassin carried out the Ayatollah’s fatwa against the director of the film adaptation of The Satanic Verses, and Pakistani terrorists continue to target Americans abroad). America has long undervalued its friends and freedoms, and yesterday’s coup promises less of both.

In the graveyard of straight-shooters

An exclusive report on the strange land where only the most perfunctory survive

(Published at the Daily Caller)

US Army Major General Peter Fuller was relieved of his command in Afghanistan earlier this month because, when asked about Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent hand-over-heart vow that, “If there is war between Pakistan and America, we will stand by Pakistan,” he called Karzai “erratic” and asked, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me.” But what was more surprising than MG Fuller’s reaction – which, if one considers the 1,800 Americans killed protecting Afghanistan, was restrained – was that of a “western diplomat” who, wishing to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his statement, observed, “The phraseology could have been better.” In other words, weeks after Joint Chiefs Chairman (Ret.) Michael Mullen’s testimony specifically confirming Pakistani intelligence’s support of the Taliban’s September attack on the US embassy in Kabul killing 25, six months after the US hunt-down of Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani Army town of Abbottobad, and ten years into a war against a Pakistan-fueled insurgency, criticizing the grammar of a pro-Pakistan statement remains one step outside-the-shade too far for the coalition of the willing.

The firing comes amid revelations about a “secret memo” delivered from Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to Admiral Mullen last May. The memo called for US support in convincing the ISI to axe its Taliban-training “Section S,” revealing the US’ ongoing courtship of the ISI – a courtship the US plans to continue, judging by Jeffrey Goldberg’s December Atlantic profile “The Ally from Hell,” which ominously concludes with an insider’s assurance that General David H. Petraeus, in his new role as CIA director, will make progress with the ISI because he has “a good personal relationship with these guys.”

Whatever the US position, it has not taken a “secret memo” for Afghans to conclude that Pakistan is at the root of their problems. For most Afghans in Kabul, the target of a startling trend of shopping center attacks this year despite its vaunted “Ring of Steel” security perimeter, “Pakistani” is nearly synonymous with “terrorist.” Even in Pashtun-dominated Kandahar, most Afghans consider the violence – this year has brought the assassination of the provincial police chief, the provincial shurah chief, the Kandahar City mayor, and many district officials – to be a Pakistani export. Southerners rank Pakistani support as one of the top three reasons the Taliban fight, according to an Asia Foundation survey released this month. Shurah leaders in Kandahar and surrounding provinces privately say not only that they believe the ISI is supporting Taliban operations in the south, but that Paksitan will reach further as America exits.

President Karzai’s statement of Pakistani solidarity was, then, meant for Pakistani consumption, not domestic. This reflects an instinctive bow to Pakistani power at a time when the waning US presence was unable to prevent the July assassination of Karzai’s close advisor Jan Mahmad Khan and the September assassination of his nationally-respected Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani.

But the intended audience of the US’ perennially tame statements on Karzai’s corruption and Pakistan’s subversion (Admiral Mullen’s statement came only after he retired) is less clear. The center of gravity in counterinsurgency, according to Gen Petraeus’ Army field manual, is not external actors but the domestic population. An Afghan population left guessing about US feelings towards the puppet-masters in Pakistan or the corrupt administration in Kabul is more likely to be suspicious of the promises ISAF makes with conviction, particularly regarding the “transition” buzz: as a NATO spokesman assured Afghans this week, “NATO’s combat role will be progressively reduced, but Afghanistan will need support after 2014 and that support will continue.”

Unfortunately, the US’ fixation on institution-building and politicking comes at the expense of Afghans’ trust. MG Fuller was fired for weakening ISAF’s “solid relationship” with the Afghan government, but it is unclear how Afghans, a record 56% of whom reported corruption to be a major problem in daily life in 2011, view anyone boasting affinity with such a dubious bunch. Meanwhile, those who emphasize fixing “AfPak” relations, to use the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s tired phrase, overlook the second and third order effects of gaining the grassroots trust of the population: Afghans confident in US intentions, and presented with an apolitical timetable for US withdrawal would be far likelier to stop facilitating the Pakistan Taliban’s presence in Afghanistan. This, coupled with drastic cuts in the US aid given to Pakistan (and, consequently, to the Taliban and radical madrassas via the ISI), would disrupt the flow of insurgents into Afghanistan, not to mention the spill-over of the fundamentalist Deobandi teachings tightening their grip on Afghanistan’s mosques.

Indeed, the diplomats and civilian advisors are as guilty as the military in favoring politics over COIN. Too often, the most cherished metric for evaluating the over $18.8 billion the US has spent on foreign aid in Afghanistan is the “burn rate.” As the June 2011 “Evaluating U.S. Foreign Assistance to Afghanistan” Senate report put it, “Political pressures create perverse incentives to spend money even when the conditions are not right.” The result is a distorted Afghan economy (it is geo-politically taboo to even suggest deregulating Afghanistan’s poppy cash crop) and a looming depression, a preoccupation of many elders at this week’s Kabul “jirga.”

As for civilian advisors, consider the lax COIN metrics of Andrew Exum, an Afghanistan expert at the Center for a New American Strategy, “Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs,”as the Washington Post has suggested. In July 2009 he said the “11^th hour” was at hand, predicting that by August 2010 ISAF would have to be able to demonstrate progress in lowering civilian body counts and increasing security force competence. Yet the percentage of Afghans agreeing that the police force is unprofessional and poorly trained remained a constant 58% in 2010 (dropping to 56% in 2011), and civilian deaths in the first 6 months of each year have increased from 622 in 2009 to 1,167 in 2011. Undaunted, last December Mr. Exum predicted July 2011 would be a COIN “watershed,” when “the unmistakable outlines of progress or deepening evidence of problems will emerge.” Yet as 2012 approaches, any Afghanistan verdict remains murky.

There are some encouraging signs of breaking the political impasse. Last month Afghanistan signed a long-overdue strategic partnership agreement with India, the natural enemy of the Taliban and al Qaeda in the region. This came in the wake of the US’ summer decision to delay payments on hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid and reimbursements to Pakistan. As for the state department, its Afghanistan budget has passed its peak, giving hope that “burn rate” obsessions and million dollar salaries for civilian “technical advisors” will be a thing of the past. Yet with Kabul jirga attendees and an Afghan opposition figure in Washington warning this week of a post-2014 civil war, the US still has a counterinsurgency effort to win. When world leaders convene in Bonn next month to make sense of where Afghanistan goes from here, “phraseology” ought to be the least of their concerns.

(Photos by Founders' Porch)

How to lose your command in Afghanistan (animated)

Last month President Karzai said something about how he would side with Pakistan against the US if it came down to it. The most common reaction by people who think it would be kinda cool if we win the war in Afghanistan was something like, "Why don't you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You've got to be kidding me." US Army Major General Peter Fuller went a little further though, and he actually said that. He was hastily fired, with ISAF apologizing and pledging to increase aid to Afghanistan's needle industry in order to show the Afghan people our sincerity.

In the Iraq War, something that seemed to help were the occasional paradigm shifts, like "CPT Trav's" cut-the-crap cartoon called "How to win in Al Anbar," found here.

I don't know what that looks like for Afghanistan, but here's one, ahem, anonymous (lest anyone else lose their job) shot at it. (Click on the first image, and the slideshow will come up).

A Merry Little Ramadan

A Founders' Porch exclusive profile on the most feared holiday ever

It was beginning to look a lot like Ramadan, everywhere I went. The ninth of the Islamic calendar’s twelve months – known for supermodel-scale fasting, forced cordiality, praying, grudging forgiveness, and alms (yes, you have to pay for this misery, too) – was two or three nights away, depending on which Afghan astronomer’s earnest lunar calculations you heeded. The Mayor of Kandahar City had been killed by a turban-bomber two days earlier, in the wake of the turban bombing of a national religious council chief at the wake for the late warlord of greater Kandahar Ahmad Wali Karza. And this year, the holiday season that really does come earlier every year would coincide with the Taliban’s perennial August finale: During a holiday when a single prayer counts for 1,000 months of prayers, would the Talibs be trying for 7,200 virgins? Or would they front-load attacks in preparation for a parched Ramadan respite? Meanwhile, my staff making its list of Ramadan-induced office disabilities, and me checking it twice due to my shock at its length and scope. The crap, crappiest time of the year, it seemed.

As I rode my Chinese “honda” motorbike to the Kandahar City police headquarters for a hoped-for meeting with its newest marshal – the young, charismatic, controversial General Abdul Razziq – with visions of pomegranate break-fasts dancing in my head, a flimsy mustached teenage policeman (one of Santa Razziq’s eager little helpers, as it were) stopped me at a makeshift checkpoint. Passing for a gangly, pasty Pashtun, I was nearly waved through, until my Chinese sleigh stalled out. A rookie mistake – but from young Cub Scout Sahib’s perspective, a nervous Talib’s mistake.

In a twitch his baked eyes went rabid, perhaps seeing faces of friends killed by the Taliban’s daily motorbike attacks.

I raised my hands. “Zuh Americayum,” I’m American, I said, wondering whether he was one of the Taliban’s ANP-infiltrators who would not believe his luck.

“Ta Americayay?” he mocked me, as if I were lying, then cocking his AK-47 and aiming it at my chest.

In April, a ticked off Afghan pilot killed eight US servicemen at Kabul International Airport in a whimsical shooting spree. While it’s debatable just how whimsical cold killings like this can be – “He always used to say that he wanted to see the corpses of dead ISAF invaders shot with his machine gun b4 his own death,” a Talib tweeted after an Afghan officer’s 29 October killing of 2 Australians –a phenomenon of un-premeditated emotional killings of Americans by Afghan security forces was plaguing the country this year, and the thought “so this is how it happens,” was fluttering in my blurred eyes as I dropped the bike and crouched behind the hood of a parked Corolla, ever-so-gently shouting “mashkeel nasta,” no problem.

So ingloriously it may have ended if a brave Kandahar friend who had been tailing me had not rushed to the scene of what would have been a non-criminal escalation of force, yelling in Pashto “It’s ok, I know him.” Cub scout Sahib exchanged some words and lowered his rifle, his eyes receding to the stoner’s happy-squint, the bullet ejecting to the ground with the most immaculate brass glimmer I’d ever seen, and earnest offers of “chai, khariji (foreigner)?” My friend mentioned Razziq, and fearing Allah-knows-what, the policeman pelted me with apologies. “Mashkeel nasta,” I said, “manana, manana, thank you.” My life-saver and I scrapped the meeting plans and called it a day.

This was my personal preface to Ramadan-in-Kandahar, but violence, confusion, mistrust, vengeance, and chaos in the infamous “spiritual heartland” of the Taliban comprise the banal preface to every Kandahari’s Ramadan. Barring a summer Ramadan-in-Alaska, where the midnight sun would make the daylight fasts fatal, the stress of Ramadan here must make it one of the world’s fiercest. It was this appreciation of the 30-day jihad ahead –not some multi-culti kick or a dark Kurtzean mission to know the people by knowing the horror – which led me to accept the Ramadan Challenge. Not that it had been offered. Even when I’d accept tea-time offers from locals, my negative reply to their customary, “You are Muslim, right?” would unfailingly suck the joy from the dry air. Anyone who couldn’t have guessed Greg Mortenson was something of a fraud before Jon Krakauer’s April 2011 investigative revelations regarding “Three Cups of Tea” should see how far Mortenson’s third-time’s-a-charm formula gets them in Kandahar: After nearly three-hundred cups of tea with Pashtuns, what mattered more to them was that Islam was not my cup of tea.

Nevertheless, most were shocked and flattered by my solidarity, with some even interpreting it as a hopeful turn towards the light. As one dogmatic staffer’s post-Ramadan e-proselytization pitched, “Islam don’t order killing of innocent people, robbery, mugger, steal, drinking of wine, [now in bold, perhaps sensing a tragic flaw] prostitution and other bad things,” generously adding, “I think you are most able to become a real honest Muslim, so kindly please study about real Islamic religion.” But overall, the Kandahris’ appreciation of my Ramadan participation was secularly genuine. As the Hazara cook Ali Baba put it, “Even if we were Buddhist and you did our Buddhist tradition, it makes us happy that you respect our tradition.”

Kind words, though an inference too far. My immediate purpose was of practicality rather than respect: the staff, hard-working though it was, was already scape-goating the month of the spiteful sun: working without food, water, cigarettes, and chai would demand shorter hours, more breaks, and an AC purchase order, for starters. If our civilian aid efforts were not to fizzle out in a year of record casualties, I had no choice but to preemptively partake. When the first “but I am fasting” excuse flew on day one, my wry “aren’t we all…” struck a devastating blow.

To mark the arrival of Ramadan (or “Ramazan,” as Afghans pronounce the Arabic letter Ḍād’s affricate trill) is to dirty oneself in the first of many catechistic free-for-alls over Ramadan’s legal loopholes. It begins when the new moon can be seen. But by whom? And with eye-glasses? And supposing it’s cloudy? Geo-politics scavenge on the confusion: Saudi Arabia declared Ramadan on the first of August, but Iran said the second. To my dismay, Pajhwok Online News reported on July 31^st that Afghans would recognize August 1^st. And so it began:

11:30 pm (Ramadan Eve): I chug three waters and stuff myself with stale nan, the Afghan bread delivered hot and soft every morning only to magically turn to cardboard by the afternoon.

11:35 pm: Shameless in my infidelity, I will not be praying for Allah’s strength during Ramadan – an all-natural yet perilous strategy never before attempted by a Kandahari. Nevertheless, since Koran-study is a special tenant of Ramadan, I decide to read a sura-a-night. Most Kandaharis, just like the Prophet Muhammad (or when g-chatting, “The Prophet – PBUH”), are illiterate, and few speak Arabic – the unalterable language of the Koran. I often saw 8 year-olds sitting cross-legged along the backstreets with heads bobbing stoically over their laps’ Korans, it being the thought that counts. This gives the local Pakistan-trained mullah pre-vaticanesque power in his Friday homilies: whether the Taliban or ISAF conquers Kandahar, it will be by the consent of the reverend. I, however, have a bootlegged English-language Koran. Tonight’s two-page sura: Thick Clots of Blood. “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful…”

12:30 am: I am dreaming of accidentally sleeping past sunrise and facing panicked hunger.

1:30 am: I wake up to relieve a desperate bladder.

3:30 am: My alarm rings. I plod in flip-flops and basketball shorts to the refrigerator. Muslims wake up before dawn for the day’s first prayer even in Ordinary Time, but in Ramadan it’s followed by a hibernation meal, prepared by the women-folk who have been up since perhaps one. Lacking a Men’s Health Guide to Ramadan, I realize I have no food strategy: some foods, I suppose, might make me hungrier or expand my stomach. I opt for the food pyramid: buttered nan, a melon slice, a spoonful of chopped cucumbers, what appears to be a leftover chicken spinal chord (this is Kandahar), and a piece of Ali Baba’s delicious cocoa-swirl pound cake. I had chugged three more waters (Ramadan, after all, means “scorched”) when out from the mosques there arose such a clatter.

3:45 am: At dawn from our rooftop, Kandahar City seems peaceful: with the power supply switched off, the only lights are the stars, the green glow of generator-powered minaret bulbs, and the red flicker of the US Army’s surveillance blimp keeping watch above the American base ten kilometers away. From a checkpoint stereo, Farhada Darya and his run-on rebab serenade the police. An occasional whiz of a traffic cop’s whistle; a hint of sewage and campfire smoke – “yeti,” as some US soldiers call the primeval smell. And now, a tap-tap-tap from the mullah’s loud-speaker, and an “Alla-a-a-ah Akbar” sealing our fate. Betraying my inner-atheist, I am in awe at this reveille’s timelessness and power. All adult Kandaharis of able health have hereby submitted themselves to the fast, as their ancestors have done for over a thousand years. Feeling as if I’ve entered Kandahar’s orbit, I go back to sleep.

5:45 am: I have to go to the bathroom, again. Is this interstitial cystitis? No, it’s Ramadan.

7:15 am: I wake up for work realizing I’ve dreamed of stabbing a would-be thief who bizarrely bleeds thick clots of blood. If that’s one sura’s effect on my psyche, I wonder what the entire book might do to a collective sub-conscience.

The true challenge of Ramadan, of course, is not to simply survive it, but keep your job in the process. Responsible for Afghan staffs in Uruzgan and Zabul provinces as well as Kandahar, I had hitherto thought it a dereliction of duty to not be properly spun on Nescafe during working hours. Yet to my relief, hunger was just as strong a stimulant, and my caffeine withdrawal was limited to a light headache.

After a mid-morning walk to the warehouse to meet aid beneficiaries from the Taliban-infested Zhari district, I realized the kicker would not be coffee, but water. Kandaharis say that Allah, in his wisdom, made Ramadan to purify the body after eight months of parasites and rot. Albendazole works fine for me, but whatever dehydration’s healthy payoff, it didn’t appear to help, for example, the Minnesota Vikings’ Muslim safety Husain Abdullah over the past few football season Ramadans. As his coach Brad Childress recalled: “We said, ‘What's wrong with Husain Abdullah? It doesn't seem like he has enough spunk.’” Here, the spunkless day-laborers loading food bags, solar panels, and tool chests for spunkless longbeards whose sons were killed just weeks earlier in Taliban crossfire, only showed signs of vim (albeit schadenfreude) when I informed them that I too was on the nothing diet.

Back at the office, lunchtime came like the birthday of an ex-lover. I resorted to my iPod to keep my mind off it. Having survived the lunch hour, I informed Noor, the hard-working but religiously lax (he’s more interested in WWE wrestler John Cena than the local mullah, for example) 30 year-old office coordinator, of my secret weapon. “But you know, we are not listening to music in Ramadan,” he said with a regretful smile. Jesus, I thought, momentarily panicked over whether sleep is even permitted (it is). It seemed the only genre with Ramadan immunity was Kandahar music – the name our office guards had grimly given to the bup-bup-bops of nearby Taliban firefights. But moments later in the separate-but-equal female office, I heard 19 year-old Sediqa listening to Pakistani pop music. Granted, she is likely the most liberal woman in Kandahar, having boasted of once pushing a flirtatious bicyclist into the gutter as she rebelliously walked to work without a burka. But being liberal in Kandahar just means knowing the loopholes. “We already are not eating or drinking. We can at least have music,” she said.

The true test would be Amin, the 25 year-old wispy-bearded aspiring mullah who I’d had my eye on for openly calling himself a non-violent Talib (aid work in Kandahar is impossible without a few shady connections, but I’d have had zero tolerance for open admiration of the actual Taliban). Aha, he was listening to music on his computer. “Yes, but that is Islamic music, so that is ok.” Sensing space for interpretation, I chose the Sediqa School of Jurisprudence.

It is widely understood that one is at greatest risk of Ramadan relapse between the hours of 4 and 6 pm. Speech becomes salivaless and precious, resulting in stocatto mumbles, which prompt requests to repeat, ultimately escalating into a scene of irritability and parsimony. Thus, it’s best spent isolated, which in turn brings sinister temptations as the minds turn dark: “But no one will ever know…” Yet I was never able to get a Kandahari to admit to even thinking of cheating. I thought of it quite often, usually justifying it in terms of work efficiency. Luckily I had an antidote. The common nap: relieves hunger, foul moods, and exhaustion, and helps you forget for an hour that you need a saline IV.

Iftar, the breaking of the fast, came at 7:15 pm that first day, dropping to 6:40 by the end of Ramadan.

Loopholes abound, with the desperate ones calling it from the lowest possible vantage. But when you’re within listening distance of a mosque, you wait for the mullah’s verdict. At this point, I felt lightweight and giddy, my appetite slightly fading. Then came the old man’s familiar tarzanish call to prayer. But this time it was beautiful – perhaps in an unhealthy, Stockholm Syndrome kind-of-way – but beautiful still, especially knowing that the generous cantor, to whom I felt allied for the first time, was delaying his own break to allow us ours. The water hit me like an endorphin cocktail. The pound cake, which I took first, was like a “special” brownie, making everything seem pleasant. These Muslims might be on to something.

The highlight of the following two weeks was my time conversing at Iftar with the two twenty-something compound-hands: Mashal, a posh Dari-speaking Kabuli with a “Broken Angel” ringtone, who wears a sleeveless soccer shirt over his Pashtun capri pants and can usually be found updating his facebook status with a “missing u still!!! :(((” for his Kabul girlfriends with Indian actress profile pics. And Jafar, a goofy-faced, gullible, kind, 6’4” Pashtun, born-and-raised in Kandahar City, often rendered incoherent by Mashal’s unsure translations of his Pashto. They prepared true Iftar meals – which start with eating some dates and end with lots of melons and oil-with-rice – and were eager to talk to the foreigner.

A common topic was the Taliban. While the first day of Ramadan had brought a summer record low of 5 attacks, zero deaths, and a partridge in a pear tree in the southern region of Afghanistan according to UN security reports, death tolls soon rose back to 10-15. There were even some particularly gruesome reports of children being hung, or forced to step on prototype IEDs.

Mashal: The fucking Taliban man. They fucking ruin everything man.

Kabir: (wild-eyed, trying his English): They are junglemen!

Me: What?

Kabir: Junglemen!

Mashal: He means, they are wild, like people in the jungle. All of our problems are the fucking Pashtuns.

Kabir: (smiles sheepishly).

Mashal: And Pakistan. And Iranian. And Russian.

Kabir tells us how he recently returned from a medical trip to Quetta, Pakistan. Amazed at the kingly aura of the black-turbaned, eye-shadowed young Talibs – Pakistani soldiers salute them, and people yell “make way!” as they enter his café – Kabir tried to take a photo with his cell phone, only to have a dour Talib order its deletion.

Mashal: Yeah man, fucking Taliban. In Kabul it’s not like this. We are listening to music, the girls are not covered, we are even drinking. I am telling my girlfriends, ‘give me head.’

Me: (eager to validate a flowering classical liberal) Nice.

Kabir: (smiling, not understanding).

Mashal: How is America? There is a girl in America that wants to marry me so I can come there. She is from Kuh-something.

Me: Colorado?

Mashal: (pulls up her facebook profile: a 40-something Kentucky carnie, balding and jack-toothed).

Me: Oh Kentucky. Yeah, Kentucky is kind of like our Paktiya. Mountain people, you know.

Kabir: (upon hearing the translation) Woooow. Kentucky.

Most aid workers are pampered with frequent leaves in Afghanistan, and I was due on the 12^th day of Ramadan. I flew first to Kabul, where I lowered the Enrique Iglesias cd volume to ask Abdul, my glittery-jeaned taxi driver, how his fast was going. “It’s very hard man. But I’m here in a taxi, I can put down the windows. I just think about all the laborers out in the sun, and think man I have it easy.”

I had a 5:15 pm flight to Egypt via Dubai. I had had two beers the previous night and missed my 3:30 am wakeup, so I was thirsty. I sat next to a non-English-speaking Jalalabad Pashtun. We were traveling west, so Iftar would be delayed (some say that simply sitting in a top-floor Dubai Tower office adds three minutes to your Iftar). The stewardess handed out special box meals of dates and water to be stowed until sun-down. I asked for one. “Are you Muslim?” “No, but I’m fasting.” “Really?” Pleasantly surprised, she handed it over. Eventually, an older man, satisfied with the sunset, dug in, followed rapidly by others. To my horror, Jalalabad Dimmesdale put down his prayer beads to wag a finger at me. After ten minutes I ask him to reassess. He approved, and we had our dates and water. Then he pulled out a peach from some mysterious stash and gave me half. No grimy half-peach had ever meant so much to me, and I thanked him for his Ramadan charity.

Ramadan in Egypt: I arrive in Alexandria too late for a proper meal. I spend the following Iftar with a cab driver in the airport parking lot, where I am waiting to retrieve a lost bag. The next day, having found the bag and forgiven the airline (‘tis the season), I continue to Israel via Cairo, where my 3 hour bus-layover gives me a chance to stroll the bustling tea-alleys near Tahrir Square. An Egyptian family eagerly invites me to join them for a generous Iftar of dates, chicken, and rice. The teens next to me brag about having fought Mubarak’s police months earlier.

Ramadan in Israel: I’ve heard it said by mischievous Muslim-American friends, “Allah does not see what happens in Las Vegas.” If that’s so, then he probably does not watch over the “Zionist entity” either. Still, I must now confess: on Day 15, having lost ten pounds on the Ramadan diet, I eliminated myself from the Ramadan Challenge with a falafel. But it was damn good falafel. As it turns out, summer in party-hard 24/7 Tel Aviv presents a unique Ramadan challenge due to its many temptations: this is one of the few cities, for example, where the daylight romance clause cannot be taken lightly. Glimpsing a few Israeli Muslims during my trip as I ate falafels, I felt like Cool Hand Luke on-the-run, destined to soon return to them, my prison-mates.

Back in Kandahar with a week to go, I resumed the fast. By now, thanks to my nightly studies, I was well versed on the posthumous torments awaiting infidels such as me: For the Infidels we have got ready chains and collars and flaming fire…We will brand him on the nostrils…Then pour on his head the tormenting boiling water… And thereupon shall ye drink boiling water. Tea, anyone? The Koran, I’d concluded, was a nightmare from which few Kandaharis were trying to awake.

Prayer value inflates dramatically over the final three days of Ramadan. Friday was “Quds Day,” so I asked the staff about praying at the mosque. Amin, eager to collect my bounty perhaps, consented. Noor was grave: “They will ask you if you are Muslim. They will ask, ‘why don’t you know how to kneel and pray like us?’ That is not good for you.” Amin offered to teach me the basics, noting that the whole world will become Muslim by 2013 anyway according to science. I yielded to Noor.

Saturday was Lailat-ul-Qadar. As my morning security text put it: “You are advised to stay more alert tonight and tomorrow than the previous times, due to the 27th of Ramadan which all people do not sleep on this special night continuing prayin and reciting the holly Quran, might insurgents use this opportunity for their target execution.” Indeed, two suicide bombs shook our office that afternoon, with Iran’s Press TV giddily reporting 64 Americans killed (the toll was actually 4 Afghans). The next day, I asked the staffers if they had stayed up all night reciting. Amin gushed that yes it was wonderful. Noor, for his part, had successfully watched John Cena until 2 am, and then fallen asleep.

Finally, the morning of Eid-al-Fitr (literally, “Festive breaking of the fast”). The compound was quiet, the staffers home celebrating three days of “picnics” (the Kandahar euphemism for parties), and Ali Baba off to his native Ghazni Province, having stocked the fridge with a lifetime supply of sheep’s organs. Yet it felt obscene to eat even a grape, so I went out to the gruff custodian Khaliq, who confirmed via translator that on Eid, it is haram not to consume. Khaliq, who has placed a flower sprig in his ear, is slurring his words and balancing his eyes, for this is his first full day since July of naswar, the rank, olive-colored powder placed on the gum like a tobacco pinch, but with ten times the effect. "It is Eid!" he reiterates with a finger in the air.

Even the most protective staffers had told me that on Eid I could take my Chinese bike anywhere, as no one would fight on that joyous day. To my surprise, the streets had been transformed into a block party of gaudily-crowned urchins in diamond studded shalwar kameeses and priestly jerkins, all heavily armed with RPGs, AKs, and klobbs. On closer inspection, these were just “toy” guns, the Tickle-me-Elmo’s of Eid-in-Kandahar. Sons were gathered with fathers near the mosques, reminding me of Salman Rushdie’s “Snotnose” Sinai, who rarely prayed, “except on Eid-ul-Fitr, when my father took me to the Friday mosque to celebrate the holiday by tying a handkerchief around my head and pressing my forehead to the ground.” In one bustling market, giant subs were blaring tunes, and even the women in their new exactly-the-same burkas looked like they might be smiling under their veils.

That night, in Martinet Ramadan’s wake, the sliver of the waxing Shawaal moon seemed like a new teacher slacking on her class: “Do whatever you want. I’ll be over here.” I wondered if it had looked that way to Babur, too -- the ancient Afghan emperor who wrote of suffering a hangover after celebrating Eid with “a few mule-loads of wine.” (I settled for fresh pomegranate juice.) After a year in Afghanistan, the happiness and freedom surrounding Eid was greater than I’d witnessed on any other day. If Afghanistan’s modern history is itself a 30-years-and-counting peace fast, one wonders how far off the forgiving era of Shawaal is.

As Noor once melodramatically put it, “I think there is no happiness in Kandahar. Everyday there is blast. Everyday there is attack.” Indeed, for now in Kandahar, “peace on earth, goodwill to men” is delusional. But I can say that both have been given to me in generous portions by many Muslims – whether Kandahari, Kabuli, Egyptian, or Palestinian – who perhaps appreciate those gems as I an Iftar chicken’s liver. Until that day of peace and goodwill, may my gracious hosts’ days be merry and bright, and may all their Ramadans be short, wintry, and white.

The Kandahar kids's aren't all right

A link to my Kandahar music video on youtube: "The Kandahar kids aren't all right," featuring The Offspring.

The smoke cloud at the beginning is from a suicide car bomber in August 2011. The coffin footage is from the Ahmad Wali Karzai assasination back in July 2011. The fire is Kandahar City's Sarpoza Prison on fire after an apparent attack using a tanker.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIIW2Nk2D3E&feature=youtube_gdata

Keep the cottage cheese revolution flying

Strolling through Rothschild Boulevard’s “tent city” in Tel Aviv last month, my fear of being outed as the rightwing Tea Party Goldwaterite that I am quickly dissipated into pity for the poor visionaries. A girl entranced in her own interpretative dance. The unglamorous smell of hot tent-sweat. Exciting signs, “Take acid, make revolution!” betrayed by the tidy ambience and sober dog-walkers. A jumbotron erected by the J-14 (July 14^th) Israeli youths for a teleconference with the 15-M (May 15^th) “Indignant” brothers-and-sisters-in-tents in Madrid. A sure sign of utter despair when one resorts to consulting Spaniards on business plans.

All the while glimpses of college-age (or, to blow a progressive’s mind: entrepreneur-age, blue collar worker-age, ambition-age) men in communist red serenading their partisan girlfriends, or holding-hands and “sharing a moment,” as The Atlantic described a 15-M couple), as they walk approvingly past signs boasting, “No job. No house. No future. And no FEAR!”

No joke? A tent city date invite is like a graveman’s marriage proposal: as Joyce’s Bloom puts it, “Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her at first. Courting death.” Mightn’t these guys have the romantic qualms of George Orwell’s anti-capitalist Keep the Aspidistra Flying protagonist Gordon, who, while living “en bon socialiste” in London’s slums as “part of a lifelong attempt to escape from his own class and become, as it were, an honorary member of the proletariat,” is quite ashamed to shillinglessly date a woman? “What rot it is to talk about Socialism or any other ism when women are what they are! The only thing a woman ever wants is money.” Orwell himself took up arms with Spain’s Socialists during their civil war “to fight against Fascism,” for “common decency.” But today, the romance of the socialist cause is pitching a tent for common handouts.

What fearless changes are J-14’ers demanding? “The revolution was not about the price of watermelons,” Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini once said, but the Israeli tent summer started as a revolution to change the price of cottage cheese. Cursed be the cheese-makers: high taxes and regulations on entrepreneurs had allowed commodity cartels to inflate prices to levels exceedingly disproportionate to Israeli incomes. So having boycotted cartels into cutting cottage cheese prices by 25%, the emboldened J-14’ers have taken to their tents to protest housing prices – sky high thanks to mystical construction codes and a virtual government monopoly on land – and, while they are at it, car, preschool, diaper, and anything-that-costs-money prices. One outspoken J-14 leader demands that government spending increase from 43 to 55% of GDP. Socialism is in the air, and the pseudo romance of red-bannered marches and tent-outs has yet to burn out in cities across this ancient land of over-priced milk and honey.

But aspidistra or not, unless the Israeli youth rethink their socialist rhetoric and look to pro-market reforms, the only ones they’ll be “sharing a moment” with are Americans, whose embrace of decades of government intervention in the housing market deserves a plurality of blame for our ever-roaring Great Double-Dip Recession.

For, to paraphrase Monty Python, the beatitude of the cottage cheese-makers is not to be taken literally, and ought to be taken in the context of the entire dairy industry. Consider, for example, the parable of the milking machines at the infamous Casa Grande, Arizona co-op, one of America’s first great attempts at “community organizing,” and, I’d suppose, the ideal of the “share the land” tenters. Conceived out of a romantic, well-intentioned government desire to alleviate the suffering of Dust Bowlers who could barely afford more than a tent, “Little Russia,” as skeptics called the resettlement camp of 80 mini-farms, was the answer to FDR Brain Truster Stuart Chase’s question, “Why should the Russians have all the fun remaking the world?”

The Eau Claire Wisconsin Leader called it “just another of those things created by wastrel busybodies whose practical experience must be near zero.” Indeed, settlers worked strictly regimented hours under the supervision of a camp director who openly admired Hitler and, according to one settler, “can’t even crank a tractor” (for heaven’s sake!), only to make enough income to repay a fraction of the project’s government loan. As morale rotted under forced equality and inefficiency, some milkers petitioned for a milking machine, which their research showed would save the co-op three men’s wages each day. The government housing camp director, whose concern was not efficiency but jobs, was furious. One milker recalled his reply: “You are jeopardizing the loan of the United States government, and it’s my job to protect that loan. You’re through, everyone of you – get out!”

The US government’s free housing ambitions chastened only moderately since this New Deal nightmare. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, known in insipid Orwellian speak as “government sponsored entities,” were children of the New Deal themselves, but were given Congressional charter for their mortgage bailouts in the wake of the 60s’ Great Society. The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to give mortgages to people who did not meet credit standards. Then in 1994, President Clinton fearlessly directed Andrew Cuomo of Housing and Urban Development to release the Fannie, or to put Matt Taibbi’s metaphor to better use: “the a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” …or an unpaid mortgage.

The problem with Fannie, besides the moral question of punishing responsible borrowers by forcing them to bailout irresponsible borrowers and incentivize Wall Street betting on guaranteed government bailouts, is that it acts for a political return. As “Reckless Endangerment,” a new book by two New York Times columnists of all people, argues, the public-private Fannie partnership meant that profits were privatized and losses were socialized. And profits, it turns out, are a funny thing in government partnerships. For Democrat Fannie director Jim Johnson, profits meant $100 million from Fannie’s federally underwritten slush fund. Meanwhile, Fannie handed out money to corrupt political activist groups like ACORN and friends of insiders like Sen. Chris Dodd, and spent $164 million on its own lobbying interests. With the bursting of the housing bubble and subsequent recession, Fannie is on pace to be the most handsomely rewarded of the bailout brigade, with an expected $300 billion. Alas, brothers and sisters of J-14, let me tell you: you don’t want more government in housing.

The best way to make housing affordable in Israel is to incentivize increased supply. The government, i.e. the Israel Land Authority, owns 93% of public lands. As with Fannie, the ILA acts for political returns, which in the case of housing means picking real estate lords. Competitive pricing requires a transfer of these lands to private ownership. But even if privatization occurs, the government needs to also relax its construction code: planning apartments in Israel takes over 5 years, compared to 1 year in most western countries. And finally, it shouldn’t take a callous Cheney acolyte like me to note that rejecting 94 percent of Palestinian building permit requests in Area C from 2000-2007, or demolishing 730 “illegal” Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem from 2000-2009 (according to Human Rights Watch), while simultaneously subsidizing the housing for wealthy religious settlers, is not going to do wonders for housing prices…nor cottage cheese prices, for that matter.

As shown by the quick and professional response of Israel’s brave security forces to this month’s Al Qaeda-linked bus attacks and Tel Aviv night club jihad, there is no famine of worthy causes in Israel. Yet when it comes to the economy, there is little romance and honor in imploring the government to sprinkle its stale magic. As Orwell’s Gordon puts it, “Every intelligent boy of sixteen is a Socialist. At that age one does not see the hook sticking out of the rather stodgy bait.” Better to take pride in the power of competition and the ingenuity of the individual. To that end, keep the government shrinking, and keep the cottage cheese revolution flying.

(Photo 1: The Atlantic; Photo 2: The Founders' Porch!)

Kandahar's newest job opening

When Kandahar godfather Ahmad Wali Karzai met a mafia shyster’s ending last week, hardly a prayer was whispered before thoughts of the proverbial “power vacuum” seized the international media, the International Security Assistance Forces, and Kandaharis themselves. When the time for intercession did come two days later – today the people are praying: “may AWK go to heaven,” one Kandahari mawkishly told me –a “turban bomber” validated their fears with a suicide attack that narrowly missed Karzai’s relatives. The subsequent assassination of President Hamid Karzai’s warlord-cum-advisor Jan Muhammad, from neighboring Uruzgan province, left no doubt that the Popalzai family patronage network is up for replacement.

Kandaharis know how the script ends: a trusted guard killed Persian emperor Nadir Shah in 1747, opening the door for the father of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah, to start a new dynasty in Kandahar. More recently, the Kandahar police chief was killed by a Talib in a police uniform in April, allowing young charismatic police commander General Abdul Razziq to inaugurate a two-month era of relative calm (albeit a tradeoff for opium-smuggling lenience). No wonder that, after Ahmad Wali Karzai’s assassination by trusted guard Mahmad Sardar – a family friend who commanded 200 men himself –Razziq acted quickly to reel in the city’s giddy minds: by afternoon Sardar’s body hung by a rope from the roof of a city center police station.

With the US troop drawdown begun this month, most observers view the loss of “our SOB” in the South – a region declared won as ISAF shifts to the East – as a strategic setback: a metaphorical prison break mirroring the literal prison break of nearly 500 Taliban in Kandahar City in May. Canada’s combat forces abandoned bases in nearby Panjway District last week, for example, having declared the Afghan mission complete, much to the dismay of local leaders. And as Razziq sets his sights on the city's Taliban, a botched high profile police raid on a downtown safehouse this week seems vindication for the late puppet-master.

Yet if it is still a counterinsurgency that ISAF espouses, then the removal of one of Afghanistan’s most corrupt and feared warlords offers a much needed clean slate. It is a fallacy to say, as ISAF often does in hopes of pursuing insurgent “reconciliation,” that most Taliban are driven by grievances rather than ideology: no jobs program can transform people who idolize turban bombers. But the active sympathies of the “auxiliaries” and the drifting loyalties of the “mass base,” to use the terms of departing ISAF Commander General David Petraeus’ COIN manual, are highly reactive to government predations.

While Gen. Petraeus made fighting corruption a priority during his twelve month command, deeply entrenched personality-based patronage networks, such as that of Ahmad Wali Karzai, prevented substantial changes from gaining momentum. Security in provinces like the late Jan Muhammad’s Uruzgan goes to the highest bidder, and is allocated by ISAF’s designated topak salaran (gun-rulers), whether it be his powerful nephew Matiullah Khan, or teenage henchmen of the Provincial Shurah’s pseudo police force: “I am a ‘servant of Afghanistan,’” one of these described his official job title to me.

Furthermore, as Afghan government officials frazzle over higher and higher offices of oversight, personal accountability is harder to pin down than the $10 million of cash leaving Kabul International Airport every day. Last month Afghanistan’s Attorney General blamed “external” actors for protecting corrupt Afghans from prosecution. Still, Afghan self-righteousness is unmerited: this week the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan reported that US efforts to train Afghanistan’s shady central bank in transparency met fierce resistance, culminating in the expulsion of US Treasury advisors in May.

All of this bodes well for the Taliban: A UN survey earlier this year found that 48% of Afghans in the South – where the police count on AWK’s ISAF-proof network for goodies and pardons – have a favorable opinion of the police (slightly above the 40% favorable rating of the Taliban).

This figures, for the twitter-friendly Taliban are doing the jobs the Americans won’t do: targeting the corrupt power-brokers. In COIN, it’s telling who the people blame when insurgents kill civilians (the incidence of which is on the rise, according to a July UN report): a successful progression would be from “blame ISAF,” to “blame the insurgents,” to “blame the government – it can do better.” But in Kandahar, the hush suggests a collective, “Can you blame ‘em?”

Yet as the so-called power vacuum shows, the jury is still out. Thus, it is startling that, presented with an opportunity to defeat the Taliban’s vigilante appeal by holding gun-rulers accountable and rewarding transparency, an international consensus has emerged that now is the opportunity for peace talks. Last month President Karzai confirmed that the US is in negotiations with the Taliban, whom he has called “brothers.” The United Nations, for its part, removed 14 “former” Taliban members from its blacklist last week in hopes of incentivizing talks.

But the opportunity for talks is a mirage. In Kandahar City this week, telecom providers dutifully disabled service precisely due to the Taliban’s desire that no one talk. In neighboring Zabul Province, providers have pleaded a 4-hour morning window out of the Taliban. Doctors at Zabul’s largest hospital have recently begun negotiating their hours as well.

ISAF’s opportunity now, rather, is to turn AWK’s passing into a symbolic turning point in the power-politics of the world’s second most corrupt country. Being perceived to side with the Afghans who are still searching for a decent Taliban alternative is essential for holding the hard-fought gains of the departing troops. Even Kandaharis are puzzled over who will fill the vacuum, but they ought to be assured: Warlords need not apply.

(Photos by Founders' Porch)

Reconciliation won't cut it in Afghanistan

“War is not a festival,” the Taliban have said, but here in Kandahar City it is at least a paid week off. The 10th annual “spring offensive” began May 1st according to a Taliban statement warning Afghans to stay home to avoid the fireworks, and, as the clock struck midnight, the United Nations and many international aid groups locked up and checked out of Kandahar City, some going as far as Dubai. Meanwhile, vacation is over for the 475 Taliban prisoners sprung loose downtown last week: whether or not the “spring offensive” will bring as many road-side executions and political assassinations as the winter, it will surely bring the manpower.

“The city so nice, they named it twice” it may be, but 475 Taliban (including commanders) spawning smack dab in Kandahar City, Kandahar Province, is not what President Hamid Karzai had in mind when he launched the Afghan Peace and Reconciliation Program's “reintegration” campaign last June. Reintegration, or as an International Security Assistance Force how-to flyer puts it, “enabling local communities to welcome former insurgents back to Afghan society,” is a tough sell in a city where, despite being the epicenter of the hospitable Pashtunwali culture, a Westerner braving the streets would be lucky to be greeted with more than glares. The Pentagon's recent“Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” boasted 699 reintegrees throughout Afghanistan, but it is unlikely many of these hailed from the city where – contrary to an April Washington Post diagram showing “insurgent-controlled” ink spots surrounding Kandahar City in April '10 disappearing in April '11 – the Taliban are already at home.

As Sarah Chayes, an American writer in Kandahar City since 2001, once put it: “What is this culture that makes the Afghans, the famously bloodthirsty Afghans, welcome their mortal enemies into their midst, and show them courtesy?” Here, where word travels faster than Twitter, it is the intimidation. “I heard the son of Akhter is working with the Americans,” go the whispers. Last week the mayor reported that only 45 of the city's 125 municipality posts are filled, mostly because of Taliban death threats. Nearly ten years after the US Special Forces evicted Mullah Omar from his downtown mansion, fear of gossip and wandering eyes keeps Kandahar under the Taliban's spell.

This is not the place of roses described in last week's Pentagon report: Measuring since October 2010, “noticeable security gains are evident in Kandahar City and several critical surrounding districts,” the Pentagon assessed. Throughout the south, momentum is shifting “from the insurgency to the Afghan government and the coalition.” And, most importantly in COIN, “Afghan perceptions of security improved slightly.”

But the last is a spin too far: the footnoted details reveal that “positive” perceptions are in fact decreasing faster than “negative” perceptions. Such gloss in the face of record US fatalities (last month was by far America's deadliest April of the 10-year war) and mass intimidation in key cities, like Kandahar, suggests a fundamental underestimation of the insurgency's strength. Meanwhile, previous ISAF reports underestimate the insurgency's ideological zeal, pinning 80% as non-ideological grievance fighters. Such high-hoping explains why, as the April report puts it, “ISAF still does not fully understand the regenerative capacity of the insurgency.”

ISAF may begin drawing-down in July, but the diplomats are already drawing up – going to war with the understanding of the insurgency they have. In March came a report from Lakhdar Brahimi and Thomas R. Pickering claiming the time for talking to the Taliban has come. “Afghanistan: Negotiating Peace,” calls for “reconciliation” with the insurgents, whom President Karzai has already called “brothers.” Ambassador Pickering concedes that “the Taliban may press for tighter control in the name of Sharia,” but he sees “an opening”: “There are things that the Taliban have begun to move on: they're not eliminating all women's schools. That kind of thing.”

Unfortunately, even Ambassador Pickering's low standard of success is impossible without first securing the population. David Galula, a founding father of COIN theory, wrote, “the population will not talk unless it feels safe, and it does not feel safe until the insurgent's power has been broken.” Indeed, the population of nearby Zabul Province will not talk on cell phones unless the telecom providers feel safe, and for much of April they did not, thanks to the insurgency's unbroken power there. Yet for the “reconciliation” advocates, it seems what is most important is that the insurgents feel safe enough to talk.

Amrullah Saleh, the anti-Taliban hawk kicked out of his position as spy chief right when President Karzai's reconciliation program kicked off, and the planner of an anti-Taliban “national mobilization” protest set for Thursday in Kabul, recently told a Washington audience the ugly truth: “we hear the speeches of major Western politicians saying failure is not an option. Now it seems as if failure is an option.” Reconciliation and reintegration have their time in COIN, but not yet. Now is the time to fight the intimidation tactics and ideological appeal that have given the insurgency shadow control over some of Afghanistan's most important cities.

Recalling last week's Kandahar City prison break, one insurgent leader said “the most astonishing thing” was that while the escape lasted nearly five hours, it went unnoticed for another four. Fret as we might over reconciliation, we may soon notice there is no one left to reconcile.

A Revolution Foretold

So now the rainbow blood pumps in the hearts of the twittering youth of the Arab revolution. Theirs is not a war of artillery and generals, but of onions and vinegar and Google marketing execs, like 31-year old Wael Ghonim, who said as Hosni Mubarak fell last February, “I have never seen a revolution that was preannounced before.” Arabs planning protests? Arabs seeking democracy? You might think it a mawkish fad, but there are actually some people who “take a different view,” claims The New York Times: “[President Obama] made the point early on, a senior official said, that ‘this was a trend’ that could spread to other authoritarian governments in the region, including in Iran.” Can you imagine?

We needn't imagine, the Lebanese will say: there was the Independence Intifada of Lebanon in 2005, when, emboldened by American power, peaceful protestors of criss-crossed religions and a single confession of solidarity rejected the narrative of Syrian imperialism and Hezbollah militancy, and chose freedom and self-rule. This was in those dusty days before Twitter, but, by God, would you believe that the people were able to communicate with each other through a tradition of the olden days called “talking”?

And before Lebanon there was Iraq. Those who blush upon hearing George W. Bush’s Iraq dabbling called a proper revolution surely never knew (for to have known once would be to never forget) the pain of Iraqi mothers forced to applaud their sons’ short-straw executions and pay the regime for the bullets. The ghost of political opposition bid farewell to the Middle East during the Baathist and Alawite crushings of the early 1980s, and the region had since been a place of whispers and screams. The 2003 Iraqi invasion may have merely brought the screams from the prisons to the streets, but the hushed pamphleteers and poets could suddenly speak louder than ever before. In the darkness surrounding Iraq, glowing eyes watched curiously. After the 2005 elections the mayor of Baghdad said, “the governments of the region are nervous. The people of the region are envious.”

Indeed, not only is there precedent for the recent medley of Arab revolutions (in Tunisia and Egypt as well as foggy-destined Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya), but the precedent is also the cause. Egyptians will laugh and say, “We want the nightmares of Iraq? Right.” But there was a shame in sitting idle as the US Marines Corps and the 82nd Airborne gave Iraqis votes, a free press, female parliamentarians, one of the greatest ecological restorations in history (i.e. the Arab marshlands revival), and new dreams. Maybe Egyptians could dream too.

But fine, supposing the US never brought any revolutions to Iraq, and supposing these recent winds of change were the lone work of Twitter and Wikileaks. In this case, those who blushed before will have to blush again if they say that the shimmering river of the Jasmine Revolution would now be flowing with promise into Mesopotamia: Oh, there would be a revolution all right.

It was strange that people who favored an international military intervention to remove Saddam Hussein from power in 2003 were branded as naïve idealists (to put it most charitably). “You break it, you own it,” said the wise realists. But the US had broken Iraq long ago when the CIA helped Saddam take power, and Saddam’s brutalization of Iraqis had made a future Shia-Sunni kill-fest an irrevocable date on Iraq’s calendar. As Christopher Hitchens predicted in 2002, amid invasion doubts:

the implosion of the Saddam Hussein regime is coming anyway. It’s coming like Christmas. We’re very soon to be faced whatever we do with all the ghastly consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq, which will include indeed Sunni-Shia rivaly, other regional rivalries, the possible intervention of neighboring countries, revenge killing, innumerable unpleasant possibilities.

The real question was not whether a revolution was coming, but whether, when it came, Saddam’s Republican Guard would still have access to the chemical weapons and attack helicopters that they were so experienced in using.

And now, as the Arab League approves a no-fly zone over Libya, where the Egyptian rebels’ caches of tear gas antidotes and muffler plugs will not do, one wonders: where was the righteous Arab League hiding when the US was enforcing a unilateral no-fly zone over parts of Iraq for the decade preceding the invasion. And as Europeans demand a no-drive zone in Libya: is there not a profitable oil-for-food program in Libya that’s worth protecting again? And as Colonel Qaddafi shows “no mercy” to the rebels: what if Qaddafi had not been “nervous” enough about Bush to hand over his chemical weapons stash? And as revolution spreads throughout the region: if Saddam were still in power, who thinks Iraqis would be too passive to take their chance? Who thinks Saddam would let them? And who thinks Iraqis would let the West come anywhere close to their rescue after two decades of European parliamentarians profiting off of their misery, and Americans preaching freedom but ignoring the concentration camp of Iraq?

There has long been a rot in Arab society, and it gave birth to 9/11. “This rot weighs on the world,” Iraqi-born professor Kanan Makiya said. It is a rot that limited Arab revolutions to either vicious coups or Islamist uprisings. But the war in Iraq offered a precedent for a new kind of revolution, “that could spread to other authoritarian governments.” Lebanon followed, and now the region. Today’s is a revolution “preannounced” indeed.

(Photos courtesy of The Founders' Porch)