Warlords and Taliban - #4

The type of corruption that is seen there reminds me of stories of the 1920’s and the corruption and gangsters of that erra.

Chief Zazai: You are a trucker who is delivering a load of goods from Kabul to Herat. What happens? Along the road there are checkpoints, some of “police,” some you don’t know who they are. Each time you must pay. You are held up at gunpoint. Or you may own a shop and you’re doing well. One day they arrest you and take you to jail. Or you or your son is snatched off the street. Your family must pay a ransom to get you back. Do you want a license to build a building or permission to dig a well or put in a pipe for sewage? Everywhere you find outstretched hands.

It, however, differs in that the governments is the corrupt entity

Chief Zazai: It is the police, it is the army, it is agents of the warlords who run their districts and deliver votes to the Kabul government. And when the people believe that the U.S. is backing these people, you can see what that does.

The next paragraph is frightening, because it reminds me of the corruption that we are only beginning to see here in the US. The US should look to Afghanistan to see what the future looks like.

Chief Zazai: The people are caught between two fires. When the warlords ran Afghanistan after the Soviets got kicked out, a poor person had to pay a “tax” to have a bicycle, to buy rice, if you sneezed they took money out of your pocket. The Taliban arose in response to this and were backed by the people who thought, These guys are bad but at least they are honest. At least they believe in something beyond their own greed and gangsterism. But then the Taliban became just as much of a plague upon the people by jamming their cruel ways down everybody’s throat. And we saw what Mullah Omar let happen, culminating on 9/11.

This is actually the way Americans feel right now about gun control. Maybe their idea of TRIBES is the same as our idea of STATES. When the word is substituted the idea is the same. So, I believe it’s the same concept.

SP: Skeptics of course will say that to arm the Afghan tribes would only be adding another ungovernable element to an already-seething witches’ brew of contending forces. How would you answer that objection?
Chief Zazai: I absolutely can understand the point where many minds’ red light alerts goes off, but that again is due to the lack of understanding of the Afghan tribal structure. Back in the 18th and 19th Centuries the British Raj faced similar problems and the threats were immediately felt by London. In order to stop the Afghan tribes from crossing into the greater Indian side and destabilizing the British Raj, the British created tribal forces from the Afghan tribes to defend the territory of the British Raj in what is now the (NWFP) North West Frontier Province. That strategy worked so well that the British models of Khyber Rifles, Mommand Regiments and Frontier Constabulary have become legendary forces and all are made from the tribesmen and are still part of the today’s Pakistani armed forces.

The same as the states have each law of their own

SP: As I understand it, these British-officered forces were, in practical terms at the rank-and-file level, governed by tribal constraints and conventions.
Chief Zazai: Militia do not exist in the frame of the tribal structure, we have got Arbakai, which means Tribal Police or Tribal Armed Constables. As I said before, the Tribal Police Force programme is and will be under the total control of a Tribal Council. The elders will control the force, there shall be no problems at all because we have a strong tribal system that no individual can break the treaties these elders make. What the elders promise, they will do and deliver. It will be more depending on the U.S. Army to deliver what they promise. To prevent tribal conflict, it has to be structured in such a way that all the tribes living in one province will sign Unity treaties among each other and agree on the conditions laid out. This would be expanded to the neighboring provinces as well, that’s where we will be able to unite the Afghan Tribes and bring them all under a single leadership. I have done so in my valley with the 11 Tribes. It’s a small-scale achievement but it could be applied all over and enlarged.
So, what would the US have to object to with this idea?
Chief Zazai: To send more troops means to create more new battles, I think we have already got a few nasty fronts in the south where the British soldiers and U.S. Marines are fighting almost non-stop and of course more troops means more body bags and that itself would be an alarming sign. In Vietnam the U.S. had over half a million soldiers and still the generals were asking for more. I would suggest that Gen. McChrystal instead explore better alternatives on the ground rather than asking for more troops. I agree when he is asking for resources and equipment and here I present the Tribal Police Force for his attention–to consider the TPF as an alternative to more U.S. troops.