Impressions of Afghanistan

Did we learn anything from this experience? To get another opinion, I met with Dexter Filkins, an “old” – that is not in my terms but at least a decade old -- Middle East hand, who has spent years in repeated assignments here, in Iraq, India and Pakistan and who is one of the few who really gets about the country, on his own, not “embedded,” and not loaded down with flak jacket, body guards and minders. He is just young enough and daring enough to see a different picture, I thought. I was right.

First, he said, the Kandahar operation is already in full swing. It isn’t just the assassination squads of the “Special Ops” (aka Special Forces) but large-scale regular army action although the Military here, known as ISAF, are not talking about it. And it is essentially, as I wrote in June on “changing the guard but not the drill,” the same as the Marja operation, just bigger. The failed Marja campaign is the template for the Kandahar campaign. And it too will fail, Filkins predicted. Filkins said that Petraeus was essentially trying to apply what he did in Iraq to Afghanistan without much thought that the two countries are very different. I disagreed, as I have in print: Petraeus is replaying not only what the Americans did in Vietnam but even the French in Vietnam.

But to my surprise, Filkins was relatively complimentary about the military high command and particularly about Petraeus. What he found most favorable was that, unlike all the civilians holed up in the embassy fortress, the military get out into “the field.” Had Ambassador Eikenberry heard this, he would have agreed.

Much of his admonition to the members of his Country Team meeting was to get out and see.

But, is this really such a good idea? I wonder. Almost everyone with whom I spoke mentioned how disturbing it was to the Afghans to see so many Americans. True, there are large areas of the country with no American military or civilian presence, but from Kabul west, south and east, Americans are thick on the ground. Would adding more be beneficial? And particularly adding more when decked out in helmets, flak jackets and goggles – like my escort officer, a nice American woman – had to wear even up in the supposedly “secure” northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Not speaking any of the local languages, almost entirely new to the country (very few have little preparation before they come, stay here longer than a year and have little contact or, apparently, interest while they are here) and prone to tell the locals how to manage their lives, they conjure the phrase common among even our close friends and allies, the English during World War II, about the Americans, “over sexed, over paid and over here.”

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