Let's Talk Seriously About Afghanistan.

• Author: Cotter, Michael W.

The media is full of information about the conflict in Afghanistan. Some of the coverage supports the Trump administration's plan to increase the U.S. military presence in that country; some of it is opposed. Some acknowledges the ongoing cost of our involvement. But very little of it suggests alternatives. It is time to lay out some basic facts about Afghanistan that make it impossible for us to succeed with our current policies, and to suggest a way out. Here are my thoughts.

Afghanistan is a Myth

There is no "Afghanistan." The area within those borders is a late 19th century creation of the British and Russian Empires. Prior to that, at a time when few people in Central Asia ventured very far from their villages, there were Afghan kingdoms. But they were ruled by Pashtun kings and included territory now part of Iran and Pakistan. The borders created by Europeans include many disparate ethnic groups. Afghanistan's population is about 33 million. Some 40% or 13 million of those are Pashtun. The remaining 60 percent are Tajiks (35%), Uzbeks (9%), Hazara (9%) and a number of smaller groups. Afghan Persian and Pashtun are official languages. The former, the native language of the Hazaras and Tajiks, is the lingua franca of the country and most speak and read it. However, very few Afghans who aren't Pashtun speak the Pashtun language. The ethnic divisions are exacerbated by an equally significant urban-rural divide. While Kabul is home to some 3.3 million or ten percent of the country's population, 74% of Afghans live in rural areas.

This background is absent from our discussion of the conflict in which we have been involved for two decades. Our government and the media identify the "enemy" as the Taliban, but they never make clear that the Taliban represent a significant portion of rural Afghans, the great majority of them Pashtun. Not surprisingly, when the "Taliban" controlled most of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, their government was composed of rural Pashtun religious figures. The opposition was largely led by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks. When we entered the conflict with the goal of ousting that regime and eliminating al Qaeda leaders, we did so through the "Northern Alliance," Uzbek and Tajik military figures, some of whom had served in the Soviet forces that occupied Afghanistan. Although both presidents of Afghanistan since then have been ethnic Pashtuns, the main support for the government continues to be the non-Pashtun ethnic groups...